Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book did well to expose the actions of the US government, international banks and the oil companies, especially in regard to Panama/Torrios/Noriega and Ecuador/Roldos, and Perkins is at his best when describing his personal experience in these countries. It is very disturbing that the U.S. Government assassinated leaders and invaded for revenge or to satisfy corporate interests, and clearly this must be brought to light. However, Perkins does not seem to be able to distinguish between valid international economic activity and that which he classifies as being Economic Hit Man ("EHM")-related. For example, if someone owned a firm that produced aluminum and needed bauxite ore that was available, say in Myanmar, how would they go about making deals to acquire the resources that their company needed? Wouldn't they need to work with government people and the local mining companies, and figure out how to best make a deal? Doesn't the fact that the bauxite miners then have one more customer for their product benefit them? The same thing is true of the oil companies that Perkins continually criticizes - they have certainly done bad things: payoffs, corruption, pollution, etc. but they have also done many good things as well. Their goal is not to screw people over (although they have certainly been guilty of that at times, and need to be brought to account), but to sell a product and make money for their company, and there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that. They are not the Satan that he makes them out to be. (BTW, I have no association with any oil company.) Another example of this from the book is Perkins' analysis of the deals done in Saudi Arabia. What is wrong with American companies trying to sell goods and services to the Saudis to "repatriate petrodollars"? He perhaps has a point about selling the deal by putting a gun to the Saudi's head, but he said very little about that critical aspect. However, his pejorative statements like, "we could then sell them things that required continual upgrading and maintenance" - how is that any different than buying a car, or installing a computer system from a specific vendor in your office? You will have to rely on that company to some degree for maintenance, and that is implicit in the purchase. Computer systems become antiquated, roads deteriorate, cars fall apart, and that is a fact of life rather than a conspiracy on the part of the manufacturer. Furthermore, it would make good business sense for the Saudi's to pick a few key vendors for building their infrastructure, because then if something goes wrong they would have fewer vendors to deal with and less finger-pointing. Thus Perkins' approach has no nuance, and no recognition of these realities; it was pure meat-axe, conspiratorial, and monochromatic. Latin America and the rest of the world in his book are simply helpless victims that are being raped by evil Americans, in one more feminist victimology play. For a man who was a chief economist for a major consulting firm, he certainly seem to be very ignorant of economic realities, and he comes across as the typical knee-jerk, clueless liberal who blames capitalism and corporations for everything. Or perhaps his purpose was something deeper? His analysis read like a marxist critique of capitalism - is that his real goal? If so, why didn't he just come out and say it? I also noticed how politically partisan he was. He had a few lame attempts at trying to try to show that he was bipartisan, but then spent many pages bashing Bush, and other republicans with little criticism of democrats. If he wanted to come across as even-handed, he could have, for example, discussed Clinton's extensive connections with international socialists, his Rhodes scholarship, and his support of corporatocracy. And interestingly, there was absolutely no word in his book of Heinz, another large multinational firm. Was that because John Kerry, like him, is another liberal from Massachusetts, and therefore was a little too close to home for him to discuss or even mention? However, my biggest criticism of Perkins' was his treatment of SIL (The Summer Institute of Linguistics), the parent organization of Wycliffle Bible Translators (WBT). Virtually everything that he said about that organization in connection with oil company activity in Ecuador were lies and false innuendo. The missionaries who went there and were murdered in 1956, predated much of the oil company interest in the area, and they were not even all with SIL or WBT. Their interest then, as now, has nothing to do with advancing any corporate agenda, and everything to do with trying to help the native people. The Huaorani (or Waodani) tribe were vicious killers who preyed on each other and carried out many vendettas - the missionaries helped them to change their lifestyle in positive directions, and conflict was dramatically reduced. When the oil companies came in force, the missionaries tried to work things out with the Indians for everyone's mutual benefit, and perhaps bent over too far in trying to seek accommodation. But to say that they did this because they were on the take from Rockefeller or any other oil company is a disgusting lie. They were in a very tough situation, caught between the forces of the Ecuadorian government, a variety of oil companies and other internal and external interests, and the varying attitudes of the various Indian tribal groups. If the missionaries hadn't been there, the Indians would have been much worse off in trying to cope with the realities of adapting to the modern world that would have encroached on their territory regardless of the presence or absence of missionaries. The missionaries may have made mistakes in the way they handled things, but their motivation was love, and they cared enough to give their lives to the Indians in Ecuador. In the same light, Perkins' uncritical acceptance of President Roldos and the Ecuadorian government is especially disturbing. For the most part they didn't give a damn about the Indians; the latter were often simply an excuse to get more leverage with Texaco and other oil companies, and this has been true throughout Latin America. Perkins' refers several times to a scene of an indigenous woman washing herself in the dirty stream as a paradigm for what American corporations have done to the world, and how he wrung his hands over his part in it. But according to his own words, this is his life: "In a strange turn of events, I succumbed to the corporatocracy when I sold IPS in November 1990. It was a lucrative deal for my partners and me, but we sold out mainly because Ashland Oil Company put tremendous pressure on us. I knew from experience that fighting them would be costly in many ways, while selling would make us wealthy. However, it did strike me as ironic that an oil company would become the new owners of my alternative energy company; part of me felt like a traitor." In other words, at the same time he is crying about the woman in the dirty stream, he is sipping a margarita on his yacht and wiping his tears away with $100 bills. While he is wringing his hands, many Christian missionary organizations around the world are actually doing things to help people in these conditions with medicine, food, housing, and more importantly help to eliminate the demons of addiction, depression, poverty, and spiritual bondage; to give them hope for the future, and to be the hands of God that demonstrate His love and care. Perkins is not fit to shine the shoes of the people in SIL, and his book could best be interpreted as an "LHB" - a liberal hit book.