Today is an exclusive live video interview with John Perkins, for the interview series “Interviews with the Leading Edge.”
In this series of interviews, I engage with people who are on the leading edge of transformational change, doing work to further the consciousness revolution and how it is manifesting in culture, politics and spirituality, in order to help bring along a more enlightened society.
John Perkins is one such person.
John Perkins is truly on the forefront of a Quantum Revolution. He is an author, activist and economist, and has had a career that has taken him into the depths of the Amazon jungle to live with the indigenous people of the Amazon basin, and into the hallowed walls of the World Bank and major corporate executive suites, along with the offices of top political leaders of developing countries around the world.
He has written numerous books, with his best-known book being the best-selling “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” published in 2004, in which he details the life he once led when he worked as a Chief Economist for a major international consulting firm and advised the World Bank, United Nations, IMF, U.S. Treasury Department, Fortune 500 corporations, and countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. As an economic hit man, his aim was economic colonization of Third World countries on behalf of multinational corporations, banks and the U.S. government.
When he worked as an economic hit man, he saw firsthand the devastation it caused to the citizens of lesser developed countries by nature of the fact that they became economically enslaved to the global corporate empire. The natural resources of developing countries were used and abused by multinational corporations so that these companies could get what they desired to enrich themselves, and it left the citizens of these countries stuck in a cycle of poverty. While major corporations rolled in excess profits, developing countries were saddled with debt they could not pay.
John points out in the book that if the leaders of developing nations would not accept the loans that were being offered them by the economic hit men, then the jackals and assassins would come in to remove them, as occurred in Iran in 1953, Chile in 1973, and Panama and Ecuador in 1981. And if the jackals couldn’t succeed, then the U.S. military would invade the country, as occurred in Iraq in 2003.
In “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” John also tells the chilling story of what was called The Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair. This occurred in the 1970’s, when the U.S. government, multinational corporations, banks, and the rulers of Saudi Arabia conspired together to pour massive amounts of money into Saudi Arabia to build its infrastructure, in order to assure that the rulers of Saudi Arabia could stay in power and the U.S. had easy access to oil. This situation caused much political unrest in Saudi Arabia over the next few decades and is one of the factors that led to the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001 and the rise of radical Islam.
John has been on the frontlines as a keen observer in the rise of the geopolitical corporate empire. Yet at the same time, John has also walked in the world of traditional and indigenous wisdom, and is a shaman himself. That part of his life began when he was fresh out of college and served in the Peace Corps, and spent time in the Peace Corps with native people in the Amazon. While there, John almost died of a food-borne illness and was saved by a shaman’s healing powers; this led him to appreciate native wisdom and took him on a lifelong quest to understand what indigenous wisdom could tell the West.
John has written numerous books on shamanism and is a founder and board member of Dream Change and The Pachamama Alliance, nonprofit organizations devoted to establishing a world our children will want to inherit. Yet for the longest time he traveled two separate and disparate worlds, that of economist and that of shaman. It wasn’t until publication of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” that he came clean about his past and began speaking out about the dangers of the global corporate empire.
With that varied background, John has cultivated a distinct outlook on the world and what is happening in it. He sees that we are in the midst of a consciousness revolution and on the cusp of a major paradigm shift. He understands that we are living in an era of tremendous change and upheaval and that times of crisis are times of great opportunity. He also understands that we are waking up to our evolutionary potential and are coming together to transform the world into a sustainable, just and peaceful home where all beings can thrive.
I met with John at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, where he had just finished teaching a workshop entitled Evolutionary Shamanism. John and I had a far-ranging conversation about the themes that are near and dear to his heart, and about the prophecies of native cultures and their wisdom and insight that speak of the times we live in. The prophecies portend a great and significant transformation into a new paradigm of enlightened thinking, behavior and action, yet the catch is that we can’t just sit back and expect it to happen – it is up to each of us to see that this new way does indeed shine.
To learn more about John’s work, go to www.JohnPerkins.org. To learn about his organization Dream Change, go to www.dreamchange.org.