Image: Stux, Pixabay CCO

Basically, the Global Oligarchic Terrorists (GOTs), send a privately contracted Economic Hit Man (EHM) into a country which is living just fine, thank you very much, albeit living as it has lived for hundreds if not thousands of years.

"We can give you electricity!" whispers the EHM to a local Leader.  "We can build a dam over your river and create a power plant! You will have lights and power to run machines. You will be rich and a hero and go down in history!"

 The Leader is usually, eventually, seduced.  The damn dam is built. Of course, the cost for the dam is extended through a loan, from the IMF, to the country itself, not the leader who sold out his country. The loan carries a hefty interest rate.  The people, who had always made their living from the land, suddenly are a) displaced (by the damn dam) and/or b) taxed to pay back the loan for the damn dam.  Either way, their "primitive subsistence" (Read: free, autonomous, quiet, uncomplicated, healthy lifestyle) ENDS. Abruptly.

They must now work at a job. Probably at the damn dam. They may have to feed the people who work at the damn dam, or clean their houses, etc.  Suddenly, these formerly independent people are a "Third World Emerging Nation" receiving "aid" from a "benevolent" "First World". 

Then, because the people cannot repay the loan with interest from the taxes withdrawn from their pay for cleaning toilets at the damn dam offices, the "benevolent" GOTs decide that this formerly independent doing-just-fine-thank-you-very-much country, which it has now "taken under its wing" would be a Very Good Place to grow coffee to sell to the First World. Or a Very Good Place to mine uranium for the First World.  Or, a Very Good Place to raise a particular type of fish foreign to that environment (thus wiping out every other fish species and leaving families who've fished for centuries suddenly unable to feed themselves).  Or a Very Good Place to grow bananas (which don't normally grow there, either).

So they hire a dark skinned person with beautiful teeth and a big smile (who doesn't live there) to climb up a lone banana tree and bring down bananas – oh, and maybe share them with a cute little monkey (imported) and they film this scene and use it – along with paid endorsements from medical professionals – to tell Consumers (replacements for Citizens) in the First World how to "feel more energetic" for their cubicle jobs by slicing a corporate plantation grown, chemically enhanced banana over their corporate packaged corn syrup sweetened breakfast cereal. Moreover, if they are good and savvy Consumers, they will buy lots of these bananas (which do not naturally grow any place any of their own ancestors have ever lived, thus are foreign to their cultural diet). 

Actually, the GOTs had this in mind when they hired the EHM in the first place, because they can grow the bananas just about anywhere warm using chemicals not smiled upon in the First World but ideally profitable for growing bananas where they don't belong. And, suddenly, this "Emerging" country is a full fledged Colony of the First World, growing a mono-crop at cheap prices for First World breakfast tables!  Or, mining toxic metals for the First World's computer chips. Or....

Suddenly, this "Emerging" country is mired in Debt. Its formerly self-sufficient residents who lived on the land in ecologically compatible and sustainable simple housing now live in IMF-debt-financed squalid flats which their government cannot afford to keep up and where the electricity, for which they have given up so much and which operates everything, often doesn't work.  They have little to eat - ah, but wear First World clothes made in other Emerging places. All this graduates the "Emerging" country to "Developing" country status! [Applause]

The First World corporate media then produces stories of the "plight" of this Developing nation, where people foolishly have too many children, children they cannot afford, and where those children live in squalid conditions.  Global corporate foundations, financed by the GOT's encourage First World Consumers to send money.

(Are you following this?  They take over the land and reap huge profits by making formerly happy people miserable. Then, they persuade First World Consumers to pay money from their cubicle jobs to help soften the suffering of the Developing people whose lives they've ruined. OK?  Just checking.)

Developing nations must send their wealthy to the US or the UK for a university education. First World Consumer doctors and dentists and teachers must go to the Developing nation to "help them develop" so they can become a "Democracy."  Oh, and missionaries must go to teach about a punishing god so they will understand that the way to deal with the pain they go through for our breakfast cereal is to Believe and have Faith that there's another life after this one and that it's better.

The GOTs thus finish the job by cementing these Developing people into their System.  The GOTs grow richer while Consumers eat cheap bananas, shipped thousands of miles to their breakfast cereal, while watching "News" which mentions nothing of what's actually going on.

Occasionally, we hear of violence in this Developing nation. This usually means that the Leader is not behaving the way the GOTs want him to. Or, he's behaving exactly as the GOTs want him to, but some of the Developing people don't truly appreciate how Lucky they are and how much Better Off they are without their natural life and their own land, or where young men and women growing up in the hastily built slums, where drugs have been made plentifully available on paydays.  "Tsk! Tsk!" we think.  "Those poor ignorant, primitive, backward people need to learn how to work together and stop their old savage ways." And, we click to a different story, sipping our caffeine and munching on some GMOs. So smug. And, so complicit.

Once in a while, back at the top of our story, the Leader may tell the EH Man "No, thank you."  That is a Good and Wise Leader, right?  That Leader cares for her or his nation and can resist flashy temptations in favor of true value and substance.  True.  And, that Leader can be easily replaced. If the EHM cannot accomplish the job, he has other countries to visit. And, the GOTs have other Means.  In come the Provocateurs and weapons. And, the rumors. And, the Grassroots coup has begun. The Good and Wise Leader loses his/her head. Or, at least job. Interestingly, the New Leader - who is Elected (Of course!) is a Friend of the GOTs and truly sees the Need for Benevolent Development.

In this manner, rape and pillage and massacre and genocide have been visited on pretty much the entire Earth by the Benevolent GOTs for seven, possibly eight decades. All in the names of the great Consumers - ah, Citizens - who should be Proud! (Don't you feel Proud!!) All nations of the world are either already fully "Developed" (natural resources used up and the Workers turned into Consumers) or Emerging-Developing. What a magnificent Accomplishment!

So, now...

Our story in the Developing nations is ending. But, the GOTs must continue to Feed, you know. They must continue to accumulate more. It's only natural. It's only Right.

You DO see that, don't you? 

And, since they've eaten their way through all the world, all that's left is, well...um…

Home. 

Europe. America.  

You DO see why that's necesssary, don't you?  You won't mind becoming an Emerging nation again, will you?  Not if it makes you ssssafer and helps spread Democracy to the entire world, right?

No, you'll cooperate gladly! You won't mind at all.

Will you?

*****

Read John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.  Watch an excellent 2-minute animated synopsis created by Studio JOHO  for DigitalInk over a John Perkins narration here.