----- Original Message -----
From: "ertugrul ahmet tonak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> I watched this guy in his DN interview. I didn't find him fully
> believable. Here is what a reviewer (without reading the book!) said
> about him at Amazon's site:
> "...you have to consider that this could well be a hoax or simply
> fiction. Consider that the previous books by this guy are called:
Here's a note from a good friend who - along with several of us at a
conference in Florida last week - viewed a great video of Hazel Henderson
interviewing both Kenneth Rogoff and Perkins (the video is from a
forthcoming PBS series on ethics in business):
"I am NOT at all surprised by his Shamanic interests. One day I will right
an ethnography of the American Caucasian tribal pursuit of native wisdom.
These kinds of "seekers" are a dime a dozen in Ecuador and much of the
Andes--especially members from the California branch of the tribe. (I
recently sourced a journo in the UK writing a piece on
Shamanistic travel junkets, that folks are dropping upwards of $5k for two
weeks of "visioning" !). So I don't think his other stuff discredits his
present work. (It is disappointing to hedge a bet that the
Marxist/materialist blinders would lead one to think that EHM was a hoax,
because he's a new-ager. That may help explain, sadly, why the
US-left may never win hearts and minds of Christian-middle-America...woe to
us all.) I think the best thing to do is just show that video with him and
Rogoff!"
My own impression is that Perkins is no hoax, and that his existential angst
has led him to this confessional. In his own words:
‘This book is a confession. Pure and simple. It is not a “How To”. It is the
confession of a man who allowed himself to become a pawn, an Economic Hit
Man, a man who bought into a corrupt system because it offered so many perks
and buying in was easy to justify, a man who knew better but could always
find excuses for his own greed, for exploiting desperate people and
pillaging the planet, a man who took full advantage of the fact he was born
into one of the wealthiest societies history has ever known and also could
pity himself because his parents were not at the top of the pyramid, a man
who listened to his teachers, read the text books on economic development,
and then followed the example of other men and women who legitimatise every
action that promotes Global Empire, even if that action results in murder,
genocide, and environmental destruction, a man who trained others to follow
in his footsteps. It is my confession.’ As for his employers, he has this
analysis: ‘Are such people part of a conspiracy? Are they a tightly knit
fraternity bent on dominating the world? My answers to those and other
similar questions vacillated. Yet, over time I began to liken them to the
plantation owners of the Pre-Civil War South, men drawn together in a loose
association by common beliefs and shared self-interest rather than an
exclusive group meeting in clandestine hideaways with focused and sinister
intent.’
Is his modus operandi unusual? I don't know, but it sounds entirely
credible. He was recruited for the consultancy firm ‘MAIN’ (Charles Main) by
a National Security Agency operative, and picks up the story in Chapters 1-2
of his book:
Claudine told me there were two primary objectives of my job: to 1) justify
huge international loans that would funnel money back to [consulting firm]
MAIN and other US companies (such as Bechtel, Halliburton, Stone and
Webster, and Brown and Root) through massive engineering/construction
projects, and 2) bankrupt the countries that received those loans (after
they had paid MAIN and the other US contractors, of course) so that they
would be forever beholden to the creditors and therefore easy targets when
we needed favors, including military bases, UN votes, or access to oil and
other natural resources.
My job was, she said, to forecast the effects of investing billions of
dollars in a country. Specifically, I would produce studies that projected
economic growth for 20 to 25 years into the future and evaluated the impacts
of a variety of projects. For example, a decision might have been made to
lend a country one billion dollars in order to persuade its leaders not to
become aligned with the Soviet Union. I would be asked to compare the
benefits of investing that money in power plants versus a new national
railroad network or telecommunications systems. Or, I might be told that the
country was being offered the opportunity to receive a modern electric
utility system and it would be up to me to demonstrate that such a system
would result in sufficient economic growth to justify the loan. The critical
factor, in every case, was Gross National Product. The project that resulted
in the highest average annual growth of GNP won. If only one project was
being considered, I would need to demonstrate that developing it would bring
super benefits to the GNP.
The unspoken aspect of every one of these projects was that they were
intended to create large profits for the owners of the contractors (MAIN,
Bechtel, Halliburton, and the others) and to make a handful of wealthy and
influential families in the receiving countries very happy, while assuring
the long-term financial dependence, and therefore political loyalty, of
governments around the world. The larger the loans, the better. The fact
that the debt burden placed on the countries would mean that the poorest
citizens would be deprived of health, education, and other social services
for decades to come was not taken into consideration…
By 1968, the year I interviewed with the National Security Agency, it
had become clear that if the US was to realise its dream of Global Empire
(as envisioned by men like Presidents Johnson and Nixon), it would have to
employ strategies modeled after [Kermit] Roosevelt’s Iranian example [i.e.,
violently replacing Mossadegh with the Shah]. This was the only way to beat
the Soviets without the threat of nuclear war. However, there was one
problem: Roosevelt was a CIA employee. Had he been caught, the consequences
would have been dire. He had orchestrated the first US operation to
overthrow a foreign government. Many more would follow. It was important to
find an approach that would not directly implicate Washington.
The 1960s witnessed another type of revolution: the empowerment of
international corporations and multinational organisations such as the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund. The latter were financed primarily by
the US and our sister empire builders in Europe. A symbiotic relationship
developed between all three - governments, corporations, and multinational
organisations. By the time I enrolled in Boston University’s business
school, a solution to the Roosevelt-as-CIA agent problem had already been
worked out: US intelligence agencies - including the NSA - would identify
prospective Economic Hit Men who could then be hired by international
corporations. They would never be paid by the government but would instead
draw their salaries from the private sector; their dirty work, if exposed,
would be chalked up to corporate greed rather than government policy. The
corporations that hired them, although paid for by government agencies and
their multinational banking counterparts (taxpayer money), would be
insulated from congressional oversight and public scrutiny through a growing
body of legal initiatives, including trademark, international trade, and
Freedom of Information laws.
