Please follow and read**** ----- Original Message ----- From: "Christoph Reuss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 1:08 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Natalia has sent you an article from npr.org
> 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. > ****Why else would they need vigilant tour guides but to enter the favelas? > > > > > 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. *******Actually, the women who are doing this to their daughters are few, it is usually men who are forcing the young girls into prostitution. The fathers, often enough, but also in the case of widows or single mothers approached by gun-toting mafia/drug peddlers who leave them no choice. There usually exists a choice for the women to work themselves, or have the kids work the tough field jobs--in the case of Colombia, it will be collecting the drugs or coffee. Coffee crop workers are usually male. They see prostitution as the lesser of two evils, sadly, not always realizing that the child will likely get hooked on drugs just to bear the pain of prostitution, and may as well be dead. ******* I hear what you are saying, I believe a sane mother would never want to do this. Yet the predicament is an insane dogmatic one in the respect that the local religion shuns birth control. If they followed it, it would be, as most outsiders would see it, a lesser sin, to those who are religious, to practice birth control rather than raising an unwanted child--which most are--only to give them over to a life of drug-addiction/ zombie prostitution or in the case of boys in Columbia, usually to the drug lords. *******Unwanted children will be amongst the highest numbers of mother-forced prostitutes. Consider that many of these mothers will have been forced into early marriages/love slave relationships, a great number will have been raped--usually at an early age themselves, and cannot break the cycle of unwanted pregnancies. Many of these have hardened to the fact that being objectified will ensure survival. > > > > 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. > *******I could have said that women are doctors world-wide, and you'd think nothing of it. I'm not suggesting it's all men, nor generalizing about men, I'm saying that male predators are in every nation on earth, so why not in a favela with a million people? > > > > > 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 assurance isn't because of those involved in drugs, it's because of the majority who are not, and I mean in the Rio favelas. > > > > 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 ). *****The point I was making was that corruption around drugs doesn't mean that the entire--in this case--country, is falling apart. Is everyone in Germany a legal drug (or even illegal) addict, or corrupt? Or vastly put out by corruption? Yes, it costs the tax payer, and lives, but not as many as do wars, polluters, corporate welfare schemes, etc. Natalia > Chris > > > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
