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Editorial
N. Perlas, 19 March 2005
"To be forewarned is to be forearmed", so goes an old saying. To understand the
mode of operation of systemic domination and exploitation means to be able to
create more strategic forms of resistance and advance alternatives effective
enough to transform the modus operandi of control.
A few months ago, an unusual book saw the light of day. It was the book by John
Perkins entitled, Economic Hit Men. Perkin's book immediately became a
New York Times bestseller, indicating the immense popularity of the book. It
is only a few months old but it is already gone beyond its 7th print run.
John Perkins wrote about the existence of "economic hit men" (EHM) and how they
destabilized the economies of nation states around the world to make these
countries vulnerable to the domination of the US global empire. Perkins should
know. He was a pioneering EHM.
Perkins tried to tell this story before. In fact, he has been trying for 20
years to tell his story. But he chickened out due to intimidation and fear of
death. He also accepted bribes so that he would not tell his story, a story that
implicates some of the most powerful individuals and institutions in the world.
Then September 11 happened. And Perkins could no longer suppress his aching and
guilty conscience. So he finally finished his book and made it available to the
world. The reverberations of his deed continue to travel around the world,
empowering tens of thousands of people in its wake.
So what exactly are EHM's and what part do they play in the creation and
consolidation of history's first global empire?
EHM is the central element of Plan A, which calls for a subtle way for the US
Empire to economically dominate a victim country. If Plan A does not work, then
Plan B comes into play. Plan B calls for covert operations aimed at toppling the
political leadership of a country either through rigged opposition and/or
elections or assassination. If Plan B does not work, then the US Empire
activates Plan C which means the outright military invasion of the victim
country. So Plan A is an economic, Plan B a political, and Plan C a military
approach to dominating nation states who do not align with the US Empire.
In Plan A, EHM's make sure that the victim country becomes economically
dependent on the United States of America. In this way, the political and
economic leaders of the victim country will not be able to resist whatever
geopolitical objectives the US government has with the victim country.
How do EHM bring this about? Economic Hit Men come in as consultants to
multilateral banking institutions, governments, and/or corporations. They fiddle
and play around with economic statistics to project an illusion of vibrant
economic growth potential for a country. This economic growth projection then
becomes the basis for the engineering work detailing the scale and costs of
power, road, transportation, and other large-scale infrastructure that the
recipient country would undertake.
The objective of the EHM is to hype up the growth potentials so that victim
countries would borrow large sums of money to finance the proposed
infrastructure projects. Most of the loans would then go to paying the very
expensive consulting services and equipment coming from the United States of
America. Sometimes these expenses would come to as much as 80% of the loan
value.
Governments engaged in this heavy borrowing, hope to pay for these expensive
projects with income coming from the projected boom in the economy. However,
because the economic projections are fake, the expected boom does not come. The
nation is then saddled with large debts it cannot pay. The resulting economic
and fiscal crisis makes the nation state vulnerable to the bidding and
domination of the lending institutions, mostly coming from the United States of
America. Perkins as an EHM was involved in the economic destabilization of
Ecuador, Indonesia, and a number of other countries.
Sometimes, however, there would be variations on the theme. In the case of Saudi
Arabia, Perkins, together with others, including the highest levels of the US
government, engineered an economic "agreement" with King Faisal and the House of
Saud that was "win-win" on both sides. Saudi Arabia was to invest its
petrodollars in US Treasury bonds. The interest from the bonds would then be
used by the US government to build modern infrastructures in Saudi Arabia. In
this way, Saudi Arabia modernized itself but at a price. The US government
isolated Saudi Arabia from its leading role in OPEC and ensured that Saudi
Arabia would not use its oil power against the US like the former did in the
OPEC oil embargo of 1973 which almost brought the US to its economic knees.
If the EHM fail, then, the "jackals" come in. Jackals is Perkin's term for the
CIA operatives who would then come in to a country for the dirty job of deposing
or assassinating the political leader of the country. Perkins shows how they did
this in Iran, Panama, and Ecuador when Plan A did not work with Mossadegh,
Torrijos, and Roldos respectively.
On rare occasions, according to Perkins, the US Empire employs Plan C, the
actual military invasion of a country, when both EHM and the CIA fail to do
their job. This they did with Panama in 1989 and the first invasion of Iraq in
the early 1990s. However, with the advent of the Bush Doctrine, there is a
higher probability that Plan C will become more and more the preferred mode of
domination, especially since more and more people are waking up to the ambitions
and hubris of the US Empire and will resist the economic and political
domination of their countries.
The writer of this editorial critiqued the Bush Doctrine and how it revealed the
intent of the US to use global economic, political, and cultural institutions
and processes to advance its dream of global empire. (See Related
Article.) Perkins not
only confirms this analysis. His book also shows that this approach has already
been successfully implemented in many countries around the world.
The story of John Perkins is important not only for illuminating the wicked and
pernicious ways of that great pretender as the champion of democracy, the US
Empire. Perkins also has a message to send to all those who have participated in
some of the darkest moments of their inner and social life and who therefore
have something important to share to the world. Perkins reveals the inner trials
he had to face and the inner falls he has taken in his struggle to finally live
up to his conscience.
We all face dark moments in our lives. But these are only temporary stations in
our journey if we do not succumb totally to the darkness within and find our
inner anchor and strength in our unconquerable spirit. We all face violence and
oppression in society. We have to find the inner strength and courage to live up
to our highest ideals and create common cause with others who are undergoing a
similar journey.
All empires in the past have an Achilles heel. All empires have not found a way
to overcome the power of the Spirit's unyielding resistance to tyranny. Before
the onslaught of this organized spiritual substance, this spiritual fire, all
empires past have collapsed. The US Empire will be no exception. It may have
taken Perkins 20 years to truly connect with his spirit. But he connected
nevertheless. And there are millions of individuals around the world, like him,
waking up to their spiritual potential. And when they find a way to truly
connect, empower each other and act together, then the US Empire will be no
more.
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