[Marxism] NEW BOOK ON U.S. EMPIRE

["George Snedeker" <snedeker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The book is by John Perkins and is called, CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN. 
the Preface is also available on the web page for the book, 



www

.johnperkins.org Prologue

Prologue

Quito, Ecuador's capital, stretches across a volcanic valley high in the Andes, 
at an altitude of nine thousand feet. Residents of this city, which was
founded long before Columbus arrived in the Americas, are accustomed to seeing 
snow on the surrounding peaks, despite the fact that they live just a few
miles south of the Equator.

The city of Shell, a frontier outpost and military base hacked out of Ecuador's 
Amazon jungle to service the oil company whose name it bears, is nearly
eight thousand feet lower than Quito. A steaming city, it is inhabited mostly 
by soldiers, oil workers, and the indigenous people from the Shuar and Kichwa
tribes who work for them as prostitutes and laborers.

To journey from one city to the other, you must travel a road that is both 
tortuous and breathtaking. Local people will tell you that during the trip you
experience all four seasons in a single day.

Although I have driven this road many times, I never tire of the spectacular 
scenery. Sheer cliffs punctuated by cascading waterfalls and brilliant 
bromeliads,
rise up one side. On the other side, the earth drops abruptly into a deep abyss 
where the Pastaza River, a headwater of the Amazon, snakes its way down
the Andes. The Pastaza carries water from the glaciers of Cotopaxi, one of the 
world's highest active volcanoes, and a deity in the time of the Incas,
to the Atlantic Ocean more than three thousand miles away.

In 2003, I left Quito in a Subaru Outback and headed for Shell on a mission 
that was like no other I had ever accepted. I was hoping to end a war I had
helped create. As is the case with so many things we EHMs must take 
responsibility for, it is a war that is virtually unknown anywhere outside the 
country
where it is fought. I was on my way to meet with the Shuar, the Kichwa, and 
their neighbors, the Achuar, Zaparos, the Shiwiars-tribes determined to prevent
our oil companies from destroying their homes, families, and lands, even if it 
means they must die in the process. This is a war that for them is about
the survival of their children and cultures, while for us it is about power, 
money, and natural resources. It is one part of the struggle for world 
domination
and the dream of a few greedy men-global empire.

That is what we EHMs do best: we build a global empire. We are an elite group 
of men and women who utilize international financial organizations to foment
conditions that make other nations subservient to the corporatocracy that runs 
our biggest corporations, our government, and our banks. Like our counterparts
in the Mafia, we provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop 
infrastructure-electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or 
industrial
parks. One condition of such loans is that engineering and construction 
companies from our own country must build all these projects. In essence, most
of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from 
banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston, or
San Francisco.

Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations 
that are members of the corporatocracy (the creditors), the recipient country
is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest. If an EHM is 
completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to 
default
on its payments after a few years. When this happens, like the Mafia, we demand 
our pound of flesh, which often includes one or more of the following:
control over United Nations votes, the installations of military bases, or 
access to precious resources, like oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the 
debtor
still owes us the money-and another country is added to our global empire.

Driving from Quito toward Shell on this sunny day in 2003, I thought back 
thirty-five years to the first time I arrived in this part of the world. I had
read that although Ecuador is only about the size of Nevada, it has more than 
thirty active volcanoes, over 15 percent of the world's bird species, and
thousands of as-yet unclassified plants, and that it is a land of diverse 
cultures where nearly as many people speak ancient indigenous languages as speak
Spanish. I found it to be fascinating and certainly exotic; yet, the words that 
kept coming to mind back then were pure, untouched, and innocent.

Much has changed in thirty-five years.

At the time of my first visit in 1968, Texaco had only just discovered 
petroleum in Ecuador's Amazon region. Today, oil accounts for nearly half the 
country's
exports. A trans-Andean pipeline, built shortly after my first visit has since 
leaked over a half million barrels of oil into the fragile rain forest-more
than twice the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez. Today, a new $1.3 billion, 
300-mile pipeline constructed by an EHM-organized consortium promises to
make Ecuador one of the world's top ten suppliers of oil to the United States. 
Vast areas of rain forest have fallen, macaws and jaguars have all but vanished,
three Ecuadorian indigenous cultures have been driven to the verge of collapse, 
and pristine rivers have been transformed into flaming cesspools.

During this same period, the indigenous cultures began fighting back. As one 
result, on May 7, 2003, a group of American lawyers representing more than
thirty thousand indigenous Ecuadorian people filed a $1 billion lawsuit against 
Chevron Texaco Corp. The suit asserts that between 1971 and 1992 the oil
giant dumped into open holes and rivers over four million gallons per day of 
toxic wastewater, contaminated with oil, heavy metals, and carcinogens, and
that the company left behind nearly 350 uncovered waste pits that continue to 
kill both people and animals.

Outside the window of my Outback, great clouds of mist rolled in from the 
forests and up the Pastaza's canyons. Sweat soaked my shirt and my stomach began
to churn, but not just from the intense tropical heat and the serpentine twists 
in the road. Knowing the part I had played in destroying this beautiful
country was once again taking its toll. Because of me and my fellow EHMs, 
Ecuador is in far worse shape today than before we introduced her to the 
miracles
of modern economics, banking, and engineering. Since 1970-during this period 
known euphemistically as the oil Boom-the official poverty level grew from
50 to 70 percent, under- or unemployment increased from 15 to 70 percent, and 
public debt increased from $240 million to $16 billion. Meanwhile, the share
of national resources allocated to the poorest segments of the population 
declined from 20 to 6 percent.

Unfortunately, Ecuador is not the exception. Nearly every country we EHMs have 
brought under the global empire's umbrella has suffered a similar fate.

The Subaru slowed as it meandered through the streets of the beautiful resort 
town of Baños, famous for the hot baths created by underground volcanic rivers
that flow from the highly active Mount Tungurahgua. Children ran along beside 
us, waving and trying to sell us gum and cookies. Then we left Baños behind.
The spectacular scenery ended abruptly. The Subaru sped out of paradise and 
into a modern vision of Dante's Inferno.

A gigantic monster reared up from the river, a mammoth gray wall. Its dripping 
concrete was totally out of place, completely unnatural and incompatible
with the landscape. Of course, seeing it there should not have surprised me. I 
knew all along that it would be waiting in ambush. I had encountered it
many times before and in the past had praised it as a symbol of EHM 
accomplishments. Even so, it made my skin crawl.

That hideous, incongruous wall is a dam that blocks the rushing Pastaza River, 
diverts its waters through huge tunnels bored into the mountain, and converts
their energy to electricity. This is the 156-megawatt Agoyan Hydroelectric 
Project. It fuels the industries that make a handful of Ecuadorian families
wealthy, and it has been the source of untold suffering for the farmers and 
indigenous people who live along the river. This hydroelectric plant is just
one of many projects developed through my efforts and those of other EHMs. Such 
projects are the reason Ecuador is now a member of the global empire, and
also the reason why the Shuar, the Kichwa, and their neighbors have declared 
war on our oil companies.

Because of EHM projects, Ecuador is awash in foreign debt and must devote an 
inordinate share of its national budget to paying this off, instead of using
its capital to help the millions of its citizens officially classified as 
dangerously impoverished. The only way Ecuador can buy down its foreign 
obligations
is by selling its rain forests to the oil companies. Indeed, one of the reasons 
the EHMs set their sights on Ecuador in the first place was because the
sea of oil beneath its Amazon region is believed to rival the oil fields of the 
Middle East. The global empire demands its pound of flesh in the form of
oil concessions.

These demands became especially urgent after September 11, 2001, when 
Washington feared that Middle Eastern supplies might cease. On top of that, 
Venezuela,
our third-largest oil supplier, had elected a populist president, Hugo Chavez, 
who took a strong stand against what he referred to as U.S. imperialism;
he threatened to cut off oil sales to the United States. The EHMs had failed in 
Iraq and Venezuela. But we had succeeded in Ecuador; now we would milk
it for all it is worth.

Ecuador is typical of countries around the world that EHMs have brought into 
the economic-political fold. For every $100 of crude taken out of the Ecuadorian
rain forests, the oil companies receive $75. Of the remaining $25, three 
quarters must go to paying off the foreign debt. Most of the remainder covers
military and other government expenses- which leaves about $2.50 for health, 
education, and programs aimed at helping the poor. Thus, out of every $100
worth of oil torn from the Amazon, less than $3 goes to the people who need the 
money most, whose lives have been so adversely impacted by the dams, the
drilling, and the pipelines, and who are dying from lack of edible food and 
drinkable water.

Every one of those people-millions in Ecuador, billions around the planet-is a 
potential terrorist. Not because they believe in communism or the tenets
of anarchism, nor because they are intrinsically evil, but simply because they 
are desperate. Looking at this dam, I wondered-as I have so often in so
many places around the world-when these people would take action, like the 
Americans against England in the 1770s or Latin Americans against Spain in the
early 1800s.

The subtlety of this modern empire-building puts the Roman centurions, the 
Spanish conquistadors, and the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European 
colonial
powers to shame. We EHMs are crafty; we learned from history. Today we do not 
carry swords. We do not wear armor or clothes that set us apart. In countries
like Ecuador, Nigeria, and Indonesia, we dress like local schoolteachers and 
shop owners. In Washington and Paris, we look like government bureaucrats
and bankers. We appear humble, normal. We visit project sites and stroll 
through impoverished villages. We profess altruism, talk with local papers about
the wonderful humanitarian things we are doing. We cover the conference tables 
of government committees with our spreadsheets and financial projections,
and we lecture at the Harvard Business School about the miracles of 
macroeconomics. We are on the record, in the open. Or so we portray ourselves, 
and
so are we accepted. It is how the system works. We seldom resort to anything 
illegal because the system itself is built on subterfuge, and the system is
by definition legitimate.

However-and this is a very large caveat-if we fail, an even more sinister breed 
steps in, ones we EHMs refer to as the jackals, men who trace their heritage
directly to those earlier empires. The jackals are always there, lurking in the 
shadows. When they emerge, heads of state are overthrown or die in violent
"accidents." And if by chance the jackals fail, as they failed in Afghanistan 
and Iraq, then the old models resurface. When the jackals fail, young Americans
are sent in to kill and die.

As I passed the monster, that hulking mammoth wall of gray concrete rising from 
the river, I was very conscious of the sweat that soaked my clothes and
the tightening of my intestines. I headed on down into the jungle to meet with 
the indigenous people who are determined to fight to the last man in order
to stop this empire I helped create, and I was overwhelmed with feelings guilt.

How, I asked myself, did a nice kid from rural New Hampshire ever get into such 
a dirty business?
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