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Racket, The: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire
While working for the Financial Times, investigative journalist Matt Kennard had unbridled access to the crème de la crème of the global elite. From slanging matches with Henry Kissinger to afternoon coffees with the man who captured Che Guevara, Kennard spent four years gathering extraordinarily honest testimony from the horse's mouth on how the global economic system works away from the convenient myths. It left him with only one the world as we know it is run by an exclusive class of American racketeers who operate with virtually unlimited weapons and money, and a reach much too close to home. Owing to the very nature of the Financial Times, however, Kennard was not able to publish these findings as part of his day job. Enter The Racket, now in a fully updated second edition. This tell-all book, reported from all corners of the world, will transform everything you thought you knew about how the world works-and in whose interests. Kennard reports not only from across the United States, but from the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. In doing so he provides startlingly clear and concrete evidence of unchecked, high-level, interrelated systems of exploitation all over the world. At the same time, through encounters with high-profile opponents of the racket such as Thom Yorke, Damon Albarn, and Gael García Bernal, Kennard offers a glimpse of a developing resistance, which needs to win. Now more relevant than ever, this 2nd edition contains a new preface by the author and a new foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges.
442 pages, Paperback
First published April 9, 2015
150 people are currently reading
1072 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
April 12, 2017
Kennard's story could be 'the greatest story never (before) told'. The beans he spills on how big business and American political hegemony controls everyone else are painful, perhaps eye opening and certainly disheartening.
The Bretton Woods institutions, if not designed as such, quickly became vehicles for projecting American hegemony across the world. In economies where the IMF and World Bank are not dictating the Washington consensus, they and the global, to a large extent American, business elite, subvert those economies until they have no choice but to fall over and accept dictated terms. Or, as an alternative, they wait until some disaster, say an earthquake, allows them to step in and create neoliberal economies that benefit outsiders, as opposed to the indigenous population.
Kennard jumps from narrative to narrative, perhaps a bit too much, and would benefit from being more concise, but the sheer scope of the global cabal he describes, means that virtual all countries outside of Europe have had to face, and almost always lose against, 'The Racket'.
The Racket is opportunistic, looking out for their own, ready to sacrifice the well being of unnamed millions for their own benefit. And, having honed their skills, they have perfected their methodology, getting away with it time and again, even when their plans, time and again, turn out to be the social failures, if big-business successes, that create the likes of Iraq.
It's not a stretch to discuss Israel as a client state of the US in this context, as Israel is an important extension of American foreign policy and thus business interests. Israel only became of strategic interest after Arab client states started to became more independent, or turned more towards the Soviet Union, specifically from the late 1960s onwards.
Amazingly, American 'aid' to Israel has added up to more than 23000 USD per living Israeli citizen.
Kennard also spends time on the few cases where the US, and The Racket, have found some pushback. Notably Venezuela, Bolivia and the Zapatista movement in Mexico, while praising the Latin American shift to the left.
Yet, though Bolivia is still managing, Venezuela has become a mess, not in the least due to result of American policies, while much of Latin America has swung to the right in the last two years, typically by big media and big business being able to subvert truth, projecting a fantasy, any fantasy, as reality.
Almost a footnote at the end of the book, Kennard points out that 'the racketeers are genuinely afraid of the creative arts', as artists exist outside of the conventional system and don't have to follow the narrative, and can not easily be controlled.
They therefore have more freedom and thus are more of a risk in overthrowing the system.
Kennard's book is essential, even though it would benefit from being slimmed down. Yet, I'm not convinced it's enough. The Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, the shift to the left in Latin America, none seem long enough lasting to make the difference society needs to be able to fight big business, the Bretton Woods institutions, and American hegemony.
The Bretton Woods institutions, if not designed as such, quickly became vehicles for projecting American hegemony across the world. In economies where the IMF and World Bank are not dictating the Washington consensus, they and the global, to a large extent American, business elite, subvert those economies until they have no choice but to fall over and accept dictated terms. Or, as an alternative, they wait until some disaster, say an earthquake, allows them to step in and create neoliberal economies that benefit outsiders, as opposed to the indigenous population.
Kennard jumps from narrative to narrative, perhaps a bit too much, and would benefit from being more concise, but the sheer scope of the global cabal he describes, means that virtual all countries outside of Europe have had to face, and almost always lose against, 'The Racket'.
The Racket is opportunistic, looking out for their own, ready to sacrifice the well being of unnamed millions for their own benefit. And, having honed their skills, they have perfected their methodology, getting away with it time and again, even when their plans, time and again, turn out to be the social failures, if big-business successes, that create the likes of Iraq.
It's not a stretch to discuss Israel as a client state of the US in this context, as Israel is an important extension of American foreign policy and thus business interests. Israel only became of strategic interest after Arab client states started to became more independent, or turned more towards the Soviet Union, specifically from the late 1960s onwards.
Amazingly, American 'aid' to Israel has added up to more than 23000 USD per living Israeli citizen.
Kennard also spends time on the few cases where the US, and The Racket, have found some pushback. Notably Venezuela, Bolivia and the Zapatista movement in Mexico, while praising the Latin American shift to the left.
Yet, though Bolivia is still managing, Venezuela has become a mess, not in the least due to result of American policies, while much of Latin America has swung to the right in the last two years, typically by big media and big business being able to subvert truth, projecting a fantasy, any fantasy, as reality.
Almost a footnote at the end of the book, Kennard points out that 'the racketeers are genuinely afraid of the creative arts', as artists exist outside of the conventional system and don't have to follow the narrative, and can not easily be controlled.
They therefore have more freedom and thus are more of a risk in overthrowing the system.
Kennard's book is essential, even though it would benefit from being slimmed down. Yet, I'm not convinced it's enough. The Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, the shift to the left in Latin America, none seem long enough lasting to make the difference society needs to be able to fight big business, the Bretton Woods institutions, and American hegemony.
November 30, 2024
It is quite funny seeing some reviewers attack this book's objectivity by decrying it as some of a leftist propaganda/conspiracy, yet the 'arguments' provided against the book amount to ridiculous siliness & sheer nonsense. Admittedly this is worrying when this comes from credentialed 'educated' people, increasing the empirical evidence that not only is education no panacea for a lack of critical thinking , as chomsky puts it , it often actively subverts critical thinking. Business is racket..it is a privilege afforded & maintained through state structures at the expense of the rest of the population. Read the WSJ & ft to know how not to think about things & to see how the elites frame things.
Two media theories really help us understand the role of media, Chomsky's theory of media manipulation & luhmann's systems theory but I add the lens of capital to it unlike luhmann himself.
To quote Parenti, "people keep flying off into reality so they have to be brought back to fantasy" by any means necessary.
Two media theories really help us understand the role of media, Chomsky's theory of media manipulation & luhmann's systems theory but I add the lens of capital to it unlike luhmann himself.
To quote Parenti, "people keep flying off into reality so they have to be brought back to fantasy" by any means necessary.
March 30, 2019
Excellent
If you want to know how and why the USA runs almost the whole world this is the book for you. Luckily there is also hope for a better future free of the neo liberal chains the world on whole is in.
If you want to know how and why the USA runs almost the whole world this is the book for you. Luckily there is also hope for a better future free of the neo liberal chains the world on whole is in.
November 27, 2024
THE BANK SAID NO.
Despite the fact that she hadn’t missed a mortgage payment until she lost her job as a corporate bond trader, despite the fact that she had found another job in a boutique bond firm a few months later and had only missed five mortgage payments which she was offering to make up with interest, despite the fact that she was upfront about her circumstances, despite the fact that she now had the means to pay her mortgage the bank took possession of her home.
HOMELESSNESS IN AMERICA.
“The Noble Drew project was built in 1972 in a poor part of Brownsville, surrounded by tenements and empty lots.” For a decade it functioned as low-rent housing for the struggling class of Americans who subsist one paycheck away from homelessness. Eventually it was privatised and purchased by multiple slum lords, finally landing with Lyndon Realty who funnelled government funds for renovations into their private bank accounts. In short, the buildings ostensibly built for the working class were a front for laundering government funds. Ultimately a new slum lord bought the complex of disintegrating buildings/tenements for $10. The residents who were not given evacuation orders remain in apartments even rats avoid – no hot water, no elevators, no security and walls riddled with mold. “Eventually the Department of Homeless Services was contracted to run the buildings. The rent they accrued was nearly $3,000 per unit from federal subsidies, far higher than the individual tenants whose rent was evaluated sometimes as low as $68.” The racketeers made a killing.
THE INCEPTION OF THE RACKET.
“At the end of WW11 American planners set about designing a monetary system that would put the rest of humanity under the crack of their whip.” In short, the new carpetbaggers understood that to profit from the global south and the local poor they needed to create impossible debt. So began a scheme/scam of altruistic humanitarian aid programs and money-lending that would keep “developing” countries in a state of gratitude, disempowerment and escalating permanent interest-laden debt. “The official old-world empires (and the new local poor) were to be replaced by something more insidious, more hidden, something that to this day is still not recognised for what it is: debt slavery.” And don’t think for two seconds that a middle-class westerner living a life medicated with movies, date nights, fast food, feel-good music, celebrity worship, mindless sitcoms, beauty products and fashion that change so fast your spending is in spin cycle, has freedom. You don’t have any more significant freedom than your impoverished fellow victims in the satellite nations under the whip. You will spend your life working at a job you hate, paying off a mortgage (if you’re lucky) and retiring with a nickel handshake that buys you a Royal Caribbean cruise and a plot in the cemetery.
GAZA.
“At 5.30am one October morning the Israeli border police forcibly evicted the Hanoun family from the home their family had occupied for generations. The Hanouns were offered a tent by the Red Cross. The loss of their home was the culmination of a decades-long program of intimidation and harassment of the Sheikh Jarrah community that had seen lives destroyed to appease the most rancid kind of religious zealotry.”
Was this after October 7th, 2023? No this was October 2014.
“Sheikh Jarrah is situated in a valley down from the American Colony Hotel where Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister and possibly the most willing servant of the American racket in the world. Blair was staying in a luxury suite to grace Jerusalem with his presence (and presumably “voice”) as the racket’s “Peace Envoy”. Blair could undoubtedly see the Hanoun’s house from the hotel pool where he took his morning swim. When Kennard contacted Blair’s spokesperson about the eviction(s) that had taken place that morning, he was informed that Blair had “No comment”.
“Across the way, and in sightline of Mr Blair and the British consulate, there was a makeshift tent where a 62-year-old woman was now living after settlers took her home.”
October 7th did not occur in a vacuum or a broil of antisemitic hatred. It occurred as a push-back against the worst kind of racketeering the elite can countenance: greed sanctioned by God.
THE FIRST PEOPLES OF AMERICA.
“The Delaware nation tribe had a simple strategy for creating jobs for the nearly two thirds of its members who were destitute and unemployed: it wanted to manufacture lighting. The Native American community already distributed lighting so they knew the industry well; now they wanted to produce LED lights. Except they couldn’t.”
THE BANK SAID NO.
“They weren’t white and they had no natural resources on their arid reservations, so the financial players, the racketeers who make everything in America move, turned them away. It was the latest stage in a centuries-old battle for basic dignity by America’s First People against the usurpers and the financial wizards who have kept them condemned to under-development.”
ENVIRONMENTAL RAPE.
In Naoma the people are dying of fast-moving cancers and children play in playgrounds shrouded in a pall of dust so thick it blocks out the sun. MTM, the mining magnate, is decapitating mountains in the glorious Appalachians by blasting the tops off them to extract coal. This disfigurement is not only sending local residents of Naoma to early graves, it is permanently erasing a mountain range of such exquisite natural beauty it should be deemed a World Heritage Site but money shouts over whisperingly eloquent and ever-gifting Nature. At last count MTM had violated over 2,000 environmental protection laws but the government is oddly deaf, dumb and blind to the protesters who regularly call these environmental criminals out. Why? BECAUSE THE BANKS SAID YES TO THEM.
THE MEDIA IS OWNED BY THE RACKET.
“The tamper-proof democracy, sensitive to the vested interests of corporate America but not to the will of people, has been erected throughout the world, pushed primarily by the US government. Leaders who don’t subscribe to it are vilified in the American and general western media, and in the event of any particular population taking democracy too seriously, the US will put in a tyrant to prepare the ground for the right kind of democracy.” The kind of democracy that privatises infra-structure, removes pesky tax levies and nasty tariffs, offers their people as slaves and opens up the bidding on lucrative contracts for foreign investors. But now that America has taken its eye off the ball by pandering to criminals like Netanyahu and Zelensky Latin America is fighting back, the people are electing real political parties like Evo Morales’ MAS, a party with real principles and real policies that serve the people and not the racketeers and all the vilifying in the obscene Murdoch-owned press and the other mainstream toadies to the billionaire class cannot stuff the genie back into the bottle. The genie is out and flittering all over social media. None of us can pretend we do not catch a glimmer of the truth she wings. If she is still in the business of granting wishes and world peace is too amorphous a construct then let us all focus on disrupting the money trail and stopping our ears to the piper that sirens us with despair and disempowerment.
Kennard sums up his aching plea for sanity and light with a very simple and focused point that should bring the crime home: “In America if you are poor, you are on your own.”
In Gaza if you are poor, and everyone is, they have the strength and faith to pull together, albeit in misery. But there is something so magnificent about the courage exemplified by these saints in the Petri dish of human conscience. Their sacrifice and their nobility is in such direct contrast to the greed and warmongering that is fuelling the Racket and subsuming the racketeers whose insatiable appetite for money and power is failing to fill the empty void where a soul has fled.
I recommend this book unreservedly and I ask that you read it and lend it out and circulate it as widely as possible.
And in summing up, I would add that IF the poor pulled together, and supported each other, they, WE, could beat the system and let the banks scream NO into a void because we wouldn’t need them anymore. We’d help each other survive and the genie could fly home.
Despite the fact that she hadn’t missed a mortgage payment until she lost her job as a corporate bond trader, despite the fact that she had found another job in a boutique bond firm a few months later and had only missed five mortgage payments which she was offering to make up with interest, despite the fact that she was upfront about her circumstances, despite the fact that she now had the means to pay her mortgage the bank took possession of her home.
HOMELESSNESS IN AMERICA.
“The Noble Drew project was built in 1972 in a poor part of Brownsville, surrounded by tenements and empty lots.” For a decade it functioned as low-rent housing for the struggling class of Americans who subsist one paycheck away from homelessness. Eventually it was privatised and purchased by multiple slum lords, finally landing with Lyndon Realty who funnelled government funds for renovations into their private bank accounts. In short, the buildings ostensibly built for the working class were a front for laundering government funds. Ultimately a new slum lord bought the complex of disintegrating buildings/tenements for $10. The residents who were not given evacuation orders remain in apartments even rats avoid – no hot water, no elevators, no security and walls riddled with mold. “Eventually the Department of Homeless Services was contracted to run the buildings. The rent they accrued was nearly $3,000 per unit from federal subsidies, far higher than the individual tenants whose rent was evaluated sometimes as low as $68.” The racketeers made a killing.
THE INCEPTION OF THE RACKET.
“At the end of WW11 American planners set about designing a monetary system that would put the rest of humanity under the crack of their whip.” In short, the new carpetbaggers understood that to profit from the global south and the local poor they needed to create impossible debt. So began a scheme/scam of altruistic humanitarian aid programs and money-lending that would keep “developing” countries in a state of gratitude, disempowerment and escalating permanent interest-laden debt. “The official old-world empires (and the new local poor) were to be replaced by something more insidious, more hidden, something that to this day is still not recognised for what it is: debt slavery.” And don’t think for two seconds that a middle-class westerner living a life medicated with movies, date nights, fast food, feel-good music, celebrity worship, mindless sitcoms, beauty products and fashion that change so fast your spending is in spin cycle, has freedom. You don’t have any more significant freedom than your impoverished fellow victims in the satellite nations under the whip. You will spend your life working at a job you hate, paying off a mortgage (if you’re lucky) and retiring with a nickel handshake that buys you a Royal Caribbean cruise and a plot in the cemetery.
GAZA.
“At 5.30am one October morning the Israeli border police forcibly evicted the Hanoun family from the home their family had occupied for generations. The Hanouns were offered a tent by the Red Cross. The loss of their home was the culmination of a decades-long program of intimidation and harassment of the Sheikh Jarrah community that had seen lives destroyed to appease the most rancid kind of religious zealotry.”
Was this after October 7th, 2023? No this was October 2014.
“Sheikh Jarrah is situated in a valley down from the American Colony Hotel where Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister and possibly the most willing servant of the American racket in the world. Blair was staying in a luxury suite to grace Jerusalem with his presence (and presumably “voice”) as the racket’s “Peace Envoy”. Blair could undoubtedly see the Hanoun’s house from the hotel pool where he took his morning swim. When Kennard contacted Blair’s spokesperson about the eviction(s) that had taken place that morning, he was informed that Blair had “No comment”.
“Across the way, and in sightline of Mr Blair and the British consulate, there was a makeshift tent where a 62-year-old woman was now living after settlers took her home.”
October 7th did not occur in a vacuum or a broil of antisemitic hatred. It occurred as a push-back against the worst kind of racketeering the elite can countenance: greed sanctioned by God.
THE FIRST PEOPLES OF AMERICA.
“The Delaware nation tribe had a simple strategy for creating jobs for the nearly two thirds of its members who were destitute and unemployed: it wanted to manufacture lighting. The Native American community already distributed lighting so they knew the industry well; now they wanted to produce LED lights. Except they couldn’t.”
THE BANK SAID NO.
“They weren’t white and they had no natural resources on their arid reservations, so the financial players, the racketeers who make everything in America move, turned them away. It was the latest stage in a centuries-old battle for basic dignity by America’s First People against the usurpers and the financial wizards who have kept them condemned to under-development.”
ENVIRONMENTAL RAPE.
In Naoma the people are dying of fast-moving cancers and children play in playgrounds shrouded in a pall of dust so thick it blocks out the sun. MTM, the mining magnate, is decapitating mountains in the glorious Appalachians by blasting the tops off them to extract coal. This disfigurement is not only sending local residents of Naoma to early graves, it is permanently erasing a mountain range of such exquisite natural beauty it should be deemed a World Heritage Site but money shouts over whisperingly eloquent and ever-gifting Nature. At last count MTM had violated over 2,000 environmental protection laws but the government is oddly deaf, dumb and blind to the protesters who regularly call these environmental criminals out. Why? BECAUSE THE BANKS SAID YES TO THEM.
THE MEDIA IS OWNED BY THE RACKET.
“The tamper-proof democracy, sensitive to the vested interests of corporate America but not to the will of people, has been erected throughout the world, pushed primarily by the US government. Leaders who don’t subscribe to it are vilified in the American and general western media, and in the event of any particular population taking democracy too seriously, the US will put in a tyrant to prepare the ground for the right kind of democracy.” The kind of democracy that privatises infra-structure, removes pesky tax levies and nasty tariffs, offers their people as slaves and opens up the bidding on lucrative contracts for foreign investors. But now that America has taken its eye off the ball by pandering to criminals like Netanyahu and Zelensky Latin America is fighting back, the people are electing real political parties like Evo Morales’ MAS, a party with real principles and real policies that serve the people and not the racketeers and all the vilifying in the obscene Murdoch-owned press and the other mainstream toadies to the billionaire class cannot stuff the genie back into the bottle. The genie is out and flittering all over social media. None of us can pretend we do not catch a glimmer of the truth she wings. If she is still in the business of granting wishes and world peace is too amorphous a construct then let us all focus on disrupting the money trail and stopping our ears to the piper that sirens us with despair and disempowerment.
Kennard sums up his aching plea for sanity and light with a very simple and focused point that should bring the crime home: “In America if you are poor, you are on your own.”
In Gaza if you are poor, and everyone is, they have the strength and faith to pull together, albeit in misery. But there is something so magnificent about the courage exemplified by these saints in the Petri dish of human conscience. Their sacrifice and their nobility is in such direct contrast to the greed and warmongering that is fuelling the Racket and subsuming the racketeers whose insatiable appetite for money and power is failing to fill the empty void where a soul has fled.
I recommend this book unreservedly and I ask that you read it and lend it out and circulate it as widely as possible.
And in summing up, I would add that IF the poor pulled together, and supported each other, they, WE, could beat the system and let the banks scream NO into a void because we wouldn’t need them anymore. We’d help each other survive and the genie could fly home.
Read
November 4, 2024A great, informative introduction to the inner workings of Western Imperialism and Colonialism, from Foreign AID agencies through NGOs, to billionaire funded foundations and think tanks and their newspapers. This book should be read by anyone willing to start gaining a deeper understanding of the economic savagery unleashed on much of the world’s population by some of the most privileged classes of our societies. In just under 400 pages it manages to show a clear link between the powerful and the death and devastation they’re responsible for.
June 12, 2015
Eye opening to the say the least. If you have a passing interest in World Politics, Capitalism, US Foreign Policy and how they make an impact and change various parts of the world for the worst and in detriment of the local people give it a chance and get informed.
August 22, 2021
Esclarecedor
August 29, 2024
Dense. Ridiculously informative. Important.
February 16, 2024
“Our entire world is at the mercy of an elite business community who run it in secret.”
That’s how to sum up this pretty eye-opening book by Matt Kennard as he seeks to uncover who the true masters of the world are. These business elites have only one thing in mind while doing so; they only really care about the bottom line of their companies and the investment opportunities that they can uncover in new global markets. Everything else (human rights, decency, rule of law, etc) exist only as a means to boost profit. It’s quite alarming, and also something that I’ve seen first-hand, so it’s something I’m willing to believe occurs all over the world.
I’m actually going to start by describing the media’s role in this global ‘racket’: “Our world is ruled by a racket. This racket is an amalgamation of different players, including transnational corporations, banks, hedge and mutual funds, and insurance companies; in effect, the many different concentrations of private wealth we have in our society. We often don’t know the names of the people who run these institutions, but they hold the real power in our world, and are backed by the US government, and as a last resort the US military. But the racket is nothing without the media.”
Why was this racket allowed to continue, if it’s obviously to the disadvantage of the vast, vast majority of people? Because everyday we are being LIED to by a media owned by the racket. In order to succeed in the media landscape, in order to rise to the top, you need to say and think and believe in the ‘right’ things. What are the right things? Why, whatever benefits the racket of course! And the beauty of the system (which, again, I’ve witnessed first hand) is that you don’t need to coerce people to believe in the right things; you just need to promote those people who genuinely believe the bullshit they spout. This is the modus operandi of any hierarchy; promote the useful idiots and sideline the critics who have a genuine point.
“It’s no coincidence that people get less idealistic as they get older. That’s how the system works to root out ideas dangerous to it, maintaining control of those that sit at its apex. So, slowly, you stop expressing opinions that are different from everyone else’s, and you shed any previously held idealism. If you do carry on thinking as before, you quickly become a “maverick” or, even worse, “immature” and “childish”. It’s hard to go into work every day for a whole career under this kind of groupthink pressure and stay sane. Few try for long. From my experience, it’s not Machiavellian – people don’t actively think “I’m going to become a neoliberal warmonger so I can get higher up the hierarchy of my newspaper”. But people slowly temper their opinions, gradually shaving off their “rougher edges” in order to become part of the institutionalized thinking.”
THE IMPORTANCE OF DEBT, ‘FREE’ TRADE, and NATURAL RESOURCES
The way the US controls the world is through debt; by financing other countries, and making them fall into debt. America has the money which the other countries need; if they ever decide to do something against the business interest of the US, the money stops flowing. It’s really that simple. The institutions created to finance and control the world include the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the World Bank. As the economy of the country is restructured to benefit the US, the interests of the people fall by the wayside. Regulations are cut, public healthcare slashed, and capital in the US grows and grows.
‘Free trade’ refers to the freedom of America to do as it pleases in its trading relationships, while everyone is forced to create economies conducive to being flooded by American goods. “Free trade agreements” actually often have nothing to do with trade – in the sense of a mutual lowering of tariffs. They are used, instead, to entrench corporate ownership of society through changes to the law in favor of investors.”
An important part of the racket involves extracting natural resources from poor countries, and removing any governments that try to prevent this from happening. On top of that, make sure to include a PR campaign by providing the locals with a few shoddy schools and hospitals that are substandard.
The book then goes through many instances of when the US government (and various subsidiary agencies) restructure the world in order to accommodate their own financial interests.
HAITI
Haiti experienced a devastating earthquake in 2010, which left the infrastructure in ruins. This example shows that foreign aid is nothing other than an excuse for the US to spread its slimy tentacles into another country and privatise its public utilities. After making sure that a leader (Aristide) with the people’s interests was barred from taking office (and ousted in a coup), they installed a puppet leader (Martelly) who would enable the looting of the country’s resources. An interesting statistic: of every $100 of Haiti reconstruction contracts awarded by the American government, $98.40 returned to American companies. Foreign aid indeed. Bear in mind that the earthquake was simply the excuse used by the government to enact its plans; it had been trying to push through neoliberal reforms for the better part of 20 years prior.
ISRAEL
Israel is a rogue, terrorist state that practices colonial policies and serial war crimes against the Palestinians; and it’s all funded by US taxpayers. Why? Because Israel play a very important strategic role for the US, as the only reliable pro-Western power in the Middle East. Israel is able to do whatever it likes as long as it remains a cop on the beat willing to push US interests in the Middle East. This is the result of an imperialist empire that wants to get its way, no matter what.
TURKEY
Turkey is another such case, perhaps not as extreme. At the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Kemal Ataturk aspired to an ethnocentric country, meaning identity homogeneity. There were ethnic Kurds living in Turkey at the time, which meant that they were stripped of their sovereignty and they were forcibly assimilated into Turkish society. In the 1980s and 1990s, with US diplomatic support and US-supplied weapons, the military cleared large parts of the Kurdish southeast, in the name of fighting the PKK, or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. “A secular, fascist-tinged elite have dominated Turkish politics since the time of Ataturk and liquidated democracy throughout the 20th century when anyone threatened to usurp their power. Meanwhile the elite established a Turkey that suited their interests: they tied themselves tightly to the US empire and its racket as it established its domination over the Middle East, filtering cash through international financial institutions to a well-served rentier class.” The Turks committed many atrocities, but it’s fine since they were acting under the aegis of the Americans.
HONDURAS
How do you justify placing military personnel and agents throughout the world without an ideological enemy such as the Soviet Union to do so? Easy, you cook up a so-called ‘Drug War’, a war that’s unwinnable, as a cover to place as many people as you want all over the world. “The Drug War then became the perfect front for a sustained military presence in the region that would make all its countries slaves to US dictates: the situation that the planners wanted replicated was that of Honduras.” So how does it all work? “Money is given by the US, alongside military and drug personnel and training, to Latin American countries in an effort to interdict drugs that are being smuggled from Colombia and other areas of South America through Central America until they finally arrive on the streets of Baltimore or Chicago. Interdiction does happen – the propaganda is not completely hollow – in the form of night raids and drug busts, but “interdiction is a very small part of the puzzle.” The US is losing the War on Drugs, but that doesn’t matter because it was never about the Drugs. “The war will continue because it’s the perfect mask, the perfect means of maintaining high levels of military force and control throughout the Americas now that the excuse of the Soviet Union has disappeared.”
BOLIVIA
Bolivia is a country that’s fighting back against the racket thanks to its indigenous President Evo Morales (who was ousted in a coup in 2019, likely fomented by the US, but I don’t have any proof of this claim.) The Morales government has consistently said that the US uses USAID to push the strategic goals of the government under the guise of ‘development’ and ‘aid’. The aid tactic is not to overthrow the government but to slowly transform society from the participatory type to a more consumerist, passive democracy subsumed within American interests. Morales had achieved a growth in the economy, alongside a reduction in poverty, while part-nationalising key industries; this scared the US and the US-sympathising elites. For this, they were made to pay. “In September 2008, President Bush suspended the crucial trade preferences that Bolivia enjoyed – alongside Colombia, Ecuador and Peru – under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA)…the decision came one day after five leading US business groups urged the Bush administration and Congress to consider ending trade benefits for both Bolivia and Ecuador because of what they described as inadequate protections for foreign investors in both countries.” “For the first time in living memory, the Bolivian people are deciding their own destiny according to their needs, ideas and hopes – not those of the US. For this reason, war has been declared on Bolivian democracy, alongside any other democracy that does not see its raison d’être as supporting US interests to the detriment of its own people.”
VENEZUELA
Venezuela is another country that’s fighting back and for that, Hugo Chavez was vilified in the Western media; Nicolas Maduro still is. Venezuela should be one of the richest countries in the world, with the world’s second largest reserves of petrol; yet its covered in barren swathes of poverty. What gives? Money flowed to the multinationals pumping out the resources; Chavez reversed this process. “So why the lies and misinformation about Chávez? The answer is simple and is deeply rooted in the political and economic policies of the United States. Venezuela under Chávez provided a symbol to the rest of Latin America, and to the wider world, of what a more egalitarian society can look like.”
MEXICO
This is another land where people resent the inequality that’s imposed on them by the neoliberal restructuring of society by the Western-friendly elites. Mexico is a failing democracy; the rich are RICH, the education and healthcare systems are in shambles, despite its natural wealth and geographical location. The government wants to displace the indigenous people, or those who happen to inhabit land that foreign nationals like the look of. The US trained the Mexican military for decades, sharing manuals and supplying billions of dollars to aid in the fight against drugs (a cover to discipline dissidents.) “In the indigenous people’s battle for their land, their enemies are not just governments on the federal or state level. Behind them, steering the ship, is the racket of private capital, the multinationals who want their resources, from water to petrol. In countries like Mexico, the state acts merely as an intermediary between foreign multinationals and the country’s natural resources, giving corporate power a legitimate face as they open up the territory and evict the people. The state, contrary to its protestations, cares not a scintilla for the human rights of its own citizens. Such a state of affairs is the case in all the countries around the world that remain trapped under the US umbrella.”
A FINAL NOTE
“When I left the racket’s media and tried to write for other newspapers that I thought would be more reflective of my political outlook, I realized something even more disturbing than what I’d seen on the inside: the racket’s stranglehold on the mass media is total. The liberal and left parts of the mainstream media are as compromised by corporate money and private interests as their conservative rivals, perhaps even more so. “When I started looking into it, I saw that the Guardian is actually intimately involved with the racket, and relies on the racket to run its day-to-day reporting operations. The racket that rules us is enabled even more forcefully by the Guardian and New York Times than it is by Rupert Murdoch or the Financial Times, because they define what is acceptable progressive opinion, and tell us how far we can go and still be “respectable” and have a mainstream journalistic career.”
That’s how to sum up this pretty eye-opening book by Matt Kennard as he seeks to uncover who the true masters of the world are. These business elites have only one thing in mind while doing so; they only really care about the bottom line of their companies and the investment opportunities that they can uncover in new global markets. Everything else (human rights, decency, rule of law, etc) exist only as a means to boost profit. It’s quite alarming, and also something that I’ve seen first-hand, so it’s something I’m willing to believe occurs all over the world.
I’m actually going to start by describing the media’s role in this global ‘racket’: “Our world is ruled by a racket. This racket is an amalgamation of different players, including transnational corporations, banks, hedge and mutual funds, and insurance companies; in effect, the many different concentrations of private wealth we have in our society. We often don’t know the names of the people who run these institutions, but they hold the real power in our world, and are backed by the US government, and as a last resort the US military. But the racket is nothing without the media.”
Why was this racket allowed to continue, if it’s obviously to the disadvantage of the vast, vast majority of people? Because everyday we are being LIED to by a media owned by the racket. In order to succeed in the media landscape, in order to rise to the top, you need to say and think and believe in the ‘right’ things. What are the right things? Why, whatever benefits the racket of course! And the beauty of the system (which, again, I’ve witnessed first hand) is that you don’t need to coerce people to believe in the right things; you just need to promote those people who genuinely believe the bullshit they spout. This is the modus operandi of any hierarchy; promote the useful idiots and sideline the critics who have a genuine point.
“It’s no coincidence that people get less idealistic as they get older. That’s how the system works to root out ideas dangerous to it, maintaining control of those that sit at its apex. So, slowly, you stop expressing opinions that are different from everyone else’s, and you shed any previously held idealism. If you do carry on thinking as before, you quickly become a “maverick” or, even worse, “immature” and “childish”. It’s hard to go into work every day for a whole career under this kind of groupthink pressure and stay sane. Few try for long. From my experience, it’s not Machiavellian – people don’t actively think “I’m going to become a neoliberal warmonger so I can get higher up the hierarchy of my newspaper”. But people slowly temper their opinions, gradually shaving off their “rougher edges” in order to become part of the institutionalized thinking.”
THE IMPORTANCE OF DEBT, ‘FREE’ TRADE, and NATURAL RESOURCES
The way the US controls the world is through debt; by financing other countries, and making them fall into debt. America has the money which the other countries need; if they ever decide to do something against the business interest of the US, the money stops flowing. It’s really that simple. The institutions created to finance and control the world include the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the World Bank. As the economy of the country is restructured to benefit the US, the interests of the people fall by the wayside. Regulations are cut, public healthcare slashed, and capital in the US grows and grows.
‘Free trade’ refers to the freedom of America to do as it pleases in its trading relationships, while everyone is forced to create economies conducive to being flooded by American goods. “Free trade agreements” actually often have nothing to do with trade – in the sense of a mutual lowering of tariffs. They are used, instead, to entrench corporate ownership of society through changes to the law in favor of investors.”
An important part of the racket involves extracting natural resources from poor countries, and removing any governments that try to prevent this from happening. On top of that, make sure to include a PR campaign by providing the locals with a few shoddy schools and hospitals that are substandard.
The book then goes through many instances of when the US government (and various subsidiary agencies) restructure the world in order to accommodate their own financial interests.
HAITI
Haiti experienced a devastating earthquake in 2010, which left the infrastructure in ruins. This example shows that foreign aid is nothing other than an excuse for the US to spread its slimy tentacles into another country and privatise its public utilities. After making sure that a leader (Aristide) with the people’s interests was barred from taking office (and ousted in a coup), they installed a puppet leader (Martelly) who would enable the looting of the country’s resources. An interesting statistic: of every $100 of Haiti reconstruction contracts awarded by the American government, $98.40 returned to American companies. Foreign aid indeed. Bear in mind that the earthquake was simply the excuse used by the government to enact its plans; it had been trying to push through neoliberal reforms for the better part of 20 years prior.
ISRAEL
Israel is a rogue, terrorist state that practices colonial policies and serial war crimes against the Palestinians; and it’s all funded by US taxpayers. Why? Because Israel play a very important strategic role for the US, as the only reliable pro-Western power in the Middle East. Israel is able to do whatever it likes as long as it remains a cop on the beat willing to push US interests in the Middle East. This is the result of an imperialist empire that wants to get its way, no matter what.
TURKEY
Turkey is another such case, perhaps not as extreme. At the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Kemal Ataturk aspired to an ethnocentric country, meaning identity homogeneity. There were ethnic Kurds living in Turkey at the time, which meant that they were stripped of their sovereignty and they were forcibly assimilated into Turkish society. In the 1980s and 1990s, with US diplomatic support and US-supplied weapons, the military cleared large parts of the Kurdish southeast, in the name of fighting the PKK, or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. “A secular, fascist-tinged elite have dominated Turkish politics since the time of Ataturk and liquidated democracy throughout the 20th century when anyone threatened to usurp their power. Meanwhile the elite established a Turkey that suited their interests: they tied themselves tightly to the US empire and its racket as it established its domination over the Middle East, filtering cash through international financial institutions to a well-served rentier class.” The Turks committed many atrocities, but it’s fine since they were acting under the aegis of the Americans.
HONDURAS
How do you justify placing military personnel and agents throughout the world without an ideological enemy such as the Soviet Union to do so? Easy, you cook up a so-called ‘Drug War’, a war that’s unwinnable, as a cover to place as many people as you want all over the world. “The Drug War then became the perfect front for a sustained military presence in the region that would make all its countries slaves to US dictates: the situation that the planners wanted replicated was that of Honduras.” So how does it all work? “Money is given by the US, alongside military and drug personnel and training, to Latin American countries in an effort to interdict drugs that are being smuggled from Colombia and other areas of South America through Central America until they finally arrive on the streets of Baltimore or Chicago. Interdiction does happen – the propaganda is not completely hollow – in the form of night raids and drug busts, but “interdiction is a very small part of the puzzle.” The US is losing the War on Drugs, but that doesn’t matter because it was never about the Drugs. “The war will continue because it’s the perfect mask, the perfect means of maintaining high levels of military force and control throughout the Americas now that the excuse of the Soviet Union has disappeared.”
BOLIVIA
Bolivia is a country that’s fighting back against the racket thanks to its indigenous President Evo Morales (who was ousted in a coup in 2019, likely fomented by the US, but I don’t have any proof of this claim.) The Morales government has consistently said that the US uses USAID to push the strategic goals of the government under the guise of ‘development’ and ‘aid’. The aid tactic is not to overthrow the government but to slowly transform society from the participatory type to a more consumerist, passive democracy subsumed within American interests. Morales had achieved a growth in the economy, alongside a reduction in poverty, while part-nationalising key industries; this scared the US and the US-sympathising elites. For this, they were made to pay. “In September 2008, President Bush suspended the crucial trade preferences that Bolivia enjoyed – alongside Colombia, Ecuador and Peru – under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA)…the decision came one day after five leading US business groups urged the Bush administration and Congress to consider ending trade benefits for both Bolivia and Ecuador because of what they described as inadequate protections for foreign investors in both countries.” “For the first time in living memory, the Bolivian people are deciding their own destiny according to their needs, ideas and hopes – not those of the US. For this reason, war has been declared on Bolivian democracy, alongside any other democracy that does not see its raison d’être as supporting US interests to the detriment of its own people.”
VENEZUELA
Venezuela is another country that’s fighting back and for that, Hugo Chavez was vilified in the Western media; Nicolas Maduro still is. Venezuela should be one of the richest countries in the world, with the world’s second largest reserves of petrol; yet its covered in barren swathes of poverty. What gives? Money flowed to the multinationals pumping out the resources; Chavez reversed this process. “So why the lies and misinformation about Chávez? The answer is simple and is deeply rooted in the political and economic policies of the United States. Venezuela under Chávez provided a symbol to the rest of Latin America, and to the wider world, of what a more egalitarian society can look like.”
MEXICO
This is another land where people resent the inequality that’s imposed on them by the neoliberal restructuring of society by the Western-friendly elites. Mexico is a failing democracy; the rich are RICH, the education and healthcare systems are in shambles, despite its natural wealth and geographical location. The government wants to displace the indigenous people, or those who happen to inhabit land that foreign nationals like the look of. The US trained the Mexican military for decades, sharing manuals and supplying billions of dollars to aid in the fight against drugs (a cover to discipline dissidents.) “In the indigenous people’s battle for their land, their enemies are not just governments on the federal or state level. Behind them, steering the ship, is the racket of private capital, the multinationals who want their resources, from water to petrol. In countries like Mexico, the state acts merely as an intermediary between foreign multinationals and the country’s natural resources, giving corporate power a legitimate face as they open up the territory and evict the people. The state, contrary to its protestations, cares not a scintilla for the human rights of its own citizens. Such a state of affairs is the case in all the countries around the world that remain trapped under the US umbrella.”
A FINAL NOTE
“When I left the racket’s media and tried to write for other newspapers that I thought would be more reflective of my political outlook, I realized something even more disturbing than what I’d seen on the inside: the racket’s stranglehold on the mass media is total. The liberal and left parts of the mainstream media are as compromised by corporate money and private interests as their conservative rivals, perhaps even more so. “When I started looking into it, I saw that the Guardian is actually intimately involved with the racket, and relies on the racket to run its day-to-day reporting operations. The racket that rules us is enabled even more forcefully by the Guardian and New York Times than it is by Rupert Murdoch or the Financial Times, because they define what is acceptable progressive opinion, and tell us how far we can go and still be “respectable” and have a mainstream journalistic career.”
March 5, 2025
video book review: https://youtu.be/xQzaO_y3ufk
An overall useful book that perhaps only fails in trying too hard to cover too much. A good introduction to economic-hit-man policies imposed on the whole world by America and its enablers.
"Despite constant US propaganda to the contrary, such self-interest, or naked imperialism, was the main motivation — to sculpt a world in its image, to create a global population working for elite US interests, while at the same time thinking they were working for their own." (p. 44)
"Transnational corporations have spent the past 25 years running this race, looking for the poorest country with the least social infrastructure in which they can produce most cheaply, turning the globe, or its poorest parts, into a wasteland of broken people and destroyed landscapes. This is all called 'globalization' by the racket's intelligentsia." (p. 57)
"More accurately, 'free trade' refers to the freedom of America to do as it pleases in its trading relationships, while everyone else is forced to create economies conducive to being flooded by American goods." (p. 61)
"One academic notes further how the US actually 'formally remaine outside the GATT regime': the US Senate never ratified the GATT. But, he adds, the Senate 'allowed the GATT system to work in a legal sense, by and large'. This precarious relationship with the GATT was consciously created because it allowed the US to be largely unconstrained by agreements which could have damaging economic consequences, while taking advantage of markets that could be prized open through the organization." (p. 63)
"Another of the major myths promoted by the US and its agents is that 'trade liberalization' — which is code for getting rid of obstructions to US products — is a vital prerequisite for development." (p. 65)
"The Bolivians have gone into projects with the Chinese, reporting that they treat them like equals, in a way the Americans never have done." (p. 92)
"From its inception, the UN has enabled the US to enforce its own foreign policy objectives with a veneer of international support." (p. 99)
(quoting Norm Finkelstein) "An occupation is wrong, building a wall around these people is wrong, shooting children for throwing stones is wrong, stealing people's land is wrong — that's not very complicated at all." (p. 116-117)
"The flack representing the embassy at this point reminded me that the Americans were 'here at the request of the government, working in areas that the government has identified'. This is the oldest American propaganda line there is." (p. 169)
An overall useful book that perhaps only fails in trying too hard to cover too much. A good introduction to economic-hit-man policies imposed on the whole world by America and its enablers.
"Despite constant US propaganda to the contrary, such self-interest, or naked imperialism, was the main motivation — to sculpt a world in its image, to create a global population working for elite US interests, while at the same time thinking they were working for their own." (p. 44)
"Transnational corporations have spent the past 25 years running this race, looking for the poorest country with the least social infrastructure in which they can produce most cheaply, turning the globe, or its poorest parts, into a wasteland of broken people and destroyed landscapes. This is all called 'globalization' by the racket's intelligentsia." (p. 57)
"More accurately, 'free trade' refers to the freedom of America to do as it pleases in its trading relationships, while everyone else is forced to create economies conducive to being flooded by American goods." (p. 61)
"One academic notes further how the US actually 'formally remaine outside the GATT regime': the US Senate never ratified the GATT. But, he adds, the Senate 'allowed the GATT system to work in a legal sense, by and large'. This precarious relationship with the GATT was consciously created because it allowed the US to be largely unconstrained by agreements which could have damaging economic consequences, while taking advantage of markets that could be prized open through the organization." (p. 63)
"Another of the major myths promoted by the US and its agents is that 'trade liberalization' — which is code for getting rid of obstructions to US products — is a vital prerequisite for development." (p. 65)
"The Bolivians have gone into projects with the Chinese, reporting that they treat them like equals, in a way the Americans never have done." (p. 92)
"From its inception, the UN has enabled the US to enforce its own foreign policy objectives with a veneer of international support." (p. 99)
(quoting Norm Finkelstein) "An occupation is wrong, building a wall around these people is wrong, shooting children for throwing stones is wrong, stealing people's land is wrong — that's not very complicated at all." (p. 116-117)
"The flack representing the embassy at this point reminded me that the Americans were 'here at the request of the government, working in areas that the government has identified'. This is the oldest American propaganda line there is." (p. 169)
March 20, 2025
First and foremost, contrary to the author's claim that as an FT journalist, he had access to information about the racketeers that weren't accessible to ordinary citizens; most of the book’s materials are already widely discussed elsewhere up to a degree that reading it could be very boring.
Secondly, some materials like the parts on free trade seems to be very problematic because at least for the countries that are trading with the US, free trade and access to the US markets has been in aggregate a positive influence on growth and prosperity as the US has trade deficits with most of them to a degree that now the US is in favour of imposing tariffs on imports instead of advocating free trade.
Secondly, arguing that South Korea and Taiwan growth were due to their protectionist economic policies raises this question that how can those countries pursue those policies while they have been so much dependent on the US support since their independence but South American countries couldn’t do that or pursue similar policies! There are few other countries on earth where the US has a bigger military presence than South Korea and South Korea have not been a democracy for a good portion of the previous centuries.
Inconsistencies and contradictions in the book are not limited to the ones mentioned above but it’s major deficit in my opinion is that as I mentioned earlier, it has not provided new information or insights above what you could read in books written by authors with similar political views. The author has merely repeated what has been again and again proposed by leftist authors to a point that it raises the question that why raising them again in the format of a new book would be useful.
Secondly, some materials like the parts on free trade seems to be very problematic because at least for the countries that are trading with the US, free trade and access to the US markets has been in aggregate a positive influence on growth and prosperity as the US has trade deficits with most of them to a degree that now the US is in favour of imposing tariffs on imports instead of advocating free trade.
Secondly, arguing that South Korea and Taiwan growth were due to their protectionist economic policies raises this question that how can those countries pursue those policies while they have been so much dependent on the US support since their independence but South American countries couldn’t do that or pursue similar policies! There are few other countries on earth where the US has a bigger military presence than South Korea and South Korea have not been a democracy for a good portion of the previous centuries.
Inconsistencies and contradictions in the book are not limited to the ones mentioned above but it’s major deficit in my opinion is that as I mentioned earlier, it has not provided new information or insights above what you could read in books written by authors with similar political views. The author has merely repeated what has been again and again proposed by leftist authors to a point that it raises the question that why raising them again in the format of a new book would be useful.
December 20, 2024
Written from a left of the left point of view reminiscent of John Pilger et al.
There are certainly fascinating and deeply troubling things one learns about so called class-warfare, deep state politics and economic subjugation and colonialism in disguise across various parts of the modern world by the -mainly Western- hegemons of our era, but from a Muslim intellectual standpoint the disdain for so called Islamism or Islam inspired politics feels acerbic. Also lacking is a dissection of equally troubling events in the so called socialists' camp such as the ethnic cleansing of Chechnya/Ingushetia under Stalin, the Great Chinese Famine that killed tens of millions under Mao Zedung or the like.
One may read Muhammad Asad's The Message of the Qur'an https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6... and his other works to get a better sense of Islam inspired politics. It is above the right-left divide and an appeal to moderation and humility in approach.
This book is good in that it highlights the mechanics of modern day Western colonialism. The author spends time delving into the World Bank, IMF, WTO and the UN and other global institutions that are exploited to suit a colonial agenda. There is a mild scratching of the surface on monetary policy (the delinking of currency to the gold standard), but no deeper insights into how this then enables exploitation and inequality. For a deeper dive on that I would suggest Tarek El-Diwani's The Problem with Interest https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8... and the book, Where Does Money Come From https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... .
There are certainly fascinating and deeply troubling things one learns about so called class-warfare, deep state politics and economic subjugation and colonialism in disguise across various parts of the modern world by the -mainly Western- hegemons of our era, but from a Muslim intellectual standpoint the disdain for so called Islamism or Islam inspired politics feels acerbic. Also lacking is a dissection of equally troubling events in the so called socialists' camp such as the ethnic cleansing of Chechnya/Ingushetia under Stalin, the Great Chinese Famine that killed tens of millions under Mao Zedung or the like.
One may read Muhammad Asad's The Message of the Qur'an https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6... and his other works to get a better sense of Islam inspired politics. It is above the right-left divide and an appeal to moderation and humility in approach.
This book is good in that it highlights the mechanics of modern day Western colonialism. The author spends time delving into the World Bank, IMF, WTO and the UN and other global institutions that are exploited to suit a colonial agenda. There is a mild scratching of the surface on monetary policy (the delinking of currency to the gold standard), but no deeper insights into how this then enables exploitation and inequality. For a deeper dive on that I would suggest Tarek El-Diwani's The Problem with Interest https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8... and the book, Where Does Money Come From https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... .
February 19, 2025
Here is a collection of lucid, critical findings by a journalist who'd been hired to produce stories in harmony with corporate perspectives. But he decided to defect, and to expose the media mainstream's views as gross misrepresentations if not boldface lies. Piling on facts, many collected at first hand, from cases in the Middle East, Latin America and beyond, the author explains in clear prose how US official and corporate interests go about their dirty work, often in the name of development, security and peace.
Even more telling are his revelations as an erstwhile insider at the top of information food chains. In tones of a j’accuse polemic, he recounts how The Financial Times and other media feeding elite and public opinion validate and camouflage plunder and violence. With this book, the author joins the company of Vincent Bevins, Chris Hedges, Peter S. Goodman -- all of them former staff of The Washington Post or The New York Times -- who quit those powerful media. They are dissenters, and their journalism today is about truth-telling.
As lies by Trump, Musk and a raft of European rightwingers are flying halfway around the world on a daily basis, the work of renegade journalists like these are helping truth get its boots on.
Even more telling are his revelations as an erstwhile insider at the top of information food chains. In tones of a j’accuse polemic, he recounts how The Financial Times and other media feeding elite and public opinion validate and camouflage plunder and violence. With this book, the author joins the company of Vincent Bevins, Chris Hedges, Peter S. Goodman -- all of them former staff of The Washington Post or The New York Times -- who quit those powerful media. They are dissenters, and their journalism today is about truth-telling.
As lies by Trump, Musk and a raft of European rightwingers are flying halfway around the world on a daily basis, the work of renegade journalists like these are helping truth get its boots on.
May 7, 2025
Matt Kennard is one of the most important journalists at the moment, writing for the FT and Guardian before setting up Declassified along with Mark Curtis which has been crucial in analysing Britain's defence policies and more recently exposing how the Labour and Tory governments have been directly aiding Israel's genocide in Gaza.
A couple of years ago I read Kennard and Claire Provost's book Silent Coup which was written during their time at the FT and Centre for Investigate Journalism. There's some crossover with this book but Silent Coup is more focused on Business and Economics where as The Racket looks at the US empire from a wider lens. Kennard uses examples of resistance against US imperialism across the globe be this through armed resistance, art and journalism. The Zapatista's was something I didn't know a great deal about as well as Evo Morales' socialism in Bolivia. The book's very engaging and each chapter there's exclusive interviews with those in 'The Racket' and those resisting it.
A couple of years ago I read Kennard and Claire Provost's book Silent Coup which was written during their time at the FT and Centre for Investigate Journalism. There's some crossover with this book but Silent Coup is more focused on Business and Economics where as The Racket looks at the US empire from a wider lens. Kennard uses examples of resistance against US imperialism across the globe be this through armed resistance, art and journalism. The Zapatista's was something I didn't know a great deal about as well as Evo Morales' socialism in Bolivia. The book's very engaging and each chapter there's exclusive interviews with those in 'The Racket' and those resisting it.
December 11, 2024
Incredibly important book written in 2016 after a decade or more of on the ground journalistic reporting and gathering of stories that never show up in the media. Matt Kennard had unprecedented access to the workings of the US Empire and brings to the American public a detailed accounting of how this racket operates.
This book is rich with personal accounts of stories that don’t get told but should. The original title is a rogue reporter versus the American Empire, but for the reasons outlined in this book the word empire doesn’t make it into American media. The accounts from Latin American and other global regions were incredible. From the Chiapas region in Mexico to Bolivia to Haiti to Palestine to Vietnam, this book is a treasure trove, and every American should know exactly how the American Empire works. It’s a racket.
This book is rich with personal accounts of stories that don’t get told but should. The original title is a rogue reporter versus the American Empire, but for the reasons outlined in this book the word empire doesn’t make it into American media. The accounts from Latin American and other global regions were incredible. From the Chiapas region in Mexico to Bolivia to Haiti to Palestine to Vietnam, this book is a treasure trove, and every American should know exactly how the American Empire works. It’s a racket.
January 9, 2025
One of the best books ever written.
Everyone who doesn't want to live in a beautiful delusion about how the world truly functions, should read it. For the rest, I can only say they are living a much easier existence.
It's funny The Guardian wrote a smear review after it was first published in 2015, attacking the book to be over-simplistic. I guess they didn't have any stronger arguments against it. The system Kennard exposed is actually quite complex and depends on maintaining a constant propaganda to conceal the truth, so I assume it's quite exhausting and everything but simple for the racketeers and their media enablers to do on a daily basis.
I'm particularly grateful for the chapter about art and politics, and the power of art as an instrument of resistance. Matt Kennard is one of the rare contemporary journalists with integrity.
Everyone who doesn't want to live in a beautiful delusion about how the world truly functions, should read it. For the rest, I can only say they are living a much easier existence.
It's funny The Guardian wrote a smear review after it was first published in 2015, attacking the book to be over-simplistic. I guess they didn't have any stronger arguments against it. The system Kennard exposed is actually quite complex and depends on maintaining a constant propaganda to conceal the truth, so I assume it's quite exhausting and everything but simple for the racketeers and their media enablers to do on a daily basis.
I'm particularly grateful for the chapter about art and politics, and the power of art as an instrument of resistance. Matt Kennard is one of the rare contemporary journalists with integrity.
January 30, 2025
Reading this book is painful.
Truth hurts, especially when it conflicts with everything you've been taught to believe your entire life. Unfortunately, what Matt Kennard outlines is sadly consistent with a number of other authors analysis and is fully supported by verifiable facts.
If you want to challenge what you think you know and are open to learning the truth about the way business and government operates, then definitely read this book. Also read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman."
Don't read this book if you want to stay in your insulated cocoon and don't want any intrusive ideas or facts to disturb your comfort.
Truth hurts, especially when it conflicts with everything you've been taught to believe your entire life. Unfortunately, what Matt Kennard outlines is sadly consistent with a number of other authors analysis and is fully supported by verifiable facts.
If you want to challenge what you think you know and are open to learning the truth about the way business and government operates, then definitely read this book. Also read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman."
Don't read this book if you want to stay in your insulated cocoon and don't want any intrusive ideas or facts to disturb your comfort.
February 23, 2025
DNF-ed at ~50% because it assumes the reader knows their history well enough, because whatever little context is present in the book is insufficient on its own to understand the points the author is trying to make. It left me wondering whether he was trying to fit these stories into a mold tha he had already decided at the outset. Repeating the title of the book every few paragraphs was also irritating. There were glimmers of sharpness and clarity that never truly rose up above the surface. The result is a book that both too long, because the conclusions are often longwinded and anti-climactic, and too short, because of the breadth he tries to cover.
January 6, 2025
This was an honest book, full of information, fearless too – by an author who puts himself on the line. I thought I already knew quite a bit of this, but no the book is like a Bible. As an artist I find the following quote from Bertolt Brecht particularly interesting. Kennard writes: “They have internalized Brecht’s timeless dictum that ‘Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer to shape it.”
February 22, 2025
Nothing has radicalized me more than liberals. I used to be one until I knew better. Corporate media is just that, corporate. This book shed a whole new light on the myth of US benevolence. It’s complicated, but we are all being lied to. I believe that most people in the USAID sector think they are doing good things and many are, but at what cost? The Empire is coming to an end and maybe it should. Great book.
April 14, 2025
Everyone should read this book. Particularly relevant today is the writing about USAID - the decision to cut this budget was a good thing (but done for the wrong reasons!). I learnt so much from this book. I found the section about culture/art as weapons of resistance illuminating. The afterward about the media and their role in upholding the world (dis)order is excellent. Read it to increase your knowledge of how the world works and the power of the US Empire.
March 12, 2019
Highly recommend. Very insightful analysis on how Big Business and America government topple governments that don’t roll out the red carpet and comply with their exploitative money making capitalist program.
December 6, 2024
The author's very brave, and the afterword definitely rings true. "The media system in the West doesn’t work by active censorship. The beauty of the system is that you don’t need to tell journalists what to write – they support the status quo as a reflex."
December 30, 2024
Excellent, topical and illuminating
An excellent book which removes the narrow sheen of respectability given to U. S. Foreign Policy. Diligent and meticulous in providing its sources.
An excellent book which removes the narrow sheen of respectability given to U. S. Foreign Policy. Diligent and meticulous in providing its sources.
August 17, 2017
Matt writes this is if he has discovered something new. Well he hasn't.
September 5, 2022
An alright list of victims of US Imperialism but totally lacks any structural explanatory power.
December 20, 2024
A searing read exposing the rapacious rulers of the world!
December 26, 2024
An essential read if you want to learn about the US Empire and how it operates. To be read in conjunction with Blum’s ‘Killing Hope.’
June 6, 2017
Having read two other books by another journalist turned writer, Jon Ronson, I got the wrong impression that these type of investigative works should be more or less objective. I agree on some of the presented facts and some of the argumentation and the fact that the US government, Wall Street and insurance companies - the "racket -" have unscrupulous interests that they chase using underhanded methods is undeniable. However, I'm giving this book a low rating for the following reasons. The author has leftist inclinations and this is strongly reflected in his work, there is blatant leftist propaganda which makes me, as citizen of a former communist country, sick to my stomach, leftist presidents like Hugo Chavez, the former cocalero (coca leaves picker) Evo Morales, Salvador Allende are praised and presented as brave heroes who fought against the "imperialist" America. Hugo Chavez is lauded that he built a modern and clean metrocable up the hills of Caracas but the author doesn't mention one iota about the decrepit state in which he left the country, there are food shortages and even toilet paper is hard to find, the author can't see the forest because of the trees. Salvador Allende is presented as the poor communist president that was ousted by the dictator Pinochet and the author wrongly writes that what followed next was decades of economic downturn; Chile is an example of economic development and stability in South America and it's all due to the reforms done by Pinochet, if Allende remained into power than most probably Chile would be nowadays in the same decrepit state like Venezuela.
The author invents or omits important historical facts, for example he writes that the US got Cuba from Spain in 1852 which is a pure invention, this event never happened.
The author likes to play the race card and to present whites and the white race as Evil incarnated, he doesn't say Americans or Europeans, it's the 'pale faced' or a similar synonym used instead, he puts in antithesis the pale faced oligarchy in Bolivia and Evo Morales for example. Who does the author think he is? Kunta Kinte? He is also white. Nice try at white guilt and white shaming.
The author invents or omits important historical facts, for example he writes that the US got Cuba from Spain in 1852 which is a pure invention, this event never happened.
The author likes to play the race card and to present whites and the white race as Evil incarnated, he doesn't say Americans or Europeans, it's the 'pale faced' or a similar synonym used instead, he puts in antithesis the pale faced oligarchy in Bolivia and Evo Morales for example. Who does the author think he is? Kunta Kinte? He is also white. Nice try at white guilt and white shaming.
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