I love the alarming silence of Bogotá at 1:30am. Alarming because over 8 million people live in this metropolitan kingdom. Kingdom because the monarchy of the elite exists here in such transparent and unashamed contrast to the sprawling serfdom of the millions of displaced and homeless. Serfdom because they all work to make the existence of BMW dealerships possible in a country where over 50% of the population lives in conditions of poverty. Colombia has the second highest incidence of economic inequality, after Brasil, in Latin America. And these Lords and Ladies have just signed a free trade agreement with the highest eschalons of the greater global monarchy, signing over not only their natural resources and livlihoods of the poorest of the serfdom, but also guaranteeing their own demise. Will we not learn from history? Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Venezuela...this system doesn't work for the lower eschalons of the monarchy, not even the high eschalon in this particular national monarchy.

A note from John Perkins:

Today, men and women are going to Thailand, the Phillipines, Botswana, Bolivia, and every other country where they hope to find people desperate for work. They go to these places with the express purpose of exploiting these wreched people - people whose children are malnourished, even starving, people who live in shanty-towns, and have lost all hope of a better life, people who have ceased to even dream of another day. These men and women leave their plush offices in Manhatten or San Francisco or Chicago, streak across continents and oceans in plush jet-liners, check into first-class hotels , and dine at the finest restaurants the country has to offer. Then they go searching for desperate people.

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 of Charleston, Cartagena and Havana. They simply recruit desperate people and build a factory to produce jackets, blue-jeans, tennis shoes, automobile parts, computer components and thousands of other items they can sell in the markets of their choosing. Or they may elect to not even own the factory themselves; instead they hire a local businessman to do their dirty work for them.

These men and women think of themselves as upright. They return to their homes with photographs of quaint sites and ancient ruins to show their children. They attend seminars where they pat each other on the back and exchange tidbits of advice about dealing with the eccentricities of customs in far-off lands. Their bosses hire lawyers who assure them that what they are doing is perfectly legal. They have a cadre of psychotherapists and other human resource experts at their disposal to convince them that they are helping those desperate people.

The old-fashioned slave-trader told himself that he was dealing with a species that was not entirely human, and that he was offering them the opportunity to become Christianized. He also understood that the slave was fundamental to the survival of his own society, that they were the foundation of his economy. The modern slave trader assures himself (or herself) that the desperate people are better off earning one dollar a day than no dollars at all, and that they are recieving the opportunity to become integrated into the larger world economy. She also understands that these desperate people are fundamental to the survival of her company, that they are the foundation for her own lifestyle. She never stops to think about the larger implications of what she, her lifestyle, and the economic system behind them are doing to the world - or how they may ultimately impact her children's future.

- From: Confessions of an Economic Hit-Man