And whose fault it that eh? Did they elect themselves democratic leaders and
build a free society or did they sit down and whine while every dictator under
the sun seized power and syphoned off all the money for their own ends, while
they did nothing to stand up for themselves?

I am sick of seeing bleeding heart liberals telling me that I have to pity such
people.

They have what they deserve.

Now stop telling trying to make the peoplle who live in free countries with
successful economies feel guilty for the "poor downtrodden" because the only
reason they are the "poor downtrodden" is because they chose to do nothing when
tyrants took control.

In this case I found this charity through acquaintances who had worked
with it.  It's small, relatively local to So Cal, and in their 2003
statement over 85% of the donated money went directly to building and
distributing wheelchairs.  I thought that was pretty impressive.

That doesn't seem to be a reasonable argument to me.  First, there are
organizations who take money and don't do anything with it.  You have to
ask questions.  For example, I was xmas shopping last year and outside a
Macy's there were people with collection boxes asking for donations "to
help poor children".  Under a bit of prodding and several changing
versions, they finally admitted that their cause was to pay for people
with boxes of bibles to go preach to the heathens.  I don't think that
that was what most people would have thought they were contributing to.  
It didn't surprise me - subterfuge in fooling people into supporting
religious causes is rampant in this country now - but it doesn't mean
that all organizations are equally dishonest.

Second, even if there are more poor people because of environmental
changes and because of civil war and genocide attempts, that doesn't
mean that feeding at least some of them is a useless thing.  I think
that the people who actually end up with the food would argue that there
was benefit to her donations.

[...]

Well, sure, but you're leaving out the entire context of cost of living,
government subsidies, etc.  If you want to make this argument, Puerto
Rico is not the place to talk about.

[....]

Remorse or lack of it is his responsibility, but when he posts in a
public newsgroup anyone is free to criticize him if they disagree with
him.  What's bad is when people criticize in a knee-jerk way, or when
the person being criticized refuses to listen or think about what's
being said.

In either case, thanks to killfiles, cody and his opinions have been
removed from my view.  It's actually quite nice.

Yeah.  Now I just have the rest of my life to get on with :)

G

It was something like the New York Times or the BBC, not Al-jazeera. Had I
known I would have to prove what I read, I would have bookmarked the URL.

I would accept it too and I drink Colombian/African coffee which is how all
this started.

From :  rick nelson <nelson2@airmail.net>
Message-ID : <41F838C8.8090703@airmail.net>

When would these organs be harvested, before *or* after their flag shrouded
casket is ceremoniously carried out of the flying hearse ?

War dead, are fallen soldiers who deserve, and have earned the respect and gratitude
of their country and it's citizens

Such thoughts are an outrage, and desecrate the dignity, honour, and tradition  of *Lest We Forget*