economic hitman
Maybe soon I'll figure out why this small town of 70K-plus is blessed enough to have the opportunity to experience famous musicians, politicians, and writers from around the world on any given night of the week.
Monday night, I went to hear John Perkins speak at the Lensic. I'd not read his book 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman,' but I knew who he had been and what he was now. Aside from the event being a benefit for KSFR, it would be important because Perkins was blowing the whistle. And it seems whenever this happens, the truth, that elusive creature, comes out and then change for the better follows. Call me an optimist.
I could ramble forever about Perkins, a worldly man who personally knew most of the leaders of the developing nations in the 70s (Jaime Roldos, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama, both of whom died in mysterious plane crashes, were among them) because he was working for international consulting firm whose responsibility it was to "build up the American empire" or the corporatocracy (US governments, banks, corporations). A self-described Economic Hitman, he would, among other things, put pressure on these leaders, many of them democratically elected, to accept loans, enormous loans, that they couldn't possibly repay. This would put these countries in the position of doing anything the US wanted them to do and it usually had something to do with oil. If the leaders didn't cooperate, they were done away with, and US-backed individuals would be installed.
The remarkable thing about the work he was tasked to do is that it seems to be without political lines, and this was somewhat refreshing. Frightening, of course, that neither of our majority parties seems to be above this type of coercion, but the truth is like that. He never mentioned the word Republican, said democratically elected a few times, and said Democrat only once when he referred to all of us in the audience. Oddly, 'Democrat' seemed to be a dirty word or at the very least unevolved. Upon thinking about it, I realized he has no use for those terms. We are all from the same party called the United States when it came to the work he did.
Monday night, I went to hear John Perkins speak at the Lensic. I'd not read his book 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman,' but I knew who he had been and what he was now. Aside from the event being a benefit for KSFR, it would be important because Perkins was blowing the whistle. And it seems whenever this happens, the truth, that elusive creature, comes out and then change for the better follows. Call me an optimist.
I could ramble forever about Perkins, a worldly man who personally knew most of the leaders of the developing nations in the 70s (Jaime Roldos, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama, both of whom died in mysterious plane crashes, were among them) because he was working for international consulting firm whose responsibility it was to "build up the American empire" or the corporatocracy (US governments, banks, corporations). A self-described Economic Hitman, he would, among other things, put pressure on these leaders, many of them democratically elected, to accept loans, enormous loans, that they couldn't possibly repay. This would put these countries in the position of doing anything the US wanted them to do and it usually had something to do with oil. If the leaders didn't cooperate, they were done away with, and US-backed individuals would be installed.
The remarkable thing about the work he was tasked to do is that it seems to be without political lines, and this was somewhat refreshing. Frightening, of course, that neither of our majority parties seems to be above this type of coercion, but the truth is like that. He never mentioned the word Republican, said democratically elected a few times, and said Democrat only once when he referred to all of us in the audience. Oddly, 'Democrat' seemed to be a dirty word or at the very least unevolved. Upon thinking about it, I realized he has no use for those terms. We are all from the same party called the United States when it came to the work he did.
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