رائع
عن سرقة الثروات والشعوب وهوياتهم بحجج منمقة
الهيمنة الأمريكية ووجهها القبيح لم تكتفي فقط باحتلال عسكري ولكن ما فعلته قوتها الناعمة كان أشد قبحًا

John Perkins nos cuenta cómo se convirtió en un gánster económico al servicio de organismos como el Banco Mundial, la Agencia de Desarrollo Internacional estadounidense, el FMI, bancos y grandes corporaciones que con la excusa de desarrollo internacional saquean y someten a los países a su interés.

La capacidad de Estados Unidos de imprimir billetes sin respaldo de ninguna reserva de oro, solamente respaldados en la confianza a nivel mundial en la capacidad de su economía y capacidad de garantizar un orden mundial, le ha conferido un poder inmenso, ya que se puede conceder créditos que no devolverá nunca y acumular un gran endeudamiento. La aparición de otras monedas que pudieran sustituir al dólar produciría la caída de la economía estadounidense y el tener que hacer frente a su gran deuda, por eso EEUU luchan encarnizadamente por mantener la fortaleza de su moneda en las transacciones internacionales

سرد الكاتب جورج بيركنز ، عن وظيفتة ( قاتل اقتصادي) في مؤسسة مالية إمبريالية ، حيث يسعى وفريق العمل لعمل دراسات وهمية والتكهن بنتائج مزيفة
، والحجة الدائمة هي نهضة البلدان المستهدفة ، ‏وغالبا ما تكون ذات ثروات طبيعية و حتى استراتيجية في يقومون بتطوير في تلك البلدان قروض مالية ضخمة لا تقوى على سدادها وعندها تبدأ حكومتهم إبتزاز هذه الدول لتحقيق مآربها وأطماعها الخاصة بالترهيب حيناً وبضغط أحيان أخرى يقدم الكاتب اعترافات على القيام وكالة الاستخبارات المركزية بتصفيات قادة وطني حين طالبوا باستعادة ثروات بلادهم المنهوبة ، وبين الكاتب بشكل واضح عن الاسباب الذاتية و الموضوعية لظاهرة الإرهاب ، هذه الأسباب التي يستر عليها عن قصد أو جهل الإعلام العالمي الراهن

Ülkemin şu an içinde bulunduğu durumu göz önüne almadan önce bile yeterince sarsıcı bir kitapken, ayın 15'inden sonra kesinlikle vurucu bir kitap oldu benim nazarımda. Zira darbe girişiminde küresel imparatorluğun parmağı olduğunu iddia eden bir yazının üzerine şu kitabı okuyor olmak beni gerçekten çok sarstı. Perkins'in deyimiyle "Şirketokrasi" kendi çıkarları için bütün zayıf ülkeleri -ve tabii bizi de- öğütüyor ve biz büyük ölçüde çaresizlik içinde kalmanın üzüntüsünü yaşıyoruz. Gerçekten bitirdiğim zaman, içimde büyük bir iç sıkıntısı miras bırakan az sayıda kitap var ve bu kitap onlardan birisi. Beni bu kadar üzense içindekilere gerçekten inanıyor oluşum galiba.

Bunlar dışında kitap son derece samimi ve anlaşılır bir dille yazılmış bence. Yazar o kadar açık bir şekilde anlatmış ki her şeyi, hiçbir iktisadi ya da yakın siyasi tarih bilginiz olmasa dahi yazarın size anlatmaya çalıştığı şeyleri çok net bir şekilde kavrayabiliyorsunuz. Fakat az da olsa son zamanlardaki olaylara aşina olmanız, anlatılanların kafanızda tam olarak oturması için fazlasıyla yararlı olabilir.

Bazı ufak tefek dizgi hataları var kitapta ancak kitabın içeriği düşünülecek olursa bunların önemli sayılabileceğini sanmıyorum.

Özetle, ben Perkins'in ve haliyle kitabın samimiyetine inandım. Ve kitabı, kendi sınıfı içinde son derece başarılı buldum. Bence beş yıldızı hak ediyor. Okumanızı tavsiye ederim.

كتاب مثير,لو قال لى احدهم انك ممكن تقرا كتاب اقتصاد مثير
بالتاكيد كنت سوف اجيبه انك تبالغ
لكن تلك حقيقه ذلك الكتاب لجون بيركنز,هو كتاب قوى من حيث المحتوى
انه ليست مجرد كتاب يفضح الاميبراليه العالميه وسيطره الشركات الكبرى ,انه مثير من حيث الاعترفات واسلوبها والصراع النفسى الذى تعيشه مع الكاتب
اما عن محتوى الكتاب,فانه هناك معلومات يتداولها البعض ولكن عندما تتاكد من اصل تلك المعلومات وعندما تعرف تفاصيلها تعرف بشاعه الحقيقه مثل حقيقه التامر على رئيس بنما وحقيقه النهضه فى المملكه العربيه السعوديه وغسيل الاموال
كيف ان العراق انقذت فنزويلا
لكن اجمل ما اعجبنى بالكتاب هو وصفه ورؤيته لتلك القبائل التى يعتبرها البعض بدائيه ولكنها تتثقف وتقرا عن اخبار العراق حتى لو لم يجيدوا القراءه
انك تطوف فى عالم كامل من السرح والجمال والاثاره والبشاعه
استمتع بكتاب جون بيركنز

There are so many excellent reviews of this book, and its sequel on GR, that I won't add more of the same.

I've read this book so long ago, must be three years, but never listed it as 'read' on GR. Mind-boggling, since it is one of the most riveting non-fictional novelistic thriller reads ever.

I also read the sequel, n   New Confessions of an Economic Hitmann, and did not add it to my GR Book shelves either. Perhaps I was reading too many books simultaneously or got tired of hunting down the genesis of all things wild and fabuliciously bad. :-) Besides, where other than GR will we share our thoughts on books like these. Nobody else will believe us anyway. Oy!

I am all for hiding our heads in the sand with our delightful Houdini-esque escapes into fiction, but sometimes we really need to come up for air and take on non-fictional books like these. Nonfiction is really my beat. I just love a good dollop of reality dished up by good researchers, journalists, scientists, and historians.

John Perkins, being THE economic hitman himself, exposed the capitalistic debt traps ruining desperate governments and economies around the world. He confessed before a similar strategy would later become known as China's Belt & Road Initiatives, which played the American corporatocracy, the World Bank, and the IMF at their own games. China is winning. Perhaps fewer people are getting murdered by the jackals in the process.

The jackals are those CIA operatives who murder leaders when they refuse to accept the plans. Precisely explained in the book. Who the leaders were and how the countries were affected when they refused the economic control of their assets and people.

Whether we want to know or not, this is our world today. And it got much worse since these books were published. At least Perkins left us with a better understanding of how it all happened/happens and how it affects us as the small plebs in the fight for survival. We cannot win.

Since China stole the American Deep State's ideas to conquer and rule, a vicious global war is raging for the final power grab and control of the world. Nowadays there are even new revelations of a globalist agenda, for those who acknowledge its existence. Was it George Bush senior who first spoke about 'a New World Order'? Then it got repeated by all US presidents, but nobody was listening.

Yanis Varoufakis: "When I read 'Confessions of an Economic Hit Man", I could not have known that, some years later, I would be on the receiving end of the type of 'economic hit' that Perkins so vividly narrated. This book resonates with my experience of the brutish methods and gross economic irrationality guiding powerful institutions in their bid to undermine democratic control over economic power. Perkins, once again, made a substantial contribution to a world that needs whistle-blowers to open its eyes to the true sources of political, social, and economic power."

Professor Varoufakis wrote a bookn  n    Adults In The Room - My Battle With Europe's Deep Establishmentn  n about his experiences. His actions as the short-lived minister of Economic Affairs in Greece sparked Brexit, and then Trumpism. It all resulted in a global stir or exposé of global deep state affairs. It seems as though Perkins' book got Varoufakis rolling and perhaps Klaus Schwab in a little bit of hot water.

His other book,  Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded & What We Need to Do to Remake Them relates the effects of these same methods applied to the American economy, as well as the devastating effect it had on the citizens of America.

Perkins has written several uplifting books too. I think I will read them as well. This author is worth a read.

Perkins' tales are corroborated by the former-CIA operative, John Stockwell, who wrote several books in this regard, including, n  The Praetorian Guard: THE U.S. ROLE IN THE NEW WORLD ORDERn;

n   In Search Of Enemies: A CIA Storyn;t

n  Red Sunsetn(a novel).

This is straightforward history in no uncertain terms.

One of the dumbest lies our politicians ever say and our media gives credence to is that terrorists hate us because they hate our freedoms. Anyone who says that is begging not to be taken seriously. Terrorists hate us because the U.S. has overthrown their governments, thrown entire regions into turmoil, intentionally destroyed other countries economies, and plundered their natural resources.

This book does an excellent job of showing how the IMF and World Bank are used to entrap developing countries into a cycle of debt that drives millions into poverty while U.S. corporations take all of their natural resources. And when that fails the CIA's 'jackals' either enable a government overthrow or assassinate the country's leader. And if that fails our military goes in and destroys everything.

It's happened so many times over the decades that much of the rest of the world despises what the U.S. stands for. This is one of those books that isn't fun to read but is totally necessary for understanding current geopolitics and why much of the world is getting behind China rather than the U.S.

آدم نمی‌دونه درباره این تیپ کتابها چی بگه. واقعیت‌های درستی که به بیانی سطحی‌ و داستان‌سرایانه بازگو شدن. بیشتر به یک‌جور رمان تحلیلی تاریخی علیه سرمایه داری شبیه بود تا یک روایت واقعی از یک کارشناس اقتصادی که تو سیستم سرمایه داری استخون خرد کرده.

At the end of Three Days of the Condor the guy who is not Robert Redford, the guy who is the evil CIA operative who has been trying to ‘bring him home’ throughout the film - which we have guessed is a euphuism for ‘take him out’ - is talking about why the CIA does bad, manipulative things in the world. He tells Redford that it is simple economics and anyway, what would Redford expect them to do? Redford says he should ask the American people first. The CIA man looks at Redford in the way so many people do when confronted with the naivety of the person they are talking to, but finally replies, “Ask them when there's no heat and they're cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. Want to know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll want us to get it for them.”


The whole way through this most remarkable book I found myself thinking of that line and that last scene from Three Days of the Condor. This is one of the most fascinating books I’ve read in quite a long time. It reads like a Le Carre novel or something by Graham Green, and yet it is autobiographical.

A young man becomes drawn into international finance and has the role of convincing third world countries (particularly the leaders of these countries) to take out loans that are so huge their countries will never be able to repay them. They do this so as to ensure that these countries become satellites orbiting the American Empire. His job was to make these countries compliant, dependent, and endlessly economically exploitable.

Perkins asserts that the economic hit men were potentially only phase one of what could become a three phase attack on the democratic rights and independence of foreign nations. If bribing the leaders of countries with massive loans they could never repay didn’t work, then the jackals were sent in to kill selected targets and to create mayhem that would ensure the ‘right’ people would be put into power. If this didn’t work, then US troops were sent in. He gives instance after instance of where this pattern was applied in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia over a period of about three decades. It would be hard to imagine someone from the US reading this book without a growing sense of shame. It is hard to read this book from anywhere in the first world without feelings of responsibility, disgust and self-loathing. He reminds us continually that our lavish and unsustainable life style is only possible by the exploitation unto death of large parts of the globe.

This is also a remarkably well written autobiography – if Noam Chomsky was to make up a character who walked the path of evil before converting and walking the path of righteousness, he’s have come up with someone pretty much like John Perkins. Perkins does not come out of this book a saint, but he does come out of it a bit of a hero – I think.

It surprises me more I can say that this book ever got published. I believe we live in times when global capitalism is so cocksure of its pre-eminence and unassailability that it doesn’t even bother to cover up its deeds. I think I preferred it when the rulers of the world at least pretended they were concerned we might overthrown them if we caught them at their cheating. I think I preferred it when they would lie to us, if for no better reason than purely out of shame. Now they don’t even bother to treat us to that level of respect. We have become completely contemptible. Where they can do whatever they like and then rub our noses in it and we will only shake our heads and complain about how powerless we are.

This really is a fascinating book, fascinating in the literal sense of having one’s attention stolen as we read. Like I said, this reads like a spy novel, but made even more compelling by it being true.

This book demands to be read.

For having a better future, everybody should read this book!

This is a remarkable work, decades in the making. Perkins is the real deal, an economist who worked for international consortia to pillage the third world. The modus operandi was to perform economic analysis of target nations that indicated a rate of growth far in excess of any real possibility in order to justify offering those nations huge loans, loans they were never expected to be able to repay. The point of this was twofold. First, the money loaned would find its way right back into the pocket of American corporations, because it would be used for major construction projects, roads, dams, electrification projects. The economic benefits would never accrue as predicted, so the host country would be saddled with crushing debt and then be forced by entities like the IMF to slash and burn domestic social services in order to make interest payments. The benefits of the “development” would go to the elite of the host nations, at the expense of the lower classes. In fact, he offers data showing that poverty increased over the term of such foreign investment. Local elites were essentially bribed to go along, and they in turn acted as enforcers for the American elite that was pushing the product.

John Perkins began as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador. He managed rather well with this experience and was recruited by a corporate type into the MAIN corporation, the actor in most of the hit man activity. In fact the title was not a case of advocacy hyperbole. The people in this line of work actually refer to each other and themselves as Economic Hit Men, or EHM’s.

I learned several things in reading this. First was that conquest via excessive indebtedness was a conscious policy, with the short term profitability of development by Bechtel or equivalent being icing on the cake of overall domination.

I learned about SAMA, or the Saudi Arabia Money-Laundering Affair. Perkins talks about several of the leaders he came to know, Trujillo in Panama, Jaime Roldos in Ecuador, other leaders of less-than-presidential caliber.

P 15
My job…was to forecast the effects of investing billions of dollars in a country. Specifically, I would produce studies that projected economic growth twenty to twenty five years into the future and that evaluated the impacts of various projects. For example, if a decision was made to lend a country $1 billion to persuade its leaders not to align with the Soviet union, I would compare the benefits of investing that money in power plants with the benefits of investing in a new national railroad network or a telecommunications system. 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 under consideration, I would need to demonstrate that developing it would bring superior benefits to the GNP.

The unspoken aspect of every one of these projects was that they were intended to create large profits for the contractors, 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 loan, the better. The fact that the debt burden placed on a country would deprive its poorest citizens of health, education and other social services for decades to come was not taken into consideration.

P 16
…talked about the deceptive nature of GNP. For instance, the growth of GNP may result even when it profits only one person, such as an individual who owns a utility company, and even if the majority of the population is burdened with debt. The rich get richer and the poor grow poorer. Yet from a statistical standpoint, this is recorded as economic progress.

…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 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 Indians fighting to defend their lands were servants of the devil.

P 17
[quoting his teacher Claudine] “We’re in a small, exclusive club,” she said. “We’re paid—well paid—to cheat countries around the globe out of billions of dollars. A large part of your job is to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. 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, these leaders bolster their political position by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people. Meanwhile, the owners of U.S. engineering and construction companies become very wealthy.

P 23
[The source of the Boogey man image appears to be Indonesia. Apparently there were pirates from a place called Bugi.] …the infamous Bugi pirates, who still sailed the seas of the archipelago, and who had so terrorized early European sailors that they returned home to warn their children, “Behave yourselves or the Bugimen will get you.”

P 49
..I knew enough history to know that suppliers who are exploited long enough will rebel. I had only to return to the American Revolution and Tom Paine for a model. I recalled that Britain justified its taxes by claiming that England was providing aid to the colonies in the form of military protection against the French and the Indians. The colonists had a very different interpretation.

What Paine offered to his countrymen in the brilliant Common Sense was the soul that my young Indonesian friends had referred to—an idea, a faith in the justice of a higher power, and a religion of freedom and equality that was diametrically opposed to the British monarchy and its elitist class systems. What Muslims offered was similar: faith in a higher power, and a belief that developed countries have no right to subjugate and exploit the rest of the world. Like colonial Minutemen, Muslims were threatening to fight for their rights, and like the British in the 1770s, we classified such actions as terrorism.

P 58
Panama was part of Columbia when the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps, who directed construction f the Suez Canal, decided to build a canal through the Central American isthmus, to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Beginning in 1881, the French undertook a mammoth effort that met with one catastrophe after another. Finally, in 1889, the project ended in financial disaster—but it had inspired a dream in Theodore Roosevelt. During the first years of the twentieth century, the United States demanded that Colombia sign a treaty turning the isthmus over to a North American consortium. Colombia refused.

In 1903, President Roosevelt sent in the U.S. warship Nashville. U.S. soldiers landed, seized and killed a popular local militia commander, and declared Panama an independent nation. A puppet government was installed and the first Canal Treaty was signed; it established an American zone on both sides of the future waterway, legalized U.S. military intervention, and gave Washington virtual control over this newly formed “independent” nation.

…the treaty was not signed by a single Panamanian.

P 72 – re Guatemala
United Fruit Company had been [Guatemala’s] equivalent to the Panama Canal. Founded in the late 1800s, United Fruit soon grew into one of the most powerful forces in Central America. During the early 1950s, reform candidate Jacobo Arbenz was elected president of Guatemala in an election hailed all over the hemisphere as a model of the democratic process. At the time, less than 3 percent pf Guatemalans owned 70 percent of the land. Arbenz promised to help the poor dig their way out of starvation, and after his election he implemented a comprehensive land reform program…United Fruit launched a major public relations campaign in the United States, aimed at convincing the American public and congress that Arbenz was part of a Russian plot and that Guatemala was a Soviet satellite. In 1954, the CIA orchestrated a coup. American pilots bombed Guatemala city and the democratically elected Arbenz was overthrown, replaced by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, a ruthless, right-wing dictator.

Thje new government owed everything to United Fruit. By way of thanks, the government reversed the land reform process, abolished taxes on the interest and dividends paid to foreign investors, eliminated the secret ballot, and jailed thousands of its critics. Anyone who dared to speak out against Castillo was persecuted.

[Torrijos then asks Perkins] “Do you know who owns United Fruit?”
“Zapata Oil, George Bush’s company—our UN ambassador.”

كتاب مهم.