Film Sessions: The Devil Walks in Broad Daylight

NinaIllingworth December 23, 2020November 5, 2022 banks, blog, Books, books you should read, CA4, capitalism, capitalism and imperialism, economic imperialism, Economics, film sessions, foreign policy, forever war, global finance, IMF, Imperialism, imperialism is a profit making enterprise, informal writing, international law, international lending, John Perkins, Media Madness, Monroe Doctrine, neoliberalism, New Confessions of An Economic Hitman, Nina Illingworth, Offsite Writing, pig empire, Politics, predatory loans, Reviews, soft power, Tedx Talk, the debt trap, the New Forever War, the peace of a tyrant, The Washington Consensus, US global superpower, Video, Wall Street, war, war as a business model, War is a Racket, WD7, World Bank, Youtube

Editor’s note: after struggling against online censorship and some epic procrastinating, I’m just about finished reorganizing my website. As part of that process, I’m posting links to older content that readers will never find again otherwise.

Thankfully, I’m most finished this process and only have a couple of posts from late last year left. Please bear with me in the meantime and thanks for all your support.

Games Without Frontiers

As someone who frequently writes about the intersection of private sector economic power, with state sector imperialist activities, I know that it can be extremely difficult for most Americans to accept that the U.S. military are essentially gangsters for capitalism; even though it’s clearly true. Even more abstract and elusive however, is the idea that American economic and diplomatic power, backed up by the violence of state-sponsored terror and drone strikes, functions and is ultimately employed, in pretty much the same way.

In this December 23rd, 2020 Media Madness blog, we look at a brief Tedx Talk event with John Perkins, the author of an important book that brings these two elements of US imperial power together, and into the light; (New) Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Although the talk itself is a little bit of thin gruel, the post gave me an opportunity to explore both Perkins’ still-relevant work, and the nature of the US imperialist debt trap. The ultimate lesson here remains an important one; the American hegemon operates in the service of capital, under all circumstances, and at nearly any cost.

“The real eye-opener however was when the U.S. occupation and sham rebuilding of Iraq was exposed as a complicated American corporate welfare and influence trading scheme, virtually identical to the trap of debt, bombs and murder Perkins described in Confessions of an Economic Hitman. You’ll even hear him bring up a famous name from both his story, and the Iraq privatization scandals – Halliburton; remember them? Overall, there is a certain spy games, or cloak and dagger element to Perkins’ telling of his life story, but the simple truth is that this web of personal economic incentives for neocolonialist elites, trade agreements contingent on the installation and maintenance of a neofeudalist economy, or the brute force of Pig Empire missiles, taken together to form the system of control the author describes, are today well known as the tools by which America maintains global supremacy in a post-Cold War world.”

To read more over on Media Madness, click on the quotation block above, or the header below:

Promises and Threats on Media Madness

nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

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