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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."
"The real story is that we are
living a lie."
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.
The quotations are from Confessions of an Economic Hit
Man, by John Perkins, Published by
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. San Francisco, CA
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