{"id":21941,"date":"2016-10-04T22:28:12","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T03:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21941"},"modified":"2016-10-04T22:28:22","modified_gmt":"2016-10-05T03:28:22","slug":"more-confessions-of-an-economic-hit-man-this-time-theyre-coming-for-your-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21941","title":{"rendered":"More Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: This Time, They\u2019re Coming for Your Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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More Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: This Time, They\u2019re Coming for Your Democracy<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n
Twelve years ago, John Perkins published his book, \u201cConfessions of an Economic Hit Man.\u201d Today, he says \u201cthings have just gotten so much worse.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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John Perkins. Photo by\u00a0Paul Dunn.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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Twelve years ago, John Perkins published his book,\u00a0Confessions of an Economic Hit Man<\/em>, and it rapidly rose up\u00a0The New York Times\u2019<\/em>\u00a0best-seller list. In it, Perkins describes his career convincing heads of state to adopt economic policies that impoverished their countries and undermined democratic institutions. These policies helped to enrich tiny, local elite groups while padding the pockets of U.S.-based transnational corporations.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t help but think about Flint, Michigan, under emergency management as I read\u00a0The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perkins was recruited, he says, by the National Security Agency (NSA), but he worked for a private consulting company. His job as an undertrained, overpaid economist was to generate reports that justified lucrative contracts for U.S. corporations, while plunging vulnerable nations into debt. Countries that didn\u2019t cooperate saw the screws tightened on their economies. In Chile, for example, President Richard Nixon famously called on the CIA to \u201cmake the economy scream\u201d to undermine the prospects of the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende.<\/p>\n

If economic pressure and threats didn\u2019t work, Perkins says, the jackals were called to either overthrow or assassinate the noncompliant heads of state. That is, indeed, what happened to Allende, with the backing of the CIA.<\/p>\n

Perkins\u2019 book has been controversial, and some have disputed some of his claims, including, for example, that the NSA was involved in activities beyond code making and breaking.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: This Time, They\u2019re Coming for Your Democracy Twelve years ago, John Perkins published his book, \u201cConfessions of an Economic Hit Man.\u201d Today, he says \u201cthings have just gotten so much worse.\u201d John Perkins. Photo by\u00a0Paul Dunn. Twelve years ago, John Perkins published his book,\u00a0Confessions of an Economic Hit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[135,6973,6971,577,14440,6085],"class_list":["post-21941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-cia","tag-confessions-of-an-economic-hit-man","tag-john-perkins","tag-nsa","tag-sarah-van-gelder","tag-yes-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21941"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21943,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21941\/revisions\/21943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}