Natalia replied: > > > > Unfortunately, the hook is the phrase "apart from gang violence"! > > You can't put that apart -- it spoils everything. As the people in > > Brazil have to find out the hard way now (mafia war against the state). > > *****Chris, I believe you are condemning their entire existence, giving > them no credit to find their own way through the dark. Tourists are not > coming to get shot at. They are coming to have fun
Being realistic is NOT "condemning their entire existence" -- rather, it's a precondition to _improving_ their existence. Are you saying the tourists go INTO the slums, or to Rio where they are safe in their hotels and "better" quarters? Rio has a famous carneval etc. but to see that, it is not necessary to go into the slums. > > > Women particularly have been thriving > > > > Yeah right! Someone I know in Colombia (Medellin) tells me that mothers > > have to prostitute their own daughters from 11 years old on to survive. > > **** 'Have chosen to' is the terminology I would use. No mother in her right mind would _choose_ to do that. They do it because they have no choice. > I wouldn't doubt, however, that > it occurs since men are predators world-wide. I resent this broad sweeping generalization! As far as I'm concerned, the men who do this deserve to be hanged by their balls, but you already know my stance on drugs and such. > > > It's as if we have been provided assurance in this new dark age > > > > Yep, like your assurance from drugs... > > *****Again, you are denying people what they have in their hearts and minds, > which is the assurance False assurance can be very dangerous. > The real crime > here is the failing government selling out their own people, their own > fellow countrymen stealing from the poor or the government, and the > multinationals enslaving the poor, as usual. Mafia will always be around, no > matter where you are. Just look at poor old Germany, with its 8-24 billion > euros cost to healthcare annually due to a corrupt legal drugs trade. > >http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,2024911,00.html?maca=en-rss-en-ger-102 >3-rdf Quoting from that article: <<One of the main problems for our susceptibility to corruption in Germany is linked to the fact that whereas other countries have one health minister, we have 17 - 16 state ministers and one federal minister," said TI board member Anke Martiny. ""We also have about 250 separate statutory insurance companies, while in other countries the health system is handled much more centrally. It goes without saying that under such circumstances the power of the functionaries has got rather out of control.>> This is counter-productive nonsense. On the contrary, centralization increases the opportunities for corruption, as can be seen in Brussels. Corruption increases as states give up power to the national government and this passes it on to the supranational EU government. Democratic control and accountability works best on the local and regional level. The claim is not even true by TI's own standards, because according to this claim, de-centralized Germany would have to score high (i.e. LOW in the table) on TI's corruption index, and Switzerland with its 27 autonomous cantons even higher, but the opposite is true (see table at http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2005 ). Chris _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
