"Street Children" as they are known of in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, often come in droves, and unless you have someone with you who can fluently speak and swear in the beautifully powerful Mongol language, you're almost fucked. One Street Children begger brings another, and they stage coordinated begging skirmishes: even sitting in an establishment and drinking beers, one Street Child will burst in to distract the help, and others will swarm to the patron tables pleading for a hand out. At times I would hand money out (I'd learn to get some ready), but this single generosity gives other Street Children the impression that us Round Eyes have a limitless supply. Some Round Eyes do, but this isn't one of them.
If you FCP assholes have read it this far, here is a paragraph critique on the intentional mistranslation with the voice over. Watch the short clip (click on the title link), and then read this from a friend below:
The translation of what the street children say is not just "[in]accurate," as one of the commentators, a Mongol, wrote, but is pernicious bullshit. (Another commentator had it almost right when she said it is "wrong.") The voice-over in English has nothing whatsoever to do with what the children are saying. Nothing. She asks them, in Mongolian, "Where do your parents come from?" and one child answers, "My parents come from the 5th district, near Amgalan." But the voice-over translates it like this: "I would like to live better, with new, and warm, clothes; I would like not to starve anymore." No doubt. The child answered without pathos, exactly what was asked. Why this deliberate deception? Surely, a short film showing a child living underground, without food, without parents, in the coldest big city in the world, doesn't need embellishment, doesn't need to make the children seem like they're asking for aid? This short film, which I recommend watching, is cynical, a manifestation of the feeling that the whole world is so rotten that a moving story must be translated into cliches and then exaggerated.
As I'm in the habit of giving these children money (I estimate that I've given at least $400 during the time I've been here), you can send your donations to (at least 1/30 of your money will reach these children)
Saturday, October 11, 2008
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10 comments:
Giving money to the truly needy ? What are you - a communist encouraging idleness? The market will take care of them, better than you can, y'know?
Maybe call it good old fashioned Humanism?
That's fer sissies.
Planet Pepe Chooses Socialism precisely because Humanism sucks. Much better to force the peasants to fund a powerful State-- which can then dole out tiny portions of inadequate care-- than, yer know, expect a touch of the milk of human kindness to flow from Versailles.
which can then dole out tiny portions of inadequate care
Look at our public transport system compared to what you find here. Look at access to healthcare. And look at the crumbling edifice of ideology-driven capitalism, which will only be rescued by a serious dose of good ol'socialism. Now shut your little right-wing-bitch trap and be humble.
The exuberance of Le Roi Soleil, shining radiantly over his Planet, enthusiastically shitting on his own land under the delusion that it is all good fertilizer.
The socialist states build poverty. Deep and abiding poverty. And that is all they have ever built. But Versailles doesn't care, for it plans to be part of the vanguard. And that van is always well guarded from the consequences of its idiocies.
May you spend the rest of your life trolling along the public transportation systems of this world's Socialist States. And I'll stick to those built by the free nations.
You take Moscow, I take London. You take Pyongyang I take Seoul. You take Beijing I take Tokyo. You take "east" Berlin, I take "west" Berlin, you take Belgrade, I take Boston.
Betcha your Socialist thugs built crap compared to what capitalist societies were able to build. Betcha you find thinking before writing just too much pain.
Social democracies build wealth: look at France, Britain, Norway, Sweden. If anything, as your sandcastle economy is showing, US-style economics only produces the illusion of wealth.
So now you are talking about Capitalist states which have a governmental Welfare program? Before you said Socialism. Gee, that's a pathetically obvious switch Le Pew. Standard modus operandi for you, but this time particularly shameless.
I would just point out that:
[a] There is far more wealth in this country than in those you mention, and
[b] Far more opportunity to enter this country as a destiture man and make wealth than in those you mention
and, most important:
[c] What made what wealth exists in the Social Democracies was the Democracy and the Market, and not the Social.
By the way, to relate it back to the point which started all this, MFT's post on giving unto others, the United States leads the world in personal contributions to charity and foundations that aid others.
This Yankee trait must bother the heck out of your ( not so well hidden) inner Scrooge. Remember, he too relied on the State to provide the poor with their Workhouses. Now go fly over your Planet, it's time for your daily shit.
Socialism is not communism, aa.
Communism is Socialism, PP. Marxism is Communism, PP. And the Socialism you adhere to is Marxist, not that of Fabian or Mussolini. The welfare democracies are profoundly capitalist. And those that cease to be also cease to be democracies. It is the capitalism which generates the wealth permitting the government to play its role as "caretaker/distributor of wealth". And the more serious a society takes the word Socialist the closer to the abyss it approaches.
To put it simple like, for the Pepean mind struggling not to be burnt by the harsh light of Reason, Social doesn't mean Socialist, Le Pew.
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