Great Throughts Treasury

"Always be. Never try to become. You can be anything you want, just don?t work at becoming. Remember to be it."

"All of those people?millions in Ecuador, billions around the planet?are potential terrorists. Not because they believe in communism or anarchism or are intrinsically evil, but simply because they are desperate. Looking at this dam, I wondered?as I have so often in so many places around the world?when these people would take action, like the Americans against England in the 1770s or Latin Americans against Spain in the early 1800s."

"And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals."

"And that's why I wrote the book, because our country really needs to understand, if people in this nation understood what our foreign policy is really about, what foreign aid is about, how our corporations work, where our tax money goes, I know we will demand change."

"As I lecture at business schools and MBA programs, Jack Welch is often held up as this idol. Jack Welch laid off a quarter of GE?s employees. You know, he said he was making the company meaner and leaner--he certainly was making it meaner--gave himself huge raises and bonuses at the same time, turned General Electric essentially from a manufacturing company into a financial services company, which really was one of the leaders in taking us down this course today that we?re on of a failed economic system. And we truly have a failed economic system at this point. It?s deep. You know, one of the reasons I wrote Hoodwinked is because I saw a lot of books coming out that deal with what I consider triage. What do you do with AIG? What do you do with General Electric? What do you do about the immediate problems with Wall Street? But the problem is much, much deeper. There?s a cancer beneath all that. And this is this very basics of our current economic system. And we must delve down and root out that cancer and move into something much better."

"As soon as one of the anti-American presidents is elected, one of us goes in and says, ?Hey, congratulations Mr. President. Now that you are president, I just want to tell you that I can make you very, very rich, you and your family. It?s several million dollars in this pocket, if you play the game our way. If you decide not to, over in this pocket, I?ve got a gun with a bullet with your name on it, in case you decide to keep your campaign promises and throw us out. Sell our oil companies your oil real cheap, or vote with us at the next UN vote, or send troops in support of ours to some place in the world such as Iraq?, and in that way, we have managed to build a world empire with very few people actually knowing that we have done this."

"As James Garrison Chairman of the World Economic Forum notes: If we take the logical sequence of things, the world 's integration into a single unit governed by the conditions of economic globalization and features pseudo - for-free market - but is in fact The situation of colonial-absurd because there is no nation on Earth capable to resist the polarization of forced globalization .Vkulailon are those who survived the structural -aslahat - and have avoided -acharot- imposed by the World Bank and the international Monetary Fund or required by global trade and international financial institutions that organization is still , despite ineffective define the concept of economic globalization and formulate laws, rules and appoint bonuses those who underwent humiliation and punishment for those who raise the stick broth and rebellion this is the power of globalization that are likely to be eyewitnesses to the merging of all national economies into a single economic system based on free market"

"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, to our corporations, and our government, and in fact we?ve been very successful. We?ve built the largest empire in the history of the world. It?s been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It?s only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort. 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 the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that."

"At the time of my first visit in 1968, Texaco had only just discovered petroleum in Ecuador's Amazon region. Today, oil accounts for nearly half the country's exports. A trans-Andean pipeline built shortly after my first visit has since leaked over a half million barrels of oil into the fragile rain forest?more than twice the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez. Today, a new $1.3 billion, three hundred-mile pipeline constructed by an EHM-organized consortium promises to make Ecuador one of the world's top ten suppliers of oil to the United States. Vast areas of rain forest have fallen, macaws and jaguars have all but vanished, three Ecuadorian indigenous cultures have been driven to the verge of collapse, and pristine rivers have been transformed into flaming cesspools."

"Basically, what Economic Hit Men are trained to do is to build up the American empire. To create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government, and in fact we've been very successful."

"Asa yourself these questions as you need to recognize it? How deceived yourself and others? The positions that the surrendered and bowed? Why did you leave yourself Istnzvha system know that it is unfair? What do you do to make sure that your kids and all the kids that they can realize their dream of the founding fathers of such values ??and dream of life, liberty and the attainment of happiness? Which way it will go to stop famines unwarranted and make sure that he would never be repeated daily , as of September atheist? How can you help your children so they understand that people are living a luxurious and non - balanced life must lament to what they do not wish to imitate them in any way , even if these people are misrepresenting themselves through the media they own that they are cultural icons , trying to convince us that luxury homes and yachts bring happiness? What changes will abide by the amendment of the positions taken by and thought to be a concepts? What shapes that Sastkhaddmha to enlighten others and to gain more knowledge?"

"Because of EHM projects, Ecuador is awash in foreign debt and must devote an inordinate share of its national budget to paying this off, instead of using its capital to help the millions of its citizens officially classified as dangerously impoverished. The only way Ecuador can buy down its foreign obligations is by selling its rain forests to the oil companies. Indeed, one of the reasons the EHMs set their sights on Ecuador in the first place was because the sea of oil beneath its Amazon region is believed to rival the oil fields of the Middle East. The global empire demands its pound of flesh in the form of oil concessions."

"But when 9/11 struck, I had a change of heart. I knew the story had to be told because what happened at 9/11 is a direct result of what the economic hit men are doing."

"Can you be innocent in America? It is true that those at the top of the economic pyramid reap huge profits, but millions of us, others depend directly or indirectly from the exploitation of the less developed countries. The resources and cheap labor that used almost all our companies come from places like Indonesia, which receive almost nothing in return. The credits of foreign aid are the guarantee that their children and grandchildren will remain hostages ours. Will have to allow the plundering of their natural resources by our companies and will continue depriving themselves of education, health and other social services, debt just to pay us. In this formula it does not involve the fact that our companies have already received most of the payment for the construction of these power plants, these airports and these industrial complexes. Most Americans are unaware of these realities, is it enough excuse? Uninformed and intentionally misinformed, yes, but ... innocent ?"

"By insisting that the countries adopt policies that will sell their publicly owned utility companies, water and sewage systems, maybe schools, transportation systems, even jails, to the big corporations. Privatize, privatize. Allow us to build military bases on their soil. Many things can be done, but basically, they become servants to what I call the corporatocracy. You have to remember that today we have a global empire, and it's not an American empire. It's not a national empire. It doesn't help the American people very much. It's a corporate empire, and the big corporations rule. They control the politics of the United States, and to a large degree they control a great deal of the policies of countries like China, around the world."

"Contrary to common public opinion, Iraq is not simply about oil. It is also about water and geopolitics. Both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow through Iraq; thus, of all the countries in that part of the world, Iraq controls the most important sources of increasingly critical water resources."

"Congress, simply by requiring businesses to provide some employee benefit, gets businesses to cough up millions of dollars that have the illusion of not being taxes."

"Driving from Quito toward Shell on this sunny day in 2003, I thought back thirty-five years to the first time I arrived in this part of the world. I had read that although Ecuador is only about the size of Nevada, it has more than thirty active volcanoes, over 15 percent of the world's bird species, and thousands of as-yet-unclassified plants, and that it is a land of diverse cultures where nearly as many people speak ancient indigenous languages as speak Spanish. I found it fascinating and certainly exotic; yet, the words that kept coming to mind back then were pure, untouched, and innocent. Much has changed in thirty-five years."

"Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest. If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia we demand our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money?and another country is added to our global empire."

"Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), 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. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but on that has taken on new and more terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know; I was an EHM."

"During this same period, the indigenous cultures began fighting back. For instance, on May 7, 2003, a group of American lawyers representing more than thirty thousand indigenous Ecuadorian people filed a $1 billion lawsuit against ChevronTexaco Corp. The suit asserts that between 1971 and 1992 the oil giant dumped into open holes and rivers over four million gallons per day of toxic wastewater contaminated with oil, heavy metals, and carcinogens, and that the company left behind nearly 350 uncovered waste pits that continue to kill both people and animals."

"Ecuador elected a pretty remarkable president, Rafael Correa, who has a PhD in economics from a United States university. He understands the system, and he understood that Ecuador took on these debts back when I was an economic hit man and the country was ruled by a military junta that was under the control of the CIA and the US. That junta took on these huge debts, put Ecuador in deep debt; the people didn't agree to that. When Rafael Correa was democratically elected, he immediately said, "We're not paying these debts; the people did not take on these debts; maybe the IMF should pay the debts and maybe the junta, which of course was long gone - moved to Miami or someplace - should pay the debts, maybe John Perkins and the other economic hit men should pay the debts, but the people shouldn't." And since then, he's been renegotiating and bringing the debts way down and saying, "We might be willing to pay some of them." That was a very smart move; it reflected similar things that had been done at different times in places like Brazil and Argentina, and more recently, following that model, Iceland, with great success. I have to say that Correa has had some real setbacks since then . . . he, like so many presidents, has to be aware that if you stand up too strongly against the system, if the economic hit men are not happy, if they don't get their way, then the jackals will come in and assassinate you or overthrow you in a coup. There was an attempted coup against him; there was a successful coup in a country not too far away from him, Honduras, because these presidents stood up. We have to realize that these presidents are in very, very vulnerable positions, and ultimately we the people have to stand up, because leaders can only do a certain amount. Today, in many places, leaders are not just vulnerable; it doesn't take a bullet to bring down a leader anymore. A scandal - a sex scandal, a drug scandal - can bring down a leader. We saw that happen to Bill Clinton, to Strauss-Kahn of the IMF; we've seen it happen a number of times. These leaders are very aware that they are in very vulnerable positions: If they stand up or go against the status quo too strongly, they're going to be taken out, one way or another. They're aware of that, and it behooves we the people to really stand up for our own rights."

"Education is not a luxury in modern American society-it is essential for survival."

"Ecuador is typical of countries around the world that EHMs have brought into the economic-political fold. For every $100 of crude taken out of the Ecuadorian rain forests, the oil companies receive $75. Of the remaining $25, three-quarters must go to paying off the foreign debt. Most of the remainder covers military and other government expenses?which leaves about $2.50 for health, education, and programs aimed at helping the poor. Thus, out of every $100 worth of oil torn from the Amazon, less than $3 goes to the people who need the money most, those whose lives have been so adversely impacted by the dams, the drilling, and the pipelines, and who are dying from lack of edible food and potable water."

"For ten years I was the successor to these advances who withdrew slaves of African forests to awaited on the beach ships but I model the latest in this path and the most elusive never seen dead bodies did not smell the meat is rotten I did not hear the cries of pain but all they did was the same evil that because I could I grabbed myself from it and I could cut all the ties which I have had the pain of humanity and the suffering of the bodies and the cries of pain Asammt my ears it may in the final analysis I see myself more criminal and evil"

"Essentially, my job was to identify countries that had resources that our corporations want, and that could be things like oil - or it could be markets - it could be transportation systems. There are so many different things. Once we identified these countries, we arranged huge loans to them, but the money would never actually go to the countries; instead it would go to our own corporations to build infrastructure projects in those countries, things like power plants and highways that benefited a few wealthy people as well as our own corporations, but not the majority of people who couldn't afford to buy into these things, and yet they were left holding a huge debt, very much like what Greece has today, a phenomenal debt. And once [they were] bound by that debt, we would go back, usually in the form of the IMF - and in the case of Greece today, it's the IMF and the EU [European Union] - and make tremendous demands on the country: increase taxes, cut back on spending, sell public sector utilities to private companies, things like power companies and water systems, transportation systems, privatize those, and basically become a slave to us, to the corporations, to the IMF, in your case to the EU, and basically, organizations like the World Bank, the IMF, the EU, are tools of the big corporations, what I call the "corporatocracy.""

"EHMs provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure?electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks. A condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from our own country must build all these projects. In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston, or San Francisco. Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest."

"Godly leadership is not about attaining recognition or glory; it's about serving others."

"From what passed from the events and experience of my work with a Maine company and found myself once again ask the same questions: How many decisions -pma where historic decisions that have affected millions of people - taken by men or women , led them their personal interests and not the desire to Truth? How many high - ranking officials in our government drove them on personal greed rather than guide them loyalty to the homeland? How many wars caught, just because the president wants to improve the bad image before the voters?"

"However?and this is a very large caveat?if we fail, an even more sinister breed steps in, ones we EHMs refer to as the jackals, men who trace their heritage directly to those earlier empires. The jackals are always there, lurking in the shadows. When they emerge, heads of state are overthrown or die in violent "accidents." And if by chance the jackals fail, as they failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, then the old models resurface. When the jackals fail, young Americans are sent in to kill and to die."

"God?s love for humanity is the motivation for redemption."

"Had Roosevelt been caught, we would have been in a lot of trouble. It would have been very embarrassing."

"I come from a culture that claimed to respect human rights, but enjoyed the materialism that is built on the exploitation of workers in other countries. I live in a nation whose population amounts to 5 percent of the world's population, but consume 25 percent of the world's resources. A society that supports ecological principles but accounted for 30 percent of the population of the worst in the world."

"I felt guilty throughout the whole time, but I was seduced. The power of these drugs, sex, power, and money, was extremely strong for me."

"How, I asked myself, do you convince men and women who live comfortably to change a system that provides their comforts - even when they know about EHMs and jackals, when they understand that attached to their comforts are terrible price tags? Where do you find words to empower them to stand up to a force like the corporatocracy? Do you inspire How them to take actions That will bend the corporations to the will of the people?"

"I brought a young MIT mathematician, Dr. Nadipuram Prasad, into my department and gave him a budget. Within six months he developed the Markov method for econometric modeling. [...]"

"I cannot believe that the founding fathers of our country , members of the US Constitutional Convention in 1787- may imagine that the right to life, liberty and happiness found only for Americans, and why we implement now , strategies that promote the values ??of Alampreialh which we fight it"

"I have come to understand that life is composed of a series of coincidences. How we react to these - how we exercise what some refer to as free will - is everything; the choices we make within the boundaries of the twists of fate determine who we are."

"I had begun to understand that although most Americans have no idea that lifestyles are built on exploitation, millions of people in other countries are aware of it."

"I have a two-year-old grandson. And as I look at this baby, you know, I think, what?s this world going to look like in six decades, when he?s my age? If we stay the course, it will be horrible. But we have this opportunity now, and I think this economic turmoil that we?re in today is teaching us that we must change. We have a failed system. We must create something better. And we must realize that my grandson can?t possibly hope to inherit a sustainable, just and peaceful world, unless every child growing up in Ethiopia and in Bolivia and in Indonesia and in Israel and Palestine has that same expectation. For the first time in history, we?re really living on a very, very tiny, highly integrated planet, and we?re all communicating with each other. Everybody is listening to Democracy Now! All around the world. We?re all talking on the cell phone and by internet. We really get it. We?re a very, very small community, and we need to recognize that."

"I want to draw upon Greece's history. You're a proud, strong country, a country of warriors. The mythology of the warrior to some degree comes out of Greece, and so does democracy! And to realize that the marketplace is a democracy today, and how we spend our money is casting our ballot. Most political democracies are corrupt, including that of the United States. Democracy is not really working on a governmental basis because the corporations are in charge. But it is working on a market basis. I would encourage the people of Greece to stand up: Don't pay off those debts; have your own referendums; refuse to pay them off; go to the streets and strike. And so, I would encourage the Greek people to continue to do this. Don't accept this criticism that it's your fault, you're to blame, you've got to suffer austerity, austerity, austerity. That only works for the rich people; it does not work for the average person or the middle class. Build up that middle class; bring employment back; bring disposable income back to the average citizen of Greece. Fight for that; make it happen; stand up for your rights; respect your history as fighters and leaders in democracy, and show the world!"

"I looked around away from Ground Zero at Ground Zero went am looking to the streets of New York , far away from the blast site, which now back to her natural wondered if the people who are walking in the streets thinking of all this , not only in the destruction of the twin towers but also in farms pomegranate which destroyed in the four and twenty thousand who die of starvation every day I wondered if they had thought about these things someday , and if they could have dismissed their thinking away from their jobs and their cars voracious fuel and rewards their work , even for a period sufficient for fend Why would leave that to the world they live and Aortonh for their children .tsaelt what do they know Anafganstan is not Afghanistan , which they see on TV , but Afghanistan - covered barracks US army and tanks Afghanistan old man .tsaelt what he was thinking when the four and twenty thousand of those who are dying every day and then I saw myself again sit in front of your computer dark screen"

"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."

"I have not yet invented a machine that can kill the noble goals"

"I think Iran today Iran is this example of where we went in and overthrew a democratically elected president, Mosaddeq, in the early ?50s, and we?ve seen terrible blowback from that ever since. It?s, you know, not only in Iran, but it impacted the whole Middle East. If we had supported that president, who simply wanted to use more of his oil money, his country?s oil money, to help the poor people--we strongly objected. We overthrew him in a coup and replaced him with the Shah. So we?ve seen the blowback that comes out of that. And this has led to this situation that we?re in today. And the swirling clouds, to me, are the big corporations. So, in the past, you had roughly 200 countries on the planet, which a few had a lot of power--the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States. But today the geopolitics might better be envisioned as the same roughly 200 countries with these huge swirling clouds that are the big corporations. And they are really calling the shots all over the planet. They know no national boundaries. They don?t listen to any specific set of laws. They strike deals with the Chinese and the Taiwanese and the Tibetans and the Israelis and the Arab nations. Whoever has the markets or the resources, they cut deal with--deals with. And as we?ve seen in our most recent election here in the United States, we bring in a president who is very diametrically different from the former president, and yet the corporations are still calling the shots."

"I was initially recruited while I was in business school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency, the nation?s largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately I worked for private corporations. The first real economic hit man was back in the early 1950?s, Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy, who overthrew of government of Iran, a democratically elected government, Mossadegh?s government who was Time?s magazine person of the year; and he was so successful at doing this without any bloodshed ? well, there was a little bloodshed, but no military intervention, just spending millions of dollars and replaced Mossadegh with the Shah of Iran. At that point, we understood that this idea of economic hit man was an extremely good one. We didn?t have to worry about the threat of war with Russia when we did it this way. The problem with that was that Roosevelt was a C.I.A. agent. He was a government employee. Had he been caught, we would have been in a lot of trouble. It would have been very embarrassing. So, at that point, the decision was made to use organizations like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. to recruit potential economic hit men like me and then send us to work for private consulting companies, engineering firms, construction companies, so that if we were caught, there would be no connection with the government."

"I thought about the core tools we EHMs used in my day: false economics that included distorted financial analyses, inflated projections, and rigged accounting books; secrecy, deception, threats, bribes, and extortion; false promises that we never intended to honor; and enslavement through debt and fear. These same tools are used today. Now, as then, many elements are present in each hit, although that likely is evident only to someone willing to delve deeply into the story behind the story. Now, as then, the glue that holds all of this together is the belief that any means are justified to achieve the desired ends. A"

"I wondered about the motivation that prompted the Americans to resist and on the will of British colonialism went beyond the limits I have had many leaders of the revolution on the great richness of what caused them to risk their jobs and their trade biting the hands that feed them? And risk their lives? There is no doubt had them all his own reasons but it must be a collective strength and stood behind them and the amount of energy and motivation and spark fueled individual energies in that unique moment in history, then I realized it those stimuli: it 's words ignited the spark the true story of an empire is listed and its trade selfish and destructive to himself at the end of eventually, lit expose the hidden meaning through men words such as Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson imagination of citizens and open their hearts and their minds and began the population of the British colonies in America in the question of why and when they did so they discovered a new fact cut off the road on the methods of deception and lying have grasped the underlying Exterior truth and understood the way the empire British exploited and deceived and enslaved realized that their masters Englishmen formed a system and then managed to convince most people falsely that this is the best system of humanity can reach it and that a better world is subject to put all the resources at the disposal of the king of England and the approach empire in trade policy is the most effective , a style humanitarian assistance majority sweeping of humans , while the truth is that this system Athery only minority on the majority of the expense of this lie has withstood and the resulting exploitation and lasted for decades until a group of philosophers, businessmen, farmers, fishermen and stationed began on the border, writers and preachers speak the truth ."

"I was with Jaime Roldos in Ecuador. I was the guy--one of the guys who was supposed to corrupt him, bring him around, and Omar Torrijos of Panama and many others. When I failed with those two gentlemen, the Jackals went in and assassinated both of them. And I was there; I was in those front lines. My official title was chief economist of Charles T. Main. I had about three dozen employees working for me and did this for ten years, and finally saw the light. But I think what?s--you know, what?s really important about all this is that in this period of time, since the 1970s, and really beginning very strongly in the 1980s, we?ve created what I consider a mutant, viral form of capitalism. Earlier on the program, you showed the statistics of 37 percent of the people in the survey not believing that capitalism is working. I don?t think the failure is capitalism. I think it?s the specific kind of capitalism that we?ve developed in the last thirty or forty years, particularly beginning with the time of Reagan and Milton Friedman?s economic theories, which stress that the only goal of business is to maximize profit, regardless of the social and environmental costs, and not to regulate businesses at all--regulation is bad, all forms--and to privatize everything, so that everything is run by private business. And this mutant form of capitalism, which I think is really a predatory form of capitalism, has created an extremely unstable, unsustainable, unjust and very, very dangerous world."

"I?ve never met anyone who wanted to be a terrorist. They are desperate people."