by John Perkins. took me around a month.
Actually I read the few first chapters quite quickly but almost 90% through, I put it down and one thing after another, I only managed to pick it up back again just now, when I found out that I have less than 10 pages to the end! The rest of the book that I thought were more chapters, are actually references. I should have finished it a month ago, =.="
Well the reason I put the book down in the first place was because the book was having an impact on me. The things that it talked about, were making me thought, so I had to stop to ponder for a bit. It was not in any way because the book was boring, although it might get slightly repetitive. But hey, the book touches upon history and history, always repeats.
The Synopsis.
John Perkins is an American and was born to the middle class. After he tells the reader about his background, which is important to the book, he then relates the story of how he became an Economic Hitman. If you've never heard that term, just imagine George Soros, someone who is notoriously famous to the Malaysian. If you've never heard Soros too, never you mind because an Economic Hit Man(or for short, EHM) are people whose works are to cause a country to be so deep in debt, that they had to bow to their creditor. In this book, the United States of America, or maybe the IMF (they seem interchangable to me).
The EHM works consist of forecasting growth if a certain project is build, writing reports how dams and electricity can raise the GDPof a country, writing proposal for development plans, etcetera and I think the most important of all, they lubricate the process of approval. These EHMs bribe, threat, and sneak their way to the leaders of a country, so that the leaders or the leading elites will approve their plans and allow foreign companies(American companies such as Halliburton) to come into this country and run the 'development' plan.
If this EHM fails, the CIA will come in with their unit, known in the book as "jackals", who assassinate leaders who refuse to submit to the system.
If the jackal fails too, the last step is by war and invasion. Which what happened in Iraq.
All of these, were in the book or suggested by it.
Language.
I like reading the book. I use the word like, because it is a simple term, since the book used simple terms. It was written for a layman's reading and I think the messages came much clearer this way. There's some finance term but I tend to ignore them or they are repeated often enough that they define themselves as you continue reading.
Recommendation.
Although the book is written in simple terms, there's a thick references pages at the end of the book. So if you are interested and want to further read, or maybe dispel the idea, about EHMs and the systems, the references with its sources at the end seems like a good place to start. For me however, it might take awhile before I read another book in this same scope of focus. I found that, what I have picked up before from reading and thinking, was true and the whole world perpetuates on a disproportionate 'equilibrium'. Make no mistakes, this book is not about conspiration theories and all those Illuminati bullocks, but it is about the system that we live in. I'll maybe blog more about what I learn from the book later. As for the book, other than a few suggestions, it hardly offers a solution to the situation it spotlighted. However like the writer said, the book is of a confessions of an Economic Hit Man, not a corrective guideline.
But hey, one can learn a lot from another's person confession, right?
Do read this book. And think.
