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This is so sad!
The country I live in has always prided itself on having humane ethics, a liberal immigration policy and taking care of its weak.
It was something we all grew up hearing all the time, it stuck to us and we came to think of it almost as a fundamental truth; "water is wet", "up is up, down is down", etc...
It isn't true.
Or it might have been, once. I don't know how long ago. We've also been hearing the words "cutbacks", "downsizing" and all those things for something like two decades now. Stricting up the immigration policies in order to save money, reducing the social services net that since the end of the second world war has sought to catch anyone falling. Again to save money.
With no thoughts of the consequences WHATSOEVER.
Yesterday, I heard on the news of an immigrant boy who had tried to Hang Himself at the center he was placed at. Fortunately, the telly said, staff was there to save him in time. Unfortunately, he was one of EIGHT children trying to kill themselves at that place over a period of just six months!
Unfortunately, that was not completely true either. It was not staff that saved that 17-year-old says the internet version of our largest evening paper, it was a couple of other children also placed there! And it was the third time he had tried to commit suicide, all because he has an extremely painful birth defect that makes one leg much shorter than the other, and if he doesn't get an operation before he stops growing, he will be crippled for life and has to spend the rest of his days in a wheelchair.
"Of course", he cannot get an operation before he recieves the equivalent of a social security number, and that cannot happen until he's been given permanent resident status. And that cannot happen until his case has been processed and granted!
The kid is determined. He will NOT end up in a wheelchair, he'd rather die to avoid it!
I can't even believe it myself, is there nobody with some compassion left in a position of power? I get so horribly, horribly upset when I read about what is happening there. Not only have there been several suicide attempts, strong suspicions point towards several boys more or less regularly being taken away from the center and (ab)used in child prostitution!
There is no hope in these young kids' life, they came to our country, their minds already badly bruised some of them, wishing for a better future. But they have been so badly let down by those people in power, and by all of us that sincerely believed this place was a good place to live!
We were SO WRONG.
Why aren't human lives worth diddly squat any longer? Why is it only money that matters? WHY DON'T WE CARE ANYMORE?
-Lenny
"But he that hath the steerage of my course,
direct my sail."
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene IV
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There is also the story about the Boy scouts who came to a gathering and decided to stay in the US. They ended up in jail for several months, even though their visas were still in effect!
The US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has grown into a self perpetuating hydra urged on by the ULTRA Conservative group that Shrub has surrounded himself with since he took office. In today's paper they were complaining because illegal immigration accross the US/Mexico border is down!!
About the only thing we can do is write our congressmen and, next election, vote the Right Wingers out!
Hugs, Charlie
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A couple hours after the article which prompted my first post appeared on the website, they now published a follow-up. They usually do that with big stories, which is why I go there, even though I usually can't stand the printed edition; they tend to kiss ass to the ruling social democrat government way too much for my taste in their editorial material.
Anyway, in this piece, one of the leading conservative opposition party leaders was "outraged" at how the children were treated at the refuge center.
What the hell? Where were YOU while all this was happening? It's been going on for at least six months and nobody listened! DO NOT TELL ME what I and so many others heard yesterday and today were news to you, you selfish, cynical bastard!
Being very well respected for the most part (except for his Christian Democratic party's views on gay people, but that does not taint their illustrious leader), he is the "old man" of our elected ruling body. He's been sitting in his chair there FOREVER, longer than any other party leader and longer than most other electees too. White-haired, sympathic-looking, deep-voiced, soft-spoken yet powerful. Kind of how you'd imagine a favourite grandfather.
And he plays MERCILESSLY on those qualities too. He is certainly one of the biggest hypocrites in any party in this country (at least he doesn't go around quoting the bible), he's even worse than the head of our government; a fat, self-centered buffoon who has pandered to the masses in order to make himself popular (and it worked too I'm sad to say, he's more popular now than ever before and he has done NOTHING to deserve it).
You see, the capital, where the refuge center is located, is run by a *conservative* city council! It is a well-known FACT they pamper the rich and give little to no regard to those less well endowed; their housing policies shows that very clearly for example. Standing in queue for an apartment for TEN YEARS for a place to live in the city center is not out of the norm because what little new in the way of housing is built, is so expensive that hardly any common people can afford it. You can't rent them because that's not as profitable; you have to buy. And if you can't cough up like $250.000 or maybe more for even a fairly small place, then you're outta luck. You're evicted to the suburbs, some of which are none too pleasant.
The average annual income of the capital's richest district is some 15 (!) times higher than our country's poorest county I think. I don't remember the exact figure, but it was something rediculous like that.
My homeland is being ripped apart by an ever-widening economic chasm, and it is affecting everybody! Children suffer because their parents have to work and come home all stressed-out, people get fired by the thousands as production is moved out abroad where labor is cheaper while the bosses at the top sprinkle wads of cash on each other in the form of bonuses despite the company as a whole is bleeding, losses racking up in tens, and in one notable case, even hundreds of millions of $.
Drug use is on the rise, and the age when children start out goes down all the time. Some cities have had fairly large problems with even pre-teen victims. Mobbing and violent crime against youngsters reach ever more nightmarish levels, neo-nazism is rearing its ugly head. I don't know where it all will end, but it does not bode well the way it's going now.
At the same time we're being suffocated with the message that in order to be happy we have to be thin, beautiful, white-teethed, rich and successful. And have big boobs if we're a girl. So-called "docu-soaps" are swamping the ether around here; reality-based TV-shows with little reality left in them where an assortment of people are stuffed into a situation and not allowed to leave until voted out by the rest of the group. The winner takes home a somewhat fat pile of cash and can expect to become a pseudo-celebrity, at least for a while.
"Big Brother" is one such show which really stoops down to the LOWEST OF THE LOW in humanity. Take a bunch of people, some deliberately casted to get on a collision course with others, all of them carefully screened and selected on merits of looks, personality, etc. Stick them in a house filled with one-way mirrors and hidden cameras and microphones where absolutely every angle is covered (yes, not even the shower is safe; naked skin is always a big hit). Keep them in there for 100 days until all but one has been weeded out.
In order to breed an atmosphere more suitable for viewing - or so it's thought anyway - "Big Brother" gives the occupants challenges. Rewards for winnng such a challenge might be a lot of alcohol. There's nothing better than to show two people screwing in a drunken stupor beneath their bed covers using a nightvision camera, apparantly...
It's so DEMEANING to all of us, both as a society and as a race. It's just about mindless entertainment, all surface no substance.
Whose fault is all this?
The Almighty Buck, I'd say.
The day we decided to put money and power above the well-being of our loved ones, that was the day we started down this path straight to hell, and now we're fairly far gone already.
Thanks for your reply. (And, End of Super-Long Rant too.  )
-Lenny Valentin
(I'll keep the login, change the sig)
"But he that hath the steerage of my course,
direct my sail."
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene IV
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No one country has a strangle hold on inhumanity towards their fellow man. Most are now out to only preserve the status quo, or to make themselves richer. It is up to the little people, like us, to keep sounding off and pointing fingers or it will become much worse.
Hugs, Charlie
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