I was watching this TED talk and I couldn’t help but reflect on Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. Perkins describes the behind the scenes manoeuvrings of the very real corruption that Peter Eigen has been battling against. This video is how the corruption has been curtailed, at least somewhat. How to Expose the Corrupt is the title but the symptoms are addressed rather than the underlying intent and manipulations of the organisations that start the very corruption that he is battling.
As Perkins reveals in Hitman and his follow up book The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men. Jackals and the Truth about Global Corruption this is not necessarily all about good companies being forced to corruption and bribery simply in order to level the playing field. “Everyone is doing it, so we have to also bribe” is I’m sure being said in board rooms around the world.
These large corporations and the governments that they control, willfully and purposefully manipulate third world countries for their specific gains, using corruption and bribery of officials, as a tool of Empire, with full knowledge of what they are doing. They create the corrupt situations that other “good” companies are forced to accept in order to compete. If the “good” companies were simply to stop, and it seems in some cases this has worked, the large corporations have shown that they would simply go in anyway and continue to pillage in order to feed the empire.
The corruption is at the top of the tree and the rot simply migrates all the way down.
