This will most likely be the last anal-ocity for this year….for next month we start preparing for the upcoming 2010 Anal-Ocity Award, the “Assie”…….
recently when talking about the status of children in Afghanistan, a senior NATO envoy, one Mark Sedwill, said this……
“children are probably safer here than they would be in London, New York, or Glasgow or many other cities.”
His comments were made for the public record while filming a BBC special on children in Afghanistan…..
First a few stats for people….
Seventy-four children were killed by bombs or suicide attacks in Afghanistan during the first half of this year—
A rep from aid group Save the Children called the remark “daft,” since “one in five children die before they get to the age of five.” Reuters reports a number of statistics that fly in the face of Sedwill’s claim: 1,795 children died as a result of the war between September 2008 and August 2010; Afghanistan’s infant mortality rate is the highest in the world; UNICEF says the country is the most dangerous one to be born in.
So, Mr. Sedwill being completely oblivious to the situation in Afghanistan deserves a place in Anal statement history….
Yes, of course the remark is daft, but (there she blows) isn’t it also a fact that trying to equate things like infant mortality rates between our culture(s) and that of places like Afghanistan is like trying to compare the relative value of cheese and copper? By which I mean they simply don’t equate at all…
Whilst I do believe in much of the work of Save The Children, the attitude of people to kids in other cultures simply isn’t the same as ours and who’s to say they’re not right? It’s the same with all this sh*t about not buying goods from companies that have their goods made in places where children are employed. So you stop buying from those companies and just maybe they respond and switch to other producers who don’t employ children… result, both the previously employed children and their parents f*cking well starve to death.
I’m all in favour of so called fair trade where basic suppliers get paid a fair rate, but the arrogance of the West in apparently believing that THEIR ideals are the right ones is just plain crap! So, we don’t allow our children to work. Instead we allow them to roam free and unoccupied by reality and they grow up into even bigger assholes than their parents and knife each other to death. I guess they are included in a different statistic then, though…
The whole thing is utter BS! It’s damned close to irrelevant! It’s Nero all over again – fiddling whilst the whole goddamned planet goes to hell in a ball of fire…
But to say that kids are safer in Kabul than in London or Washington is just plain moronic…..and I believe that he was talking about physical safety….and suicide bombers are not a worry in most other capitals in the West, at least not right now….but there is always tomorrow….