-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 5, 2007 9:56:17 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fwd: John Perkins: Jerk, Con-man, Shill
In "Secret History," Perkins, from the inside, gives the details of
the weird moral emptiness and pitilessness of men who waylay the
riches of the planet from the people to whom it rightly belongs.
In New England, the pain imposed by the clients of the economic hit
men were financial; but, as Perkins wants us never to forget, in
much of the planet, the slick sales pitch of the economic hit man
is enforced by squads of hit men with less subtle weaponry.
Perkins writes:
"Three men toting AK-47s stood at attention outside. They saluted
as we drove past. One of the three opened the front door opposite
the driver. Leather Jacket and I climbed in. He spoke into a
walkie talkie. Tinted windows made it impossible to see inside."
See what's free at AOL.com.
From: Greg Palast <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: July 5, 2007 4:13:15 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: John Perkins: Jerk, Con-man, Shill
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
John Perkins: Jerk, Con-man, Shill
by Greg Palast
5 July 2007
I remember John Perkins. He was a real jerk. A gold-plated, super-
slick lying little butthole shill for corporate gangsters; a snake-
oil salesman with a movie-star grin, shiny loafers, a crooked
calculator and a tooled leather briefcase full of high-blown bullshit.
This was two decades ago. The early 1980s. I wore sandals,
uncombed hair down to my cheap collar and carried a busted ring-
binder filled with honest calculations and sincere analysis. It
was Economic Hit Man Perkins vs. Economic Long-Hair Palast. I
didn't stand a chance. The EHM was about to put a political bullet
hole through me wider than a silver dollar.
Hit Men have "clients." Perkins' was a giant power company, Public
Service of New Hampshire. PSNH was trying to sell New England
lobstermen and potato farmers on the idea that they desperately
needed a multi-billion dollar nuclear plant. The fact that this
bloated atomic water kettle, called "Seabrook," would produce
enough electricity for everyone in the Granite State to smelt iron
didn't matter. That the beast could add a surcharge to electric
bills equal to home mortgages was simply smiled over by Perkins and
his team of economic con artists.
To steal millions, you need a top team of armed robbers. But to
steal billions, you need PhD's with color charts and economic
projections made of fairy dust and eye of newt. Perkins had it all
- including a magical thing called a computer-generated spreadsheet
(this was well before Excel).
I was an expert witness for some consumer groups, trying to explain
to state officials that Perkins' numbers were bogus as a bubble-gum
bagel and his financial projections were from some New Hampshire on
another planet.
But this was the key point: Perkins slept in a suite at the Omni.
I had truck-rumble insomnia at the motel off exit 68. He glared
and grinned and glad-handed. I tried to keep my eyes open.
Here's how it ended. The local Joe's jumped head-first into the
Perkins fantasy and bought his client's power plant boondoggle.
Within a couple years, the local electric companies had all gone
bankrupt, the state treasury was drained, electric bills went from
lowest to highest in the nation causing factories to close and
dump, I figure, about 11,000 jobs.
Perkins' clients walked away with barrelfuls of billions.
And Dr. Perkins pocketed plenty for his mortal soul.
But, as in every moral tale, Perkins, the modern Dr. Faust, found
redemption in confession.
And we're lucky he did. Because, in Perkins', "Confessions of an
Economic Hit Man," and his latest, the just-released "Secret
History of the American Empire," we find out what makes these guys
tick. By "these guys" I mean the vultures who suck up development
aide, the sharks who use the World Bank as their enforcers, the
corporate marauders, power pirates and hedge fund hogs with their
snouts in the economic trough.
In "Secret History," Perkins, from the inside, gives the details of
the weird moral emptiness and pitilessness of men who waylay the
riches of the planet from the people to whom it rightly belongs.
In New England, the pain imposed by the clients of the economic hit
men were financial; but, as Perkins wants us never to forget, in
much of the planet, the slick sales pitch of the economic hit man
is enforced by squads of hit men with less subtle weaponry.
Perkins writes:
"Three men toting AK-47s stood at attention outside. They saluted
as we drove past. One of the three opened the front door opposite
the driver. Leather Jacket and I climbed in. He spoke into a
walkie talkie. Tinted windows made it impossible to see inside."
In lines heavy with Hemingway, Perkins takes us to Indonesia,
Bolivia, even tiny Diego Garcia and other victim-states where
doctorate-armed "consultants" put an academic gloss on militarized
plunder.
In the story of the guys with the AKs, Perkins is on assignment in
Guatemala for an outfit called SWEC, a Bechtel twin trying to foist
another mad power plant horror show on the natives of Guatemala.
(About the same time, I convinced the state of New York to bring
racketeering charges against SWEC and its partners in a massive
power plant building fraud. SWEC and co-defendants settled the
civil charges for a payment of nearly half a billion dollars.)
Unlike the yokels of New Hampshire who fell for the smooth Perkins
line, the Guatemalans were no pushovers. Skeptical locals,
suspicious indigenous shamans and a couple of improbably courageous
politicians simply wouldn't roll over to the corporate conquistadores.
The resisters, we are led to presume, will be dealt with
accordingly. As Perkins explains it, if his pie-charts don't make
the sale, the little men in his darkened car know a little
explosive wired to an ignition could be persuasive.
However, by time he got to Central America on the corporate
assignment, Perkins was already ill at heart with the SWECs of this
world. Ultimately, he refused to back their destructive scheme.
Perkins had switched sides - and, in Confessions of an Economic Hit
Man gets his soul back from Satan only a little soiled. In Secret
History, the personal confession turns into an illuminating, world-
spanning jeremiad. From Latin America to Africa to the Middle
East, Perkins leaps from his own story to the widespread caused by
the greed armies sent marching from the boardrooms of New York and
London.
Today, Perkins is my confrere and colleague. He wears his hair
longish and I wear mine . . . well, I've stopped wearing hair
altogether.
And in his writings today, Perkins heart goes out to the Third
World targets of this new empire ruled by shock troops and spread
sheets. His empathy extends to those in the occupied territory
known as the USA. Because, says Perkins, when the wretchedly
ripped-off of the Earth rise in rebellion, the lash of the backlash
is felt by the children of the lobstermen of New Hampshire,
shivering under Humvees in Falluja, and never the EHM's clients'
fortunate sons, frolicking in their Ferraris.
***********
Greg Palast is the author of Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New
Orleans - Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild.
To read an except from Perkins' latest book, The Secret History of
the American Empire, go to http://www.gregpalast.com/the-secret-
history-of-the-american-empire-excerpt/
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