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I have an issue! Maybe we can all help me. Lately there have been several news reports related to our privacy and freedom of choice. Who has the right to spy on us in the name of national security? And does the media and those complying with onerous thugocrat intrusions have a real responsibility to go along with it? I say NO!

The news media and the company's who are being asked to go along with the efforts by an out of control political system, "whom electorate enabling hath turned inside out" through partisanship. Now has to live confronted by the real danger of an excess of control from the very system they supported and are also counted among its members. It isn't only the government, we have the same thing with social media, internet and phone company providers. Control seems to be everywhere online off line and even at work and shopping.

The information age touted as a bastion of free exchanges between like minded individuals who could usher in a ... Read more »
Category: Community | Views: 2258 | Added by: blarset | Date: 2014-Jul-01

(This is an article by my husband Mike which I'd like to post here if that's OK.)

Four different attitudes to crime and punishment

The four principle approaches to crime and punishment are deterrence, retribution, intentionalism and environmentalism. All four have their advantages and disadvantages when considered from a logical, practical and/or moral viewpoint.

Let me illustrate the differences of emphasis between the various approaches. An advocate of deterrence will claim that the purpose of punishment is to deter crime. A retributionist claims that the purpose of punishment is to punish crime.

In the first case it is the consequences of the action that are seen as important. A criminal act is punished with the intention of discouraging other criminals from following the example.

In the second case it is the act itself that is punished and whether or not the punishment deters criminals is of no importance in the think ... Read more »
Category: Community | Views: 1942 | Added by: biglin | Date: 2013-Sep-20

(This is a post I wrote on another board in response to an appalling programme about Irish travellers called 'My Big Fat
Gypsy Wedding'

All Romanies are travellers but NOT all travellers are Romanies.

A bit like all Native Americans are Americans but not all Americans are Native Americans, or all English are British but not

all British are English.

The traveller community consists of several sub-groups, only ONE (or, if I'm generous, two) has the right to be called 'gypsies.'

The largest component (at least in the British Isles) is Irish tinkers. They speak English and Shelta Thari (a kind of debased
Gaelic), do NOT live by the leis prala and do NOT observe our rituals about cleanliness.

One of the worst insults in Romani is caling someone mokardi or marime. The words mean specifically 'unclean' or 'dirty.'

Another thing that is very important to a true Roma is chachimos - . truth. ... Read more »
Category: Community | Views: 1946 | Added by: biglin | Date: 2013-Sep-19

The Romani (gypsy) way of life is much misunderstood. It's firmly based upon three fundamental principles and a whole battery of laws, customs and traditions that follow on from them. We have our own "courts," "judgements" and our own fiercely held beliefs.

The core principles of our code, often referred to as the leis-prala (the law of the brothers) are freedom, health and love. We have a saying that without freedom there can be no health and without health, love cannot be fully enjoyed.

Our over-riding passion is for freedom. Even though nowadays most of amaro folki (our people) live in static homes rather than caravans or the old hand-painted vardos, we still feel the fire of freedom burning deep within us. Very few Roma work for other people, and if they do it's almost always a temporary job. We much prefer to work for ourselves and run our own businesses. The internet is full of Romanis offering their services and, of course, using it to make contact with ... Read more »
Category: Community | Views: 1886 | Added by: biglin | Date: 2013-Sep-18

I'm a Romani (well, all right, I'm a posh-rat - a half-breed Romani - and I mean Romani as in gypsy NOT Romanian or Roman!

I'd like to share with you a couple of our legends and a true story about one of my family members who was saved from the Porajmos (what us gypsies call the Romani holocaust when Hitler murdered nearly a million of our people):

How music came among the Roma:

Once upon a time there was a beautiful young girl. Not only her looks but her great wealth should have drawn all the men towards her. All the same, some years passed and she remained single. The villagers began muttering among themselves.

She is bewitched, they declared. Why else is it that a girl as beautiful and rich as her still wants a husband?

The girl was desolate as no man came for her. She fell in love with a young farmer and tried everything she could to make him love her back. For all her efforts, the boy hardly noticed she existed.
... Read more »
Category: Community | Views: 941 | Added by: biglin | Date: 2013-Sep-18