Here are a series of nuggets from John Perkins' truly extraordinary and shocking Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Even if the consequences of US actions around the globe are pretty clear, including the massive siphoning off of international 'aid' into the coffers of companies like Bechtel and Halliburton - it is something else to see how deliberate, comprehensive and cleverly planned the exercise has been.
See them all together here
You can also see Perkins on Youtube. Or a slightly more showy version at the Veterans for Peace Conference. First part is on why we went into Iraq.
And here's a nugget (or is it a humbug) from another interview he did on Democracy Now:
...we economic hit men, basically in the last four decades, have managed to create the world’s first truly global empire; and I talk in detail in the book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, about this and in various countries where we went in to create this first truly global empire. We’ve done it primarily without the military. The military comes in only as a last resort. We’ve done it through economics, and we’ve done it very, very subtly, so it’s been a secret empire, unlike all of history’s previous empires. Most Americans don't realize that we’ve created this empire. They don’t realize what we've done in Latin America.
And the way economic hit men work, we use many different techniques, but probably the most typical is that we'll identify a company [country] that has resources that corporations covet, like oil. We'll arrange a huge loan from an organization like the World Bank for that country; but the money won’t go to that country at all. It goes to big U.S. corporations -- Bechtel, Haliburton, ones we all hear about all the time -- to build infrastructure projects in that country.
These projects, like industrial parks and power plants, benefit the very rich of those countries and do nothing for the poor, except to leave the country in a huge debt, one it can’t possibly repay, which means it can’t give social services, education, health to its poor, and it’s put in a position where it doesn't repay its debts; so, at some point, we economic hit men go back in and we say: ‘Look, you can’t repay your debts, so give us a pound of flesh. Sell oil to our oil companies real cheap or vote with us at the next U.N. vote, or send troops in support of ours some place in the world.’ And that's how we’ve created this empire; and we’ve done it without most Americans even realizing that it’s happening.
Claudine told me that there were two primary objectives of my work. First, I was to justify huge international loans that would funnel money back to MAIN and other US companies (such as Bechtel, Halliburton, Stone and Webster, and Brown and Root) through massive engineering and construction projects. Second, I would work to bankrupt the countries that received these loans (after they had paid MAIN and the other US contractors, of course) so that they would be forever beholden to their creditors, and so they would present easy targets when we needed favours, including military bases, UN votes, or access to oil and other natural resources.
These executives fanned out across the planet. They sought the cheapest labour pools, the most accessible resources, and the largest markets. They were ruthless in their approach. ... Like us, they ensnared communities and countries. They promised affluence, a way for countries to use the private sector to dig themselves out of debt. ... In the end, however, if they found cheaper workers or more accessible resources elsewhere, they left. When they abandoned a community whose hopes they had raised, the consequences were often devastating...
Instead of sending in the Marines [to Iran], Washington dispatched CIA agent, Kermit Roosevelt (Theodore's grandson). He performed brilliantly, winning people over through payoffs and threats. He then enlisted them to organise a series of street riots and violent demonstrations, which created the impression that Mossadegh was both unpopular and inept. In the end, Mossadegh went down ... the pro-American Mohammad Reza Shah became the unchallenged dictator.
The example of organised crime seemed to offer a metaphor. Mafia bosses often start out as street thugs. But over time, the ones who make it to the top transform their appearance. They take to wearing impeccably tailored suits, owning legitimate businesses, and wrapping themselves in the cloak of upstanding society. They support local charities and are respected by their communities... However, beneath this patina is a trail of blood. When the debtors cannot pay, hitmen move in to demand their pound of flesh.
The condition was that Saudi Arabia would use its petrodollars to purchase US government securities; in turn, the interest earned by these securities would be spent by the US Department of the Treasury in ways that enabled Saudi Arabia to emerge from a medieval society into the modern, industrialised world. In other words, the interest compounding on billions of dollars of the kingdom's oil income would be used to pay US companies to fulfil the vision I had come up with... Our own US Department of the Treasury would hire us, at Saudi expense, to build infrastructure projects and even entire cities throughout the Arabian Peninsula.
Surely, [Omar Torrijos] knew that the foreign aid game was a sham - he had to know. It existed to make him rich and to shackle his country with debt. It was there so Panama would be forever obligated to the United States and the corporatocracy. It was there to keep Latin America ... forever subservient to Washington and Wall Street. I was certain that he knew that the system was based on the assumption that all men in power are corruptible, and that his decision not to use it for his personal benefit would be seen as a threat.
Today, we still have slave traders. They no longer find it necessary to march into the forests of Africa looking for prime specimens who will bring top dollar on the auction blocks in Charleston. Cartagena, and Havana. They simply recruit desperate people and build a factory to produce the jackets, blue jeans, tennis shoes, automobile parts, computer components, and thousands of other items they can sell in the markets of their choosing...
about his meeting with Omar Torrijos (quoted in Confessions of an economic hitman)