This week’s guest Guests:
– Economic Hit Man JOHN PERKINS
— Long-time Military Correspondent JOE GALLOWAY
– Economic Hit Man JOHN PERKINS
Our first guest is John Perkins, interviewed by Monitor co-host Pokey Anderson. Perkins has written two exposes about his experiences in a number of countries, working for American interests. Over the past several decades, he and others like him would go in, using economic levers to strongarm leaders into creating policy favorable to the U.S government and corporations. If economic incentives fail, others he calls “jackals” may be called in, to use more thuggish methods, including destabilization and assassination.
The net result has been enrichment of corrupt leaders, overthrow of less-corrupt ones, increased poverty in their nations, and bending entire nations to the will of US corporate and government interests.
Of his first book, Perkins says he was threatened and bribed not to write it, but after September 11 decided to go ahead and write it anyway. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man created quite a stir, and spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list.
His follow-up book is The Secret History of the American Empire. It zeroes in on hot spots around the world and, drawing on interviews with other hit men, jackals, reporters, politicians, and activists, examines the new geopolitical crisis and what can we do to change things for the next generations.
Perkins’ strong suit is not documentation and footnotes; yet Howard Zinn writes of the new book that it is “a sweeping, bold assault on the tyranny of corporate globalization, full of drama and adventure, with devastating stories of greed run wild.”
BOOKS:
–Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
–The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption
QUOTE:
“We economic hit men, during the last 30 or 40 years, have really created the world’s first truly global empire, and we’ve done this primarily through economics, and the military only coming in as a last resort. Therefore, it’s been done pretty much secretly. Most of the people in the United States have no idea that we’ve created this empire and, in fact, throughout the world it’s been done very quietly, unlike old empires, where the army marched in; it was obvious.” — John Perkins, Democracy Now (February 15th, 2006)
WEB SITE:
http://www.johnperkins.org
<> 6:40 pm CDT – Long-time Military Correspondent JOE GALLOWAY
Our second guest is Joseph Galloway, a military columnist for McClatchy Newspapers and a former senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder. His distinguished journalist career spans four decades, and he has covered wars including Vietnam, Desert Storm, Haiti, and East Timor. He is the recipient of a Bronze Star Medal and the Medal of Valor of the U.S. Army awarded to a civilian for service during Vietnam Galloway is co-author of the best-selling book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young.” General H. Norman Schwarzkopf has called Galloway “the finest combat correspondent of our generation–a soldier’s reporter and a soldier’s friend.”
Monitor co-host Mark Bebawi will ask him about Seymour Hersh’s recent revelations about Major General Antonio Taguba’s investigation of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
PHOTO: Major General Antonio Taguba. From The New Yorker, by Mary Ellen Mark
In addition, they will discuss the government crackdown on US veterans who have been protesting against their government. One example is Adam Kokesh, a Marine who first drew attention when he held up a sign counting how many times Alberto Gonzalez claimed memory lapse during Senate testimony in April.
PHOTO: Marine Corporal Adam Kokesh at Gonzalez’ hearing
ARTICLE:
“Abu Ghraib: The Rest of The Story”
by Joseph L. Galloway
Sunday, June 24, 2007
The Miami Herald, reposted at Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/24/2062/
QUOTE from GALLOWAY ARTICLE:
“As the investigations [of Abu Ghraib] unfolded, it was clear that the primary motivation of most of them was to protect Rumsfeld and the president from any blame or responsibility for what had transpired at Abu Ghraib. Blame, unlike cream, settles as close to the bottom of any bureaucracy as can be arranged.”
ARTICLE:
“The General’s Report:
How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties”
by Seymour M. Hersh
The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/25/070625fa_fact_hersh
QUOTE from HERSH ARTICLE:
“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”
ARTICLE:
“VFW Backs Vet in Trouble Over Protest”
SAM HANANEL
June 2, 2007
AP
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070602/military-protest-hearing/
