SPREADING THE WORD: Creating a sustainable, stable, and peaceful world

Dear friends,

I am just returning from an extensive road trip. It has been rewarding to see the ever-increasing interest and passion to create a better world everywhere I go. The Omega NYC Conference I wrote about previously sold out with 2,000 attending and at the Chicago Green Fest 40,000!!

My new book, The Secret History of the American Empire, will be in stores June 5, 2007. One of the world's great historians, Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States described the work in these words: "A sweeping, bold assault on the tyranny of corporate globalization, full of drama and adventure, with devastating stories of greed run wild. But Perkins is undaunted, and offers imaginative ideas for a different world."  I hope you read it, discover its meaning in your own life and spread the word.

I wrote Secret History as a follow-up to Confessions because of things I heard during the last 2 ½ years, as I traveled around the U.S. and Latin America, speaking in public, meeting with presidents, former presidents, and other government officials, and talking with an array of people in places like Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador. Secret History zeroes in on hot spots around the world, and drawing on interviews with Hit Men, Jackals, reporters, government officials, and activists, examines the current geopolitical crisis. It's clear that the world we've created is dangerous and no longer sustainable.  How did we get here?  Who's responsible?  What good have we done and at what cost? And what can we do to change things for the next generations? The answers to these questions - especially the last one - are the soul of Secret History.

HOW YOU CAN HELP SPREAD THE WORD TO OTHERS
Many people ask me how they can help. One immediate way is to pre-order the book, read it and share it. It was the people around the world --- not mainstream media ---- that helped Confessions of an Economic Hit Man earn 59 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. This recognition opened many doors to share its message, waking up people on a global scale. It also resulted in the book being published in 27 languages and also engaged and ignited a powerful movement toward creating a better world. For this I am most grateful.

You can help build the momentum for change by ordering The Secret History of the American Empire online today. It is a way to join others in demonstrating your support for the message of change. The goal is to surpass what we did with Confessions, making this important message one no one can ignore. The more copies you order – for friends and family – the more energy for a better world!

Ordering at Amazon.com through Global Dialogue Center or at www.dreamchange.com will ensure a percentage of the proceeds will be donated to programs devoted to inspiring change.

Together let’s create a sustainable, stable, and peaceful world for future generations everywhere. I look forward to seeing and talking with many of you in the months ahead as I begin touring again.

John Perkins

The Secret History of the American Empire by John Perkins 
on sale June 5, 2007 
Learn more about the new book
Pre-Order at Amazon.com

Visit the John Perkins Collection at the Global Dialogue Center
Confessions of Economic Hit Man with new material in paperback

Comments

[Fern Henley]

John, you know humankind has created the noosphere where we can see from the shoulders of Kepler, Plato, Bach, etc the potential for becoming better people as a result of these and other giants among us. You know that wealth is generated by the use of the human central nervous system in solving these pesky problems such as potable water supply for 6 billion earthlings, clean, efficient, safe energy production, education and health care. Stewart Brand has come out with his support of nuclear energy. I want to hear your position on this issue. Vermont has 80 % of their energy from nuclear. We stand on the cusp of a great future if we start acting like beings created in the image of a merciful God instead of dancing around a golden calf of green, global, or traditional idealogy. Our children don't have a future untill we find the will to use our brains in the way Lincoln or F.D. Roosevelt did to meet the needs of the general welfare. Should hedgefunds/big money continue to call the shots for an uninformed citisonry no one including sons and daughters of hedge fund managers will have a country to enjoy. What a poor heritage is being prepared for them. I enjoyed your "Confessions" book however it was like the Enron case business went on as usual, didn't it? Well, at least, unlike Dr. Kelly you weren't found dead in the woods. Or like Gary Webb, shot twice in the head, obviously a suicide. God bless you and have a great, dynamic, and fun day. Oh, yes, I wish you'd start reading the larouchepac.com news if you can find time. The Larouche Youth Movement has a link on the NASA.gov, so after checking out what they're doing you may consider linking them on your page. They're pretty phenomenal.

[Project Humanbeingsfirst]

Dear John,

I had written the following introduction to your previous book "A game as old as empire" - and at the end of which I subsequently appended a Redux question/observation. I hope you can respond to it with as much candor and honesty as you bring to bear in your Confessions.

sincerely
Zahir.
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org

----

Introducing A Game As Old As Empire

Zahir Ebrahim
Feb 4, 2007

(c) Project HumanbeingsfirstTM. Permission granted to use freely as per copyright notice.

Document ID: PHBFZE20070204 URL: http://www.humanbeingsfirst.org Discuss here.

[A version of this letter introducing John Perkins' new book "A Game As Old As Empire" was emailed to grass-roots volunteer friends and social activists on Sunday Feb 4, 2007]

To: my social activist friends
Subject: Introducing A Game As Old As Empire

Attached is a preview of an about to be published book that its publisher just sent me with the above title.

I am sharing it with you because all of us are concerned about globalization to some degree in its many manifestations, and many of us don't actually understand what devious shapes and forms it often takes. We often view it only as black and white. The protagonists extol its virtues and the antagonists rail against its evils, neither really possessing any depth of understanding of why they take these positions. It's obvious to the antagonists that it causes poverty. It's also usually self-evident to many well meaning protagonists of its inevitability, and that is often cited as justification for acceptance, closing the doors to exploring other solutions spaces that might be more equitable. However, usually hard data and analysis is often missing on both sides among the ordinary peoples to whom this impacts the most. And we are indeed these ordinary peoples!

When participating at WSF 2006 in Karachi in a forum, I had made this seemingly strange statement: "Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism are two sides of the same imperial coin". In one other forum on water privatization, I had noted something equally bizarre to the effect (in Urdu): "deception is a key component in this game and you have to assume this as your working premise when you investigate or evaluate any proposal that is put your way on why or how water privatization will be beneficial to you - they wage war by way of deception".

It was simply remarkable how many people had thronged around me afterwards to learn more and ask for elaboration. That's when I realized that the real intellectual underpinnings behind the impetus towards globalization and the neoliberal agenda were not being addressed to their full unravellings and disambiguation anywhere. All of a sudden I seem to be the only one talking about it in these terms, often needing to even challenge the perceptions of many of the learned panelists themselves whom I felt were speaking at the most superficial levels - the outer most visible layer of the onion. In one other forum on "fundamentalisms", I found one person (a physicist) on the panel describing the term "fundamentalists" as if the mighty oracle, the illustrious progenitor of the war-mongering idea of "clash of civilizations", Mr. Bernard Lewis himself was speaking through him to justify the other side of the imperial coin! Almost everyone has heard this term "clash of civilizations" and Samuel Huntington's 1996 book of the same name. How many actually know that it was seeded into the public consciousness in 1991-92 by Bernard Lewis for an article in Foreign Affairs magazine? And what was happening in 1991 in the global space to synthesize such bombastic messages? No amount of field work or participating in grass-roots socialization events like WSF can unravel these mysteries.

People in general are ill equipped with the intellectual tools to either comprehend this problem of globalization in its multifaceted dimensions, or take on addressing its root causes. Grass-roots the world over has become synonymous with action in the streets, or working in the field doing good works and deeds. Few read, even fewer dig even when they might read. Even students at elite schools like my own, MIT, study poverty under a microscope in their laboratories (there is a poverty alleviation lab at MIT - do google it), and come up with the most interesting red herrings to pursue, such as reduce the birth rate for instance to solve poverty problem, or the newest fad in microcredit schemes. Both eminently reasonable propositions on the surface for many progressive minds to alleviate poverty. But as I had come to appreciate in computer science and as a practicing engineer in Silicon Valley, the highest order bits entirely determine where the page faults! And here, what is incredible to me is that they entirely end up ignoring the giant elephants trumpeting on the newlyweds' bed - debt cancellation of the third world; inequities of global trade treaties like WTO; economic conscription that generates a new class of labor camps in the wonderful duty-free zones where the employer reigns supreme and few labor laws that apply in the developed nations apply there; or that "free trade" has been the mantra of all dominant civilizations and mainly only favors them. None of these are studied as the primal first cause of global poverty, or how poverty is harvested for the benefit of multinationals when they offshore, or the fact that the third world is deliberately being raped by supporting dictatorships and kingdoms that can be more easily controlled than any fractious genuine parliamentarians ever could.

These same geniuses with fancy PhD. degrees in economics will then head various World Bank and its sister organizations and often not have a clue. And when they do get a clue, they are so complicit that extricating themselves can become quite impossible. This is how empires are built in neoliberalism. We have already witnessed how empire is extended using neoconservatism. The distinguished New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said it the best in his now famous "Manifesto for a Fast World": "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist - MacDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."

And a major aspect of this "hidden hand" is what John Perkins disclosed and confessed to in his first book in 2005, the "Confessions of an economic hitman" - the notorious EHM. See page 101 (of the hardcover first edition, page numbering may be different in paperback) to be shocked beyond belief how an MIT statistician is employed to create a pseudo science to prove to the tin-pot dictators around the world why it would be beneficial to their nations' growth to take on more debt by falsely projecting enormous growth rates which can be used to pay back the debts easily! Such growth projections of course never materialize - because they were conjured up out of thin air, and thence the tag team of WB-IMF get into their now infamous act of further structural-adjustment lending just to enable paying off the rapidly accumulating interest on the monstrous loans that now shackle every third world nation beyond belief. Can we relate this to our own nations taking on debts like a leaking ship?

Without a profound appreciation for the deep intellectual capital that lies behind the manifest reality of misery that surrounds us in the poor under-developed nations - that despite our tons of natural resources we are continually unable to harness for the betterment of our own peoples - we often cannot properly unravel the right cause and effect relationships due to the high degrees of separation from the first causes. The layers upon layers of obfuscation and deception that are usually woven around the issues often require almost doing a PhD to figure out. Unraveling this onion, layer by layer, requires far more intellectual capital than has been appreciated by the activists and other well intentioned peoples who worry about these things. Consequently, many well intentioned and hardworking friends end up spinning on the treadmill. This is why the World Social Forum (WSF), as a global grass-roots forum that was intended to be a counter weight to the ruling elites' World Economic Forum, has become a misplacement of well intentioned peoples energies. The first causes of the problems and their real solution spaces require addressing these issues at the right levels of abstraction to achieve any degree of efficacy that is greater than zero!

Reading and comprehending exposes' like John Perkins book and becoming an intellectual detective, helps orientate us to the real source of the problems, and thus also can enable focusing on the right problems to address in our respective activisms rather than the many red-herrings we often end up addressing.

I hope you enjoy this attached 48 page preview of "A Game as old as Empire". Enjoy it to the point of anger. This new book is a sequel to John Perkins' "Confessions of an Economic Hitman". Other courageous authors have now come forward in the new book to explain how the "game" is even more pervasive today as entire nations are being stolen and plundered by the new imperial masters - "the corporations and their benefactors" - in a world that will soon be entirely ruled by them. The new imperial coin!

If all this is unfamiliar to you, you might also wish to read David Korten and John Pilger to get another perspective on this subject. And also do lookup the former chief economist of the World Bank, who seems to have finally also found his voice after he left that august institution and wrote his own book "Globalization and Its Discontents". And of course, we are all well acquainted with the accomplishments of the present day leadership of the World Bank, but I am sure no one has read any of the reports he wrote while at the State Department, or as the premier member of PNAC, right? But that's the story of the other side of the same imperial coin...for another day.

This pdf attachment requires Adobe Acrobat reader 7.x to open correctly. Works okay'ish with version 6.x, but not properly with version 5.x and below.

Please also see:

http://www.bkconnection.com/agameasoldasempire/

http://confessions.c.topica.com/maafG4nabwk97aB1NtLeaeQzcG/

Feel free to share this message with your friends.
Best regards,

Zahir

Attachment: http://www.bkconnection.com/static/agaoesampler.pdf

[Redux: After the Economic Hitmen retire from their cushy jobs of raping nations under "legal cover", they write confessionals as victims of conscience. Should we have let go Adolph Eichmann too had he written a confessional? The latter was the harbinger of misery to millions of peoples for a short span of a few years with just the stroke of a pen or the drop of a word, and we tried and hanged him in Jerusalem. Whereas the former are the complicit harbingers of the continued entrapment of entire nations in inextricable systems of poverty and misery for generations and they walk free in suits and ties, sometimes even heading prestigious economic institutions, and of course, nations. Should we applaud the former EHM and absolve them of their own past monumental crimes just because they are revealing it all now post faits accomplis and laughing their way to the bank? Or should we use this information in informing our own Moral Activism to prevent future fait accompli? Should we demand from them that they deposit all the proceeds of their confessional writings in trust for the benefit of the nations they raped? Should we do something about the empire's "legal covers" and condemn them unequivocally as deliberate enablers of multi-color-collared crimes against humanity by the emperors? Where else are we seeing such "legal covers"? Would it be apropos to point to "shock and awe", "Sanctions", and the "UN Security Council Resolutions", to subjugate entire nations? When else in a previous epoch, have we seen this proclivity for "legal covers" to commit "acceptable" monumental international crimes against humanity? To know right from wrong is indeed not too complex - the Bible has already taught it to us through the Golden Rule - there are few shades of gray for the commonsensical unhypocrite! The choice of Moral-Activism is ours! To exercise this choice efficaciously however, we must be addressing the issues at the right levels of abstraction! The highest order bits are seeded entirely in the intellectual space!]

[Ray Tapajna]

Explore the lost worlds in the Gobalist Free Trader Flat World of Thomas Friedman from the New York Times, the Clintons from the Land of "is" and the Bush League "it's only business - nothing personal- "family" at http://tapsearch.com/tapartnews/
For a chronical of Free Trade and Globalization since 1956, see Tapart News and Art that Talks at http://tapsearch.com/tapartnews/
See also http://www.experiencedesignernetwork.com/archives/000636.html and
http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Ray_Tapajna
It really all about you in the global economic arena based on the effects of Economic Hit Men on the streets of USA.

[harvey berringer]

Hi John:
I believe that your involvement with the EHM conspiracy is a blessing in disguise. God has his people everywhere and although you may feel guilty for the grotesque acts of this handful of greed mongers that have plunged the world in suffering and despair, you are a chosen vessel to alert the world to the demonic forces behind the unspeakable suffering of defenceless humanity. At the end of the text, I wept uncontrollably because now I know why we suffered such hardships and pain. I come from a third world country, and I hve experienced poverty, starvation, neglect, and scorn. I knew there was some sinister force behind our underdevelopment, and stagnation but just could not put my finger on it. You have verbalized most eloquently my agony but lack of understanding thereof. You are the voice of the voiceless, the weapon of the helpless, and the rock of Gibralta that will break the grasp of the wicked. the sword of damocles hangs over their heads and they will all be brought low because the word of the Lord has spoken it. they may be awash now in their illegal oil and their coffers filled with illgotten money, but the Lord of the poor and down trodden will certainly reward them in his day of reckoning. He hears every cry from Africa, he sees every tear from Afghanistan and every pain from south America. Just keep up the good work and keep the peace brother.

[John Perkins]

Harvey

Beautifully stated, touches my heart. Many thanks for your eloquent inspiration. Keep speaking out and fighting for a just and sustainable world. Thanks for taking the time to write.

John Perkins