Coming Home to Roost (or Somebody Please Pinch America)

In 1973, America was brought to her knees by an incensed Saudi Arabia which imposed a total oil embargo on the US, punishing the superpower for siding with Israel in the Yom Kippur war. The short-lived embargo caused America to have a full-blown panic attack. Her concern over Middle-East oil dependence now turned into an obsession. Almost as soon as the embargo was lifted in March 1974, America struck a deal with Saudi Arabia. The House of Saud was wooed with political, economic, and technological support (and if required military protection) for its continued rule and the "modernization" of the Saudi Kingdom. The ancient desert land would be converted into an oasis of unrivalled wealth and opulence. The House of Saud would rule forever. In exchange for uninterrupted oil supply. It was an irresistible deal for the Saudis with their volatile neighbours, lack of military might, and plenty of oil. America's corporates went ballistic in giving the desert kingdom an image makeover. World class goods, services, and facilities soon turned Saudi into a mecca of every luxury that money could buy. It also gave the new generation of Saudis access to the best education system in the West. Their lifestyles changed. They moved away from the traditional Wahabi culture of puritanism, modesty, humility, and submission to their faith and became brazenly materialistic which was an affront to the conservative Wahabis and angered them greatly. One man was witness to the "deal of the century" between Saudi Arabia and America: John Perkins.

For over a decade, Perkins worked as an economic hit man for the American government. His job was to assist in what he terms America's "empire building" - not by military conquest but by economic conquest. America's empire builders are differently attired warriors whose battles are fought in corporate boardrooms and financial institutions around the world. In his book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," Perkins describes in shocking and sometimes morbidly fascinating detail America's modus operandi that catapulted her to Sole Superpower status.

Economic hit men are academically brilliant economists who cook the books of Third World economies to produce over-inflated and mostly falsified data to justify granting of huge loans by American controlled international financial institutions to desperately poor countries in a supposed bid to modernize them and bring them into the mainstream. Mammoth infrastructure, electrification, and engineering projects are undertaken by American corporates. In reality, the returns from these projects will never be enough to repay the loans. Once the countries are mired in debts that they cannot repay, America calls in her "pound of flesh" in the form of access to natural resources, crucial votes in international political bodies, trade concessions, and land for military bases. What follows is large scale land and resource grabbing, destruction of ecosystems and indigenous cultures. As an economic hit man, Perkins has seen plenty of economies spill their guts; he's helped rip apart some of them. In Indonesia, Columbia, Panama, Venezuela, Guatemala, Ecuador, Iran, and Iraq, Perkins describes the rise and fall of regimes at America's whims.

When the economic hit men run into opposition, the jackals step in to try and bring their opponents around with threats and bribes. If they fail, the CIA arranges for the opponent's permanent disposal. Latin and South American history books are littered with dead heroes who took on American "corporatocracy." Omar Torrijos of Panama, Salvador Allende of Chile, Jaime Roldos of Ecuador, Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala...Perkins tells their stories - their struggles, their heroism, their martyrdom all of which proved too little to halt the roll of the juggernaut. If the jackals fail, the American military steps in to forcefully take what doesn't rightfully belong to America - in unprovoked acts of aggression against civilian populations that pose no threat to the United States...like they did in Iraq. America's ill-advised misadventures in Middle Eastern politics is now legendary. She's saddled with Israel who she can't offload because of domestic compulsions, and she's never going to be trusted by the Arabs because of the Israeli albatross around her neck. Decades of tight-rope walking have taken their toll on America, and her growing impatience has made her impulsive and foolish in the Middle East.

Perkins' cathartic outpouring reads like a story searching the landscape for a place to wash off the blood on his own hands. Perkins sketches Roldos and Torrijos with boyish admiration and a yearning envy of their courage of conviction - something he readily admits he lacked for a good part of his career. His story forces the reader to face his/her own culpability in driving our world to the brink of disaster. Every page in Perkins' book underlines the power of the individual and is a subtle call to the reader to be the change that we seek in our world; it forces us to acknowledge that each of us can make a difference for better or for worse, and Perkins comes away with a heightened awareness of this truth from his encounters with the characters in his book.

Having interacted with the people in Third World countries he was assigned to, Perkins knows that they are not anti-democracy, anti-progress, or anti-America. They are anti-greed. They resent a foreign economy's intrusive barge-in. It doesn't help that America is usually clueless about the cultural complexities she barges into. They resent the dollar's purchasing power that corrupts natives and pushes those on the fringes, off the cliff entirely. It angers them that when they oppose America in their own land, her characteristic response is "Go jump." Perkins describes the corporatocracy as a marauding giant that devours 25% of the Earth's resources while comprising only 5% of its population. America teaches and rewards reckless wantoness and has become a society that judges its people not by what they are but by what they have. "The lives of those who "make it" and their accoutrements - their mansions, yachts, and private jets - are presented as models to inspire us all to consume, consume, consume. Every opportunity is taken to convince us that purchasing things is our civic duty, that pillaging the earth is good for the economy and therefore serves our higher interests," says Perkins of a society where more is less. He describes this blood-thirsty quest for global dominance as "a monstrous machine that requires exponentially increasing amounts of fuel and maintenance so much so that in the end, it will have consumed everything in sight and will be left with no choice but to devour itself."

In the same world, 24,000 people die of hunger every single day; 12 million American families are unsure of their next meal; 30% of the world's pollution is caused by America's rogue corporates who have contributed significantly to punching the ozone hole. When nature hits back, the whole world pays for America's myopic self-indulgence.

In Indonesia, Perkins meets a University student who tells him: "Stop being so greedy and selfish. Realize there is more to the world than your big houses and fancy stores. People are starving and you worry about oil for your cars. Babies are dying of thirst and you search the fashion magazines for the latest styles...You shut your ears to the voices of those who try to tell you these things. You label them radicals or communists. You must open your hearts to the poor and downtrodden instead of driving them further into poverty and servitude. There's not much time left. If you don't change, you're doomed."

A proud ignoramus, America knows little and cares even less about the world she inhabits. A genuine lack of knowledge and interest in other cultures allows Americans to believe that in all matters of governance and economics, America knows best. Her hyperbolic rhetoric and her "it's either my way or the highway" approach to all negotiations fails to factor in aspects of culture, religion, tradition, and other complex regional forces that influence the politics and the economics of a society; that democracy and capitalism as she knows and practices it is not the "one size fits all" solution to all the grey-shaded ills of the world. Leading a blinkered, self-centered existence, with a stubborn petulance that demands the world's indulgence, she invites the wrath of extremism against her citizens and to her shores. Labelling this wrath fundamentalism-terrorism-communism, America is happy to bracket the phenomenon and play aggrieved victim to the hilt while never acknowledging her own role in its growth.

In 1977, on one of his visits to Iran, Perkins meets Yamin a proud Persian trying to save the sanctity of his land from the Shah's sellout. Iran's beautiful mountainous desert land is as old and complex as its civilization. "The desert is a symbol," Yamin tells Perkins. The Shah who has been installed after America has overthrown Iran's democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh, is lording over Iran. Openly pro-American, the Shah has sold the beautiful desert land (and his soul) to the corporatocracy. A Flowering Desert project is underway to green the desert. The corporates will make a killing, but to Yamin and his countrymen, the desert is not an opportunity for exploitation. It is a sacred relationship between the Beduouins and their beloved land. "The desert is our environment. The Flowering Desert project threatens nothing less than the destruction of our entire fabric. How can we allow this to happen?...We are the desert," says Yamin passionately. His words fall on deaf ears till Ayatollah Khomeni and his clerics instigate a riotous and violent street uprising to snatch Iran from the hands of the Shah. The Shah is forced flee to Egypt and then to America to escape the murderous rage of the Ayatollah.

It would be unfair to attribute all of America's success to corporate greed. Victims of humanitarian crises around the world have been beneficiaries of American altruism for decades. Her unconditional respect and recognition of merit and hard work has made America home to millions of non-Americans. America's impressive roll-call of innovators in every field is a tribute to her legacy of nuturing and rewarding individual creativity. She has it made and she's willing to share her wealth and success with all those who keep her banner flying high. Usually fair and impartial in her judgements in her own land, America's vibrant democracy affords her citizens a genuinely optimistic chance to constantly better their lives. She celebrates not just individual successes but glorious comebacks as well. She loves to pull people out of the dumps, dust them over, give them a second shot at the "American Dream" and cheer them from the sidelines as they come in for their home run. All this keeps her forever young, bold, and creative - a reputation that she guards jealously. It also makes her terribly restless and willing to do whatever it takes to stay Numero Uno - including crossing her shores to find the resources that will keep her keeping on. America is benevolent and beautiful but only as long as she stays home.

America has never had a distinct culture of her own in her 2-century-old existency. Dubbed the melting pot of the world, she makes up her culture as she goes along. Now is Nirvana. Her insensitive meddling with cultures that are as old as civilization itself is regarded as an unconscionable transgression by the more conservative keepers of their cultures. When the clash threatens a value system, reactionary rage is bound to throw up die-hard defenders of their faiths and lands. Rampaging the earth on the lookout for the next big buy, America has managed to make the "American Dream" a global nightmare with entire societies trying desperately to keep up with the Joneses. Technological leaps in communication (and the CIA's own declassifed documents) have now made it possible for everyone to see what's happening everywhere. And there are plenty of people who don't like what they see and have access to the same technology to demonstrate how offended they are. In the much cliched "global village" there are no more well-kept secrets. So now, the chickens are coming home to roost.

"On May 7, 2003, a group of American lawyers representing more than thirty thousand indigenous Ecuadorian people filed a $1 billion lawsuit...against ChevronTexaco Crop. 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 waste water contaminated with oil, heavy metals, and carcinogens, and the company left behind nearly 350 uncovered waste pits that continue to kill both people and animals."

With her history of engineered assassinations and political coups in foreign lands to serve her own interests, her unprovoked aggression against weaker societies to enslave their resources, her brazen mining of the Earth's resources beyond her own shores, her bull in a china shop stomping on delicate toes, aggressive trading tactics, and gluttonous greed, America wonders (seemingly innocently) why the world loves to hate her. Perhaps it's time the world gave America a wake-up pinch.