Re: Off Topic: Basic Assumptions

[Margaret Tarbet <tarbet@swaa.com>]

[A]nalysts say the [Asian] financial crisis has led to increases in
child labor,  prostitution, drug trafficking, domestic violence and
suicides. 

"The economic meltdown and what it's doing to the people I see and
the children is absolutely terrible," said the Rev. Joe Maier, a
Roman Catholic priest from Longview, Wash., who has worked in
Bangkok's Klong Toey slum for more than two decades. 

"And no one has the slightest idea how bad it is," he added. 

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9902/22/AsiaCrisis-Coping.ap/

As usual, the folk who suffer most are those who can least afford
to, and who had no part in the decisions that are ruining their
lives.   Similar things are already happening here -- will we wake
up before we become as weakened and ineffectual as Bangkok
slum-dwellers?

(I'd argue that these issues are not at all off-topic.  The only
folk who have privacy are the very wealthy and the utterly poor --
and the latter only because nobody cares, not because their privacy
rights have any substance)