Stuff below the fold plus rants

The "irish babies" report is pure propaganda to persuade Ireland to legalize abortion.

My take? Heh. They had septic tanks in Ireland in the 1920's? (Ireland was a poor third world country at the time, and childhood mortality was high). Then I wondered why no one bothered to clean  the septic tanks out? And finally: Gee, they must have had HUGE pipes.

 update: If I am being sarcastic, it is because these kids had a warm place to stay and were educated.  Compare and contrast to the 1.5 million street kids in the third world today, and the children abandoned at birth to trashcans. And the millions of "sex workers" in the third world often took these jobs because it was the only way they could support their kids born out of wedlock or after the boyfriend/husband took off. The west sees these things as "voluntary" but that just isn't true.

And the Irish moms could start life over: Something that they were unable to do back then if the nuns didn't help them (compare the institutions of Catholic Ireland with the richer UK and I think you might find them comparable).
orphanages/adoption of kids were terrible, but the alternatives were and are worse. I mean, Philomena became a nurse and her son got a college education.

My son once read a story of a child abused by her stepmother: Why is she complaining, he said, she had enough food to eat. Yeah. His perspective is a bit different. He should know: after his parents died, he was on the street working for a living (age 10) until a relative who got tired of caring for his younger brother took them to the local orphange, and denied that they had family nearby, so that they had a chance for adoption. Most of the kids in his orphanage had moms, but didn't get along with her present paramour so ended up on the street until they were rescued. Alas, the majority of the street kids didn't go to this orphange: They stayed on the street, often killed by the shopkeepers, dying of disease or ending up in jail; if they were lucky, they went to the state run reform school after being arrested for petty crimes such as drug use or stealing....
and nowadays, sex abuse is a big problem...

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David Warren remembers Tiananman square.

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Dr. E says the Iranian revolution saw a moderate government advised by Islam as the best solution to Iran's problems, but says radicals are taking over the government.

Today an active reactionary campaign is underway to distort and smear the thoughts and ideas of Imam, they are those who have followed their personal or party  agenda these years and have no regard for God or for the nation.

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StrategyPage discusses the Shia custom of short term marriage, (so the widows etc. could have a legal relationship and financial support at times when soldiers and others would stay in an area for only a short time) and how some European brothel owners are using it to recruit sex workers.
Also they point out how AlQaeda sometimes uses this to obtain women women for sexual relief, adding this sardonic observation:

In combat zones Nika &s717; al Mutah is used by some Islamic terrorist groups, along with drugs and whatever else is required to keep the holy warriors motivated. Islamic scholars are currently debating if it would be halal for Moslem men to have sex with robots as it appears that android prostitutes are only a few decades away.

Before you point fingers, remember all those half American babies still wandering around Asia. Most of them were not kids of prostitutes, but the children of the "hooch women" who lived with soldiers as a temporary wife, often under the illusion that they would marry, and then abandoned.

This is one reason a lot of Filippinos oppose the new "armed forces agreement" with the US. Sex tourism, including child sex and gay sex, are already a social problem, and when farmers migrate to the cities, their kids are in real danger of being recruited.
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