Yes alright, I admit. I’m on again about the moral dilemma I perceive, brought about by some people’s contradictions, hypocrisy and double standards as they seek to justify to me, the presence and role of drug trafficking in our beleaguered society. (Regulars know my drift: should the honest upright Christian, Hindu or Muslim shop at or support the Mall/Supermarket/Auto Import/ etc., knowing the establishment to have been founded on finance earned through narco-trafficking?)

“Buzz off Fenty, we don’t know about that. Nothing has been proven in any court of law. And we don’t break any law when we support this enterprise. This place is providing a needed service...”

Just imagine, friends: I myself claim no high moral ground. I’m not even a staunch religious person like so many of my church-going acquaintances or colleagues. Yet I’m troubled by the obvious moral and spiritual `revolution’ which has upturned all of my poor needy grandmother’s standards, values and virtues. You can’t tell me the foundation of the society is not now eroded. And formerly good people - `shyly’ or boldly - rationalise, even justify that moral erosion - “Everybody doing drugs. It happening all about”.

I’ll keep provoking the few good folks left, however. Today, it is in the form of three short tales.

A prominent successful businessman
This story is set on an Island in the Caribbean Sea. The son of a `small’ businessman was approached by his girlfriend’s sister to take a small package of local confectionery to her boy-friend in Connecticut. He did so - and that was the start of his stint as a mule, ferrying cocaine to various parts of the USA. So successful was he, that he was quickly elevated into the upper echelons of the particular ring, as he himself had recruited young street-smart mules.

A natural disaster had left the island economically challenged. So, welcome was the new supermarket the successful son erected in the capital of his island. Praises and tributes flowed from government and opposition. Department store and auto import investments followed. The island was happy. The son, his father, his girl-friend - many families grew rich.

Years after, whilst visiting a sister-island, the young man’s girl-friend was abducted but it didn’t make a big stir in the fellow’s own island. The other-island kidnappers killed the girl-friend and the fellow - then deputy of the island’s Chamber of Commerce and Manufacturing suffered a stroke. There was some sympathy now for the family whose name - and investments - continued to be `respected’. Good honest people cared not how the business took off.

A young brown professional
(I’m not shying away, from black because Emanci-pation Day is approaching.)

This account is located in a neighbouring territory. This was a rural family wherein two brothers worked their economic way up selling chickens and tailoring clothes. After years of moderate success, one brother moved to the capital and established a thriving poultry outlet. Soon the garment-manufacturing brother joined his thirty-something sibling in the city. He too did well.

It was this second brother who was approached by one of his best wholesale customers with respect to some `funding’ to travel to the UK with an item. Perhaps it was because he suspected that he agreed. For years he financed this exporter/courier’s trips abroad. After all, he was merely funding ostensibly legitimate `business trips’ in the beginning. So the rewards were great. The `fronts’ - poultry and garment manufacturing - were effective.

The funny thing in the relatively small capital city was that `everyone knew’ the other sources of the brothers’ wealth. But the society admired upward mobility. Especially when the brothers donated to charity - including churches, even sport. And also, when one young son won the country’s top educational scholarship. He could have done without it.

He, however, went on to glorify the fathers’ family name. He became a respected Medical Doctor - a young Brown professional.

Good, honest law-abiding people cared not how the family really made their money. The accomplished young doctor is `serving society’. (Cocaine by itself isn’t bad. Who says drug trafficking isn’t `good’?)

The politician’s daughter

This is in a more familiar place closer to our `home’. Elected politician with pretty daughters. Could have won one of our twenty pageants per quarter - any one of those young ladies. Then the twenty-five year old met the leading vocalist who was successful and popular. He travelled to and played in many territories. But somehow the Americans never granted him a visa which the politician’s daughter had already easily secured.

So they would travel abroad a lot - together and separately. Once, whilst about to leave the local airport for New York, she was searched and questioned. Then released. Few questions followed. Her father was a popular Member of Parliament. And her popular boyfriend kept on singing. Soon he formed a band that he leads and opened a modern disco.

Everybody knows but does not care how the success was, or is funded.

As you draw your own conclusions, all I remark is that there is now a thin line between what is right and even what wrong is. Who cares about the broken victims from whose wasted bodies and souls the cocaine wealth is generated?

The bill - and FITUG
Two of our national issues of this week, of course, were the bill that seeks to enshrine as a fundamental right, someone’s sexual orientation, or preference, for which they should not be discriminated against. Among other rights. Then there was the sudden resuscitation of FITUG - a `rebel’ group of influential trade unions which is to become a sort of pressure group to force necessary reform of the Trade Union Congress.

With respect to the bill, which really should not be viewed as a gay-rights bit of legislation, one would have thought that it would be a straightforward progressive law in the making. But no. Religious, upright, straight people are worried about how the legislation, if passed, could be interpreted and utilised.

Only last Friday, I penned my own view on, really, the privacy of homosexuals. However, I won’t join the debate as is my custom when things are being pounded by all others.

Except to wonder like the letter-writer from Brooklyn, Emile Mervin. When and if young boys - or girls - see same-sex marriages, or live in environments that permit certain life-styles; when they begin to copy behaviour at an early age, who’s to blame?

I’ll delve into FITUG soon. But perhaps this is a tactic to really expose the injustices of the Old Boys Club TUC. They have not convened a real formal meeting of the TUC for months, I understand. No wonder Patrick is keeping his union aloof. After all Lincoln, his sometimes ally, did not deliver. Keep listening.

Until...
(1) Launch something significant and economically lasting by next week-end. Emancipation participants - and descendants.

2) So the real IDI AMIN is not too well. Our own IDI here continues unabated - in the media - however.

3) How is Dr Reid since the last report?

Pay regards now.

`Til next week!