I am sooooooo tired right now. I haven’t been treating my body very well in the sleep department. I have a tendency to stay up way too late chatting with friends. Its good that the weekend is just about here. I have some potential exciting news to share…not on the location front but other potential news. I always go to fast in everything so prudence is telling me to delay. So I will.
I finished up the documentary on Adam today. I was quite pleased the way it turns out. The editor of the newspaper came by my office to look at it. Here we both our leaders of various large media departments each with a common goal to use our medium in order to enact social change. There was this special sense of oneness of purpose. It was true camaraderie. We are going to use the media…to not change the world…at the moment…but we are trying to change the world for one family. For us…that is enough. So however I can help Stan…and he can help me….we have the same common goal. He’s going to try to see if he can make duplicates of the DVD and put them in all of his newspapers. So he’s coming by to pick up a copy of the documentary tomorrow. I will post the article on the abduction that Stan wrote after I post this blog. The only question for us now…is the internal office debate. Do we put KSDi’s logo on the DVD. It could be great marketing but there is international diplomacy to thing about it well. Its sparked an interesting debate. We’ll do it…but we just aren’t sure we’ll put our name on it.
I was talking with a friend who works as a diplomat in a foreign country. I showed her the article and she told me that sort of thing was quite common. Which shocked me. I thought it would be good to share with you (with her permission) so you can get a window to what it’s like in the rest of the world. I changed the names and some of the country details. But I thought it was fascinating:
In fact, for those colleagues of mine who deal with consular issues, this is a routine. One of the latest stories is about a Latvian woman and her daughter. She lived in Australia, had her daughter there but was never married to her father and he is not recorded in her birth certificate because he lives in Australia illegally, has seriously criminal past etc... he also refused to support his child anyhow, became abusive.... After finding it all out, the woman left Australia, came back to her family here in Riga. Yet it was considered that she stole the child from his father and she was made to return the year old baby to Australia. She refused saying she is not going back to the criminal. The guy came over here and pulled out the baby in front of the shopping mall here in Riga in the middle of the day. The woman was held by an unknown man who was together with the guy.
They fled the country - went to Australia via Estonia, Tallin. Estonian borderguards didn't want to let them cross the border because he had no proper documents. They called Riga institutions and somehow - no one can really explain how - they convinced they can leave. Even Prime minister was involved in the case. So the woman is back to Australia, is allowed to see her daughter once a week and forbidden to talk to her in Latvian. Only, because she was convinced of stealing the child away from his dad. Who is not even recognized as such. Everything is still in the process and the mother truly hopes to get her child back.
Another case - a muslim guy shot a Latvian girl in Dublin, the mother of their son. The girl wanted to divorce him. The girl is dead, the guy is in prison in Ireland, and the custody of the boy is given... to the guy's sister who lives in Pakistan (if I remember correctly). The dead girls' parents have never ever seen their grandson afterwards and have never ever been allowed to meet him. And only because the shot girl didn't manage to apply the baby boy for the Latvian citizenship - parents say she didnt know she can do that at the Embassy.
So there you have it. I hope you enjoy your freedoms and justice America.
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