"Africa brings all the issues together. It is, in a way, the last frontier of unabashed exploitation and it receives that dubious honor because we have allowed ourselves to be drugged into a stupor of self-deception. We succumb to television ads hawking cheap diamonds and gold. We brag about declining prices for laptops and cell phones. We waste gasoline and complain when the prices rise. We sweep the faces of diamond and gold miners and children poisoned by oil spills under the rug of materialistic greed.
We forget that our own children will inherit that rug. They will be called upon to replace it. They will have to clean up the terrible messes we leave behind.
Africa cups her hands and shouts to us. It is indeed time to change. Together, we can lift up that carpet, remove the messes, and quite literally clean out the house we are about the hand over to our children."
-John Perkins, The Secret History of the American Empire
