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By Jim Miles
The American Entice: My Battle to Expose America’s Secret Financial Struggle In opposition to the Remainder of the World. Frédéric Pierucci (with Mathieu Aron). Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2020.
It turns into extra clear with increasingly more readings that the “American lure” is the US greenback, and that for some it’s no secret. Frédéric Pierucci’s well-written private story tells how he turned a pawn within the higher sport of financial management of the world’s funds and the world’s politicians and companies.
This story jogged my memory of John Perkins’ Confessions of an Financial Hitman in that it’s not a tutorial analysis paper nor a journalistic exposé, however the story of 1 particular person’s journey into the darker aspect of geopolitical manipulations.
Completely different Themes
The work exposes a number of essential themes as it really works by Pierlucci’s adventures, and like all geopolitical tales, all of the elements are interrelated. The primary theme is, as per the title, the financial warfare waged by the US towards the remainder of the world. It has change into for my part the overarching element of US efforts to forestall the failure of the US greenback as the worldwide reserve foreign money.
If that occurs – as China has expressed it’s eager about doing and together with Russia having taken steps to keep away from main repercussions – the US is powerless financially and solely has its navy left as a risk. The navy is highly effective, and very harmful, existentially so, and its essential objective is just not freedom nor democracy nor human rights however to guard the usage of the US greenback as the worldwide foreign money.
Mixed with that theme, supporting and underlying it, are Pierucci’s accounts of the manipulations of the Division of Justice of the US utilizing its self-created extraterritorial powers to drive compliance to US calls for (International Corrupt Practices Act, 1977).
No shock, this additionally contains the manipulations of overseas governments and companies being pressured to adjust to the courts’ personal manipulations and contains the help supplied to home firms as a way to management overseas enterprises. It reveals clearly that company CEOs are solely within the greenback worth of the corporate to the extent they’re prepared to throw their very own staff away as a way to save their very own pores and skin from having to face a jail time period within the U.S.
This results in a smaller theme, that of the character of the US For-profit personal jail system. The circumstances described by Pierucci are inhumanely horrible however the argument that these are criminals and are receiving the outcomes of their actions. The connection between the specter of jail time, the specter of enormous fines, the DOJ’s manipulations of the firms and the jail system, all make for a system that’s neither equitable nor simply, nor able to reforming any type of prison conduct.
Overviews in Hindsight
Because the story attracts to its end – and arguably will probably be a very long time earlier than it’s actually completed – a number of highly effective statements are made.
First the prison justice system: “This ‘jail capitalism’, this race for revenue on the expense of essentially the most primary human rights, is degrading”. One other goal is to strain inmates into plea bargains and thus “bettering its already Stalinist statistics (98.5 p.c success fee).”
In his personal trial sentencing Pierucci, framed because the chief of a bribery operation, was lectured by the choose on corruption when his case concerned the US’ corruption of Suharto’s Indonesia. “This choose absolutely embodies American hypocrisy in all its grandeur.”
Pierucci’s strongest assertion arrives within the epilogue:
“It is a warfare that’s extra refined than standard warfare, extra insidious than industrial warfare, a warfare that the general public are unaware of , a warfare of the regulation….lawfare…which consists of utilizing the authorized system (the regulation) towards an enemy, or an adversary designated as such, as a way to delegitimize such an adversary, inflicting it most harm and forcing it to conform utilizing coercion.”
He then reaches the crux of the difficulty: “By advantage of the ability of their greenback (used for worldwide commerce) and their know-how [and be assured that Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, CIA, FBI are all part of that technology, the Cloud Act, 2018]…are they actually the one ones in place to enact extraterrestrial legal guidelines and, above all, implement them.”
Lastly, “the Washington administration at all times serves the pursuits of a plutocracy who personal its industrial, monetary and extra lately technological giants…And…is the primary nation to conclude phony offers in lots of international locations underneath its space of affect…the brutality of American unilateralism and imperialism is staring us within the face.”
Endnotes
Frédéric Pierucci is just not harmless as he did work for an organization utilizing bribery and kickbacks as a way to achieve a bonus over different firms and win contracts in overseas lands. He was concerned not directly with occasions between France’s Alstom and the Indonesian authorities; he turned the autumn man for occasions between Alstom and GE’s takeover bid of the corporate.
The American Entice is actually written and exposes a lot of what’s not seen on the earth of geopolitics. It provides help to the concept that the US’ biggest energy is just not its navy, however its management of the worldwide monetary system. Because it threatens Russia and China with sanctions and expulsion from the monetary system – SWIFT particularly – it will appear it’s threatening its personal sagging hegemony for international monetary transactions. Exterior SWIFT, there are numerous international locations dealing increasingly more with alternate methods of fee and transfers.
The clear concept from all of the above is that it’s the energy of the US greenback supported by extraterritorial legal guidelines (stemming from its perception in its personal infallibility) that management the world. The navy is generally an adjunct to that.
– Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a daily contributor/columnist of opinion items and ebook evaluations to Palestine Chronicles. His curiosity on this matter stems initially from an environmental perspective, which encompasses the militarization and financial subjugation of the worldwide neighborhood and its commodification by company governance and by the American authorities.
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