No, We Can't

If Americans really wanted change, we would have been choosing between Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

We are the Jackels

I love Democracy Now because it's so depressing. They outdid themselves yesterday. The end of this interview just made my blood run cold.

JOHN PERKINS: I think there’s an amazing revolution going on in Latin America. In the last—in this decade, nine countries, representing more than 80 percent of the population, have democratically and peacefully voted in presidents who say, “We don’t want any more war. We don’t want any more terrorism. We don’t want any more exploitation by foreign corporations.” They’re saying, “We don’t want foreign aid. We simply want to have the right to use our resources to help our people.”

And these are countries, Amy, every one of them, that during most of my lifetime were run by brutal dictators who were US puppets. And now, all that’s changed in the last—less than ten years. And I think there’s tremendous hope there. I think this gives hope for all of us here in the United States, for people in Africa, in the Middle East, that diverse groups can come together and do what’s right democratically and peacefully.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Correa of Ecuador have reason to fear, well, who you call the jackals?

JOHN PERKINS: Absolutely. They do have reason to fear, and I know they’re taking protection. I have spoken with Correa. He’s exchanged letters with me. I was with Evo Morales on New Year’s Eve a year ago. Chavez has talked openly about this. I was just in Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega feels this way. They’re taking steps, and probably most importantly is that they’re banding together. There’s so many of them now, it would be hard for the United States to send in enough jackals, you know, without raising a lot of world concern. However, you reported on this program—I think it was yesterday—that the Fourth Fleet has been taken out of mothballs. The US naval fleet that goes into the Caribbean and South America that’s been in mothballs since 1950 is being called out.

John Perkins used to be one of those jackels he is talking about, but the thing which really gets me is the contrast between hope for real freedom, and the United States being the biggest obstacle to that freedom.