death and progress
======
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society
http://hias.org
======
http://merton.org
======
When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
http://www.neworleansvfp.org/node/3002
======
http://www.agroecology.org/cases/humanmanure.htm
http://jenkinspublishing.com/compost-links.html
======
Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council
http://gplc.org
======
Lethal Legacy of the Soviet Bio-Industrial Complex
by Mark Sanborne 9/1/6
http://ww4report.com/node/2423
======
http://just-healthcare.org
======
Green Party of Allegheny County
http://gpoac.org
======
From
Germs on the loose
Bioweapons tests tainted sites around the globe. Will the mess ever be cleaned up?
by Eileen Choffnes March/April 2001 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=ma01choffnes
...Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC)...pathogens with special properties like enhanced virulence, greater environmental persistence, and antibiotic resistance...
Every major World War II combatant had a biological weapons program...the pathogens they released persist in the test sites' animal, bird, reptile, and insect populations...pathogens once released into the environment will adapt to new hosts and spread diseases to new areas...
...numerous countries have been reported as having - or developing - a biological weapons capability....Russia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, China, Israel, Egypt, Cuba, Taiwan, Romania, Bulgaria, Pakistan, India, and South Africa....
The British biological warfare project began in February 1934. The British, ironically, became curious about the utility of germ weapons as a result of an international treaty, the Geneva Protocol of 1925, aimed at banning their use....With the assistance of the United States and Canada, Britain focused its offensive research on anti-livestock microbes that could be aerosolized and disseminated from bursting munitions or sprays....
The U.S. Biological Defense Research Program had its origins in World War II. Begun in 1942...primary mission was research on anthrax and botulism. The U.S. policy for use of biological weapons during and shortly after World War II was retaliatory only. From the end of World War II until the U.S. renunciation of offensive biological weapons in 1969, the army developed both offensive and defensive biological weapons capabilities.
...Many of the aerosol dispersal tests during the Cold War introduced non-indigenous diseases (or increased the geographic range of indigenous diseases) to Utah and surrounding states, including encephalomyelitis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, psittacosis, Q fever, anthrax, brucellosis, plague, tularemia, and hydatid disease, all of which are now considered endemic among the native wildlife.
...At least two dozen other sites nominally administered by the Dugway Proving Grounds -including unrestricted public lands - were used from the late 1940s through the 1960s to test virtually everything in the army's BW arsenal, from wheat stem rust and rice blast to anthrax and plague. The army deliberately infected and released a variety of animals and insects to determine the rate and extent of disease dispersal through native animal populations. The army's live-agent testing program, designed to include trials at sea, in the tropics, and in the arctic, reached far beyond the borders of the continental United States to include sites in Alaska, Central America, the Far East, the Caribbean, and over the Pacific Ocean. Aimed at determining animal, plant, and human reactions to exposure to putative BW agents, the army allegedly conducted clandestine tests in South Korea, Liberia, Egypt, and Okinawa...
The United States spends billions on "homeland defense" programs to mitigate or minimize the human health consequences associated with potential biological attacks, but it appears to place very low priority on international or domestic proliferation prevention strategies, including strengthening the BWC. The Federation of American Scientists has observed that "instead of exercising creative leadership, the United States has become the single greatest block to reaching agreement on a protocol for verifying compliance with the international prohibitions on BW."...
...the world could face new horrors that would jeopardize not only U.S. national security interests, but those of the planet itself.
======
http://www.bushcommission.org/Findings/preliminaryfindings.pdf
...The testimony of scientists and the scientific reports and other documents submitted
during the inquiry support a conclusion that the Bush Administration has committed crimes
against humanity by its environmental policies and practices. These policies and practices
appear to support corporate interests while denying the overwhelming evidence that greenhouse
gas emissions are irreversibly damaging the world environment and causing present day injury to
people throughout the world...
======
http://makethemaccountable.com/misc/BushQuestions.htm
======
http://campdemocracy.org
======
Pennsylvania Stimulates Alternative Fuel Production
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2006/2006-08-21-09.asp#anchor4
......Pennsylvania Stimulates Alternative Fuel Production...
8/21/6 - Pennsylvania's first ethanol plant will be built in Clearfield County...BioEnergy International, LLC, of Norwell, Massachusetts will build and operate the plant, making ethanol from corn...cellulosic ethanol could dramatically reduce fossil fuel use by up to 90 percent and yield large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions...ethanol and biodiesel...Pennsylvania is particularly interested in the production of biodiesel and ethanol for use as a transportation fuel....“Priority will be given to projects that create jobs and boost the state’s economy by bringing new or expanded fuel production facilities to the Commonwealth,”...build re-fueling and production infrastructure to support wide distribution of the alternative fuels...school districts, transit authorities, local government agencies and nonprofit organizations are eligible for grants...
======
http://waterintegritynetwork.net
http://www.savinggodsgreenearth.com/resources.html
http://thomhartmann.com
======
Environment News Service
http://ens-newswire.com
======
Actor Charlie Sheen Questions Official 9/11 Story
Alex Jones & Paul Joseph Watson/Prison 3/20/6
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/200306charliesheen.htm
http://reopen911.org
http://martiallaw911.info/insidejob1.htm
======
http://voxpopnet.net/voxpopmedia.html
http://forensic-intelligence.org
======
From:
World Business Council for Sustainable Development
http://wbcsd.org
======
From World Business Council for Sustainable Development:
Survey predicts private sector to play important role in solving climate change
http://wbcsd.org/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?type=DocDet&ObjectId=MjAyMjU
...A majority of experts doubt that the current progress on climate change will be fast enough to avert major, irreversible damage, and one-third believe it is already too late...
======
http://judicialwatch.org
======
New Orleans Benefit Concert
Proceeds Benefit: New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic & Apothecary
...serve not only the local community, but will provide critical services to women and their children for the entire region....Working People Helping Working People!
Mike Stout and the HUMAN UNION
http://mikestoutmusic.com
With performances by:
Comedian Gab Bonesso
Autumn Ayers and the Battle Hymns
and special guest appearance by
The Raging Grannies
Saturday, September 9, 2006
Show Starts at 7 P.M. Tickets: $10
Rex Theatre
1602 E. Carson Street • Southside Pittsburgh
======
New Orleans Women’s Health & Justice Initiative
...numerous crises as a result of the federal government’s failure to provide funding and assistance to individuals, local government, local NGO’s and other local resources; instead, 70 to 90 percent of the federal funds appropriated by Congress for hurricane-related rebuilding has gone to a half-dozen large corporations, including Bechtel, Halliburton, CH2M, Fluor Corporation and Ashbritt. As a result, the people of New Orleans have seen little change from the day the flood waters receded, still have nowhere to live, no jobs, no schools, next to no utilities & public services, and almost no health care services. The health care situation is particularly dire; most of the hospitals and clinics remain closed and most health care personnel have not returned. The Charity Hospital system remains shut down
as its administrator, LSU, tries to privatize the system. The untreated stress of the storm, loss of family, neighborhoods and lives, and the unrelenting disaster of its aftermath is taking its toll on the people of New Orleans in the form of increasing rates of suicide, violence, and stress-related health problems, without little or no services to alleviate what is being seen as an epidemic of post-traumatic stress-related health problems. Women face additional problems with the lack of pre- and post-natal care, the absence of rape counseling services and
soaring levels of domestic violence, with little or no services/shelters or legal/protective services left to help women and children under physical assault..
Women’s Health & Justice Initiative
is to promote a holistic community-centers and well-women approach...
..huge gaps have been left in care provision for low-income and working class community members...health care for women that promotes a holistic approach to health...
http://www.incite-national.org/issues/healthresources.html
======
http://www.mtnmath.com/whatrh/node118.html
...third world countries are forced to open their markets to manufactured goods largely destroying indigenous industries while simultaneously their agricultural products are forced to be noncompetitive because of the huge agricultural subsidies in first world countries....
======
http://whatwillbe.com
http://dayfordarfur.org
http://gardenweb.com
http://interfaithalliance.org
http://nukestrat.com/links.htm
http://kresge.org
http://wallacefoundation.org
http://kentlaw.edu/ilhs
======
Louisiana Environmental Action Network
http://leanweb.org
======
From:
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
By John Perkins
http://clearerchannel.org/media/page.php?id=438&prefix=video
Preface
...highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars... funnel money from the World Bank, U.S. Agency for International Development, 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...tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder...a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization...Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama...died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We EHMs [economic hit men] failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.
I was persuaded to stop writing that book. I started it four more times during the next twenty years. On each occasion, my decision to begin again was influenced by current world events: the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1980, the first Gulf War, Somalia, and the rise of Osama bin Laden. However, threats or bribes always convinced me to stop.
In 2003, the president of a major publishing house that is owned by a powerful international corporation read a draft of what had now become Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. He described it as “a riveting story that needs to be told.” Then he smiled sadly, shook his head, and told me that since the executives at world headquarters might object, he could not afford to risk publishing it. He advised me to fictionalize it. “We could market you in the mold of a novelist like John Le Carre or Graham Greene.”
But this is not fiction. It is the true story of my life. Amore courageous publisher, one not owned by an international corporation, has agreed to help me tell it.
This story must be told. We live in a time of terrible crisis-and tremendous opportunity. The story of this particular economic hit man is the story of how we got to where we are and why we currently face crises that seem insurmountable. This story must be told because only through understanding our past mistakes will we be able to take advantage of future opportunities, because 9/11 happened and so did the second war in Iraq, because in addition to the three thousand people who died on September 11 at the hands of terrorists, another twenty-four thousand died from hunger and hunger-related causes. In fact, twenty-four thousand people die every single day because they are unable to obtain life-sustaining food. Most importantly, this story must be told because today, for the first time in history, one nation has the ability, the money, and the power to change all this. It is the nation where I was born and the one I served as an EHM: the United States of America.
What finally convinced me to ignore the threats and bribes?
The short answer is that my only child, Jessica, graduated from college and went out into the world on her own. When I recently told her that I was considering publishing this book and shared my fears with her, she said, “Don't worry, dad. If they get you, I'll take over where you left off. We need to do this for the grandchildren I hope to give you someday!”
The longer version relates to my dedication to the country where I was raised, my love for the ideals expressed by our founding fathers, my deep commitment to the American republic that today promises “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all people, everywhere, and to my determination after 9/11 not to sit idly by any longer while EHMs turn that republic into a global empire. That is the skeleton version of the long answer; the flesh and blood are added during the chapters that follow.
This is a true story. I lived every minute of it. The sights, the people, the conversations, and the feelings I describe were all a part of my life. It is my personal story and yet it happened within the larger context of world events that have shaped our history, brought us to where we are today, and form the foundation for our children’s futures. I have made every effort to present these experiences, people, and conversations accurately. Whenever I discuss historical events or re-create conversations with other people, I do so with the help of several tools, including published documents; personal records and notes; recollections-my own and those of others who participated; the five manuscripts I began previously; and historical accounts by other authors, most notably recently published ones that disclose information that formerly was classified or otherwise unavailable. Footnotes and references are provided to allow interested readers to pursue these subjects in more depth.
My publisher asked whether we actually referred to ourselves as economic hit men. I assured him that we did, although usually only by the initials. In fact, on the day in 1971 when I began working with my teacher Claudine, she informed me, “My assignment is to mold you into an economic hit man. No one can know about your involvement-not even your wife.” Then she turned serious. “Once you're in, you're in for life.” After that she seldom used the full name, we were simply EHMs.
Claudine's role is a fascinating example of the manipulation that underlies the business I had entered. Beautiful and intelligent, she was highly effective; she understood my weaknesses and used them to her greatest advantage. Her job was typical of the cogs that keep the system on track. Claudine pulled no punches when describing what I would be called upon to do. My job, she said, was “to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire-to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs. In turn, they bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people. The owners of U.S. engineering and construction companies become fabulously wealthy.”
Today we see the results of this system run amok. Executives at our most respected companies hire people at near-slave wages to toil under inhuman conditions in Asian sweatshops. Oil companies wantonly pump toxins down rain forest rivers, consciously killing people, animals, and plants and committing genocide among ancient cultures. The pharmaceutical industry denies life-saving medicines to millions of HIV-infected Africans. Twelve million families in our own United States worry about their next meal. The energy industry creates an Enron. The accounting industry creates an Andersen. The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world’s population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest went from 30:1 in 1960 to 74:1 in 1995. The United States spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitation services, and basic education to every person on the planet.
And we wonder why terrorists attack us?
Some would blame our current problems on an organized conspiracy. I wish it were so simple. Members of a conspiracy can be rooted out and brought to justice. This system, however, is fueled by something far more dangerous than conspiracy. It is driven not by a small band of men but by a concept that has become accepted as gospel: the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. This belief also has a corollary: that those 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.
The concept is, of course, erroneous. We know that in many countries economic growth benefits only a small portion of the population and may in fact result in increasingly desperate circumstances for the majority. This effect is reinforced by the corollary belief that the captains of industry who drive this system should enjoy a special status, a belief that is the root of many of our current problems and perhaps is also the reason that conspiracy theories abound. When men and woman are rewarded for greed, greed becomes a corrupting motivator. When we equate the gluttonous consumption of the earth's resources with a status approaching sainthood, when we teach our children to emulate people who live unbalanced lives, and when we define huge sections of the population as subservient to an elite minority, we ask for trouble. And we get it.
In their drive to advance the global empire, corporations, banks, and governments (collectively the corporatocracy) use their financial and political muscle to ensure that our schools, businesses, and the media support both the fallacious concept and its corollary. They have brought us to a point where our global culture is a monstrous machine that requires exponentially increasing amounts of fuel and maintenance, so much so that in the end it will have consumed everything in sight and will be left with no choice but to devour itself.
The corporatocracy is not a conspiracy, but its members do endorse common values and goals. One of corporatocracy's most important functions is to perpetuate and continually expand and strengthen the system. The lives of those who “make it,” and their accouterments-their mansions, yachts, and private jets-are presented as models to inspire us all to consume, consume, consume. Every opportunity is taken to convince us that purchasing things is our civic duty, that pillaging the earth is good for the economy and therefore serves our higher interests. People like me are paid outrageously high salaries to do the system's bidding. If we falter, a more malicious form of hit man, the jackal, steps to the plate. And if the jackal fails, then the job falls to the military.
This book is the confession of a man who, back when he was an EHM, was part of a relatively small group. People who play similar roles are more abundant now. They have more euphemistic titles, and they walk the corridors of Monsanto, General Electric, Nike, General Motors, Wal-Mart, and nearly every other major corporation in the world. In a very real sense, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is their story, as well as mine.
It is your story too, the story of your world and mine, of the first truly global empire. History tells us that unless we modify this story, it is guaranteed to end tragically. Empires never last. Every one of them has failed terribly. They destroy many cultures as they race toward greater domination, and then they themselves fall. No country or combination of them can thrive in the long term by exploiting others....
======
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society
http://hias.org
======
http://merton.org
======
When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
http://www.neworleansvfp.org/node/3002
======
http://www.agroecology.org/cases/humanmanure.htm
http://jenkinspublishing.com/compost-links.html
======
Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council
http://gplc.org
======
Lethal Legacy of the Soviet Bio-Industrial Complex
by Mark Sanborne 9/1/6
http://ww4report.com/node/2423
======
http://just-healthcare.org
======
Green Party of Allegheny County
http://gpoac.org
======
From
Germs on the loose
Bioweapons tests tainted sites around the globe. Will the mess ever be cleaned up?
by Eileen Choffnes March/April 2001 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=ma01choffnes
...Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC)...pathogens with special properties like enhanced virulence, greater environmental persistence, and antibiotic resistance...
Every major World War II combatant had a biological weapons program...the pathogens they released persist in the test sites' animal, bird, reptile, and insect populations...pathogens once released into the environment will adapt to new hosts and spread diseases to new areas...
...numerous countries have been reported as having - or developing - a biological weapons capability....Russia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, China, Israel, Egypt, Cuba, Taiwan, Romania, Bulgaria, Pakistan, India, and South Africa....
The British biological warfare project began in February 1934. The British, ironically, became curious about the utility of germ weapons as a result of an international treaty, the Geneva Protocol of 1925, aimed at banning their use....With the assistance of the United States and Canada, Britain focused its offensive research on anti-livestock microbes that could be aerosolized and disseminated from bursting munitions or sprays....
The U.S. Biological Defense Research Program had its origins in World War II. Begun in 1942...primary mission was research on anthrax and botulism. The U.S. policy for use of biological weapons during and shortly after World War II was retaliatory only. From the end of World War II until the U.S. renunciation of offensive biological weapons in 1969, the army developed both offensive and defensive biological weapons capabilities.
...Many of the aerosol dispersal tests during the Cold War introduced non-indigenous diseases (or increased the geographic range of indigenous diseases) to Utah and surrounding states, including encephalomyelitis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, psittacosis, Q fever, anthrax, brucellosis, plague, tularemia, and hydatid disease, all of which are now considered endemic among the native wildlife.
...At least two dozen other sites nominally administered by the Dugway Proving Grounds -including unrestricted public lands - were used from the late 1940s through the 1960s to test virtually everything in the army's BW arsenal, from wheat stem rust and rice blast to anthrax and plague. The army deliberately infected and released a variety of animals and insects to determine the rate and extent of disease dispersal through native animal populations. The army's live-agent testing program, designed to include trials at sea, in the tropics, and in the arctic, reached far beyond the borders of the continental United States to include sites in Alaska, Central America, the Far East, the Caribbean, and over the Pacific Ocean. Aimed at determining animal, plant, and human reactions to exposure to putative BW agents, the army allegedly conducted clandestine tests in South Korea, Liberia, Egypt, and Okinawa...
The United States spends billions on "homeland defense" programs to mitigate or minimize the human health consequences associated with potential biological attacks, but it appears to place very low priority on international or domestic proliferation prevention strategies, including strengthening the BWC. The Federation of American Scientists has observed that "instead of exercising creative leadership, the United States has become the single greatest block to reaching agreement on a protocol for verifying compliance with the international prohibitions on BW."...
...the world could face new horrors that would jeopardize not only U.S. national security interests, but those of the planet itself.
======
http://www.bushcommission.org/Findings/preliminaryfindings.pdf
...The testimony of scientists and the scientific reports and other documents submitted
during the inquiry support a conclusion that the Bush Administration has committed crimes
against humanity by its environmental policies and practices. These policies and practices
appear to support corporate interests while denying the overwhelming evidence that greenhouse
gas emissions are irreversibly damaging the world environment and causing present day injury to
people throughout the world...
======
http://makethemaccountable.com/misc/BushQuestions.htm
======
http://campdemocracy.org
======
Pennsylvania Stimulates Alternative Fuel Production
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2006/2006-08-21-09.asp#anchor4
......Pennsylvania Stimulates Alternative Fuel Production...
8/21/6 - Pennsylvania's first ethanol plant will be built in Clearfield County...BioEnergy International, LLC, of Norwell, Massachusetts will build and operate the plant, making ethanol from corn...cellulosic ethanol could dramatically reduce fossil fuel use by up to 90 percent and yield large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions...ethanol and biodiesel...Pennsylvania is particularly interested in the production of biodiesel and ethanol for use as a transportation fuel....“Priority will be given to projects that create jobs and boost the state’s economy by bringing new or expanded fuel production facilities to the Commonwealth,”...build re-fueling and production infrastructure to support wide distribution of the alternative fuels...school districts, transit authorities, local government agencies and nonprofit organizations are eligible for grants...
======
http://waterintegritynetwork.net
http://www.savinggodsgreenearth.com/resources.html
http://thomhartmann.com
======
Environment News Service
http://ens-newswire.com
======
Actor Charlie Sheen Questions Official 9/11 Story
Alex Jones & Paul Joseph Watson/Prison 3/20/6
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/200306charliesheen.htm
http://reopen911.org
http://martiallaw911.info/insidejob1.htm
======
http://voxpopnet.net/voxpopmedia.html
http://forensic-intelligence.org
======
From:
World Business Council for Sustainable Development
http://wbcsd.org
======
From World Business Council for Sustainable Development:
Survey predicts private sector to play important role in solving climate change
http://wbcsd.org/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?type=DocDet&ObjectId=MjAyMjU
...A majority of experts doubt that the current progress on climate change will be fast enough to avert major, irreversible damage, and one-third believe it is already too late...
======
http://judicialwatch.org
======
New Orleans Benefit Concert
Proceeds Benefit: New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic & Apothecary
...serve not only the local community, but will provide critical services to women and their children for the entire region....Working People Helping Working People!
Mike Stout and the HUMAN UNION
http://mikestoutmusic.com
With performances by:
Comedian Gab Bonesso
Autumn Ayers and the Battle Hymns
and special guest appearance by
The Raging Grannies
Saturday, September 9, 2006
Show Starts at 7 P.M. Tickets: $10
Rex Theatre
1602 E. Carson Street • Southside Pittsburgh
======
New Orleans Women’s Health & Justice Initiative
...numerous crises as a result of the federal government’s failure to provide funding and assistance to individuals, local government, local NGO’s and other local resources; instead, 70 to 90 percent of the federal funds appropriated by Congress for hurricane-related rebuilding has gone to a half-dozen large corporations, including Bechtel, Halliburton, CH2M, Fluor Corporation and Ashbritt. As a result, the people of New Orleans have seen little change from the day the flood waters receded, still have nowhere to live, no jobs, no schools, next to no utilities & public services, and almost no health care services. The health care situation is particularly dire; most of the hospitals and clinics remain closed and most health care personnel have not returned. The Charity Hospital system remains shut down
as its administrator, LSU, tries to privatize the system. The untreated stress of the storm, loss of family, neighborhoods and lives, and the unrelenting disaster of its aftermath is taking its toll on the people of New Orleans in the form of increasing rates of suicide, violence, and stress-related health problems, without little or no services to alleviate what is being seen as an epidemic of post-traumatic stress-related health problems. Women face additional problems with the lack of pre- and post-natal care, the absence of rape counseling services and
soaring levels of domestic violence, with little or no services/shelters or legal/protective services left to help women and children under physical assault..
Women’s Health & Justice Initiative
is to promote a holistic community-centers and well-women approach...
..huge gaps have been left in care provision for low-income and working class community members...health care for women that promotes a holistic approach to health...
http://www.incite-national.org/issues/healthresources.html
======
http://www.mtnmath.com/whatrh/node118.html
...third world countries are forced to open their markets to manufactured goods largely destroying indigenous industries while simultaneously their agricultural products are forced to be noncompetitive because of the huge agricultural subsidies in first world countries....
======
http://whatwillbe.com
http://dayfordarfur.org
http://gardenweb.com
http://interfaithalliance.org
http://nukestrat.com/links.htm
http://kresge.org
http://wallacefoundation.org
http://kentlaw.edu/ilhs
======
Louisiana Environmental Action Network
http://leanweb.org
======
From:
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
By John Perkins
http://clearerchannel.org/media/page.php?id=438&prefix=video
Preface
...highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars... funnel money from the World Bank, U.S. Agency for International Development, 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...tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder...a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization...Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama...died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We EHMs [economic hit men] failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.
I was persuaded to stop writing that book. I started it four more times during the next twenty years. On each occasion, my decision to begin again was influenced by current world events: the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1980, the first Gulf War, Somalia, and the rise of Osama bin Laden. However, threats or bribes always convinced me to stop.
In 2003, the president of a major publishing house that is owned by a powerful international corporation read a draft of what had now become Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. He described it as “a riveting story that needs to be told.” Then he smiled sadly, shook his head, and told me that since the executives at world headquarters might object, he could not afford to risk publishing it. He advised me to fictionalize it. “We could market you in the mold of a novelist like John Le Carre or Graham Greene.”
But this is not fiction. It is the true story of my life. Amore courageous publisher, one not owned by an international corporation, has agreed to help me tell it.
This story must be told. We live in a time of terrible crisis-and tremendous opportunity. The story of this particular economic hit man is the story of how we got to where we are and why we currently face crises that seem insurmountable. This story must be told because only through understanding our past mistakes will we be able to take advantage of future opportunities, because 9/11 happened and so did the second war in Iraq, because in addition to the three thousand people who died on September 11 at the hands of terrorists, another twenty-four thousand died from hunger and hunger-related causes. In fact, twenty-four thousand people die every single day because they are unable to obtain life-sustaining food. Most importantly, this story must be told because today, for the first time in history, one nation has the ability, the money, and the power to change all this. It is the nation where I was born and the one I served as an EHM: the United States of America.
What finally convinced me to ignore the threats and bribes?
The short answer is that my only child, Jessica, graduated from college and went out into the world on her own. When I recently told her that I was considering publishing this book and shared my fears with her, she said, “Don't worry, dad. If they get you, I'll take over where you left off. We need to do this for the grandchildren I hope to give you someday!”
The longer version relates to my dedication to the country where I was raised, my love for the ideals expressed by our founding fathers, my deep commitment to the American republic that today promises “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all people, everywhere, and to my determination after 9/11 not to sit idly by any longer while EHMs turn that republic into a global empire. That is the skeleton version of the long answer; the flesh and blood are added during the chapters that follow.
This is a true story. I lived every minute of it. The sights, the people, the conversations, and the feelings I describe were all a part of my life. It is my personal story and yet it happened within the larger context of world events that have shaped our history, brought us to where we are today, and form the foundation for our children’s futures. I have made every effort to present these experiences, people, and conversations accurately. Whenever I discuss historical events or re-create conversations with other people, I do so with the help of several tools, including published documents; personal records and notes; recollections-my own and those of others who participated; the five manuscripts I began previously; and historical accounts by other authors, most notably recently published ones that disclose information that formerly was classified or otherwise unavailable. Footnotes and references are provided to allow interested readers to pursue these subjects in more depth.
My publisher asked whether we actually referred to ourselves as economic hit men. I assured him that we did, although usually only by the initials. In fact, on the day in 1971 when I began working with my teacher Claudine, she informed me, “My assignment is to mold you into an economic hit man. No one can know about your involvement-not even your wife.” Then she turned serious. “Once you're in, you're in for life.” After that she seldom used the full name, we were simply EHMs.
Claudine's role is a fascinating example of the manipulation that underlies the business I had entered. Beautiful and intelligent, she was highly effective; she understood my weaknesses and used them to her greatest advantage. Her job was typical of the cogs that keep the system on track. Claudine pulled no punches when describing what I would be called upon to do. My job, she said, was “to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire-to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs. In turn, they bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people. The owners of U.S. engineering and construction companies become fabulously wealthy.”
Today we see the results of this system run amok. Executives at our most respected companies hire people at near-slave wages to toil under inhuman conditions in Asian sweatshops. Oil companies wantonly pump toxins down rain forest rivers, consciously killing people, animals, and plants and committing genocide among ancient cultures. The pharmaceutical industry denies life-saving medicines to millions of HIV-infected Africans. Twelve million families in our own United States worry about their next meal. The energy industry creates an Enron. The accounting industry creates an Andersen. The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world’s population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest went from 30:1 in 1960 to 74:1 in 1995. The United States spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitation services, and basic education to every person on the planet.
And we wonder why terrorists attack us?
Some would blame our current problems on an organized conspiracy. I wish it were so simple. Members of a conspiracy can be rooted out and brought to justice. This system, however, is fueled by something far more dangerous than conspiracy. It is driven not by a small band of men but by a concept that has become accepted as gospel: the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. This belief also has a corollary: that those 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.
The concept is, of course, erroneous. We know that in many countries economic growth benefits only a small portion of the population and may in fact result in increasingly desperate circumstances for the majority. This effect is reinforced by the corollary belief that the captains of industry who drive this system should enjoy a special status, a belief that is the root of many of our current problems and perhaps is also the reason that conspiracy theories abound. When men and woman are rewarded for greed, greed becomes a corrupting motivator. When we equate the gluttonous consumption of the earth's resources with a status approaching sainthood, when we teach our children to emulate people who live unbalanced lives, and when we define huge sections of the population as subservient to an elite minority, we ask for trouble. And we get it.
In their drive to advance the global empire, corporations, banks, and governments (collectively the corporatocracy) use their financial and political muscle to ensure that our schools, businesses, and the media support both the fallacious concept and its corollary. They have brought us to a point where our global culture is a monstrous machine that requires exponentially increasing amounts of fuel and maintenance, so much so that in the end it will have consumed everything in sight and will be left with no choice but to devour itself.
The corporatocracy is not a conspiracy, but its members do endorse common values and goals. One of corporatocracy's most important functions is to perpetuate and continually expand and strengthen the system. The lives of those who “make it,” and their accouterments-their mansions, yachts, and private jets-are presented as models to inspire us all to consume, consume, consume. Every opportunity is taken to convince us that purchasing things is our civic duty, that pillaging the earth is good for the economy and therefore serves our higher interests. People like me are paid outrageously high salaries to do the system's bidding. If we falter, a more malicious form of hit man, the jackal, steps to the plate. And if the jackal fails, then the job falls to the military.
This book is the confession of a man who, back when he was an EHM, was part of a relatively small group. People who play similar roles are more abundant now. They have more euphemistic titles, and they walk the corridors of Monsanto, General Electric, Nike, General Motors, Wal-Mart, and nearly every other major corporation in the world. In a very real sense, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is their story, as well as mine.
It is your story too, the story of your world and mine, of the first truly global empire. History tells us that unless we modify this story, it is guaranteed to end tragically. Empires never last. Every one of them has failed terribly. They destroy many cultures as they race toward greater domination, and then they themselves fall. No country or combination of them can thrive in the long term by exploiting others....
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posted by St. Jim the Composter at 10:31 AM
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