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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2015
These are two interesting, controversial, complementary books. The authors are of different generations. John Perkins is sixty (2005). He was a college student during the Vietnam War who came to oppose the war, then joined the Peace Corps to avoid the draft. Noreena Hertz is thirty-six. She is an academic/activist, a professor of political economy who was tear-gassed at the massive Global Justice protest in Genoa (2001) at which hundreds were beaten by the Italian police and one protestor killed.
1. London Times interview, September 18, 2004.
2. Numbers in parentheses in the text are the page numbers of the two books under review. It will be obvious from the context which book is being cited.
3. “Junk Library Science” is posted at ShorewoodVillage.com.
4. Revere, C. T., “Tsunami Aid May Line U.S. Pockets,” The Tucson Citizen (January 17, 2005).Google Scholar Perkins's publisher has responded to the questioning of Perkins's veracity with a lengthy rebuttal, posted on the Berrett-Koehler website, dated March 7, 2005.
5. At the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, in July 2005, provisions were made to cancel all debts for eighteen countries, and to provide $50 billion more in aid. See www.50years.org for recent updates on the debt cancellation movements, and critical analysis of the Gleneagles resolutions.
6. The channeling debt reduction savings through an agency charged with seeing that they are well-spent has been proposed by others as well. See, for example, Lodewijk, Berlage, Danny, Cassimon, Jacque, Dreze, and Paul, Reding, “Prospective Aid and Indebtedness Relief: A Proposal,” World Development 31(10) (2003), 1635–54.Google Scholar
7. Perkins cites novelist Graham Greene's memoir, Conversations with the General, in support of his view regarding Torrijos. Greene, whom Perkins had met, was a good friend of Torrijos. Greene tells of a phone call he received from Torrijos's bodyguard shortly after the President's death. “There was a bomb on that plane. I know there was a bomb on that plane, but I can't tell you why over the telephone” (159). (When the jackals fail, says Perkins, the military are called in—as they were in Panama later, to remove Manuel Noriega, and most recently in Iraq, to eliminate Saddam Hussein.)
8. For corroboration of these events and many others, see Drexel political scientist Michael Sullivan's sobering study, American Adventurism Abroad: 30 Invasions, Interventions and Regime Changes since World War II (London: Praeger, 2004).Google Scholar
9. One important, sophisticated article that does treat the question is Bernhard, Emunds, “The Integration of Developing Countries into International Financial Markets: Remarks from the Perspective of an Economic Ethics,” Business Ethics Quarterly 13(3) (July 2003): 337–59.Google Scholar
10. Peter, Singer, One World: The Ethics of Globalization (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), 172.Google Scholar
11. See Thomas, Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002),Google Scholar especially chaps. 1, 8.
12. Robert, Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 152.Google Scholar
13. Isaac's accepting Lurie's apology in Disgrace. Cited by Hertz, 177.
14. David, Ellerman, Helping People Help Themselves: From the World Bank to an Alternative Philosophy of Development Assistance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 246.Google Scholar
15. Ibid. 244.
16. Ellerman argues—in contrast to virtually all philosophers who have addressed the question of global justice—that “the first step toward a new strategy is a radical reduction in developmental assistance” (ibid., 248). His argument must be taken seriously. But if money is not the answer, we must think carefully about what it is that poor countries might need from rich countries. (What do we do, now that we are sorry?) We must think carefully about, among other things, the meaning of “development,” the normative and economic foundations of “intellectual property,” the possibility that “fair trade” is something different than “free trade,” the moral implications of “foreign direct investment” and “export-led growth” as developmental strategies, and the role rich-country educational institutions might play in fostering human flourishing in poor countries. (It should be noted that debt forgiveness is not aid. Debt forgiveness simply stops the flow of scarce financial resources from poor countries to rich countries.)
17. Laura L. Nash, “Intensive Care for Everyone's Least Favorite Oxymoron: Narrative in Business Ethics,” Business Ethics Quarterly 10:1 (January 2000): 277–290, 282–83, emphasis in original.