My Life as an Economic Hitman with John Perkins | Shane Smith Has Questions | Vice News (youtube.com)
For those who don't know how US style ‘empire’ works.
If you're the Indonesian president, here's a nice young American economist, and he's saying you can have $2b (already allocated by the World Bank, which in turn is backed by the US) to build whatever infrasture project would be best for your country, and while it's being built your family and friends are going to make a lot of money, and your kids and friends all get scholarships and all expenses paid to top US universities and good jobs afterwards. Or if you say no we'll send in ‘the jackals’ that you've seen in Guatemala and other countries that didn't cooperate with the US.
The Panamanian president did stand up (and died under mysterious circumstances), and wasn't swayed by the nice young economist to not take the canal back to Panamanian ownership.
What made him quit was his friend, the Panamanian president, on a boat with friends and associates and a bunch of young babes, said don't you realize what you're really doing here? What effect you're really having on my countrymen? And his Colombian girlfriend (who's brother was part of what would become FARC) was saying the same thing to him.
He was in denial for several years, trying to convince himself of what was right. Then he decided he would quit and went into his US business's HR and they said Of course what you're doing is right. But he was ‘kind of living on alcohol and valium.’ A lot of pressure not to get out. He was on vacation in the Caribbean and saw some people who used to be slaves, and a place that was built by slaves, and thought he too was a slaver, not with a whip but an economic slaver. After the vacation he went back to Boston and quit.
What the US wanted was the collateral after the loan couldn't be repaid. Oil, permission to build a base, turn over companies to US companies because they can run them much better.
China becomes top destination for Mexican students looking to study abroad (youtube.com)