...Today, we still have slave traders. They no longer find it necessary to march into the forests of Africa looking for prime specimens who will bring top dollar on the auction blocks in Charleston, Cartagena, and Havan. They simply recruit desperate people and build a factory to produce the jackets, blue jeans, tennis shoes, automobile parts, computer components, and thousands of other items they can sell in the markets of their choosing...
...Though the Ecuadorian rain forests are precious, as are the indigenous people and all the other life forms that inhabit them, they are no more precious than the deserts of Iran and the Bedouins of Yamin's heritage. No more precious than the mountains of Java, the seas off the coast of the Phillippines, the steppes of Asia, the savannas of Africa, the forests of North America, the icecaps of the Artic, or hundresds of other threatened places. Every one of these represents a battle line, and every one of them forces us to search the depths of our individual and collective souls. I was reminded of a statistic that sums it all up: The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world's population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest countries went from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1995...
...We have convinced ourselves that all economic growth benefits humankind, and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. Finally, we have persuaded one another that the corollary to this conepts is valid and morally just: that people who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewareded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation... This corporatocracy is ourselves - we make it happen - which, of course, is why most of us find it difficult to stand up and oppose it. We would rather glimpse conspirators lurking in the shadows, because most of us work for one of those banks, corporations, or governments, or in some way are dependent on them for the goods and services they produce and market. We cannot bring ourselves to bite the hand of the master who feeds us. ... How do you rise up against a system that appears to provide you with your home and car, food and clothes, electricity and health care - even when you know that the system also creates a world where twenty-four thousand people starve to death each day and millions more hate you, or at least hate the policies made by representatives you elected? ...
John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
