dear congress i'm writing to inform you that even though you survived most of the two thousand and twelve election and find yourself keeping your house or senate seat warm for another term i wouldn't get too comfortable you see seventy five percent of this country if given the chance would vote for term limits such a limiting the number of times your asses can hold on a seat in the capital furthermore if any of you find yourself running for president one day more than six out of ten americans will paulison electoral college make it that much harder for you to occupy the oval office this is all according to a gallup poll released on the eighteenth day of january two thousand and thirteen plus just recently americans ranked cockroaches all whites and even brussels sprouts as more popular than you so basically congress you suck truly yours the majority of your constituents so let's keep it rolling and let's break the set. up where you are she going to be like.

have you ever stopped to think about how the first world of able to maintain its status of being on top while the third world is constantly at the bottom goes beyond innovation and technology what if i were to tell you this world order is in fact covertly manufactured by corporations and governments that feed off the demise of these countries look exactly what my next guest has revealed in his tell all book called confessions of an economic hit man so now to talk about his experience as an economic hit man making the rich richer the poor poorer and the grave implications that follow i'm joined by the author himself economist john perkins john thanks so much for coming on it's great to be with you every thank you so for people who haven't read the book who don't know who you are tell our audience is just a really straightforward what is an economic hit man well i think it's safe to say that economic you have created the worlds. truly global empire and it's the first

empire created primarily without the military and it's not a national interest not an american empire it's really a corporate empire created by economic hit men like me we work many different ways but perhaps the most common is that we will identify a country that has resources our corporations covet like morning i'll arrange huge loans to that country from the world bank and other international banks but the money never actually goes to the country instead it goes to our own corporations to build big infrastructure projects in those countries like power plants industrial parks things that benefit a few wealthy families but don't help the poor who are too too poor to buy electricity can't get jobs industrial park because they don't hire many people and yet they are left holding a huge debt they can't possibly repay so at some point we go back and say hey you know you can't pay your debt so sell your oil or whatever the resource is real cheap blur corporations allow us to build a military base on your soil that sort of thing and in

a few cases where we fail where the governments don't agree to these terms the jackals go in and these are people that either overthrow governments or assassinate their leaders and i talk in my books about how i deal with the president of ecuador jaime rolled oats in the hand of omar to read host and because they wouldn't buy into these deals both of them were assassinated and of course the i.m.f. and world bank are used as tools for the economic and to go in and keep these debts going with these countries what entities you just said that it's not it's not the united states it's the corporate control it's the corporate empire what entities are involved in this operation i mean are we just talk about corporations facilitating these deals are they working in concert with governments i think we've come to a point in history where corporations really control the governments right and we know that nobody gets elected to a major position in the united states without huge corporates the. lord and then

they basically become servants to the corporations it isn't their fault it is no obama's fault that he now has to bring in people who are very firmly to corporations to to to watchdog those very corporations he wouldn't be president he didn't do that so really today we've come from the point where two hundred three hundred years ago religious organizations call the shots around the world to ones where governments call the shots for some time and now it's the corporations that are calling the shots in various different ways this is a revolving door so there's really no separation between corporations and government at the very highest levels they people the leaders back and forth between the two. john you mention ecuador i want you to talk more extensively about what happened there and why the jackals needed to calm the man. well ecuador had been under the leadership of a military dictator a certain number of years and put into office by the cia and kept there by the cia and then there was a kind of a revolution a democratic revolution in ecuador and they but they've done it credibly voted in

this president i mean this is back in the seventy's and i mean ran on any take of this said he was going to clamp down on the all kind of you wanted them to continue drilling for oil but they had to give a bigger share of their profits to the people we didn't like that and so my job and that of other economic hitman was to convince try me to do differently he didn't he wouldn't be convinced he had great integrity he stuck to his guns and so he was assassinated. and i saw you in another interview you were talking about iraq. what steps were africa and there was kind of like iraq was a case where everything was tried and then alternately ended and no ground invasion why why did it need to end there. well it is an interesting case it's a kind of a lot of story we had a mazing the successful operation in saudi arabia where we convince the saudis to buy into a deal with. the let's the law and it's

a lot so i won't go into the details but it was extremely helpful to us than our oil companies and our big major corporations we wanted saddam hussein to buy into a similar deal saudi arabia was the largest producer of war of the time that iraq was the second largest he wouldn't by any economic hit men couldn't convince him and the jackals went in to try to assassinate him they couldn't he had very good security he had look alike doubles it's hard to take them out they couldn't take him out so that was the first invasion and we thought that that would bring him around he lost his no military but he still stuck to his guns he did not give in and you know to make a long story short the second edition came because we felt that we really had to take over iraq right yeah it's amazing when you when you look at your work john and you realize what really at play here kind of makes all this rhetoric completely absurd when it's really just all about that that they controlled there's a very stark as i mean when you're looking at the globe right now there's very few independent states still left that has that are not under the wing of of western

imperialism i mean iran syria north korea cuba let's take the case of iran what do you think the outcome is going to be and this country. i think iran is we're in a very very different difficult and dangerous situation there. i was just meeting here a couple of days ago with with a group of people who are from the middle east and russia who are convinced the reason we're going after syria and assad is because he is the defense for. we take syria the next step is taking iran and then conceivably we will try to take more control of a russian that was the fear of the russians because russia has a lot of oil and gas and it's raising its head again and i don't know that's conjecture but certainly we what we do know is that we see iran as a country. tremendous resources in terms of oil and gas and in a very crucial position geographically speaking and also a country that's threatening to sell oil for something other than dollars and we

don't like it eleven of my own is our whole system of currency here and try to reserve it whenever needed or certain to do that is could they did the same that it is now if the iranians knowing we take great exception i don't believe that iran is really about the nuclear issue so much as it's about a much larger geopolitical economic issue absolutely have course in a funding of hamas hezbollah these are things that are have a thorn in the side of the establishment let's say in terms of iran but you know you talk about the real cause of our global financial meltdown as quote predatory capitalism what is that and is there a way to have global capitalism without it being predatory. i believe there is in fact i was i went to business school in the late sixty's and it was kinzie in economics kinzie and capitalism which is very different can see in capitalism said that corporations need to make profits and pay their investors a decent rate of return but they also need to be good citizens and take good care

of their customers and their employees especially the c.e.o. would take a big cut in pay before he'd lay anybody off that all changed in the seventy's when not in friedman the chicago school of economics came along and basically replaced keane's and abased and the crux of friedman's ideas is that the only responsibility of business is to maximize profits regardless of the social environmental cause that changed everything and essentially everybody's bought into that since ronald reagan had braced it in his that margaret thatcher did in every major leader including every u.s. president democrat and republican alike his embrace that and sort of the big corporations i think it's a terrible system to say that the only reason business is there is excellence from the. it's absurd it's the first time we've anybody said this is far as i know and in a large level what we need to do we the people we the consumers have more power perhaps than we realize that we have and we need to set

a new growth of these corporations and only buy from corporations that have a stated objective of serving the public interest yes make a decent rate of return to encourage capital but also said is your main goal to serve us the people public interest employees suppliers consumers serving us that should be the goal of course i mean the system as it currently stands is completely unsustainable. and you don't have to be a genius to look at it and say this is not going to last much longer and so short sighted john but i mean at the same time asking consumers to be conscious buyers it's not happening i mean look at the case of b.p. still thriving after poisoning the entire gulf coast i mean i just seems like we're pretty far from consumers kind of taking that upon themselves so do we need more government regulation or i mean what do you think. it we won't get government regulation until we've convinced the corporations that serve their best interest because they control the government doing

a lot of my like like to the station is broke the laws of the land but today it's really the lobbyists that write the big wasn't passed to the government officials would be essentially own so we've got to convince the corporations and you know we actually have a very good history of that when i was in college there was apartheid in south africa we boycotted corporations that supported it it went away we had rivers on fire in ohio and other parts the united states terrible pollution we forced corporations to clean it up we force them to open their doors wider to women and minorities we actually have a very good success record so i think as we become more and more aware of the occupy movement this program that you're doing here the minute amount of attention that's been given around the world now i think people are really beginning to wake up and have great hope that we will put tremendous pressure on these corporations that we. you will understand that the marketplace is a democracy if we choose to make it not every time we shop we're voting absolutely i told the people at all so if you like what you see so far better check out my four interview with john perkins on our you tube channel using dot com plus

breaking essential scrabble you very well to check us out on hulu as well hulu dot com class break and dash the set you're going to like our facebook page at facebook dot com slash begin to set if you're wondering what i'm doing when i'm down on air call me on twitter at abby martin take a break for now but stay tuned here a very special interview with the parents of activist rachel corrie next. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

deadly rivals some decades. just good fifteen thousand people killing each other in any other country there would be diplomats there with mediators. self-imposed costs from society i will check myself and michael attack my brother understand michael on my own immediate. i'm going to leave basically attack the cops of my. anger and my frustration. got. well into the.

two of the most violent gangs in us history. it's just all model kill or be killed with colors matching the national flag. of this country uses violence when it reaches and then it legitimizes the violence they all made in america on the odyssey. almost ten years ago twenty three year old american peace activist by the name of rachel corrie had her life cut tragically short while protesting against the demolition of the palestinians family's home rachel was crushed to death by an israeli bulldozer she was a member of the international solidarity movement and had gone to gaza at the

height of the second palestinian intifada in march two thousand and three. seeking justice for their daughter's death rachel's parents filed a civil suit against the israeli government in two thousand and five for failing to conduct a full investigation into the case the lawsuit was purely symbolic and only asked for one us dollar in damages in an effort to clarify that the case against the government was about justice both for rachel and for the cause that she had so bravely defended finally last year israeli court rejected the suit ruling that the israeli government and defense forces would not be accepting responsibility for her death rachel's name has since become an international symbol for the rights of palestinians and is inspired countless activists including her own parents craig and cindy one of the rachel corrie foundation a nonprofit group that encourages grassroots efforts in pursuit of human rights social economic and environmental justice and world wide so now to speak about

rachel's case the ongoing struggle of palestinians and activism through the rachel corrie foundation i'm joined by both her parents craig and city cori thank you so much for coming on you guys it was really amazing to meet both of you last night at the press club and i sympathize greatly with your case and rachael served as a symbol for me to really wake up about this issue so thank you so much for coming on and for viewers who may not be familiar with her case i'm hoping you could talk about what the international solidarity movement is and why she decided to go to palestine let's start with. the international solidarity movement was founded in i believe it was two thousand and two actually there had been a resolution at the united nations to bring the human rights monitor. forced to israel and palestine when the second intifada started and that resolution was vetoed i'm told by the united states by israel and at that point activists around the world decided to form this movement to bring internationals to the area

to stand in solidarity with palestinians and there were only two requirements for being a part of i assume one needed to believe in the principles of freedom and equality for the palestinian people and only nonviolent forms of resistance in challenging israeli occupation that had been going on for so long. and craig you guys decided to take on the israeli government two thousand and five why did this take so long i mean you guys just got a verdict last year well of course it started. right at the rate was killed when we through diplomatic channels to find some sort of answer and actually president bush was promised a thorough credible and transparent investigation by the israelis the prime minister sharon promising that the day after it was killed but in two thousand and four we heard in writing. of course they had done some sort of investigation but

they came back exonerating the soldiers and everything but even our own state department said that did not meet the standard being thorough credible and transparent so with that promise made by the president but we kept pushing through diplomatic channels but with two years running we had to file something because that's the only way we could push it forward then i think there was a law passed in the knesset saying that nobody in the. palestinian territories could bring a lawsuit that was made retroactive that had to be challenge should go up through their high court and eventually we found the opportunity to actually end up in court the first day that we were in court was. two thousand and ten on the actual why ask of hearings was. two thousand and eleven in the. august of two thousand and twelve so it's been a long process and we just i think sunday filed

a an appeal so we're looking forward to who knows but another couple of years you just have to challenge this you know you don't know where it's going to go but you have a child and you have to challenge it because you said last night it really stuck with me that the final voyage was as if the judge hadn't even heard the testimony over the last couple years what do you mean by that we were in haifa district court the israeli court system is different from the court system here in the united states the case was heard by a single judge there are no juries in israel and we the district court is the second tier of courts in israel there is the magistrate courts the district court in the supreme court and. we presented our evidence we had four international eyewitness eyewitnesses to rachel schelling who her her friends who were with her that day that came to testify and then of course the state of israel brought military when witnesses we had twenty three witnesses testify over fifteen

different court dates so we we had a good window into into some of what happened when rachel was killed but when the decision came down the judge stated what happened to rachel was an act of war and as such the israeli military could not be held responsible for what happened to rachel he went on to say also that he believed that the people in the bulldozer did not see rachel but he failed to reconcile all of the inconsistency is in the testimony that we heard even between the two people that were in the bulldozer that was that injured that harmed rachel and. he it appeared to us in the reading of it it was just about as bad a verdict is as it could be and that in some ways you know we might have not heard all the witnesses over the course of that two year period that he simply took what the state brought in their original statements about the case what they had to say

about and accepted an adopted that i'm very glad that you're challenging verdict or really doesn't have a challenge and of course you are saying you know the affidavits of written all over eerily similar kind of the same language almost as if they didn't write them selves the people and if that's what i wanted to move on to the home that rage was trying to protect you said it was riddled with holes why. i think that they know that the home was bill that actually after the oslo agreements the family that lived there moved back they were living in egypt at the time and it was the middle of a neighborhood when they purchased the plot and built the land but those homes that were between you know not the israeli border but the egypt border were destroyed by the israeli military trying to make a larger buffer zone there so they the tanks would drive by in the middle of the night and shoot into the home and so we went into that homos still standing about

six months after it was killed we went in and we saw the bullet holes into the children's bedroom so the older brother lived on the ground floor the younger brother with his family the second floor but they would move back into the back the parents building part of the building their bedroom rachel wrote about staying there with that family and waking up in the morning in the big puddle of blankets. amazingly i think i said last night the younger brother when they're under such threat the younger brother wanted to know what he could do what he could do for the children when people are shooting into the house and what he decided to do is raise rabbits because when you're under that much threat the most important. thing used to maintain your capacity to love and so we've got these little rabbits in the child we saw the children their pedigrees furry rabbits the amazing story. by the time we saw this house it was really the only house standing and that row of houses

on the border and human rights watch in a report in two thousand and four said that a tenth of the population of russia during that period lost their homes that was sixteen to seventeen thousand people and one row after another of houses were destroyed so for this family it was simply that their house was the next in i don't know for viewers can see but that's really the scene between the house. and gyptian border with rachel there and those used to be all houses that you can imagine. it's truly amazing and also just the the method of terrorizing people who live there shooting into the homes where they can just trying to get them to evacuate themselves before of course going to demolish them how can we you know you said that the only way an end to this occupation will come of the u.s. really stops funding it and of course taxpayers ultimately are funny in this i mean how quick provoked an end to this occupation and avoid the stigma of just being

labeled anti israel while doing it but i think that our friends in israel who are working to change their government's policies to tell craig and me during the the many months that we've been there for the trial that they can't do it alone and that it requires on the outside to really work for changes in policy and to really hold the israeli government accountable for the us that is to i think address the funding we're providing three billion dollars a year thirty billion dollars over a ten year period here up to two thousand and eighteen and craig and i believe. that the caterpillar bulldozer that killed our daughter was paid for with our tax money. we have laws in the united states the arms export control act the leahy amendment we we believe that there is still an issue between the u.s. government and the israeli government over rachel's case contrary to what the judge

thought everything that we learned in the trial about the quality of the investigation took place was that it was very inadequate very flawed and yet there's not been accountability to the u.s. government from israel about what happened and there should be some accountability through our laws there should be some impact with the funding i think ranch when i look to the rest of the world right now because as i saw then you then you win vote around palestinian statehood and i saw a map afterward that showed the u.s. and canada israel and a few other islands opposing that that vote in the united nations but the rest of the world standing with the palestinian people. i draw a lot of hope and. i think. that the policies that we're following right now and are not in u.s. interests not in palestinian interest certainly but also not in israeli interests and i look to the rest of the world to exert some pressure and certainly for people

in this country to insist that our own laws are followed absolutely we have only about a minute left i want to ask you about the rachel corrie foundation it's grown into something so much bigger than just the struggle. talk about how you became activists and really what this organization is doing we have very little ok well it's a grassroots sort of thing we're trying to like rachel to try to the grassroots level combine people so that they understand each other from different part of the world and of course rachel impacted a whole lot of people around the world and so we're trying to get them in touch with each other trying to get bring people for instance in gaza particularly try this year to bring some people to united states and get people for you know states we were just in gaza. in november bringing some people from the united states so a lot of this grassroots activism and knowing each other and do that through art. written were rituals about and then just the communications thank you so much both

of you for coming on. cory thank you i mean this. often received backlash on the show my criticisms of the israeli government their disregard for international law and disproportionate violence now and may not be and all of us to lay our lives on the line for you believe and but that's what makes rachel corrie's so special so let's never forget her cause because people all the world can rally behind justice and is not worth fighting for. we speak your language and not a day in. the news programs and documentaries in spanish more matches to you breaking news a little tune to angola's stories. are you here. to try to alter the spanish find out more visit.

wealthy british style it's time to. find. a. market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to conjure reports on our.

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