by Jansen Estrup

 

Normally I don't review books I can't give a five star rating, but John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man has me twisting between opposing polarities. I believe he is telling the truth about his moral failings (which enabled him to help impoverish much of the third world) and that he has `seen the light' and reformed (to do good for the downtrodden) now that it is too late to help the thousands who die each day of starvation and other preventable causes.

 

Perhaps it is the writing style, which tries to make his story part spy/adventure yarn (favoring Sir Richard Burton - the explorer/linguist, not the actor) and part serious expose, which gives the book a Hollywood feel. Perhaps it is only me, angry at his every encounter with world leader, counter revolutionary, shadowy `money man', former US Secretary of Defense, even Graham Green in a futile attempt to save one of his Central American reformers from CIA assassination.

 

Most dismaying is Perkins' assertion that there are really no conspiracies at the root of all this criminal activity, only amoral ambitions operating in a `criminal capitalist' but legal system set up at the end of World War II. It revolves around the World Bank, which claims to lend money to Third World countries in order to improve their standard of living. Actually, (Perkins was part of this process) the leaders of such nations are bribed, coerced, blackmailed, etc., into accepting huge `loans' which are used to hire American companies to do the work of water, electricity, refuse and military projects. The money never actually goes to the people or economy. After a few years X nation finds itself unable to repay the `debt' its rulers accumulated, so they are at the mercy of oil, mineral and other predators who rape X's natural resources without responsibility for clean up, medical care or even compensation for the population they hold in virtual slavery. Rulers who resist are overthrown in coups or die in all too coincidental (hardly concealed CIA fingerprints) flaming plane crashes. If that does not succeed, then our military is called in ...  Is that how we maintain our vaunted standard of living? Sadly, I believe it is so.

 

Reluctantly, I do give this book five stars, if only to encourage readers to discover what a draft evader can (and did) accomplish for his country/empire while so many of us were `playing dominoes' in Southeast Asia in the Sixties and early Seventies.