Amsterdam is nothing but self-promotion

I felt compelled to write «Amsterdam is nothing but self-promotion» especially for those who, all too often, reduce human beings to mere “human resources”. It is to them that I wish to offer an uncensored view of Amsterdam — far from the gloss and the myths of tolerance so lovingly celebrated by official discourse. Here you will find neither complacent praise nor servile narratives, as one might perhaps expect if the author were not a foreigner who has lived in this city for thirteen years. This is the voice of a musician, an intellectual who survives within this reality, and who resolutely denounces how behind the veil of a “false welcoming spontaneity” lie segregation, exploitation, and a painful commodification of the human being. Gregorj Cocco