{"id":865,"date":"2011-04-12T14:47:09","date_gmt":"2011-04-12T18:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/?p=865"},"modified":"2011-04-12T14:48:05","modified_gmt":"2011-04-12T18:48:05","slug":"john-perkins-former-economic-hit-man-and-shamanic-advocate-spoke-in-sonoma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2011\/04\/john-perkins-former-economic-hit-man-and-shamanic-advocate-spoke-in-sonoma.html","title":{"rendered":"John Perkins: Former Economic Hit Man and Shamanic Advocate spoke in Sonoma"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night I drive to Sonoma to hear John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man<\/a>,<\/em> and of a number of other books, give a talk sponsored by the Praxis Peace Institute<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0The audience was filled with people more or less like myself: progressives who are feeling amore than a little whip lashed between depraved Republican politics and the unnerving weakness of their Democratic opposition. I at least was expecting a clear analysis of the corporate threat to America and decency in general. This was not quite what we got.<\/p>\n

Perkins immediately caught my attention by telling us that we live during a time in history more revolutionary than either the agricultural revolution thousands of years ago, or the industrial revolution.\u00a0 This was the same point I am developing in the book that has taken most of my attention over the past several years.\u00a0 He then underlined my interest by pointing out this time had been prophesized years ago in countless indigenous cultures.\u00a0 He had had his world view fractured while in the Peace Corps in Bolivia, where he became deathly ill until a native shaman had cured him in one night.\u00a0 It took a while for the seeds that experience planted to sprout, but sprout they eventually did.<\/p>\n

Here was no traditional critic of the corporate empire!<\/p>\n

But first a brief word about who Perkins is.\u00a0 It puts the rest in perspective. In his introduction to Economic Hit Man<\/em>, Perkins starts with a definition.<\/p>\n

Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.\u00a0 They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign \u201caid\u201d organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet\u2019s natural resources.\u00a0 Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder.\u00a0 They play a game as old as empire, but on that has taken on new and more terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.<\/em><\/p>\n

I should know; I was an EHM.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perkins wrote that the initial draft of his book had been dedicated \u201cto the presidents of two countries whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits \u2013 Jaime Roldos, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama.\u00a0 Both had just died in firey crashes.\u00a0 Their deaths were not accidental….\u201d<\/p>\n

Equally significantly, while Economic Hit Man<\/em> was on the New York Times<\/em> bestseller list for a year and a half, it was never reviewed by the Times<\/em>.\u00a0 Never.\u00a0 That had never happened, before or since.<\/p>\n

Perkins began by asking his audience how many knew of Dwight D. Eisenhower\u2019s warning about the terrible threat <\/a>to America posed by the \u201cmilitary-industrial complex?\u201d\u00a0Many of us raised our hands.\u00a0 He then asked us why Eisenhower had mentioned it only once, in his farewell speech to the nation.\u00a0 We did not.\u00a0 (I had often wondered myself why Ike waited till he was leaving office to give his warning.)\u00a0 Because, Perkins said, Eisenhower had only \u201cone shot.\u201d He had to make it his best one.\u00a0 The military industrial complex would otherwise have \u201cbrought him down.\u201d\u00a0 That, he said, is also why Obama has turned into such a milk toast.\u00a0 He learned that if he did not he would not last out his term of office.<\/p>\n

(Perkins was more sympathetic to Obama than I am, and that remains unchanged. No one forced him to run. If he can send others into harm\u2019s way, as he does, he shouldn\u2019t shrink from it himself.)<\/p>\n

In other words, we are dominated by gangsters, and what they have created is not the \u201cfree market\u201d but \u201cpredatory capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today they are applying to the American people the same methods they used against so many peoples around the world, with similar results.\u00a0 The formula for most is simple \u2013 convince people to accept loans they cannot repay, then foreclose.\u00a0 People will do all they can to keep their house, and not cause trouble.\u00a0 The same holds for politicians dependent of corporate funding.<\/p>\n

I thought of today\u2019s college students: \u00a0burden them with debt.\u00a0 Then they cannot cause trouble and even thinking for themselves is financially risky.\u00a0 The rapid rise in student debt is no accident.<\/p>\n

He gave an interesting example of the degree of corporate control that has grown in this country.\u00a0 During the 1960s the antiwar protests were covered nationally, and many politicians listened to the people.\u00a0 Before Bush attacked Iraq millions protested both here and around the world: the biggest protests in world history.\u00a0 They received almost no coverage.\u00a0 And (these are my additions) in Wisconsin far more people protested in the cold and for far longer than the tea Baggers in Washington, yet received essentially no national coverage.\u00a0 Then there is the mysterious 7000+ votes<\/a> for Prosser discovered by a woman who worked for him and was a Republican hack.\u00a0 Votes that magically reversed an election.\u00a0 Meanwhile the idiots and whores who were wrong about Iraq continue with big media contracts and those who were right are still ignored.<\/p>\n

Perkins explained that at a national level we are not a democracy any more. I believe he is correct.\u00a0 We are an oligarchy, an exceptionally corrupt and brutal one.<\/p>\n

But the biggest part of Perkins\u2019 talk was not on the horrors of corporate America, they were on what we could do about it and the larger context within which we live.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, the corporate thieves utterly depend on our paying for their products.\u00a0 In a memorable quote that I wish could be compressed into a bumper sticker, he said \u201cThe vote you cast when you buy something is s important as the vote you cast in the ballot box.\u201d<\/em> And maybe more important under current circumstances, he added.<\/p>\n

Corporations care only about money and will hurt anyone to get more.\u00a0 But that means they will also stop hurting people if that is how to get more.<\/p>\n

The winning strategy is to go after their bottom lines, and go after their CEOs, to embarrass them for their thievery.\u00a0 Not all of them are complete sociopaths.<\/p>\n

That requires shopping and consuming as a citizen, not a consumer.\u00a0 A consumer buys what will be most beneficial for him or herself personally, and that usually means paying attention only to price, and maybe quality.\u00a0 A citizen also pays attention to values that cannot be reflected in terms of price and quality, such as support for sustainability, fair treatment, and decency.<\/p>\n

Some people might think this is acting on too small a scale.\u00a0 But \u2013 and I am giving my own analysis here \u2013 they are wrong for several reasons.\u00a0 First, the money they spend goes to reward decent businesses rather than gangsters.\u00a0 Thinks of who you help when you spend as well as what you get.\u00a0 Second, you help the growth and development of sustainable technologies and business models more generally.\u00a0 New MBAs and the like have career options other than work for gangsters.\u00a0 Third, when others learns what you are doing they are more likely to do it themselves.\u00a0 We begin to regain a sense of community rather than what the gangsters want- that we are isolated consumers.<\/p>\n

But there was more to Perkins talk than this.\u00a0 In addition, he said, pursue a society where you can look forward for your grandchildren to live in.\u00a0 Do this by \u201cfollowing your passion.\u201d\u00a0 He gave the example of George Washington and Thomas Paine.\u00a0 If Paine had tried to lead an army and Washington had written pamphlets, we would never have freed ourselves from Britain.\u00a0 Each followed his passion in pursuing a better world.\u00a0 The point is not to follow a grand strategy, but to integrate our loves with our actions.<\/p>\n

Again, in my words, as we do this we automatically create new institutions to replace the corrupt ones with corrupt leaders that now dominate. We need to see our actions as individuals as collectively building the future, and doing so based on the needs and opportunities within out own communities.\u00a0 Of course initially that cannot impact the oil industry, but it builds the foundations of alternatives that can.\u00a0 Buying local and organic first and organic second strikes at the heart of monstrosities such as Monsanto. Here is California there are the beginnings of efforts to establish state banks such as have long existed in North Dakota<\/a>, a really exciting possibility. Alternatively, bank at credit unions or, second best, at local institutions.<\/p>\n

He also reminded those of us who like himself, are older, \u201cIf you\u2019re retired you can\u2019t be fired.\u201d\u00a0 We are free in a sense we have not been since we were students. We should make the most of it.<\/p>\n

Perkins continually put his arguments within a spiritual context: that acting in this way would help heal the enormous and destructive gulf between our autistic civilization and the more than human world around us.\u00a0 If the prophesies were right, we are in a propitious time for doing so.\u00a0 The very soullessness of the corporate world means few truly love it \u2013 its greatest strength is the sense that we have no alternatives.<\/p>\n

We do and we need to create them.<\/p>\n

Perkins closed with a fascinating tale of his encounter with the Dalai Lama.\u00a0 He was at an airport in Ladakh, with a group of people, as was the Dalai Lama.\u00a0 Someone noticed His Holiness was carrying Perkins\u2019 book Shape Shifting<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

Informed that the book\u2019s author was present, the Dalai Lama invited him to join him on their flight.\u00a0 The two sat together for the one hour flight, after which the Dalai Lama invited him and his group to his residence for more conversation.\u00a0 Among the fascinating points that arose from their interaction, the Dalai Lama said that while he was, as prophecies had long foretold, the last Tibetan Dalai Lama, he thought the next would be in another high mountain area, perhaps the Andes.\u00a0 He agreed that this person, who might even be a woman, would not necessarily be a Buddhist.<\/p>\n

In fact His Holiness told the people assembled there that they should not think of becoming Buddhists, but rather to apply the Buddha\u2019s teachings about compassion and kindness in their lives.\u00a0 Forget the institutional rigmarole that goes with an organized tradition.<\/p>\n

Here was a common theme from fighting corporate criminals to living a spiritual life: keep it small and local even while always trying to keep the bigger picture in mind.<\/p>\n

As a Pagan I could not have been more impressed.<\/p>\n

Perkins web page and a blog are located here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An organization associated with South American issues and indigenous people is the Pachamama Alliance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One more broadly focused but with similar values is Dream Change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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