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I hope this book sells enough copies so that it will be recorded. However, reading is difficult for me. Please read this book so that I can listen to it soon. Actually, I haven't read the book, just heard an interview with the author. I'm interested in what he has to say and would love to read it.
All I can ask for is more stories from more people in similar positions/ This book will really open your eyes as well as be a page turner. Great book love the way it was written.
The great value of this book by John Perkins as well as of his Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, is that, through a series of concrete and dramatic anecdotes, he gives us a feel for how our corporations (quite aptly called the "corporatocracy"), aided by "economic hit men" (IMF, World Bank, etc).,"jackals" (CIA), and the military, work to plunder the third world and working people in the first world to our material, cultural, and moral detriment. While competition among individual capitalists for markets often leads to efficiency and publicly beneficial outcomes, the long-term result of unfettered competition is the formation of monopolies and combinations of monopolies that lead to the ruthless and destructive exploitation of people, resources, and environments. He evidently believes that capitalism is reformable without losing its character as capitalism. Agents of the corporatocracy spend many millions in a form of lobbying that amounts to bribing, more millions in propaganda, propaganda usually quite effective, stoking and playing on fear or anger, increasing the ability of the corporatocracy to manipulate public opinion.
One must think through these matters. On an international level, acting as more or less national blocs through their governments, these combinations form the economic bases of their respective governments. Both scenarios are frightful, but one, if acted out in history, promises a better future for humanity and the earth. Perkins' books should definitely be included among your study materials. Still, one may ask: Is there another choice.The immediate future, if the two scenarios I describe are the only realistic options, is not pretty. The part of this book I must question is the last section in which Perkins deals with what we can do to make things better.
A ruthless competition among these governments, now imperial powers, develops in competition for markets, for cheap labor, and for cheap raw materials that leads inevitably to fascism and world war, a massive destruction of capital values, and a repeat of the same dreary boom-and-bust cycle-- or, if the masses are properly won over and organized, leads to revolution. It is true that under capitalism some good reforms do take place, perhaps attenuated or watered down over time, and generally restricted in scope, and it is equally true that in spite of the usual insufficiency of many of these reforms, earnest pursuit of reform by our citizens is generally worthwhile, in fact essential if we are not to lapse into an unhappy impoverished brain-dead police state, for in the course of participating in a reform movement we gain much of the experience, knowledge, and skill we need to work collectively for the genuinely radical political, economic, cultural, moral, and spiritual change we must bring about if we are to save ourselves and the planet we live and have our being on.Many of the reform movements now under way are often subverted or derailed by agents of the corporatocracy in all three branches of our government as well as in our principal media, in our churches and fraternal organizations, and in our educational systems. The corporatocracy and their agents are good at giving the impression of supporting a reform with only some "minor" modifications, going so far at times as to advocate "red herring" reforms to distract us from what is really needed, and to make sure that whatever executive agencies are involved in instituting or managing a good reform shall be understaffed, incompetent, untransparent, and/or underfunded.
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq Democrats or Republicans.It doesn't matter. If you want to know who controls the world then you should read this, along with Stephen Kinzer's "Overthrow".
This book should be required reading for anyone interested in the real history of the US that you dont hear about in high school history courses
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