But with their little fingers they can do such fine work....

ArkAngel: Temescal: "They stole our childhood," Frene, a 68-year-old retired watchmaker, told The Associated Press in an interview at his home in the western Swiss town of La-Chaux-de-Fonds.

Watchmaker? Could he be any more stereotypical?

He was cutting chocolate with his pocketknife at the time

This isn't funny, as a child he was forced to eat fondue made with Velveeta.

So what your saying is we have cheap, non-Mexican sources of agricultural labor at our disposal?

bdub77: Hey it could be worse, your country could have taken a side in WWII and you probably would never have been born. Count your blessings.

They did take a side. In fact, they took the losing side. And the victors never should have let them get away with what they did.

"In Switzerland we know exactly how many cows there are at any one time, because they are all tagged. But to this day nobody knows for sure how many children were sent away from their families," said Alexander Leumann, as he guided a group around the exhibition.

So... tag all the kids so you can keep track of them? I mean, obviously the cows are more important, but once you have a system in place to track livestock all you need is to set up a separate database to track the people.

sheilanagig: When they do that here, we call it adoption and foster care. In my state, there used to be trains that ran from the cities out to North Dakota to supply adoptive children and foster children to farmers to love and care for tenderly work them until they dropped from exhaustion and beat them regularly.

Imagine you're a child from Chicago living in poverty, and to help you the authorities put you on a train to the back of beyond to become a worker that has no rights. Because you're adopted or fostered to these people, you belong to them now and will probably never see your actual family again if you ever had one. The physical, mental and sexual abuse all came into it too, but we're still pretending it never happened, along with human vivisection, forced sterilization and Indian schools.

Orphan Trains (new window)

Another example: Sex In A Cold Climate (new window) (basis for the movie The Magdalene Sisters)
A bit different on several fronts- Irish, Catholic not secular govt, and exploited women who were labeled "sinful" because they had sex, or defied their abusive parents at some point, or the family just couldn't afford them. Paraded themselves around as some sort of rehab, but it was nothing more than a collection of massive abusive child labor camps.

The similarity? It's finding a way to exploit vulnerable children for profit, and sell the idea as some sort of work ethic that builds character in a win-win situation.

Say what you want about the horrors of the welfare system in the USA. I'll certainly not deny there's truth to any of the problems brought up, but this has historically been the alternative- organizations that fund themselves by exploiting the labor of children. And sure, they took kids off the street as promised, and produced some widget, at little or no cost to the taxpayer. Yet on the whole it is a terrible mistake, not simply on an abstract claim of morality elicited by anecdotal narratives, but for the pragmatic economic future of the nation.

Over here, kids want government restitution for going to college for an arts degree.

Norway (new window)

Sick of the Swiss (new window)

/seems apropos
//any excuse to post an KITH

Put all the welfare kids to work; they won't learn this ethic at home.

PsiChick: Uh, aren't the Swiss supposed to be the sane ones?


I think this is a classic case of the grass is always greener, or perhaps just plain misinformation. It seems like no matter what nation you are from some other nation is always the "sane" one. Probably why so much of the world wants to emigrate here to the U.S.

You think someone getting pepper sprayed here in the U.S. horrible? Watch some videos of the whacky riots in Switzerland right now (and the past several years). They seem to riot over just about anything. Including their elections.

Example...

Link (new window)

Or just google swiss riots. Torching buildings and smashing cars, and the mass teargas and water cannon response form police, is becoming a way of life over there.

. . . a period in which Switzerland was transformed from a rural backwater into a wealthy and modern society.

On the backs of children the elderly and those that couldn't fend for themselves. OH sorry, not Republikan Amerika, Switzerland.
My bad

It's ok, the world will forgive Switzerland. First off, the victims were white, and secondly, everybody likes the Swiss.

Oddly enough Nightly Business Report of all places has had one individual on it's Friday show explain how important the foster child program was to the rich that wanted cheap servants.
It's never been about serving the child's needs, only about the affluent's needs.

Nauseating to be human sometimes.

Marcintosh: Oddly enough Nightly Business Report of all places has had one individual on it's Friday show explain how important the foster child program was to the rich that wanted cheap servants.
It's never been about serving the child's needs, only about the affluent's needs.

Nauseating to be human sometimes.

This is a good example of why the States should recognize sex as a sin, make birthcontrol unobtainable and ostracize the poor.

ThrobblefootSpectre: PsiChick: Uh, aren't the Swiss supposed to be the sane ones?


I think this is a classic case of the grass is always greener, or perhaps just plain misinformation. It seems like no matter what nation you are from some other nation is always the "sane" one. Probably why so much of the world wants to emigrate here to the U.S.

You think someone getting pepper sprayed here in the U.S. horrible? Watch some videos of the whacky riots in Switzerland right now (and the past several years). They seem to riot over just about anything. Including their elections.

Example...

Link (new window)

Or just google swiss riots. Torching buildings and smashing cars, and the mass teargas and water cannon response form police, is becoming a way of life over there.

And at least in The States the cops have the common courtesy to let each protester know, one by one, that they're gonna get the pepper spray.....



....then spray 'em.


/Oh the humanity.

ArkAngel: Temescal: "They stole our childhood," Frene, a 68-year-old retired watchmaker, told The Associated Press in an interview at his home in the western Swiss town of La-Chaux-de-Fonds.

Watchmaker? Could he be any more stereotypical?

He was cutting chocolate with his pocketknife at the time

That about kills all of them except cheese--FSM-bless you all.

PsiChick: Uh, aren't the Swiss supposed to be the sane ones?

You'd be surprised. Many rural Swiss cantons (their version of a province) are intensely conservative. Women's suffrage wasn't adopted at the federal level until 1971. Abortions for non-medical reasons were generally prohibited prior to 2002.

A distant cousin of mine in Zurich once told me that the cantons used to have laws on the books that regulated what color cows were allowed. Owning an unapproved cow was not only scandalous, but could also lead to fines. She also told me about the scandal that her own mother caused in her youth (just before WWII) when she married a man from a different canton. Marrying a non-local man at the time was heavily frowned upon. Worse was If you were from a German or French canton and you married somebody from an Italian canton - in those days, it could have resulted in you being disowned from the family.

Yeah, when I think of progressive ideas, Switzerland isn't the first country that comes to mind.

coco ebert: My hubby is Swiss

BTW, thanks for the heads up you gave me a while back about Trader Joe's Swiss Chocolate being Migros brand. It is nice not having to lug boxes of that stuff back from Europe.

sheilanagig: When they do that here, we call it adoption and foster care. In my state, there used to be trains that ran from the cities out to North Dakota to supply adoptive children and foster children to farmers


If you ever happen to be around Owatonna, MN, their City Hall is in the old orphanage and has a small museum exhibit dedicated to it. It is surprisingly fascinating.

There was a time when everyone had to work to survive. Believe it or not there was no welfare back then, no fat poor, and no combines for factory farming. Those times may come again.

Sheilanagig: When they do that here, we call it adoption and foster care. In my state, there used to be trains that ran from the cities out to North Dakota to supply adoptive children and foster children to farmers to love and care for tenderly work them until they dropped from exhaustion and beat them regularly.

Imagine you're a child from Chicago living in poverty, and to help you the authorities put you on a train to the back of beyond to become a worker that has no rights. Because you're adopted or fostered to these people, you belong to them now and will probably never see your actual family again if you ever had one. The physical, mental and sexual abuse all came into it too, but we're still pretending it never happened, along with human vivisection, forced sterilization and Indian schools.

My great grandfather and his younger brother were orphaned in the aftermath of the Civil War in North Carolina and were sent west on an orphan train. Around the same time, my great grandmother was sent west on an orphan train from Chicago. They were lucky and were adopted by decent families in southern Iowa. My grandmother said her mom never forgot standing on train platforms in every little town with a group of ragged kids while the townspeople looked them over like farm animals picking out the ones who didn't have TB and could work.

ThrobblefootSpectre: Watch some videos of the whacky riots in Switzerland right now (and the past several years). They seem to riot over just about anything.

One of the comments from your link says, "Please note that these rioters are not starving, for food that is, and they are attacking the people that are being taxed to support them. Socialism, a bad idea."

WeenerGord: There was a time when everyone had to work to survive. Believe it or not there was no welfare back then, no fat poor, and no combines for factory farming. Those times may come again.

For your sake I hope not. Can't fend for yourself in that hoveround.

Wait, what are you doing in this thread? Aren't you late for the klan meeting?

depends, on how long the trial is suppose to be and how close to popping she is.