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  • Miami New Times

    Budget Ballin'

    South Florida's lawless exotic rental car industry keeps rolling.

    By Gus Garcia-Roberts

  • Houston Press

    Crime Doesn't Pay Back

    In Texas, restitution for victims is nothing but a state-sanctioned sham.

    By Chris Vogel

  • Seattle Weekly

    Hot and Frothy

    If you thought Seattle couldn't fetishize coffee any more, you haven't been to a "cupping" yet.

    By Jonathan Kauffman

It's Not OK to Hit, Man

By Hiya Swanhuyser

Published on May 28, 2008 at 4:23am

You hear stories about them: The military contractors, the private armies, the paracapitalist danger boys. Sometimes they're portrayed as heroes in action movies. But John Perkins used to be one of them, albeit a business-oriented one, not a missile-launching one, and he wrote a book about the experience called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Ugh. We'd all like to ignore them, but the wiser we get about the unsavory systems that use them to keep the little guy down, the better. At this talk, the author, (who also wrote The Secret History of the American Empire) also offers some of his ideas for making things more equitable.
Tue., June 3, 6:30 p.m., 2008