--- ravi <gadfly at exitleft.org> wrote: aren't you generalizing a bit here? there is a fair-sized gypsy community in southern india, and i have never heard of them drugging their children. also, aren't concepts like "drugging", "beggars" meaningful (and of one particular meaning) only in our highly-organized [liberal] democracies? without going too pomo, one could see advanced, modern societies as drugging their children (if not by any other means, at least by indoctrination using pledges of allegiance and such, along with a curiosity-stunting system of education) for a life of begging (i.e., low-income insecure jobs with meagre benefits that one has to be fight to retain). ---
I'm just familiar with the ones here in Moscow (and by gypsy I do not mean ethnic Roma -- I mean a particular lifestyle). They live 20 to an apartment outside Moscow and get bussed in to beg by criminal gangs who take part of the loot. They sit on the streetcorner, covered in snow, with their kids, also covered in snow, who never cry and have a very glazed expression, because their parents have drugged them. A crying baby means less money from begging. I might add that the kids are kept illiterate. I do not like these people. They are parasites of the worst sort.
_______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now. http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush