Fighting For It

This morning on my walk I listened to a podcast interview with Emmanuel Jal, who at aged 8 was a child soldier carrying an AK-47 rifle in the Sudan People's Liberation Army. (He was later adopted by a British aid worker and is now a rising international music star.) 

The interviewer said that by 18, the usual age for conscription, people can determine right from wrong, but at aged 8, you haven't yet developed a conscience.

I heard this and thought nothing of it. Until Z saw this poster and asked what it was.

PJ and I explained to him that Fair Trade empowers farmers in developing countries, (though we left out that John Pilger has an argument against some Fair Trade agreements, saying they are constructed by the privileged).

In response Z said he wishes he were a policeman. If the greedy people are mean to the farmers, he would put them in jail for one day. If they do it again, he would jail them for two days. And if they do it again, in they go for three days...

I look at a lot of the injustices in the world and the generation of the perpetrators and I think: up until what age can our behavior escape scrutiny?