John Perkins “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” Extended Interview 2008

31:53

“And Africa is an amazing example because who’s ever heard of Africa? I mean we hear the name Africa but who knows anything about Africa? What do we know about coltan in the Congo, what do we really know about diamonds in some of these countries, what do we really know about oil in Sudan? We hear these things but we don’t really know much. What we’d like to say, the American people like to say, the American press likes to say: “O… is those corrupt leaders.”. We don’t ask who corrupted them? Leaders are not corrupt, they are corrupted, somebody does it. We say: “oh you know tribal warfare”, well who’s creating the tribal warfare? It’s been to the advantage of the British the French the Dutch the Germans whoever happened to be there now us. To foster this kind of instability, this antagonism, the antagonism between Muslims and Christians and Jews. This goes on and on and Africa is truly the canary in the mine and it’s it’s a dying canary. You know it’s terribly dying and we don’t even look, we don’t know and another problem with Africa is that the people in our own country whose heritage is African that the African Americans for the most part don’t even know where they were from. They don’t know what language their ancestors spoke so it’s hard for them to really relate. Unlike Latin America for example, we can’t really do something in Venezuela or Colombia or Bolivia without people in this country taking note. Because a lot of those people are from there we have a lot of people here in this country from Venezuela and Colombia Bolivia and so on and they’re interested. They know where they’re from and they can read the local papers they can read Spanish but in Africa our African heritage people don’t even know where they’re from and they don’t read those papers. So there’s been this huge mask that’s been thrown over Africa. It truly is a dark continent from the point of view of we don’t allow light in, the media doesn’t understand what’s going on, it doesn’t want to. The corporatocracy surely don’t want us to understand. I mean the corporation’s do everything they can to foment turmoil, mayhem, instability and chaos there and to keep the information from reaching the American public from even reaching the press because that serves their interests best.”

14:53

“Torrijos kept his family together, he said: “I’m probably next but it’s okay because I’ve done what I came here to do. I renegotiated the canal, that the canal will now be in our hands.” He just finished negotiating the treaty with Jimmy Carter. “So I’ve accomplished what I need to accomplish. I’m ready to die. If that’s what it’s going to take.” And he had dreams about an airplane crash in June of that same year. Just a couple of months later he also went to an airplane crash. Which there’s no question was you know executed by CIA sponsored jackals was a pass-off over radio. There’s a tremendous amount of evidence that one of the security guards, one of the Torrijos’s security guards, handed him at the last moment as he was getting on the plane a small tape recorder that contained a bomb.”

This is the legacy of our Western civilization. Killing people who wanted to help their people because like Chomsky said:

“17 of them, even though it’s called G15– a good part of the world. And they do have something to say, believe it or not. And you can even read it. For example, you read it on the front page if you happen to subscribe to the leading journal in Egypt. [LAUGHTER] –The Al-Ahram, which has an English edition so you can read it in English. What they say at the G15 meeting is that the United States and Britain– this is mostly quotes– are unwilling to enter into a dialogue with the South. “The South” is what is euphemistically called the developing world. Which direction they’re developing, you can argue about. The US and Britain are unwilling to enter into a dialogue with the South, which is always forced to make concessions in the World Trade Organization to the benefit of the rich. The true story of globalisation, they continue, is that the North– that’s G7– has to make maximum benefits, and the South is only entitled to a limited margin of development. And if this margin is crossed, the Western speculators are there to take you down as quickly as they can. That’s not false. But it’s a considerable understatement that the writers surely know it. US power and violence has also been there to take you down as quickly as it can if countries tried to pursue the path of independent development, what’s called in US planning circles “radical nationalism” or “economic nationalism” or sometimes even “excessive development.” That’s not to be permitted in the current period of globalisation, for reasons I’ll get back to. You don’t have to send the Marines that often. The speculators can do the job. The G15 meeting goes on to issue a plea to Western investors. It says, we don’t want to stifle you, but we want to know who you are. And we want you to come and go in an orderly fashion. That’s precisely what the North will not accept. The demand that not be accepted is a core part of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, which has been deflected thanks to activist pressure, which succeeded in escaping media controls, but deflected– not stopped–”

-Noam Chomsky

“You don’t have to send the Marines that often. The speculators can do the job.” Those speculators he speaks about are economic hit-men like John Perkins.

“I mean if anyone know any economic history knows that say 200 years ago there wasn’t much difference between what’s now the first world and what’s now the third world actually India and China where the commercial and industrial centers of the world Europe was kind of backward in most respect but now they are very different hugely different. How did it happen? The European states, the developed States England, United States, France, Germany, Japan the one country that resisted colonialism up to East Asian you know Tigers without exception they radically violated principles of economic liberalism. They insisted on massive state protection and subsidy just as the US economy does today. They were very highly protectionist and interventionist on the other hand they forced what is now the third world to accept economic liberalism program that Chava he wants an extreme form of it and it had predicted effects so at the end of two hundred years of British rule India was not the commercial and industrial center of the world anyone from which Britain was stealing technology and so on. It was an impoverished peasant country with a mortality rate about the same as it had been two hundred years earlier, and began to develop afterwards when it could follow its own principales. However in every one of those third-world countries, everyone there is an elite which is extremely wealthy and privileged, serves the interests of the foreign master and they do just fine, you know. You go to the poorest country in sub-saharan Africa and there are people living the lavish lifestyle we dream of. So in Iraq too under this system there will be such people, the ones working with foreign bankers and international investors and with Halliburton and so on they are gonna have local managers.”-Noam Chomsky

Ye, but we live in a free market economy where there is no oppression or colonialism and the 3rd world suffers only because like John Perkins said:“O… are those corrupt leaders.”. We don’t ask who corrupted them? Leaders are not corrupt, they are corrupted, somebody does it. We say: “oh you know tribal warfare”, well who’s creating the tribal warfare?”