Plan B Forum

The guy slows down his motorbike, pulling up alongside us as we walk the cracked pavement by the side of the road. Anywhere else this could be trouble, but not here.

The guy lifts his hand in greeting, flashes us a grin, then yells to be heard over the burble of his engine: "You are welcome in Iran!"

Then he tears off along the street, still waving with one hand. My friend Michelle and I look at each other, shrug our shoulders and smile. Another one.

The true strangeness of this situation is that it's not strange at all. Something similar to this scene has been playing out constantly for the past week that we've been in Iran.

It happened just 10 minutes ago. A kid who can't have been more than 18 nearly ploughed his motorbike into a fruit shop, such was his determination to wave to us and call out hello while negotiating a pavement full of pedestrians on a fairly big machine.

It happened before, too, on the busy streets of Tehran, of Esfahan, of Yazd and of Shiraz. You can see the well-wishers coming from the corner of your eye. You're wandering down the street, minding your own business, and an Iranian will swoop, like some kind of extremely polite eagle.

"Excuse me," they'll say, "can I ask you are from which country?"

"Australia," we'll reply - me to the men, who invariably address the male in the couple, and Michelle to the Iranian women, who'll always break the ice with her.

"Oh," they'll smile, "welcome to Iran. I hope you enjoy my country."

Some will then hang around for a chat, to ask a few more questions or point out a sight of interest, while others will just walk away, content that they've done what they came to do: welcome you.

You think Iran's going to be scary, a place of raging ayatollahs and poorly Photoshopped fighter planes, but you couldn't be further from reality. This is a country of hospitality, of people who want nothing more than for outsiders to see their nation as it really is.

It can be easy to assume a country's citizens are just like its politicians. It was simple, years ago, to think of all Americans as gun-crazy cowboys. It was easy to think of the French as a mob of suave womanisers. And I'm sure it was easy for people from other countries, for a certain period, to think of Australians as xenophobes.

But that's not the case. Americans aren't George W. Bush. The French aren't Nicolas Sarkozy. And Iranians aren't Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, their nuclear-obsessed President.

In fact, you could make a case for Persians being the friendliest people on the planet. For a nation that is supposedly part of the axis of evil, we could learn a lot from Iranians about the power of goodwill.

Soon, Michelle and I are on a bus in southern Iran, travelling from the desert town of Yazd to the cultural hub of Shiraz.

Barren landscape is flashing past outside; the driver is smoking a cigarette, tendrils of smoke being whipped out of his open window; bad Arabian pop is blaring from the stereo.

We're chatting about our future travel plans when a hand reaches from between the seats in front of us, proffering half an orange. Then a cloaked face appears behind the hand. "Please," a lady says, pushing the orange closer to us, "for you."

We accept, and share the orange. Ten minutes later the same hand reappears, followed by the same cloaked face. This time the lady is holding an apple. "Please," she repeats, smiling, "for you." Again, we accept.

It's not just food we're offered in Iran, but help. Constantly. "Do you know where you are going?" people on the street will ask. We do, usually, but they'll point us in the right direction anyway.

A few days later we're in Esfahan, home to Iran's most spectacular edifices. We've just entered Masjed-e Emam, a huge mosque clad in blue tiles down one end of the city's imposing main square. Just like on the street, we clock the approach from the corners of our eyes, two girls in black niqabs sidling our way. "Excuse me," one of them says, addressing Michelle, "where do you come from?"

"Australia," Michelle replies.

"Oh. Can we tell you about this mosque?"

And so begins a half-hour tour guided by two girls who, it turns out, are studying to become air hostesses. They take us to the mosque schools, they show us the hidden sundial, they point out the shape of a huge heart woven through the intricate design of the mosque's tiled dome.

And then they leave, smiling, wishing us well in Iran. "You are welcome in our country," they say. And it's true.



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/travel/the-friend ... z2VsQptXYs

We're chatting about our future travel plans when a hand reaches from between the seats in front of us, proffering an apple. Then a cloaked face appears behind the hand. "Please," a lady says, pushing the apple closer to us, "for you."

"Please," a lady says, pushing the apple closer to us, "for you."

I[t]was, wasn't I[t]?


Sorry. i know you're I'm not much on facts.


The Catholic church in Spain kidnapped tens of thousands of children and sold them to childless couples for enormous prices.

[up]yrs,
rubato

300,000 babies stolen from their parents - and sold for adoption: Haunting BBC documentary exposes 50-year scandal of baby trafficking by the Catholic church in Spain

By Polly Dunbar
UPDATED: 05:55 EST, 16 October 2011

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Up to 300,000 Spanish babies were stolen from their parents and sold for adoption over a period of five decades, a new investigation reveals.

The children were trafficked by a secret network of doctors, nurses, priests and nuns in a widespread practice that began during General Franco’s dictatorship and continued until the early Nineties.

Hundreds of families who had babies taken from Spanish hospitals are now battling for an official government investigation into the scandal.
Several mothers say they were told their first-born children had died during or soon after they gave birth.
Identity crisis: Randy Ryder as a baby being cradled in a Malaga hospital in 1971 by the woman who bought him

Identity crisis: Randy Ryder as a baby being cradled in a Malaga hospital in 1971 by the woman who bought him

But the women, often young and unmarried, were told they could not see the body of the infant or attend their burial.

In reality, the babies were sold to childless couples whose devout beliefs and financial security meant that they were seen as more appropriate parents.

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Official documents were forged so the adoptive parents’ names were on the infants’ birth certificates.

In many cases it is believed they were unaware that the child they received had been stolen, as they were usually told the birth mother had given them up.

Journalist Katya Adler, who has investigated the scandal, says: ‘The situation is incredibly sad for thousands of people.

‘There are men and women across Spain whose lives have been turned upside-down by discovering the people they thought were their parents actually bought them for cash. There are also many mothers who have maintained for years that their babies did not die – and were labelled “hysterical” – but are now discovering that their child has probably been alive and brought up by somebody else all this time.’
Reunited: Randy Ryder with Manoli Pagador, who believes she may be his real mother

Reunited: Randy Ryder with Manoli Pagador, who believes she may be his real mother

Experts believe the cases may account for up to 15 per cent of the total adoptions that took place in Spain between 1960 and 1989.

It began as a system for taking children away from families deemed politically dangerous to the regime of General Franco, which began in 1939. The system continued after the dictator’s death in 1975 as the Catholic church continued to retain a powerful influence on public life, particularly in social services.

It was not until 1987 that the Spanish government, instead of hospitals, began to regulate adoptions.

The scandal came to light after two men, Antonio Barroso and Juan Luis Moreno, discovered they had been stolen as babies.

Mr Moreno’s ‘father’ confessed on his deathbed to having bought him as a baby from a priest in Zaragoza in northern Spain. He told his son he had been accompanied on the trip by Mr Barroso’s parents, who bought Antonio at the same time for 200,000 pesetas – a huge sum at the time.

‘That was the price of an apartment back then,’ Mr Barroso said. ‘My parents paid it in instalments over the course of ten years because they did not have enough money.’
Bought for cash: Journalist Katya Adler with Juan Luis Moreno, who was sold as a baby

Bought for cash: Journalist Katya Adler with Juan Luis Moreno, who was sold as a baby

DNA tests have proved that the couple who brought up Mr Barroso were not his biological parents and the nun who sold him has admitted to doing so.

When the pair made their case public, it prompted mothers all over the country to come forward with their own experiences of being told their babies had died, but never believing it. One such woman was Manoli Pagador, who has begun searching for her son.

A BBC documentary, This World: Spain’s Stolen Babies, follows her efforts to discover if he is Randy Ryder, a stolen baby who was brought up in Texas and is now aged 40.

In some cases, babies’ graves have been exhumed, revealing bones that belong to adults or animals. Some of the graves contained nothing at all.

The BBC documentary features an interview with an 89-year-old woman named Ines Perez, who admitted that a priest encouraged her to fake a pregnancy so she could be given a baby girl due to be born at Madrid’s San Ramon clinic in 1969. ‘The priest gave me padding to wear on my stomach,’ she says.

It is claimed that the San Ramon clinic was one of the major centres for the practice.

Many mothers who gave birth there claim that when they asked to see their child after being told it had died, they were shown a baby’s corpse that appeared to be freezing cold.

The BBC programme shows photographs taken in the Eighties of a dead baby kept in a freezer, allegedly to show grieving mothers.

Despite hundreds of families of babies who disappeared in Spanish hospitals calling on the government to open an investigation into the scandal, no nationally co-ordinated probe has taken place.

As a result of amnesty laws passed after Franco’s death, crimes that took place during his regime are usually not examined. Instead, regional prosecutors across the country are investigating each story on a case-by-case basis, with 900 currently under review.

But Ms Adler says: ‘There is very little political will to get to the bottom of the situation.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z2W3CfTFU2
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rubato wrote:
(Am I too subtle for you?)

yrs,
rubato

(Am I too subtle for you?)