i mean your ass is going to hold on to seats in the capital furthermore if any of you find yourself running for president one day more than six out of ten americans will all of the 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 the brussel 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. let's look at where you are going to be like. have you ever stop 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 or 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 a great to be with you have you 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 hit men have created the world's first 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 and are created by economic you me we were many different ways but perhaps the most common is that we will identify. 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 debts so sell your oil or whatever the resources real cheap but our 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 assess and make their leaders and i talk in my books about how i failed with the president of ecuador jaime rolled oats in

a pan 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 to be 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 corporate support 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 firm to the corporations to to to watchdog those very corporations he wouldn't be president he didn't do that so really today we've gone from a. point were 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 sort of 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 don't 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 oil come if 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 it 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 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 in to 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 them

and the jackals went in to try to assassinate him they couldn't he had very good security he had looked like 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 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 their three sources 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 to have to syria assad is because he is the defense. we take syria the next step is taking iraq 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 then 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 that undermines our whole system of currency here and try to reserve it whenever needed is threaten to do that is can they do the same get it 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 pay before he'd lay anybody off that all changed in the seventy's when the treatment the chicago school of economics came along and basically replaced keane's and abase and the the crux of treatments ideas is that the only

responsibility of business is to maximize profits regardless of the social environmental costs 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 said this is far as i know and in a larger 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 so do we need more government regulation or i mean what do you think. it won't get government regulation until we've convinced the corporations that serve their best interest because they control the government during a lot of my life like to the fictional wrote 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 or you see so far been sure check out my four interview with john perkins on our you tube channel using dot com a suspect in a sudden scramble a very well to start a fight on who is 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 sorry welcome to the big picture. deadly rivals so decades. if you had fifteen thousand people killing each other

in any other country there would be diplomats there with mediators. soused out costs from society i will check myself the model attack my brother understand my contacts immediately. i'm going to leave basically attack the cops of my. anger and my frustration. got. well into the. two most violent gangs in us history. it's just all model killer joe 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 oxy. 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 out 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 teams only nonviolent forms of resistance in

challenging the 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 promised him that the day after it was killed but in two thousand and four we heard in writing that. 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 be 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. the two thousand and ten in the actual while of hearings was. two thousand and eleven and the verdict came out 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 well 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 from the reading of it it was just about as bad a verdict this 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 i'm very glad that you're challenging verdict really does he 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 rachel was trying to protect you said it was riddled with holes why. i think they know that the home was build 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 and 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 homo 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 a 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 there petting these furry rabbits 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 line i don't know if our viewers can see it 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's still an issue between the u.s. government and the israeli government over rachel's case contrary to what the judge saw 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 in that i think. that the policies that 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 but i want to ask you about the rachel corrie foundation it's grown into something so much bigger than just the struggle. to 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 combined people so that they understand each other from different parts of the world and of course rachel impacted a whole lot of people around the world. so we're trying to get them in touch with each other trying to get bring people for instance in gaza particularly tried this year to bring some people to united states and get people from united states we were just in gaza. november bringing some people from united states so a lot of this grassroots activism and knowing each other and do that through art. written word which rituals about and then just the communications thank you so much both of you for coming on sunday cory thank you living here this. often receive backlash on this show from my criticism 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 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. surely we can we know if you're going to let us stay still some of. us choose to consent you can. choose to give to us the degree to. choose to stories get him. to speak access to. play. live. live.

live. play. play. play. live. live live play live. please. more news today violence has once again fled

upline. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china operations are all today please. both. live. and over the speed. i wish i. looked. like a missile a good bill.