Economic Warfare

The corporatocracy, on the other hand, by using tools like the IMF and the World Bank, backed up by the CIA and jackals when necessary, was practicing a new form of conquest, imperialism-through-subterfuge. When you conquered with armies, everyone knew you were conquering. When you conquered with EHMs, you could do it secretly. This raised a question I was beginning to ask myself frequently about the toll such a concealment took on a democracy that presupposes an informed electorate. If voters were ignorant of their leaders’ most important tools, could a nation claim to be a democracy?

Perkins, John. The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth About Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and How to Change the World (John Perkins Economic Hitman Series) (p. 74). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

He then talked about the report he was writing that described “a vast Sea of oil beneath the jungle.” This report, he said, would be used to justify huge World Bank loans to the country and to persuade Wall Street to invest in Texaco and other businesses that would benefit from the oil boom. When I expressed amazement that progress could happen so rapidly, he gave me an odd look. “What did they teach you in business school anyway?” he asked. I didn’t know how to respond. “Look,” he said. “It’s an old game. I’ve seen it in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Now, here. Seismology reports, combined with one good oil well, a gusher like the one we just hit . . .” He smiled. “Boomtown!” Ann mentioned all the excitement around how oil would bring prosperity to Ecuadorians. “Only those smart enough to play the game,” he said. I’d grown up in a New Hampshire town named after a man who’d built a mansion on a hill, overlooking everyone else, from the fortune he’d amassed by selling shovels and blankets to the California gold miners in 1849. “The merchants,” I said. “The businessmen and bankers.” “You bet. And today, the big corporations.” He tilted back in his chair. “We own this country. We get a lot more than permission to land planes without customs formalities.” “Like what?” “Oh my God, you do have a lot to learn, don’t you?” He raised his martini toward the city. “To begin with, we control the military. We pay their salaries and buy them their equipment. They protect us from the Indians who don’t want oil rigs on their lands. In Latin America, he who controls the army, controls the president and the courts. We get to write the laws—set fines for oil spills, labor rates, all the laws that matter to us.” “Texaco pays for all that?” Ann asked. “Well, not exactly . . .” He reached across the table and patted her arm. “You do. Or your daddy does. The American taxpayer. The money flows through USAID, the World Bank, CIA, and the Pentagon, but everyone here”—he swept his arm toward the window and the city below—“knows it’s all about Texaco. Remember, countries like this have long histories of coups. If you take a good look, you’ll see that most of them happen when the leaders of the country don’t play our game.”1 “Are you saying Texaco overthrows governments?” I asked. He laughed. “Let’s just say that governments that don’t cooperate are seen as Soviet puppets. They threaten American interests and democracy. The CIA doesn’t like that.” That night was the beginning of my education in what I’ve come to think of as the EHM system. Ann and I spent the next eighteen months stationed in the Amazon rain forests. Then we were transferred to the high Andes, where I was assigned to help a group of campesino brick makers. Ann trained handicapped people for jobs in local businesses. I was told that the brick makers needed to improve the efficiency of the archaic ovens where their bricks were baked. However, one after another they came to me complaining about the men who owned the trucks and the warehouses down in the city. Ecuador was a country with little social mobility. A few wealthy families, the Ricos, ran just about everything, including local businesses and politics. Their agents bought the bricks from the brick makers at extremely low prices and sold them at roughly ten times that amount. One brick maker went to the city mayor and complained. Several days later he was struck by a truck and killed. Terror swept the community. People assured me that he’d been murdered. My suspicions that it was true were reinforced when the police chief announced that the dead man was part of a Cuban plot to turn Ecuador Communist (Che Guevara had been executed by a CIA operation in Bolivia less than three years earlier). He insinuated that any brick maker who caused trouble would be arrested as an insurgent. The brick makers begged me to go to the Ricos and set things right. They were willing to do anything to appease those they feared, including convincing themselves that, if they gave in, the Ricos would protect them. I didn’t know what to do. I had no leverage with the mayor and figured that if I—a foreigner who was only twenty-five years old—were to intervene, it would only make matters worse. I merely listened and sympathized. Eventually I realized that the Ricos were part of a strategy, a system that had subjugated Andean people through fear since the Spanish conquest. I saw that my commiseration was merely enabling the community to continue doing nothing. They didn’t need me to stand up for them; they needed to stand up to the Ricos themselves. They needed to admit to the anger they had suppressed, to take offense to the injustices they had suffered. I told them that they had to act. They had to do whatever it took— including risking being killed—so that their children could prosper and live in peace. My realization about enabling that community was a great lesson for me. I understood that the victims themselves could be unwitting collaborators and that taking action offered the only solution. And it worked. The brick makers formed a co-op. Each family donated bricks, and the co-op used those bricks to rent a truck and warehouse in the city. The Ricos boycotted the co-op, until a Lutheran mission from Norway contracted with it to buy all the bricks for a school it was building, at about five times the amount the Ricos had paid the brick makers but half the price the Ricos were charging the Lutherans—a win for everyone except the Ricos. The co-op flourished after that.

Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 3rd Edition (pp. 32-35). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Less than a year later, Ann and I completed our Peace Corps assignment. I was twenty-six and no longer subject to the draft. I became an EHM. When I first entered those ranks, I convinced myself that I was doing the right thing. South Vietnam had fallen to the Communist North, and now the world was threatened by the Soviet Union and China. My business school professors had taught that financing infrastructure projects through mountains of World Bank debt would pull lower-income nations out of poverty and save them from the clutches of Communism. Experts at the World Bank and USAID reinforced this mindset. By the time I discovered the falsehoods in that story, I felt trapped by the system. I had grown up feeling poor (admittedly a relative term), the son of a teacher in a New Hampshire boarding school for extremely wealthy boys, and suddenly I was making a great deal of money, traveling first class to countries I’d dreamed about all my life, staying in the best hotels, eating in the finest restaurants, and meeting with heads of state. I had it made. How could I even consider getting out? It was not until much later that I realized I’d been privileged; unlike much of the world, I’d never worried about finding my next meal or a roof over my head, and I’d received an education restricted to very few. Perhaps my subconscious did realize some of this, because this is when the nightmares began. I woke in dark hotel rooms sweating, haunted by images of sights I had actually seen: legless lepers strapped into wheeled wooden boxes rolling along the streets of Jakarta; people bathing in slime-green canals while, next to them, others defecated; a human cadaver abandoned on a garbage heap swarming with maggots and flies; and children who slept in cardboard boxes, vying with roaming packs of dogs for scraps of rubbish. I realized that I’d distanced myself emotionally from these things. Like other Americans, I’d seen these people as less than human; they were “beggars,” “misfits”—“them.” One day my Indonesian government limo stopped at a traffic light. A man suffering from leprosy thrust the disease-ridden remnants of his hand through my window. My driver yelled at him. The leper grinned, a lopsided toothless smile, and withdrew. We drove on, but his spirit remained with me. It was as though he had sought me out; his bloody stump was a warning, his smile a message. “Reform,” he seemed to say. “Repent.” I began to look more closely at the world around me. And at myself. I came to understand that, although I had all the trappings of success, I was miserable. I’d been popping Valium every night and drinking lots of alcohol. I’d get up in the morning, force coffee and pep pills into my system, and stagger off to negotiate contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. That life had come to seem normal to me. I had bought into the stories. I was taking on debt to support my lifestyle. I was operating out of fear—the fear of Communism, losing my job, failure, and not having the material things everyone told me I needed. One night I woke up remembering a different type of dream. I had walked into the office of a leader in a country that had just discovered it had lots of oil. “Our construction companies,” I told him, “will rent equipment from your brother’s John Deere franchise. We’ll pay twice the going rate; your brother can share his profits with you.” In the dream I went on to explain that we’d make similar deals with friends of his who owned Coca-Cola bottling plants, other food and beverage suppliers, and labor contractors. All he had to do was sign off on a World Bank loan that would hire US corporations to build infrastructure projects in his country. Then I casually mentioned that refusing would bring in the jackals. “Remember,” I said, “what happened to . . .” I rattled off a list of names like Mossadegh of Iran, Arbenz of Guatemala, Allende of Chile, Lumumba of the Congo, Diem of Vietnam. “All of them,” I said, “were overthrown or”—I ran a finger across my neck—“because they didn’t play our game.” I lay there in bed, once again in a cold sweat, realizing that this dream described my reality. I had done all of that.

Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 3rd Edition (pp. 35-36). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Every time I walked away from Claudine’s apartment, I wondered whether I was doing the wrong thing. Somewhere in my heart, I suspected I was. But the frustrations of my past lingered with me. MAIN seemed to offer everything my life had lacked—money, power, and sex. In the end, I convinced myself that by learning more, by experiencing it, I could better expose it later—the old “working from the inside” justification. When I shared this idea with Claudine, she gave me a perplexed look. “Don’t be ridiculous. Once you’re in, you can never get out. You must decide for yourself, before you get in any deeper.” I understood her, and what she said frightened me. After I left, I strolled down Commonwealth Avenue, turned onto Dartmouth Street, and assured myself that I was the exception. One afternoon some months later, Claudine and I sat in a window settee watching the snow fall on Beacon Street. “We’re a small, exclusive club,” she said. “We’re paid—well paid—to cheat countries around the globe out of billions of dollars. A large part of your job is to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes US commercial interests. Convince them to fear the Communists or even, if you have to, us. Tell them the solution is to accept loans from our banks that will pay our companies to build the infrastructure that ends their poverty. It’s simple. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire—to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs. In turn, these leaders bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people. Meanwhile, the owners of US engineering and construction companies become very wealthy.” That afternoon, in the idyllic setting of Claudine’s apartment, relaxing in the window while snow swirled around outside, I learned the history of the profession I was about to enter. Claudine described how throughout most of history, empires were built largely through military force or the threat of it. But with the end of World War II, the emergence of the Soviet Union, and the specter of nuclear holocaust, the military solution became just too risky.

Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 3rd Edition (pp. 51-52). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

At one point Claudine told me that when I met with people in positions to accept the loans and set the wheels in motion, I should tell them: “If you want your country to prosper, accept loans from the World Bank and adhere to the conditions imposed by it and the IMF.” At her urging, I wrote those words into my notebook, memorized them, and would repeat them many times during the following years. Later, the World Bank, IMF, US Treasury Department, and their sister organizations would collectively be known as the Washington Consensus and its policies would be categorized as neoliberalism. Claudine’s statement would be revised to “If you want your country to prosper, accept loans from the Washington Consensus, hire our companies to build infrastructure projects, and submit to neoliberal policies.”

Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 3rd Edition (p. 50). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

In that moment I had to accept my personal responsibility, had to acknowledge the possibility that my years in Ecuador had given me a perspective unlike that of the others who did my type of work or the citizens whose taxes supported us. I had been blessed—or cursed—with insights shared by few Americans. Everyone found ways to rationalize. Charlie fought the Communists. Others were simply profiteering. “A dog-eat-dog world,” they said. “My family comes first.” Some wrote off other races or classes as inherently inferior or lazy, deserving whatever misfortunes befell them. A few, I supposed, actually believed that investing fortunes into electrical grids would solve the world’s problems. But me: What was my justification? I was a young man who suddenly felt very old. I stared down at that canal. I wished I had a copy of Tom Paine’s Common Sense so I could hurl it into those rank waters. My eyes were drawn to something I had not spotted before. A large and battered cardboard box slumped, like a collapsed beggar’s hat, near the edge of the stagnant water. As I stared, it shuddered, reminding me of a fatally injured animal. Figuring I was delusional, that the heat, fumes, and noise had gotten the better of me, I decided to resume walking; but before I turned, I caught a glimpse of an arm protruding from around the side of the box—or rather, what appeared to have once been an arm, now reduced to a bloody stump. The shaking intensified. The bloody stump moved along the edge of the box to a corner at the top. It shot straight up. A nest of black hair followed it, appearing like Medusa’s snakes above the box, knotted and mangled with mud. The head shook itself and a body began to emerge, up until now hidden by the box, a body that sent waves of revulsion through me. Bent and emaciated, the body of what I took to be a woman crept along the ground to the edge of the canal. It struck me that I was seeing something I had heard about all my life but never encountered before. This woman, if that in fact was her gender, was a leper, a human being whose flesh was decaying right before my eyes. At the canal’s edge, the body sat down, or, more accurately, collapsed into a pile of rags. The arm I had not seen before reached out and dipped a tattered cloth into the fetid canal water, shook it slowly, and wrapped it around the bloody stump, which had several open wounds where fingers should have been. I heard a groan, and realized that the sound came from me. My legs wobbled. I had an urge to race back to the hotel, but I forced myself to remain at that spot. I had to bear witness to this person’s agony. I knew in my heart that any other action was futile. This woman’s struggle was probably repeated several times a day by her alone. I wondered how many other abandoned souls were performing such doomed rituals here in Jakarta, throughout Indonesia, in India and Africa. A movement caught my eye, another twitching of the cardboard walls. The leper turned slowly to stare at the box. Her face was a blur of red pustules; it lacked lips. I followed the sunken eyes. A baby’s head came into view beside the box. I wanted not to watch but was fascinated, like a man witnessing a murder he is powerless to stop. The baby crawled toward the woman. It sat down beside the leper and began to cry. I could not hear the sound, either because the voice was too weak or the traffic too loud, but I could see the open mouth and the spasms of the little body. The leper suddenly looked up and spied me watching her. Our eyes met. She spit onto the ground, rose to her feet, shook her bloody stump at me, caught the baby up in her arms and, scurrying faster than I imagined possible, disappeared back inside the box.

Perkins, John. The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth About Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and How to Change the World (John Perkins Economic Hitman Series) (pp. 20-22). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Sulawesi was also the home of the infamous Bugi tribe. European spice traders centuries ago feared them as the fiercest, most bloodthirsty pirates in the world. When they returned home, the Europeans threatened disobedient children with the warning that if they did not change their ways “the Bugimen will get you.” During the 1970s the Bugis continued to live much as they had for hundreds of years. Their magnificent sailing ships, called prahus, formed the backbone of interisland commerce. The sailors who manned these black-sailed galleons wore long sarongs, brilliantly colored headscarves, and dazzling gold earrings; they carried vicious machetes thrust through sashes at their waists. They looked as though they still cherished their ancient reputation. I became friends with an elder named Buli, a shipbuilder who practiced his art in the manner of his ancestors. One day, when he and I were lunching together, he observed that his people never saw themselves as pirates; they were merely defending their homeland against intruders. “Now,” he said, handing me a slice of a luscious fruit, “we’re at a loss. How can a handful of people in wooden sailing ships fight off America’s submarines, airplanes, bombs, and missiles?” Questions like that got to me. Eventually, they convinced me to change my ways.

Perkins, John. The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth About Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and How to Change the World (John Perkins Economic Hitman Series) (pp. 33-34). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

A town known as “Batsville,” located near the budding Texas cattle ranch, had been identified as a possible location for a power plant. Early one morning, my driver drove us out of Ujung Pandang, up the spectacular coast, to the port city of Parepare. From there, we wound cautiously into the mountains of the remote interior, the road barely more than a dirt trail cut through jungle. I felt like I had returned to the Amazon. When the jeep pulled into the village of Pinrang, the driver announced, “This is it. Batsville.” I glanced around; the name of the village had piqued my interest. I searched for the bats, but saw nothing unusual. The driver cruised slowly past a plaza that resembled many others in towns throughout Indonesia: It had a couple of benches and several trees with huge dark clusters hanging from their branches, like extra-large coconuts. Then suddenly, one of those clusters opened up. My heart caught in my throat as I realized that a gigantic bat was stretching her wings. The driver pulled to a stop. He led me to a spot beneath one of the bats. The amazing animal was moving above us, her wings sluggishly uncoiling, her body as large as a monkey. The eyes opened. The head turned and stared at us. I had heard rumors that these bats shorted out electric lines, indicating that their wing spans measured in excess of six feet; however, even in my wildest imagination I had never expected anything to compare with what I was seeing. Later, I met with the mayor of Pinrang. I quizzed him about local resources and likely attitudes toward building a power plant and industries owned by foreigners in his area, but the bats dominated my thoughts. When I asked whether they caused problems, he replied, “No. They fly away every evening and eat fruit far out of town. They return mornings. Never touch our fruit.” He raised his teacup. “Very much like your corporations,” he said with a sly smile. “They fly off, feed on resources far away, defecate on lands people from the United States will never visit, and then return to you.” I heard this theme often. I had begun to understand that although most Americans have no idea that their lifestyles are built on exploitation, millions of people in other countries are aware of it. Even in the 1970s they viewed our military not as a defender of democracy but rather as an armed guard for exploitative corporations—and they were frightened and angry as a result.

Perkins, John. The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth About Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and How to Change the World (John Perkins Economic Hitman Series) (pp. 32-33). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Empire, whether based on direct rule or indirect influence, is not about control for its own sake: it is about exploitation of foreign lands and peoples for the benefit of the metropolis, or at least its ruling circles.

Hiatt, Steven. A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret Word of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption (p. 17). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Third World debt increased from $130 billion in 1973 to $612 billion in 1982 to $3.2 trillion in 2006, as James S. Henry explains in “The Mirage of Debt Relief.” Another result of the crisis of the 1970s was to discredit the reigning economic orthodoxy—Keynesian government-led or -guided economic development—in favor of a corporate-inspired movement restoring a measure of laissez-faire (a program usually called neoliberalism outside North America). Its standard-bearers were Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Britain, and international enforcement of the neoliberal model was put into the hands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Dozens of countries currently operate under IMF “structural adjustment” programs (SAPs), and despite—or because of—such tutelage few ever complete the IMF/World Bank treatment to regain financial health and independence.

Hiatt, Steven. A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret Word of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption (p. 19). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Payments on Third World debt require more than $375 billion a year, twenty times the amount of foreign aid that Third World countries receive. This system has been called a “Marshall Plan in reverse,” with the countries of the Global South subsidizing the wealthy North, even as half the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day.5

How does such a failed system maintain itself? Simply put, Third World countries are caught in a web of control—financial, political, and military—that is extremely hard for them to escape, a system that has become ever more extensive, complex, and pervasive since John Perkins devised his first forecasts for MAIN.

Hiatt, Steven. A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret Word of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption (p. 19). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Hiatt, Steven. A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret Word of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption (p. 19). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

James S. Henry

G8 leaders have proudly announced $40 billion in debt relief for eighteen heavily indebted poor countries in Latin America and Africa—just over 1 percent of the $3.2 trillion that those countries owe. But the actual debt relief granted will be only a fraction of this small amount—and the strings attached to getting it make even this modest amount hardly worth getting: closed hospitals and schools, bankrupted local businesses, and high unemployment. James S. Henry delivers the analysis and outlines steps for an effective relief campaign for Third World debtor countries.

Hiatt, Steven. A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret Word of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption . Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Bruce Rich

Export credit agencies have quietly become the world’s largest financial institutions, backing $788 billion in trade in 2004. Secretive and largely unregulated, they pursue a single mission: boost overseas sales of their countries’ multinational corporations. In doing so, they’ve become some of the dirtiest players in the EHM game, financing nuclear power plants in countries that can’t manage them and massive arms sales to strife-torn regions—all lubricated by billions of dollars in bribes. Bruce Rich looks at the secretive world of ECAs and the damage they cause around the world.

Hiatt, Steven. A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret Word of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption . Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Ellen Augustine

“Development” and “modernization” became code words for U.S. efforts to prop up the regime of President Ferdinand Marcos, with the World Bank serving as a conduit for the financing of Marcos’ dictatorship. Some 800 leaked documents from the World Bank itself tell how the Bank financed martial law and made the Philippines the test case for its export-led development strategy based on multinational corporations—with disastrous results for both democracy and economic development.

Hiatt, Steven. A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret Word of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption . Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Steve Berkman

The World Bank has pushed a debt-based development strategy for Third World countries for decades. Hundreds of billions in loans were supposed to bring progress, yet the programs have never lived up to their promise. Instead, governing elites amass obscene fortunes while the poor shoulder the burden of paying off the debts. A former World Bank staffer, Steve Berkman presents an inside investigator’s account of how these schemes work to divert development money into the pockets of corrupt elites and their First World partners.

Hiatt, Steven. A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret Word of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption . Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Greg Muttitt

 While the Iraqi people struggle to define their future amid political chaos and violence, the fate of their most valuable economic asset, oil, is being decided behind closed doors. Oil production sharing agreements being forced on Iraq will cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue, while funneling enormous profits to foreign companies. Greg Muttitt uncovers a little-known Western foundation, the International Tax and Investment Center, that’s providing the hit.

Hiatt, Steven. A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret Word of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption . Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Kathleen Kern

Civil strife in the Democratic Republic of Congo has cost 4 million lives in the last ten years, as militias and warlords fight over the country’s resources. The atrocities have been funded, at least indirectly, by some of the biggest Western corporations. They see the country as only a source of cheap coltan—vital to making semiconductors—and other minerals. Kathleen Kern explores the direct relationship between the suffering of the Congolese people and the low prices Westerners pay for cell phones and laptops.

Hiatt, Steven. A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret Word of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption . Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Steven Hiatt

Third World countries pay more than $375 billion a year in debt service, twenty times the amount of foreign aid they receive. This system has been called a Marshall Plan in reverse, with the countries of the Global South subsidizing the wealthy North, even as half the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. How does such an unjust system maintain itself? Steven Hiatt outlines the web of control—financial, political, and military—that maintains this system and explains why it’s so hard for Third World countries to escape.

Hiatt, Steven. A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret Word of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption . Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Later in the 1980’s, Big Oil moved downstream or away from wellhead production and into refining, marketing, petrochemicals and shipping. Part of the reason for this is that exploration and production involve more risk to capital, so why not leave this to the smaller independent companies. Another reason for moving downstream was involuntary, since many Third World governments had tired of the exploitation of their energy resources by the Four Horsemen and had created their own nationalized oil companies to explore and develop oilfields. Still, these countries rely heavily on the Four Horsemen in the refining, marketing and transporting of their crude oil. As the Four Horsemen swam downstream, they naturally began to desire low per barrel crude prices. Thus, throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s wholesale prices remained low. Gasoline pump prices, on the other hand, never returned to their pre-1973 levels and the Horsemen have been pocketing the difference ever since. Exxon, Mobil, Chevron and Texaco owned ARAMCO lock, stock and barrel and were also part of the Iranian Consortium led by BP and Royal Dutch/Shell. These same Four Horsemen controlled oil production in both Twin Pillars countries. The Shah and the House of Saud were mere porcelain figurines. And Iran and Saudi Arabia were less nation states than oil fiefdoms run by the Four Horsemen and their bankers at Chase Manhattan and Morgan Guaranty.

Henderson, Dean. Big Oil & Their Bankers In the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families and Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics and Terror Network . Dean Henderson. Kindle Edition.

“Bolivia is emblematic of a land exploited by empires.” Those words, uttered by a teacher at my Peace Corps training camp in Escondido, California, in 1968, stuck with me. The teacher had lived in Bolivia; he continually impressed upon us the toll that centuries of oppression had taken. After I completed training, while serving as a volunteer in Ecuador, I often thought about Bolivia. I was fascinated by this landlocked country that on a map looks like the hole in a donut comprised of Peru, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. During my Peace Corps tour, I visited all but one of Bolivia’s neighbors, avoiding Paraguay as a personal protest against its ruler, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, and his policy of sheltering Nazi SS officers. I also studiously skirted Bolivia because young North Americans we referred to as “on the Gringo Trail” who sometimes stayed with me described it as more brutal toward its Indians than Ecuador. At that time it seemed impossible that any place could surpass Ecuador in this category. The indigenous people were considered by the country’s wealthy elites as subhuman. Like African Americans in the United States a few decades earlier, they lacked civil rights. Rumors abounded about a “sport” played by rich young men. They would catch an Indian doing something illegal—like picking hacienda corn so his starving family could survive—order him to run, and then shoot him down. Oil company mercenaries in the Amazon carried out similar executions, although they justified them as fighting terrorists, not sport. Yet despite the oppression in Ecuador, Bolivia was apparently worse. This point was brought home by the fact that Che Guevara, the Argentine physician who decided to fight oppression, selected Bolivia as his battlefront. The ruling class solicited Washington’s aid. Che was relegated to a classification worse than subhuman or terrorist; because he was supported by Cuba, he was categorized as a communist fanatic. Washington sent one of its most skilled jackals to hunt him down. CIA agent Felix Rodriguez captured Che in the jungle near La Higuera, Bolivia, in October 1967. After hours of interrogation, Rodriguez, under pressure from the Bolivians, ordered the Bolivian army to execute Che.17 After that, the fist of the corporatocracy tightened around Bolivia. The donut squeezed the hole.

Perkins, John. The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth About Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and How to Change the World (John Perkins Economic Hitman Series) (pp. 94-95). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

“These Mayans,” Pepe said, as though he had read my thoughts, “are obsessed with anger. They blame the rest of us for all their troubles. We give them work, they complain that we enslave them. When we don’t hire them—my family imported Haitians who work for pennies—they riot and try to murder us. And it isn’t just here. Similar things are happening throughout the hemisphere. In the Andes, the Amazon, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia. Name any country south of the Rio Grande. You gringos don’t get it because you killed off all your Indians. We should’ve followed your example.” He tapped my knee for emphasis. “Mark my words, the challenge of the next few decades will be to keep the indigenous people—the Indians—down. You can talk all you want about democracy, but these countries are going to need strong leaders to hold those Indians in their places. The Mayans don’t care a damn about democracy. Nor do the Quechua. Or any of the others. Given the opportunity, they’d slaughter every one of us.” I did not tell him about my experience with the Mayan shaman who in the end agreed to work with us. The breakthrough came when I told him that the only reason I could think of for him to help us was so that together we could build a bridge between his people and mine. “Many of us in the United States,” I said, “share your disgust for the ways our government treats your people. We want to change.” I opened a bag containing Incan stones presented to me by Quechua shamans from Ecuador. “We’re trying to do similar things in other parts of Latin America.” After that, to my surprise, he switched to Spanish, which he spoke fluently. By the time Pepe’s caravan arrived at the geothermal site, I suppose I had already decided what I would recommend to SWEC. This project was not just about using World Bank funds to enrich the wealthy and leave the poor in deeper debt; it would also rob the Mayas of their sacred rights. When the three vehicles pulled to a stop, Pepe once again kept me inside while his men—totaling twelve now—searched the area. Outside, great clouds of steam bellowed from the earth. As Pepe and I strolled around, he recited engineering statistics about pounds of pressure, kilowatts, and construction costs. We stood at the edge of a pool of bubbling water, inhaling sulfur fumes; he pointed through the steam down the hill to a valley and described the spa-resort his sister envisioned there. I felt compelled to state the obvious. “The Mayans will certainly fight you tooth and nail.” “Aha,” he said. “You’re wrong there. They may be stupid, but they know me and my family . . .” His voice drifted off. He grinned. “I’m certain we can come to terms with them. And it won’t cost much; just a pittance really. That’s all they need. It’s the reason you must have partners like my family. Bring in a gringo negotiating team, the party’s over. We, on the other hand, can handle them.” His eyes met mine. “I think you know what I mean.” I nodded and turned away. Of course I understood, and it infuriated me. I walked to the other side of the pool. I picked up a small stone. Throwing it into the bubbling water, I sent with it my respects to the Mayan spirits or whatever force it was that created such an amazing phenomenon. Our return trip was so delayed by rush hour traffic that I missed my flight. It did not phase Pepe; he called his pilots. They picked me up at his building and drove me to his private jet. It seemed terribly ironic that two pilots and thousands of dollars of jet fuel would fly me all the way to Miami so I could squelch Pepe’s project. At first I felt guilty accepting his plane, then exonerated; I figured the Mayan shaman and the geothermal spirits would be amused—and grateful.

Perkins, John. The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth About Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and How to Change the World (John Perkins Economic Hitman Series) (pp. 90-92). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population… Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction. – George Kennan, “Review of Current Trends, U.S. Foreign Policy.” February 28, 1948. Policy Planning Staff, PPS No. 23. Top Secret. Included in the U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, volume 1, part 2 (Washington DC Government Printing Office, 1976).

Stone, Sean; Grove, Richard; Preparata, Guido. New World Order: A Strategy of Imperialism (p. 89). Trine Day. Kindle Edition.