Review of “Confessions of an economic Hit Man (EHM)”

I don’t exactly remember which of my friends and/or acquaintances told me to read this book in the first place, and like always I added this book to my “to be read” list and decided to wait whenever it’s turn comes up in the my list.

Initially I had reservations reading this book. For a guy like me who had none whatsoever background of accounting & economics, words like Economic Hit Man were totally intimidating. My first reaction to the title was of fear. It appeared daunting and a bit of too subjective to read. It is not clear to me, what made me read this book – my internal ability to push myself to do new (read weird) things and keep myself open (read vulnerable) to everything or my ability to torture myself with most awkward things in life just because I want to see myself as strong (read Mighty STRONG) or just random curiosity. But whatever it was, I can’t thank it enough for making me read this book and completing it till the very end.

John Perkins writes very candidly about his life, his geographically widespread professional entourage, turbulent personal accidents and of all the stories which his experience brought to him. The book started with a confused and a not clear note, which is acceptable given the fact that the reader should be able to put things in “his perspective” rather than putting things in “author’s perspective”.

At first I guessed that this book would be a fable of some economic blunders made in the US economy and some of its “free trade partners” in this global economy, but to my surprise this book contained that and much more.

The way John passes through countries through countries and explains tirelessly about what MAIN Corporation stands for and how MAIN reaped him in, intertwined with the notion of personal life as well is nothing short of indescribable. Earlier just professional and later his personal experiences started to revolve around MAIN’ strategy to expand the global empire and meeting to my realms of understanding, this thirst of oil continues to evade US supported MAIN from one continent to another.
Horrifying examples of Ecuador, Panama, Indonesia, and Canal country are meant to open the eyes of the readers and the masses (by a long shot though) to the corporate bureaucracy. The author coined a new term out of it, which is interesting too. The book clearly shows that the oldest democracy in the world has outlawed all the international laws (the experience stories about Vietnam and Iraq war), nullified all the popular democracy movements in the targeted countries (for e.g. Canal), CIA assassinations imprints (for example, murder of Roduge) all over the books, colossal amount of national debts incurred to these countries in lieu of providing foreign aid for building infrastructure ( such as highways, dams, power plants, oil plants and many more), loss of national freedom, and many similar activities.
Why this book & its controversial experiences seem to me as different is a good question that I am asking myself, way before even I thought I would write a review about it.

Big fish still eats the small fish. A mightier country today dictates the smaller country by means money (read foreign aid), technology transfer (read lobbying for concessions and army base) and sometimes war (read US supported army coup). Oil thirst seems to overtake everything else in the world and on this planet. NOTHING stands in front it. The fact that first EHMs are sent to a country to investigate and prepare the ground to a new country and if that fails, the jackals are sent shows the pinch of might these bigger conglomerates have over you and my daily affairs.

Each one of us likes to think that I am free and I am equal as guaranteed by the constitution (this is usually true for most of the countries, irrespective of where you belong to and from where you are reading this), but in the bigger picture, these big money earning and oil thirsty juggernauts will destroy the very fundamental of freedom by enslaving everyone of us with their products, services and money.

To our greatest fear, even today the imperialism prevails. It really doesn’t matter that which nation you are reading this entry from, but it matters what history you nation has and most importantly what it is going through now. Imperialism as we knew it, ended ages ago. Now you don’t see geographically spread colonies and rampant human slavery, but you see huge national debts of countries once rich with natural resources, now we don’t see blacks and browns tortured because of their skin color (partly thanks to the system and partly to education that let’s everyone to be seen as equals), but we see good people like John Perkins working as EHM and helping to create global empires for the countries like this one on the expense of so many others.

You can visit this page to read on goodreads

Snippet for Today

Hey folks!

Frankly I am quite bored of the regular life and it's diurnal activities and so to make it interesting, I have a little change planned for us.

Since I am vegetarian( for now), I am going to give all of us vegetarians a delight to prepare and help them out on this process. Yes you guessed it.!

Make a bowl of mixed vegetable with my mother's special recipe!

This gone week one of my good friends which we will call by V, came back from home after traveling their for a whole month. Phewh. I couldn't be more jealous of his fortune. Seriously folks, I miss them.

So, when he got back, I got back the memories of what my mother makes best and what I like the best. As we remember it, all of us when we were young and little kids, there was something or the other, may be an apple pie or a milk shake or just a regular ice-cream flavor that was your favorite food you mother used to make for you. So I grew up eating this yum and exciting mixed vegetable entree that I just cant forget ever.

Thinking all of this has made me nostalgic and guess what I will make mixed vegetable entree that mother always made for me ( and some extra quantity of it ). My intention is to keep you guys posted with the recipe and will get some pictures of the before and after food for you guys to see.

I just hope it becomes only that much good that I don't start comparing mine to my mother's .

Well apart from that you will also see an interesting debate and reviews about Microsoft's Bing search engine Vs Google search. Top this with what experts think about Bing's newest Version.
Night guys! Dig it or hate it, we love your feedback.

New Blog series! For snippet see below

New Blog series!

Swamp weapon is planning to present its readers with an inexplicable tour of the questions ( and its solutions from your perspective and our perspective, both) that have baffled human mind since ages and will continue to put mind’s strength at test.
This is a no brainer that you needn’t be psychology expert to experience questions in your mind. Being a firm believer of the supreme power, I can’t be more appreciative of any other fact in this world that when the supreme lord was creating human bodies, he gave all the super strength to this mind and not to the other parts of the body. Every human mind will continue to have questions and it just might be the case that the struggle just continues for ever for most of us. Only the lucky ones are able to see through this rigorous struggle and let go of our fears.


So what are these questions? Any thoughts/ideas for what might be the case for these?

Hundrendth and first Post -101st post

The big day for which I was waiting for a long time :) has for sure arrived. I realized it when I saw the blog and realized "hey! Its the 100th one already"

Time to party!!

It came into my brain cells that there have been so many things that have been going on with me, around me, and things around me can be called "change" instead, but what is important here is that if you remember, I made a commitment here, to be more regular and more consistent in what I write and it's just days, and I am here ->> 101st post at this blog.

Frankly, I am excited for this. This seems to be a good deal atleast for me and I am so glad that this day so soon and it is fine by me.

Well that being said, there are couple of things that I would like to share with you. There has been like a lot of developments that I have been getting to know :) One being that I have been looking for jobs so badly, if I continue for just seven more days, I can be sure that I would be more than sure that I will land up something. Apart from this, there are couple of things are going around, which I guess need proper justice to them, but here is a snippet what you can expect

Bells on Graduation! Plans this week! Car accident ! Flying back from India! Flying within India! PHD plans! French lessons! Friends getting back together!

Well you know me, I have plenty going around me and I like to keep myself busy like hell :)That was the snippet, stay tuned for more!

Word of the day - May 23 2009

equanimity \ee-kwuh-NIM-uh-tee; ek-wuh-\, noun:

Evenness of mind; calmness; composure; as, "to bear misfortunes with equanimity."

Equanimity comes from Latin aequanimitas, "impartiality, calmness," from aequanimus, "impartial, even-tempered," from aequus, "even" + animus, "mind, soul."

Followers @twitter

Hey folks,

This is going to be last post of the day or night. I was about to go to bed and realize this weird thing.

Hearing the buzz I joined twitter. Now being on twitter for a while and using tweeter fox add-on through my Mozilla browser, I kind of have grown into it. I now tweet way more than before. I like the idea of broadcasting in a way to the followers what you are doing in REAL time. ! That's bad news for Google I guess.

So, I have been tweeting and I was thinking its time to increase my following base. RIGHT! But some weird people have started to follow me. No offense to those. Welcome to my tweets. I hope you like them. If not, let me know we can work this out. Ha. Seriously, I have like random people adding me, which is good and makes me nervous at the same time.

Wouldn't it be nicer if you decide to follow someone and send them a message saying why you are following with a little intro. I guess that is okay to ask, Isnt it?

Yakk whether you like it or not.

2009 French Open Tennis

tennis! WOW ! It is probably the only sport I passionately follow after I lost interest in sports for good. :)

I intend to keep a swift watch on how french open goes and who wins! Here is an except!

The French Open is billed as the most challenging of all the grand slams and the 2009 French Open tennis tournament is sure to adhere to the rigours and robust competitiveness so typical of the second of the annual tennis 'majors'.

Hosted by one of the most romantic cities in the world, Paris, the 2009 French Open will run from May 24th to June 7th and this year's tournament is sure to unleash some of the most riveting grand slam tennis.

Word of the Day

stolid \STOL-id\, adjective:
Meaning:
Having or revealing little emotion or sensibility; not easily excited.
Origin:
1590–1600; < L stolidus inert, dull, stupid
Synonyms:
apathetic, lethargic, phlegmatic.

Stolid derives from Latin stolidus, "unmoving, stupid."

Word of the day - May 15 2009

querulous \KWER-uh-luhs; -yuh\, adjective:

1. Apt to find fault; habitually complaining.
2. Expressing complaint; fretful; whining.

Word of the day - May 14 2009

unctuous \UNGK-choo-us\, adjective:
Meaning :
1. Of the nature or quality of an unguent or ointment; fatty; oily; greasy.
2. Having a smooth, greasy feel, as certain minerals.
3. Insincerely or excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech; marked by a false or smug earnestness or agreeableness.