Confessions of and Economic Hitman - John Perkins
Essentially how America has blackmailed the rest of the world with the threat of war and / or assassinations.
It’s a reasonable read, his style is okay, but he doesn’t really go into enough detail on the monetary side (not essential or the point of the book but would have been interesting to read, and there are tons of other articles and extra reading in the notes if you want it) and he spends a lot of time hand wringing about his own roll (again, not essential, as when you understand his his job you know he’s utterly complicit regardless of his later work), all understandable, but left me wanting a little more. The point of the book though is to illustrate how brazenly the USA has, with the help of the CIA, the World Bank, the IMF, and the general corporatocracy, lied, threatened, murdered and wared for the sake of a very small amount of corporate families, their profits, and their egos. Whether it’s Guatemala or Iran in the 50s, Chile and Pinochet in the 70s, Bombing Panama in the 80s or Venezuela and Chavez in the 00s; if you try for any sort of true socialism, are perceived to be standing up to them, or possibly just make them look bad, you and your country will get fucked in one way or another.
3.5 unexplained, but some how predicted, plane crashes out of 5.
