Letters to the Editor
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Huh?
Is it just me, or does the 3rd paragraph make no sense whatsoever? It seems like there's missing text...
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eh??
Somebody needs to go back and proof that third paragraph -- there's obviously some text missing.
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Combining Stories?
I'm thinking that 2 different stories got combined. Isn't there an editor to proof this stuff?
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What?
Walmart sterilizes gypsies?
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Involuntary sterilization of Gypsies in Slovakia
The story about Gypsies is a part of an overblown media campaign. Basically, women who gave two consecutive births using Ceasarean delivery are recommended sterilization for medical reasons. They are always informed about the procedure and its consequences and prior written confirmation is required.
The current wave of complaints was started by a few activists from abroad who were searching for something enough attractive for the media and managed to convinced few Gypsy women that they have been treated wrongly. The claim was that the women were put under pressure and that, being often functionally illiterate, they did not understand what they had signed.
These women have a strong motivator to sue: practically all of the legal income of their families comes from the state social security and this income is directly proportional to number of children they have (this has changed in Slovakia and other countries are likely to follow). Add the fact that the more children a Gypsy woman has the more valuable she is for her husband and the clan (childless ones have very low status) and, last but not least, a hope to extract money from the state through the court.
The situation of Gypsies living in European countries is very complicated due to cultural, economical and ethnical differencies, mutual animosity between them and the majority population lasting for centuries and low ability of Gypsies to accomodate the fast changing industrial and post-industrial society. No quick or easy solution to their problem has been found but this kind of campaigns resulted only in heightened tensions in the past.
(I am not a native English speaker so please take apology for grammatical mistakes)
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Say what?
Somebody goofed.
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Does Salon still have editors?
Or are they busy helping Cary pad his book?
Or helping Farhad fact-check before he goes to print, for a change?
Or looking for sycophantic letters to the editor to star?
Or skimming the New York Times for their next blog entry?
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THIS JUST IN!
Wal-Mart, in an effort to prevent women from becoming managers, decides to sterilize entire female workforce. "We've been gypped!" cry female employees.
When Wal-Mart managers were arrested on charges of kidnapping their diminutive Eastern European female employees for serilization, a manager responsed, "We were just trying to cache a small Czech."
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This is...
beautiful, beautiful.
I tend to skim and skip things over most of the time, so imagine my confusion.
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There seems to be something very wrong with this story
Two stories got blended. Can you fix it please?
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In response to at least one of these two issues...
I spent a year working with a Sinti and Roma association in Germany, and I learned a great deal in the process about the forced sterilization of Romani women in Eastern Europe. Ladislav Hruska mentions above that the functional illiteracy of the women has been blamed, but the reality has less to do with illiteracy and more to do with purposeful deception on the part of the doctors. From a European Roma Rights Centre press release (at www.errc.org):
'Budapest, 31 August 2006. In a decision communicated this week, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) condemned Hungary for violating the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in connection with the sterilisation of a Romani woman without her consent in January 2001.
On 2 January 2001, a Romani woman (Ms. S.) was sterilised by doctors at the Fehergyarmat hospital. While being operated on in connection with a miscarriage, she was asked to sign forms giving her consent to this and other operations, without a full explanation about the intervention, its nature, possible risks, or what the consequences of being sterilised would be. She was not told about other forms of birth control either. It was only after the operation that she learnt that she could not become pregnant again.'
As Mr. Hruska fails to offer any support for his contrary position, I'll take the word of the U.N.
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What's not to understand?
It's very clear. The court, presided over by Justice Jenkins, sterlizes gypsy women without their consent. To do this, they hire a gypsy catcher named Borat, who can hit a gypsy with a rock from 20 feet (40 if they are tied down).
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A Salon reader's plea for a competent editor
Is there an editor in the house?
For three days now, Salon has been informing its readers that WalMart is somehow in the business of sterilizing gypsies...When I first saw the botched article by Catherine Price, which somehow combines an article regarding a sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart with a report on the involuntary sterilization of women in Slovakia, I thought, "Boy, gotta show this to my sister pretty quickly, as it's such an hilarious mistake that Salon will soon realize the error and pull it from the web page." Guess I was wrong...
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Well there goes my initial thought...
While researching for a paper I am writing on this topic, (the Wal-Mart one, not the "Roma" one) I came across this article. I was planning on using it as one of my sources, which was to be cited of course, and even started to form a paragraph around it when I thought to myself, that makes no sense. At first glance, I thought you had a good parallel going, relating the Wal-Mart issue to another outside issue. As I read closer, I realized that you weren't trying to do that at all and it was just a big mistake between to stories getting blended together. I now have to go rework my paragraph and come up with a different approach.
Thanks for not editing.