by GREG SZYMANSKI
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=2&contentid=2615&page=1
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' 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.
Bribery, Loan Sharking And Murder True American Foreign Policy, Says
Economic Hit Man By Greg Szymanski
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