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To: WaveSeeker who wrote (32937)	5/3/2003 12:31:40 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Good you came back. Lets share our experiences. First I make my case for the policial state. Then you do your case for the orphan children. Post-911 is going to become even worse. Look around. I am doing you a favor of trying to make you see the US for what it is if compared with other parts of the world. One day they will put an electronic tag on your wrist, another in your car's windshield, another on your PC all in name of security and you would say, yes am a more free man than in other places who have poor children. First they target the non-locals. Then -since they are already at it- they get a taste for it and they start targeting the locals too. Yes, I have lived and worked in all continents barred North America. Yes, I have traveled once in a while to the US, had not traveled more because I don't feel comfortable (if compared to other countries) -see Germany comparison below- in there. And that was before this homeland security scheme to provide pseudo jobs on the wake of 911. I lived, worked and traveled in the Czech Republic, and for a former communist country, and also in policial state Sweden which at least control from a distance but don't confront you personally. In the US I was once on a pleasure trip around Napa Valley and got lost trying to get to the petrified forest. Once I had to make a U turn I saw some horse on a rural property and my daughter, then, two years old and had not seeing a real horse before, I made a brief stop to show her. A car slows a bit and pass the guy looks to me as he passes, I drive on, make my correct turn, a police car come from the left, I have the preference but gave him the way, since on an area like that he might have been hurrying to help someone. He passes. Look to me, and stops a 100m. In another country, where I know how the people think and act -I mean Saudi Arabia, Nigeria- I would stop and tell him I needed directions. In that situation, in a remote area, knowing that you get out of a car and walk to a police officer he would consider a threat and most likely would have showed me he meant business, I passed by him, it was the Sheriff's car, made a U turn, and drove back to town. I was in Napa Valley because things got out of control in Indonesia, and the company had told us to seek a safe country to spend a couple of weeks in case we had holidays to take. When I drove to Jakarta's airport things were burning all over the place. But a few days back an American on our team told us he would expect the US to send in some troops and make a corridor to take the foreigners out of the city. I was going to start laughing, but then I noticed he was talking serious!!!! You are a citizen with rights that goes without saying in a free country. You step in the US, nobody tell you that, you've got -from the door of the plane until you are in the street absolutely no rights. You are just in transit from JFK to La Guardia, or just got a couple of business meetings, or just staying overnight and flying next day, like any US citizen, coming from another part of the country. But if you have to pass by passport and immigration control, there is someone, whose only job should be to check your papers: If the passport is valid and legitimate, that visa given by the embassy is a correct visa,. No. There's all that hassle (which I normally avoid by dress with a suit and tie and shaved because I know they give you a less hard time if you fit in some kind of picture they have in mind). If I compare with an entry in Germany -a country much free than the US. I don't need a visa. There's no need for disembarkation card and they just look up my visa and wave me through. My wife they don't even open here passport, although they check my daughter's. Then I can roam around the whole Schengen agreement countries unimpeded. You speed and deserve a ticket because you broke the law. That's it. In the US you speed, good 140 Km a hour to catch a plane. In another country, They pull you, over, fine and warn you. In the US, you step out of the car -not to talk yourself out of trouble- but out of eagerness to tell the patrol man that it is a rented car, you will pay the fine, your driver license is OK, you area citizen who respect the law, but you risked a fine not to lose the flight. Write this ticket faster and I can make it at the limit speed. Typical thing all over the planet. Not in planet US. There you step out of the car and the patrol man hit for his gun, shouting: "Get inside you car, Sir!" "Hey, sorry, I'm no trouble, officer? "Get inside you car, Sir!" This time you know, either you enter your car, or he draws the gun and shoot you and he is just doing his job. I prefer the barrel of the M-16 of the Nigerian military on a check point inside my Peugeot because I know he will not shoot at me, unless I drive by without stopping, in which case I would be asking for it.

To: WaveSeeker who wrote (32937)	5/3/2003 12:57:46 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 74559

I think people like you, WS, have a feeling about the precariousness of your society and like to keep comparing your's with developing countries. Do you read Portuguese? I doubt. I read English. I am always interested on the countries problems. Just like you. Lets look at the US who children is not destitute. The US lock the children up. Perhaps the street children are happier than being locked up! "Tallulah may be dangerous, inefficient and counter-productive. But the juvenile-correction system employs 1,800 people." You know it is all about jobs, don't you? Tallulah tales Apr 17th 2003 \| TALLULAH, LOUISIANA From The Economist print edition A particularly ghastly jail PEOPLE in America's growing “juvenile corrections business” try to avoid the word “prison”. But no one would mistake the grim fortress at the edge of this down-at-heel town for anything else. Just past a string of junk shops, decrepit houses and long-shuttered storefronts sits a series of dull beige buildings surrounded by a chain-link fence and razor wire. Tallulah is the most notorious of Louisiana's four youth prisons. After it opened under private ownership in 1994, the company that ran it tried to cut costs by skimping on salaries for guards and on food, clothing and schooling for inmates. Guards maintained control by beating inmates. Conditions improved after the state Department of Corrections took over in 1999, but reports of violence continue. One young man had his jaw broken by guards. On April 14th a local juvenile-court judge, Mark Doherty, began hearings on whether the prison should be closed. Too many convicts in America Aug 8th 2002 United States Human rights Department of Corrections Critics maintain that Louisiana's whole juvenile-justice system is unfair and counter-productive. Fewer than one in ten of the 1,300 youths the state locks up at any given time are found guilty of murder, rape, armed robbery or other seriously violent crimes. Most are first offenders, and most have been found guilty of property and drug crimes, not violent ones. Some are younger than 14. Black children who misbehave are more likely to go to jail in Louisiana than white ones who commit the same offence. Rehabilitation programmes are minimal: most inmates commit more crimes after their release. These worries are shared not just by the usual liberal do-gooders but also by tax-conscious conservatives who chafe at the high costs of incarceration, which come to about $55,000 per inmate per year. In March a commission of state legislators called for closing down Tallulah and using the savings to pay for “halfway houses”, day treatment, counselling and other programmes. The reform plan also calls for responsibility for juvenile justice to be removed from the state's Department of Corrections. Passing a law to do this will not be easy. A complex web of contracts obliges the state to pay the construction debt for Tallulah, which it doesn't own, even if the state shuts down the prison. (The actual owners are three friends of Edwin Edwards, a former governor who is now in federal prison for unrelated misdeeds.) And the state's secretary of corrections, Richard Stalder, has some powerful defenders. Many of Louisiana's district attorneys and sheriffs instinctively back prison wardens rather than penal reformers. Although conditions might seem Dickensian now, they are less chaotic than they were before Tallulah was built: in the early 1990s juvenile prisoners slept in broom closets and under other inmates' beds. So far the state's Republican governor, Mike Foster, has not taken a position on the reform plan, but his closest adviser used to be a district attorney in rural Louisiana. Ever since Huey Long's days, public services in Louisiana have had as much to do with providing jobs as with looking after the needy (or the criminal). This is a state that prefers to care for its elderly in an elaborate, labour-intensive system of private nursing homes rather than spend money on nurses visiting people in their homes or on other forms of preventive care. Tallulah may be dangerous, inefficient and counter-productive. But the juvenile-correction system employs 1,800 people 2 million poeple are in prisons in the US. If this is not a policial state what it is?

To: WaveSeeker who wrote (32937)	5/3/2003 12:58:13 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Is street children less moral than a policial state? Compare with Sweden. The company I worked for there made a market research in several countries. Brazil, Poland Sweden, the US. It was about how people perceived themselves. The guy - a Swede- told me that Sweden perceived themselves as much more caring people than Brazilians. But the research proved that Brazilians are a more caring people for the needy than the Swedes. Why? Because Sweden has a welfare state. The state cares for the need and Swedes pay taxes to cover the costs. Brazil, because doesn't have a welfare state, people tend to be much more compassionate about the people in dire straits. My theory is that the less compassionate the people, the more they need a welfare state to protect its weak. The more caring people are, the less they need to establish official government assistance. Is that perfect? Absolutely not! Is that a cause for me to feel rotten about countries with destitute children? No. Why? By making my part. Look at it this way: It is like me choosing to be a honest guy. Is it going to solve the world's problem? Not. It won't. But we can be sure there is one less son of a bitch on earth! I am not going to solve the children's problem, but there one thing I can guarantee you, I am not contributing to the problem. You see. I can do something about the children's plight. What can you, as an individual do to avoid a policial state? And only netween us: 2 million people are in prisons in the US. If this is not a policial state what it is?