INTERVIEW: John Perkins turns on the Empire, writes <I>Confessions of an Economic Hit Man</I>
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- Written by Jay Ruskin
Officially, Chas T. Main is described as an "independent professional engineering firm providing comprehensive services associated with electrical power, industrial, and related environmental facilities . . . a world-wide operation and . . . now one of the largest professional engineering firms in the United States." Founded in 1893 to work for the New England textile industry, Chas T. Main extended its business into electric utilities, and then more generally to manufacturing and process industries. -- But according to Charles Perkins, who worked for Chas T. Main from 1971 to 1981 and has just published Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, the firm's nature is very different. -- By participating in persuading third-world nations to borrow more money than they can repay, a process is engaged that leads to the use of debt to gain control of resources. -- According to Perkins, this is the ultimate mechanism whereby the U.S. has attained global hegemony. -- When the "economic hit men" fail, the "jackals" are the next line of defense (or offense): covert action by clandestine agencies, leading to a coup or an assassination. -- The use of the military, as in Iraq, is a last resort. -- In Perkins's view, Saddam Hussein's greatest sin had nothing to do with his many crimes against humanity, it was his revolt against this international regime: "Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals. Jackals are CIA-sanctioned people that come in and try to foment a coup or revolution. If that doesn't work, they perform assassinations. Or try to. In the case of Iraq, they weren't able to get through to Saddam Hussein. He had -- his bodyguards were too good. He had doubles. They couldnt get through to him. So the third line of defense, if the economic hit men and the jackals fail, the next line of defense is our young men and women, who are sent in to die and kill, which is what weve obviously done in Iraq." -- Perkins also speaks at length of the assassination of Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos (with whom Jimmy Carter negotiated the treaties ceding back control of the Panama Canal) in 1981, ostensibly in an accidental airplane crash. -- More on John Perkins is available here. ....
BOOK REVIEW: Why do they do it? Understanding great power intervention
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- Written by Henry Adams
To read Jeffrey Taliaferro's Balancing Risks: Great Power Intervention in the Periphery is to consider rejecting two conventional explanations of the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- first, that it is an indication that the American national security state has been "cartelized" (that is, that small groups in U.S. society are able to control its material resources and thereby hijack its political institutions), and second, that it was the result of a calculation on the part of national leaders who decided that the benefits to be gained outweighed the risks involved -- in favor of third explanation, based upon a "balance-of-risk" theory, which "postulates that an aversion by leaders to perceived losses (i.e., a state's relative power, status, or prestige) motivates great power intervention in peripheral regions," to quote reviewer Barry McVeigh of the Univ. of Arizona....
BOOK REVIEW: William Blum proves Americans live with 'eyes wide shut'
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- Written by Henry Adams
This embittered review by Adam Engel of the latest book by William Blum, author of Killing Hope, was recently published on the Northern California web site Dissident Voice. -- Engel's claim that Blum is "one of the great American historians of the post-WWII period" is wildly inflated, but his review is valuable for its engagement of the important but usually evaded question of the complicity of the American people in the crimes that are committed in their name (though never named as they are committed)....