saves Africa....
Tafataona P. Mahoso, Sunday Mail (Harare) 8 May 2005
"The top of the list should be John Perkins’ book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man which was summarised in the interview which the US "economic consultant" had with a US radio station called Democracynow which The Sunday Mail reprinted under the title "Economic ‘hitman’ bares all" on May 1 2005.
Essentially, Perkins is saying that as a US economic "consultant" for the last 50 years, his real function was that of an economic saboteur and manipulator on behalf of the US transterritorial empire. Perkins says in the interview:
"Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is to do is to build up the American empire. To bring — to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country (the US), to our corporations, and our government and, in fact, we’ve been very successful . . . This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through economic hitmen."
But the most revealing part of Perkins’ interview is about the ladder of escalation of subversion methods used by this empire. At the lowest level it looks benign and friendly. It uses "civil society" means such as missionaries, NGOs, volunteers and other apparent do-gooders to soften up the society ideologically.
If this level does not accomplish the mission, intervention is raised to level two, where "the private sector" of the US carries out the US government’s mandate with very little mention of the government or government intentions. Some of the private sector people become advisors to client governments. John Perkins himself rose to become the government’s chief economist in some of the countries he helped to subvert and destroy. Zimbabwe also once hired a chief economist, Norman Raynolds, who now travels around the world agitating for Western military intervention in this country.
If level two fails, level three involves using what Perkins calls "CIA jackals". These are spy activists who whip up resentment and division within state and social institutions in order to provoke civil strife, civil war, coups d’etat or insurrection.
If level three fails, the US intervention escalates to level four, which involves the use of hired assassins to eliminate key leaders of the country. That is what happened in Rwanda in 1994 and Congo in 1961. It failed in Cuba, however. The killings of Samora Machel and Chris Hani perhaps need further investigations in terms of the Perkins scenarios.
If assassins’ plots fail, the US resorts to direct military intervention in the style of the US-UK invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
A second recent story appeared on the same Sunday, May 1 2005, in The Sunday Mirror. It was called
"The rise of disaster capitalism". It suggested that the US government, as a world government, has set up the Office of the Co-ordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilisation.
Its purpose is to help the US government to recycle the economies which it succeeds in destroying. This means that after the economic hitmen have succeeded in wrecking an economy, this office will move in to award contracts to US multinational corporations to start a new cycle of exploitation and entrapment called "reconstruction and stabilisation".
The creation of the office means that in the post-1989 era the number of successfully wrecked economies has increased to the extent that a reconstruction plan is now needed long before the country and its economy are destroyed, meaning that even economies which are successful in their own ways but not under US control are seen from the US point of view as economies waiting to be destroyed, reconstructed and recycled for the benefit of the empire.
l The third significant story was about the new president of one of the instruments of global economic manipulation and sabotage, the World Bank. It was called "The Truth about the World Bank" and it appeared in the same Sunday Mirror as story number two above. Here,
George Monbiot was saying that it was a good thing for victims of US corporate totalitarianism that the US had appointed a rightwing extremist, Paul Wolfowitz, to head the World Bank. Why? Because, for those who have eyes, it may become clear that the World Bank is part of the global infrastructure making it possible for economic hitmen of John Perkins’ type to subvert, wreck, rebuild and recycle countries for the benefit of the US and its allies.With this Wolfowitz at the helm, there will be no more illusions about "poverty reduction" as one of the missions of the World Bank. It is mostly a conduit through which the West deploys its economic hitmen.
l The fourth story worth mentioning here is The New African’s cover story: "Can this man (Tony Blair) Save Africa?" in the April 2005 issue of the magazine. With this example we cross the Atlantic Ocean from the US to its staunchest ally, the United Kingdom. Both these countries consistently accused the former Soviet Union of harbouring a "saviour" mentality and seeking to subjugate the world under the guise of saving it from oppression and poverty.
The emergence of unipolarism and neo-liberal capitalism confirms the US and UK as the ones most afflicted with this saviour mentality. North America’s key partner, British Prime Minister
Tony Blair, not only put together a so-called Commission for Africa, he also proceeded to author a Commission for Africa Report reporting to himself and declaring: "I fear my own conscience on Africa. I fear the judgment of future generations, where history properly calculates the gravity of the suffering. I fear them asking: but how could wealthy people, so aware of such suffering, so capable of acting, simply turn away to busy themselves with other things?"
Yet at an earlier time when he visited Africa, Blair reduced the continent to "a scar on the world’s conscience".
What all this means is
an extreme form of political narcissism whereby Blair ’s conscience equals the conscience of the whole world and a committee set up at Number 10 Downing Street, London, automatically becomes a Commission for all of Africa and proceeds to report to itself about Africa and the Africans."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAH505A.htmlIf one reconsiders what the World Bank along with the IMF did in the former Soviet Union: they caused more destruction than Worldwar II and managed to reduce the average living-expectancy rate 5 years (48 years for men) and is aware of the living conditions of most people in Russia, listening to Wolfowitz talking of "economic and political" progress and his plans for Africa gives me even more nightmares. Does he plan to privatize their bodyparts?
Hello from Germany,
Dirk
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