🚀 go-pugleaf

On 2009-08-28 13:11:35 -0400, "David P." <imbibe@mindspring.com> said:

>  Cydrome Leader <prese...@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:
>> wis...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>> "(David P.)" <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> 
>>>> http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-04-22-popkostadinova-en.html
>> 
>> here's the short version of this long winded story
>> gypsies are crap.
> 
> [...]
> As with other new member states from eastern Europe, the
> European Commission urged Romania & Bulgaria to implement
> a zero-tolerance policy against racism before joining the
> EU. According to Katharina von Schnurbein, spokesperson
> for Vladimir Spidla, the Social Affairs Commissioner who
> counts Roma issues as part of his portfolio, this included
> "legal follow-up of incidents occurring in Roma settlements
> and fighting the ill-treatment of people".
> 
> But little change was brought to bear, and admitting that
> racism exists remains taboo. This, along with chronic
> neglect, has left the policies signed up to by the
> Bulgarian authorities, such as the "Decade of Roma
> Inclusion" or the "2007 European Year of Equal Oppor-
> tunities for All", a dead letter.
> 
> A walk through Stolipinovo confirms this impression.
> Lying on the outskirts of Bulgaria's second city of
> Plovdiv, it is, with its 35,000 inhabitants, the second
> biggest Roma ghetto in Bulgaria. At lunchtime on a typical
> weekday, everybody is around and the streets are alive
> with clamour. Children play in the mud, men bustle about
> in small groups and women wash clothes in front of their
> apartment blocks.
> 
> But the inhabitants are chronically deprived and suffer
> from bad health. "We have had no running water for ten
> years," complains a small, blue-eyed woman, her hair
> piled up in a bun. "All 3 of my children got hepatitis
> last summer as a result."
> 
> She goes on: "They have lice in their hair because I
> cannot wash them. Some people accuse me of not sending
> them to school. How can I send them in that state? I
> won't send them!" The health and safety problems so
> visibly present in Stolipinovo are replicated in Marchevo,
> a village notorious for its poor conditions in the Rhodope
> mountains of the south, near the town of Garmen. Its
> origins date back to the 1960s, when a clan of basket
> makers settled there in obedience to the 1957 decree.
> It has long been a source of local epidemics on account
> of its poor sanitation. "Only 500 metres of pipe were
> needed for this mahala to be plugged into the town's
> water supply," says Kalina Bozeva, head of the Inter-
> Ethnic Initiative for Human Rights in Bulgaria. "It was
> the responsibility of the municipality, but it only came
> about recently, as the result of an NGO project."
> 
> Petar Dikov, Sofia's chief architect, explains that areas
> populated by Roma were usually listed in urban plans as
> industrial zones, in order to exempt municipalities from
> having to build any infrastructure. It is much the same
> over the border in Romania, where, according to Magda
> Matache, head of a Bucharest-based Roma rights group,
> Romani CRISS, such villages and settlements commonly
> have no running water. "People there can only dream of
> a sewage system," she says. "They have to walk miles
> every day to the nearest well to bring home water for
> their families."
> 
> Failure starts at school
> 
> Among the many mistakes & omissions made by the Bulgarian
> government with regard to the Roma, none was so crucial
> or so devastating as the way it mishandled the issue of
> schooling. A policy of effective segregation has deprived
> generations of Roma a chance to advance towards equal
> participation in the labour market. In the Communist
> era, Roma could only study in neighbourhood schools
> geared to preparing them for blue-collar, low-qualified
> jobs. Subjects taught in "normal" schools, like math &
> history, were omitted.
> 
> "They produced generations of poorly educated people,"
> says Krasimir Kunev, head of the Bulgarian Helsinki
> Committee. Today almost 70% of Roma children continue to
> study in de facto segregated schools, according to a 2006
> Bulgarian Helsinki Committee report.  This, he explains,
> also made Roma the group most vulnerable to economic
> depression and high unemployment in the post-communist
> transition. And although the state became aware of the
> extent of the problem in the early- and mid-1990s, it has
> done little to tackle it beyond providing welfare.
> 
> "This was a huge failure," Rumyan Sechkov maintains.
> "It was the easy solution; people with no qualifications
> remained under-qualified and marginalised." Meanwhile,
> according to the historian, ordinary Bulgarians found
> the welfare payouts unfair, which incited social tension.
> The scale of the problem has kept growing, entrenching a
> culture of dependency. "Now we are facing a national
> problem because a whole generation of Roma has grown up,
> never seeing their parents get up in the morning and go
> to work," Sechkov maintains.
> 
> In 2006, 58% of Roma households were receiving some form
> of social aid, according to the labour ministry.
> 
> But this is about to change. From 1 January 2008, new
> rules will limit the period under which anyone can
> receive welfare to 18 months. While designed to reduce
> abuse of the system, critics insist the development will
> have been in vain if it is not accompanied by polices
> that target poor education and unemployment.
> 
> Roza Tzvetanova, 54, is sitting on the kerb in front of
> her home in Stolipinovo. Her head wrapped in a bright
> pink scarf, she rolls tobacco in her lap as she describes
> how she and her five children survive on social benefits,
> she without a job, her husband in prison. When she hears
> she will soon have her welfare cut off, she becomes
> furious: "Are they crazy? They are trying to exterminate
> my children and me! No one wants to employ a 50-year-old
> woman with elementary school. Don't they see this?"
> 
> Bulgaria is not alone in the region in failing to offer
> its Roma a decent education. In recent decades, standards
> have remained poor across Southeast Europe, giving Roma
> few chances to escape poverty and participate in society
> on an equal footing. But while other countries in the
> region have taken the first steps towards breaking this
> vicious circle, Bulgaria continues to neglect the issue.
> [...]
> .
> .

Madonna got booed at her own concert when she went on a pro gypsy rant.
Not being racist but, gypsies have a huge mafia like network in Europe 
and in US with
a vastly disproportianite amount of thieves and scam artists as there 
primary cottage industry.