Corporatocracy

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Why “they” hate “us”.  Story of the “EHMs”

After the attacks on 9/11, many citizens in the US, many in the Christian Right included, were bewildered as to why anyone would attack “us”, a peaceful nation that brings nothing but peace and democracy to all nations.  The people in the USA began to ask over and over, “why do they hate us?”  If a Christian was truly a Christian and had faith in God the way Job had faith in God there would be no need to answer the question “why do they hate us” because the question would never be asked.  Have faith, turn the other cheek and praise God. Since that is not what happened and everyone wants to know how anyone could hate our good and perfect country, let’s take a look.

US foreign policy and the world events they helped to orchestrate have been well documented and chronicled in books and documentaries. In 2005 I read a book written by a man who worked to cobble together deals with foreign leaders that shaped the US’s relationship with these countries. Because it is a first hand account, or “confession”, of these events I feel it is one of the best sources to help explain US corporate foreign policy.  His “confession” answers that nagging question of why “they” hate us. The author is John Perkins and his book is titled Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.  After you read this article, I urge you to go and read Mr. Perkins’ book in its entirety.  This article can hardly do justice to or fully recount such an important work.  It should be required reading for all people of the USA.  As you read this think of the corporation monopolies and how the US government serves their needs first over “the people” of the US.

Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.  They funnel money from the World Bank, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign “aid” organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources.  Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder.  They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.
I should know; I was an EHM (Perkins ix). 

John Perkins was a first rate capitalist, eager to make money by any means necessary. He believed in Laissez-Faire, free-market economics and he could make the numbers show any result his bosses wanted to see. He believed that the ends justified the means because in the end the US was altruistic so in his eyes it was win-win-win.  His US corporation, MAIN, got rich, he got rich and the foreign country got rich.  However, the foreign country didn’t get rich and it took some time for Perkins to see the damage he was inflicting upon these foreign countries in the pursuit of a buck.

Because Perkins was not a “Christian” in the mold of the Christian Right, he could not justify the continuation of his own actions and the actions of his country’s government.  He could not hide behind the belief that he was free from sin, “forgiven” like the Christian Right, and therefore free to cast stones, lie, cheat, steal and condone murder all for the betterment of the Corporatocracy.  So, unlike the Christian Right he had a conscience and although it took time, he finally saw the truth and stopped serving mammon.

From here I will let the words of John Perkins tell the story of US foreign policy as he experienced it first hand. “Claudine” is the name Perkins gives to the woman that showed him the ropes at Charles T. Main, Inc. (MAIN).

Claudine pulled no punches when describing what I would be called upon to do.  My job, she said, was “to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes US commercial interests.  In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire – to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs.  In turn, they bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to the people.  The owners of US engineering/construction companies become fabulously wealthy.”

Today we see the results of this system run amok. Executives at our most respected companies hire people at near-slave wages to toil under inhuman conditions in Asian sweatshops.  Oil companies wantonly pump toxins into rain forest rivers, consciously killing people, animals, and plants and committing genocide among ancient cultures.  The pharmaceutical industry denies lifesaving medicines to millions of HIV-infected Africans.  Twelve million families in our own United States worry about their next meal.  The energy industry creates an Enron.  The accounting industry creates and Anderson.  The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world’s population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest went from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1995.  The United States spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitation services, and basic education to every person on the planet And we wonder why they hate us? (Perkins xi –xii).

Let me just ask my own question here, would Christ want our money spent on war-for-profit or on bringing care to people in need?  Conducting ourselves in a humanitarian manner rather than a greedy manner would leave “them” without a reason to hate “us”.  Hence the reason Jesus recommended that we “do unto others as we would have them do unto us”.  

Some would blame our current problems on an organizational conspiracy. I wish it were so simple. Members of a conspiracy can be rooted out and brought to justice.  This system, however, is fueled by something far more dangerous than conspiracy. It is not driven by a small band of men but by a concept that has been accepted as gospel: the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits.  This belief also has a corollary: that those people who excel at stoking fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation.

…When men and women are rewarded for greed, greed becomes a corrupting motivator.  When we equate the gluttonous consumption of the earth’s resources with a status approaching sainthood, when we teach our children to emulate people who live unbalanced lives, and when we define huge sections of the population as subservient to an elite minority, we ask for trouble. And we get it (Perkins xii).

This is what Jesus was preaching about.  I know it is “anti-American” to think that wanting more is “bad” or that greed is “bad”, but it is what Christ taught, and if you are a Christian, you ought to be following His principles: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The same applies if you have half an ounce of humanity in your body.

Perkins continues here talking about the corporatocracy.  

In their drive to advance the global empire, corporations, banks, and government (collectively the corporatocracy) use their financial and political muscle to ensure that our schools, businesses, and media support both the [aforementioned] fallacious concept and its corollary.  They have brought us to the point where our global culture is a monstrous machine that requires exponentially increasing amounts of fuel and maintenance, so much so that in the end it will have consumed everything in sight and will be left with no choice but to devour itself (Perkins xii – xiii).

One needs look no further than the Roman Empire to see that this is true.  Looking at the Roman Empire we see the fate of the USA and we see that greed will not let us escape our inevitable demise. Knowing that the USA deserves such a fate made me apathetic.  However, watching the Christian Right support the greed that will lead to our demise and calling me an “unpatriotic liberal” in the process, I became compelled to write just as Perkins and others are compelled to write.  We try to hold up a mirror to our nation to show it that it is devouring itself with greed.  We are far more “patriotic” than the Christian Right and conservatives who support and feed the beast of greed.  The Christian Right is more to blame than anyone, because they should no better; they have Christ’s words that should keep them off this path of destructive greed.  It is why I “pick-on” the Christian Right so much in this website. Perkins continues:

This book is the confession of a man who, back when I was an EHM [Economic Hit Man], was part of a relatively small group.  People who play similar roles are more abundant now.  They have more euphemistic titles, and they walk the corridors of Monsanto, General Electric, Nike, General Motors, Wal-Mart, and nearly every other major corporation in the world.  In a very real sense, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is their story as well as mine.
It is your story too, the story of your world and mine, of the first truly global empire.  History tells us that unless we modify this story, it is guaranteed to end tragically.  Empires never last.  Every one of them has failed terribly. They destroy many cultures as they race toward greater domination, and they themselves fall. No country or combination of countries can thieve in the long term by exploiting others.
This book was written so that we may take heed and remold our story (Perkins xiii).  

In 2003, I departed 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 Shuars, the Kichwas, and their neighbors the Achuars, the Zaparos, and 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. For them, this is a war 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 running our biggest corporations, our government, and our banks. Like our counterparts in the Mafia, EHMs provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure —electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks. A 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 creditor), 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, then like the Mafia we demand our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money—and another country is added to our global empire (Perkins xvi –xvii).

Yes, I can understand the greedy conservatives of the USA being thrilled about this set-up of exploitation, but I do not understand the Christians Right’s support of the conservatives who create this set-up.

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 [2004], a new $1.3 billion, three hundred–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. For instance, 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.
… Because of my fellow EHMs and me, Ecuador is in far worse shape today than she was 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…

…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 recently elected a populist president, Hugo Chávez, 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, those 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 potable water.

All of those people—millions in Ecuador, billions around the planet—are potential terrorists. Not because they believe in communism or anarchism or are intrinsically evil, but simply because they are desperate…
… 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 to die (Perkins xvii-xxi).

The “jackals” that Perkins refers to here are assassins, usually from the CIA, that Pat Robertson said we should use to kill Hugo Chavez of Venezuela instead of killing more “young Americans” in uniform (Robertson). Robertson demonstrated that he knows what is going on; why he supports it is beyond me.  He will have to take that up with God, as will all Christian’s who support this anti-Christian system. 

Like U.S. citizens in general, [I] believed we were doing countries favors when we built power plants, highways, and ports.  Our schools and our press have taught us to perceive all of our actions as altruistic.  Over the years, I’ve repeatedly heard comments like, “If they’re going to burn the U.S. flag and demonstrate against our embassy, why don’t we just get out of their damn country and let them wallow in their own poverty?”
People who say such things often hold diplomas certifying that they are well educated.  However, these people have no clue that the main reason we establish embassies around the world is to serve our own [business] interests, which during the last half of the twentieth century meant turning the American republic into a global empire. Despite credentials, such people are as uneducated as those eighteenth-century colonists who believed that the Indians fighting to defend their lands were servants of the devil (Perkins 16).

Corporate lies were responsible for making us believe that Native Americans were “devils” and “deserving” of death.  With “Christians” clearing the lands of the “Native Devils”, the corporations walked in unmolested and set-up shop and enslaved the Christians in their corporations.  “Blessed be the ties that bind” us to corporate greed. What we did for the “Indians” we will do for the rest of the world. God must be so proud of us. I have no idea why anyone would hate us.

References:
           
Perkins, John. Confessions of Economic Hit Man. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2004.

Robertson, Pat. Regarding Hugo Chavez. 22 Aug 2005 <http://www.usatoday.com/ news/nation/2005-08-22-robertson-_x.htm>.

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