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In spite of it all. . .
Jan. 19th, 2003 09:30 pmI am SO glad to be a citizen of North America :-) I don't want to slur my Canadian friends by saying I'm so glad I'm an American, as if it would suck to be Canadian, so I'll just say I'm glad to be a North American citizen.
I heard on the news today that Elian Gonzales' father is running for office. He is one of 609 candidates, running for. . .
609 government seats.
That's right, he's running unopposed, right along with Fidel Castro. . .
who says that Cuban elections are not meaningless.
Uh huh. And Iraqi elections are meaningful too. Because it is possible to count 22 million paper ballots in less than 12 hours from a country twice the size of Idaho.
Yeah, that's some fun.
That's fun and Oh! Polio was not eradicated on schedule because some very poor and bitter Muslim men in Uttar Pradesh and other small districts in India, upset that the government is dominated by Hindus, and paranoid that the enforced sterilizations enacted by former PM Benazir Bhutto may again be put in place, have spread rumors that polio vaccine will sterilize children. Now the government workers are working very very hard going through neighborhoods where there is no sanitation and no food and people wonder "why do you care so much about these drops?" and they have to fight even harder, not only against the ignorance, but against the rumors and the suspicion. And they have to try to find Muslim women who AREN'T purdah confined who can help them.
Who suffers? The children.
And there's not a damn thing to be done about it but for those government workers to just keep trudging through those shit-filled streets, knocking on doors, pleading with the purdah-confined mothers inside. Those are some serious heroes.
I heard on the news today that Elian Gonzales' father is running for office. He is one of 609 candidates, running for. . .
609 government seats.
That's right, he's running unopposed, right along with Fidel Castro. . .
who says that Cuban elections are not meaningless.
Uh huh. And Iraqi elections are meaningful too. Because it is possible to count 22 million paper ballots in less than 12 hours from a country twice the size of Idaho.
Yeah, that's some fun.
That's fun and Oh! Polio was not eradicated on schedule because some very poor and bitter Muslim men in Uttar Pradesh and other small districts in India, upset that the government is dominated by Hindus, and paranoid that the enforced sterilizations enacted by former PM Benazir Bhutto may again be put in place, have spread rumors that polio vaccine will sterilize children. Now the government workers are working very very hard going through neighborhoods where there is no sanitation and no food and people wonder "why do you care so much about these drops?" and they have to fight even harder, not only against the ignorance, but against the rumors and the suspicion. And they have to try to find Muslim women who AREN'T purdah confined who can help them.
Who suffers? The children.
And there's not a damn thing to be done about it but for those government workers to just keep trudging through those shit-filled streets, knocking on doors, pleading with the purdah-confined mothers inside. Those are some serious heroes.
