Bribery, Loan Sharking And Murder True American Foreign Poli

mrmom2

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Mar 8, 2005
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In one-on-one interview, best-selling author, John Perkins, lays it on the line about corrupt American foreign policy.
August 22, 2005
By Greg Szymanski


Jackals inside the U.S. government’s foreign hit squads recently warned at least six of the major democratic leaders of South American countries, in no uncertain terms, either “play ball or be killed.,” according to John Perkins, best-selling author, whistle blower and self-proclaimed economic hit man..


Perkins recently shocked America with a startling account about how government-sponsored mafia-like hits and economic bribery are a mainstay in U. S. foreign policy, used as dirty tools in order to “get what it wants when it wants” no matter what the cost.


“Right now our government’s heavy-handed pressure, applied by hired jackals, is worse today in Latin America then it was when I worked applying pressure to foreign leaders years ago,” said Perkins in a telephone conversation this week from his Florida home while recovering from colon surgery and preparing to go on the road for an American and European speaking tour..


He is presently working on a second book, due to be released next year, a book attempting to offer future solutions about how to the reverse America’s destructive empire building tactics, including economic bribery and assassinations.


“We have the resources and we are the last powerful country able to change the destructive course being taken now,” added Perkins. ”I am optimistic and believe we will reverse the course being taken now, otherwise why would I be writing these books.”


His first huge success, “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” released last year and selling over 200,000 copies, immediately became a New York Times best-seller. His shocking book, a must-read for anyone who wants to know why America is hated around the world, reveals how foreign governments are intimidated and uncooperative leaders assassinated while the U.S. masquerades as a benevolent benefactor.

For more than 15 years, Perkins, the former corporate consultant, acting as a third party intermediary between the U.S. and foreign leaders, lived in a dangerous "political underworld" of deceit, bribery, loan sharking and murder while advancing America’s shady foreign policy interests.

Perkins finally went public, detailing how he helped the U.S. "gets what it wants" by using a mafia-style tactics, after being guilt-ridden from taking a half million dollars from the Stoner-Webster Corp. to keep silent and then being haunted by the memory of the 9/11 tragedy. He adds 9/11 is the result of foreign retaliation based on years of U.S. aggression.

His book clearly shows the ugly side of America’s empire building, providing a firsthand account why the "jackals" in the CIA and what he calls “the corporatocracy” were responsible for the assassinations of President Omar Torrijos of Panama and President Jaime Roldas of Ecuador.

Perkins said the same sort of mafia-like tactics are taking place today in countries like Argentina, Chili, Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela, citing the recent coup ousting President Gutierrez of Ecuador as an example after the former leader cut a one-sided deal with President Bush against the interests of his own people.

“One month after he was elected, Gutierrez met with Bush in Washington,” said Perkins. “He was originally elected by a mandate of the people based on an anti-American and anti-globalist platform. But after getting in office and being pressured by Washington, he agreed to a deal whereby Ecuador gets about 10 percent of the profits from their oil and natural resources while 90 percent goes to American oil companies and to pay back debt owed to the World Bank.”

“When word leaked out in his country what happened, the people of Ecuador were furious. They ousted Gutierrez, replacing him with the Vice President, but it is still up in the air whether anything will really change there. Put yourself in their shoes. The pressure we exert is outrageous and the leaders are essentially offered millions of dollars or a bullet in the head, with the jackals reminding them of how other victims of obvious assassinations, like President Torrijos of Panama and President Roldas of Ecuador, were dealt with in the past.

Perkins said the American people need to be made aware, since the media is ignoring the problem, that a majority of the Latin American countries in recent years are putting democratically elected leaders in office, all running on anti-American platforms. Claiming hatred runs deep among the Latin American people, Perkins said leaders are finally starting to stand-up against American aggression due to growing resistance at home.

Perkins used President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela as a perfect example of how U.S. government-sponsored hit squads are attempting to kill him for not agreeing to one-sided loans which would eventually bankrupt his country while turning over all of Venezuela’s infrastructure, like water, gas and power, powerful American owned and operated corporations.

Referencing Perkins’ book as evidence of U.S. attempts on his life, Chavez is the most outspoken of all the leaders who is bucking the American system, even publicly saying recently that he wouldn’t set foot on U.S. soil until the people of America liberated themselves from Bush’s tyrannical rule.

Chavez has also publicly accused Bush of trying to have him killed for not “doing business as usual” which means rich American corporations profit while his countrymen starve. Venezuela has long been a target on the U.S. imperialistic map, since it has large oil reserves and is the fourth largest oil exporter to the United States, making it a prime target for the Bush administration’s lopsided and heavy-handed foreign policy approach.

Last week Chavez also suspended all cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement agency, accusing its agents of spying and espionage. Further, Chavez has threatened to discontinue U.S. oil shipments and Washington observers verify Perkins claims that much of Latin America is rallying around Chavez becoming increasingly discontented with Washington’s undiplomatic policies toward the region and its distrust with the Bush administration in general.

“The Latin American people are obviously saying don’t meddle with us, but the media and the government are keeping the real truth from the American people,” said Perkins, citing a conspiracy among large corporate media owners, wealthy international bankers and the government in manipulating public opinion and the news for their own globalist agenda.

Perkins also cites his wildly popular book as another example of media suppression. Although his book has hit the all the best seller lists, he has been relegated to discussing it in the alternative media, saying he has systematically been silenced by the major networks and newspapers, not granting him interviews or bothering to discuss the book.

While CNN recently gave a pro Bush administration author with a relatively obscure book 20 minutes of air time telling the public how Iran posed an imminent nuclear threat, Perkins has never once been asked to appear on CNN.

He also has never been asked to appear or be interviewed on other major networks, forcing him to tell his story on CSPAN, including outlets like Public Broadcasting Radio as well as print and internet magazines like The American Free Press and the Arctic Beacon.

“This is a big story in itself,” added Perkins. “Here I have a best-selling book with truthful, important and controversial issues needing to be dealt with, and the corporate-driven media has seen fit to ignore me and keep my story from the American people. If anyone is going to save this democracy, it is not the spineless mainstream media, but people in the alternative press and on the internet who have had the courage in the face of much adversity to expose the truth.”

Searching for reasons for telling his story and trying to explain to the American people why he became a whistle blower, he added:

"I wanted and needed to expose what was going on. Most Americans have no idea. I think that what we have is a world empire that’s controlled by a few men I call the corporatocracy. These are the heads of the big banks, the corporations and the government. You now they jump across these lines and it is very dangerous, very undemocratic. MacNamara was a good example. He was President of Ford and then became Secretary of Defense and then President of the World Bank. Today we’ve got Dick Cheney who’s basically the same picture. This has been going on for a long time and it not simply a republican issue but it goes across party lines.

"I think our aggressive position of bringing other countries to their knees has created a tremendous economic imbalance where now out of the 100 largest economies in the world, 52 are corporations and 47 of those are American. Here we have 5% of the world’s population reaching out like a giant octopus and sucking in 25% or more of the world’s resources.

"But it’s not really 5% of the world’s population or the American people. It’s really 1% of our population controlling more than 90 % of the wealth while the rest of us support them through taxes, our purchases, through our silence and through going along with the system."

Saying the imbalance of resource consumption can not be transferred to emerging countries like China and others without having devastating effects, the problem is thatthe Bush administration is clinging to the old ways.

“With the appointments of Paul Wolfowitz as President of the World Bank and John Bolton in the United Nations, Bush is telling the world that the bank is a not an international entity, but an American one used to advance only our interests,” said Perkins about the financial institution which is likely to get worse with its policies of saddling tremendous debt on third world countries in order to insure allegiance to American imperialism.

Concerning the recent public announcements made by Bush about third world debt forgiveness in 18 countries, Perkins said it is a “complete sham” as the real motive is to forgive debt put at the same time make it contingent on large American corporate interests taking over the gas, water, power, education and telephone systems of the countries involved.

Saying the debt forgiveness initiative is just another clear example of American economic blackmail at work, he claims the poor people of the developing countries are the ones that really suffer at the expense of corporate greed.

Concerning this problem as well as the increase of world-wide terrorism, Perkins offered his solution:

“The only way we are going to get security and stop terrorism is to address and stop the problem of 20,000 people every day dying from hunger world wide. We need to address and solve the problem of roughly 30,000 people, mostly children, dying from curable diseases every day.

“There are more than 2 billion impoverished people in the world today. These are staggering numbers that need to be addressed because as long as there is extreme poverty, there will always be hatred, resentment and terrorism.”

And it’s the heavy-handed games played by the American government, often times bankrupting third world countries causing poverty, starvation and death that Perkins deals with his hard-hitting book.

How the "game is played" provides the main thrust of Perkins’ book and his role as the government’s "economic hit man" provides the credibility behind the shocking details. Page by page, every step of the way, he portrays America as a greedy villain, never taking "no" for an answer when it comes to raping a country of its wealth and natural resources.

"In Indonesia, Panama, South America, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran, the U.S. has used the same system of economic intimidation, assassination and then ultimately war as a last resort to get what it wants," said Perkins.

Perkins remembers first recruited by the Boston consulting firm of Chas T. Main in 1971 after a two year stint in the Peace Corp. The firm worked closely with the National Security Agency and CIA, recruiting Perkins for his knowledge of languages while working in Ecuador.

After being trained and given his first assignment in Indonesia, Perkins describes his 10 year tenure with the consulting firm as "technically legal, but morally and ethically bankrupt."

Essentially, no matter where he traveled or what leader he was hired to manipulate, the modus operandi was the same. Perkins would meet with a leader of a targeted country, encouraging him to accept a large loan for an inflated project that both the CIA and the leader knew the country could not afford.

When the loan was accepted, usually through U.S. connections at The World Bank, the money would be transferred to a bank in the U.S. and then funneled back to U.S. companies through massive construction and engineering projects.

Perkins’s job was to provide inflated loan estimates, saddling the underdeveloped country with a massive debt, impossible to repay and leaving the country at the mercy of the U.S. to dictate repayment terms. These terms often times included the right to construct a strategically important military base, a favored U.N. vote in support of U.S. policy or cheap access and usage to a country’s natural resources.

"Once the third world country was economically indebted to the U.S., the CIA would then have its hooks into manipulating the course and direction of the country’s political agenda," said Perkins.

Perkins added that if this type of loan was arranged between private parties, it would be called extortion, but in the international arena it’s simply dismissed as economic development.

And the US average Joe doesn't know why the US is so hated around the globe 8O