Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Amoral

If I had to choose one word to describe the zeitgeist of present-day England, one of the richest countries that has ever existed, and one whose citizens enjoy standards of living that are unprecedented in human history, that word would have to be Amoral. My friends and acquaintances are mostly prosperous and comfortable, but few of them ever express gratitude for being well off, or show any thought for those at the bottom of the heap.
Cocaine makes you feel good. Its use has filtered down to the street, and to the benefit-dependent classes. Untold billions of dollars are made from trafficking, most of it going to some very nasty people. But the comfortable think it's kind of okay, just a tad naughty perhaps, and hey, who does it hurt?
A friend of mine has been to Colombia, and I have heard how a beautiful country has been wrecked by the FARC guerrillas and the US-funded government forces, each side paid, in effect, with Western cash.
This report is about a gentle and unsophisticated group called the Nukak, whose lifestyle is crumbling under the pressure of modern civilisation and drug-driven terrorism.
Have a look if you get time, and I hope that it makes you feel as much anger as I do when well-heeled Brits treat cocaine as just a bit of harmless fun.

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