- Many have thought about where we began our dissent into
the current literal hell, and some believe that it may have begun when
we split our lives into separate categories of "business" and
"private" life. This separation of personal responsibility or
the lack thereof seems to stem from a basic desire to have everything both
ways without the human need to face the consequences. This also makes
a mockery of ethics and personal morality: but it cannot survive because
all of this is based on ever-larger lies.
In business this process was greatly increased when corporations were given
the right to behave as individuals might, with all the rights that people
have, but with none of the responsibilities. Recently this was intensified
by corporate officers who were allowed to imbed their personal actions
beneath the shield of corporate activity and from this simple twist of
rarified privilege, the dye was cast that created the walls that divide
our two-tiered world.
From this simple equation the world has come to live under new rules; rules
that favor the rise of the global corporatocracy that now rules this planet.
In this new paradigm, distractions share their bed with lies and disinformation
that all together have created the subversion of all that most people once
held dear. Yet this is affecting not just one nation or even a region of
the world, but rather this tyranny affects every nation, while 24,000 people
starve to death every day. John Perkins wrote a book about his part in
creating this monstrous plot and below are some of the things he says
about how we came to be here and what the goals of the new corporatocracy
really are.
"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 U.S. 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."
"The real story of modern empire of the corporatocracy that exploits
desperate people and is executing history's most brutal, selfish, and ultimately
self-destructive resource- grab has little to do with what was exposed
in newspapers that morning and has everything to do with us. And that,
of course, explains why we have such difficulty listening to the real story.
We prefer to believe the myth that thousands of years of human social evolution
has finally perfected the ideal economic system, rather than to face the
fact we have merely bought into a false concept and accepted it as gospel."
"It would be great if we could just blame it all on a conspiracy,
but we cannot. The empire depends on the efficacy of big banks, corporations
and governments - the corporatocracy - but it is not a conspiracy. This
corporatocracy is ourselves - we make it happen - which, of course, is
why most of us find it difficult to stand up and oppose it. We would rather
glimpse conspirators lurking in the shadows, because most of us work for
one of those banks, corporations, or governments, or in some way are dependent
on them for the goods and services they produce and market. We cannot bring
ourselves to bite the hand of the master who feeds us."
"We have convinced ourselves that all economic growth benefits mankind,
and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. Finally
we have persuaded one another that the corollary to this concept is valid
and morally just: that people who excel at stoking the fires of economic
growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes
are available for exploitation."
"This concept and its corollary are used to justify all manner of
piracy - licenses are granted to rape and pillage and murder innocent people
in Iran, Panama, Columbia, Iraq, and elsewhere. EHMs, jackals, and armies
flourish for as long as their activities can be shown to generate economic
growth and they almost always demonstrate such growth. Thanks to the biased
"sciences of forecasting, econometrics, and statistics, if you bomb
a city and then rebuild it, the data shows a huge spike in economic growth."
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- "The real story is that we are living a lie."
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- The world can no longer afford this outrage or the outright
theft of so much of the natural resources of the planet that go into the
coffers of the very few - and yet it will continue until the whole ugly
tale is out there among the people of the USA, as it is already, among
most of the those who live outside this country. The John Perkins book
is thorough and damning, in so many ways that so many have wondered about,
since the rise of Bandits came to replace what we used to think of as the
USA. Anyone interested in connecting all the dots needs to read these 225
pages, that encompass so much of what has seemingly eluded so many of us
for such a very long time.
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- kirwan
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- The quotations are from Confessions of an Economic Hit
Man by John Perkins
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- Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. San Francisco,
CA
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