Director Stephen Gaghan’s film “Syriana” based on former CIA agent Robert Baer’s book “See No Evil” and John Perkins’ New York Times bestselling book “Confessions of an Economic Him Man” show the danger of the U.S. reliance on Middle Eastern oil. They also answer the questions, “Why is Anti-Americanism growing around the world?” and “How did America become a Superpower with minimal military action?”
Perkins says the group of Middle Eastern countries that formed OPEC, the cartel of oil producing nations in the 60s collaborated to hold down petroleum prices to increase their profits in 1973 resulting in an oil embargo. After the embargo Washington offered the House of Saud, the rulers of Saudi Arabia, technical and military support to keep them in charge if they would assure the U.S. there would not be another oil embargo. The United States-Saudi Arabia Joint Economic Commission JEOR was established. Another condition was that Saudi Arabia use its petrodollars to purchase U.S. government securities and use the interest earned to pay U.S. companies to build modern cities and infrastructure projects.
Perkins believes one of the reasons the U.S. invaded oil rich Iraq is to eliminate the need for the U.S. pact with The House of Saud. Washington is also concerned that Saudi Arabia is the primary source of funds and training to the jihad movement and to terrorists such as Osama bin Laden. Perkins says had Saddam Hussein cooperated with the Bush Administrations and set up a system like Saudi Arabia he would still be in power.
Perkins’ 40-year job as an economist for Chas. T. Main, an international consulting firm, was to convince strategic countries to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development, to ensure that U.S. corporations got the projects and that the countries went bankrupt.
Upon default of the loans The United States Government, World Bank, International Monetary Fund IMF, and other U.S. dominated aid agencies have access to the countries’ resources (especially oil), strategic land and the installation of military bases.
Perkins calls the big banks, corporations and government a “corporatocracy.” Countries such as Ecuador, Indonesia, Guatemala, Chile, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Panama are beholden to the U.S. global empire thanks to highly paid international economists (“Economic Hit Man”) who work for international corporations to hide the U.S. governments’ involvement.
In Barbara Kingsolver, a biology graduate’s book “Small Wonder,” she says U.S. corporations, banks and the World Trade Organization are overtaking the autonomy and economy of small countries. In the last 30 years the U.S. has helped finance air assaults in Afghanistan, Chile, El Salvador, Grenada, Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Panama, the Sudan, Vietnam and Yugoslavia. The World Trade Organizations are placing pressure on farmers of other countries to buy genetically altered seeds that kill their own embryos so the farmer will always have to buy seed from the company.
Kingsolver based her novel “The Poisonwood Bible” on the U.S., CIA and Western Europe’s involvement in Patrice Lumumba’s death in the Congo. The U.S. supported Joseph Mobutu’s dictatorship and abuse of funds while his people were dying of starvation and disease. She says the Export-Import Bank loaned the Congo more than a billion dollars for a bogus power line so they can be assured a permanent debt and be repaid in cobalt and diamonds.
Harold Pinter the British 2005 winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, in his acceptance speech, criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq and President Ronald Reagan’s overthrow of Nicaragua’s socialist Sandinista government by supporting the Contras. As Perkins says U.S. foreign policy refuses to accept governments that allocate land to the poor, institute universal health care, free public education, and eliminate the death penalty.
Kingsover says we live in the only rich country in the world that still tolerates poverty in our own country. In Japan, some European countries and Canada the state assumes the duty of providing all its citizens with good education, good health and shelter. These nations believe that homelessness simply isn’t an option. The citizens pay higher taxes than the U.S. and so they have smaller homes, smaller cars, and appetites for consumer goods. They realize true peace is not the absence of tension but the presence of justice.
For more about Perkins' book go to:
The Price of Oil
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?id=20263
