Fallen followers: Investigation finds 10 more dead children of faith healers
»PLAY VIDEOBOISE, Idaho – Peaceful Valley Cemetery sits on a windswept hill 30 miles east of Boise.
Some of The Followers of Christ faith healers bury their dead there.
The same last names appear over and again, going back decades. Some – like Beagley – are the same names you’ll see in a similar cemetery in Oregon City.
In 2010, jurors in Clackamas County convicted Jeff and Marci Beagley of letting their son Neal die of an untreated urinary tract infection.
KATU’s Dan Tilkin covered that story, as he has so many faith-healing stories. That’s why he traveled to Idaho to trace the connections between Followers members in both states, and a new trail of dead children.
A former member of the Followers of Christ advised him to go to Peaceful Valley and look for two specific names.
He found them. He found many more.
Garrett Dean Eells.
The coroner’s report says Garrett was a 6-day-old baby who died of interstitial pneumonitis. That’s pneumonia, untreated.
Jackson Scott Porter.
Jackson was a baby girl. She lived only 20 minutes. The coroner’s report said she received no pre-natal care.
Her grandfather, Mark Jerome, says she died in his house three months ago after his daughter went into labor.
“Well, when she came over, she was just sick – like a kidney infection or something like that,” Jerome said. “So she just wanted to come to the house for a couple days. And when she had the baby no one expected it, it just happened that quick.”
The coroner used the words “extreme prematurity” to describe the labor.
Jerome said he doesn’t regret the lack of pre-natal care. That gets to the heart of faith-healing.
“That’s the way we believe,” he said. “We believe in God and the way God handles the situation, the way we do things.”
Preston Bowers and Rockwell Sevy.
The Canyon County coroner believes Preston had Down’s Syndrome, and that the 2-year-old died of pneumonia.
KATU reported on his death in 2011, along with that of 14-year-old Rocky.
Rocky isn’t buried in the cemetery, but he lived nearby with his parents, Sally and Dan.
They didn’t want to talk about not getting him treatment.
“What I will talk to you about is the law,” Dan Sevy said. “I would like to remind you this country was founded on religious freedom, and on freedom in general. I would like to say, I picture freedom as a full object. It’s not like you take “a” freedom away. It’s that you chip at the entire thing. Freedom is freedom. Whenever you try to restrict any one person, then you’re chipping away at freedom. Yours and mine.”
That was that. Sevy didn’t want to talk any more about it.
“I told you I’m not going to do that,” he said. “You don’t understand the full story, and I’m not going to stand in front of a camera and give you the whole story. It’s just not going to happen. I see the way these things get edited out.
“All I see is an aggressive campaign against Christianity in general, it’s amazing to me in this day and age where Muslims get soft pedaled and Christians are under attack. It just blows my mind.”
Unfortunately, those weren’t the only names in the cemetery. There are 10 new graves that look as though they belong to children that have appeared since KATU’s last report in 2011.
Arrian Jade Granden.
Arrian was 15 years old. She ran track at Parma Middle School.
In June 2012, she got food poisoning.
She vomited so badly she ruptured her esophagus.
She slipped into unconsciousness and went into cardiac arrest.
She died.
Micah Taylor Eells.
The autopsy says Micah died of “likely an intestinal blockage.”
Micah was four days old.
None of the parents of the children who are buried at Peaceful Valley Cemetery will be prosecuted.Oregon wiped out its laws protecting faith-healers. Idaho did not.
- Read more: Faces of the fallen – Autopsy reports for the 12 dead children (Warning: graphic content)
Pamela Jade Eells.
Doctor Charles Garrison performed the autopsy on 16-year-old Pamela. She died of pneumonia.
“If you’ve ever been in a situation where you can’t breathe, it’s pretty desperate.
“You’re drowning in your own fluids.”
Watch: Raw interview with Dr. Charles Garrison:
The coroner’s report says Pamela died after a long chronic battle with an infection in her pelvic bone.
Garrison hasn’t forgotten.
“It’s inexplicable to me to comprehend how anyone can watch a child die and do nothing,” he said.
Linda Martin has seen it before. She’s a former Followers of Christ who grew up near Boise. She left when she was a teenager, and lives in Oregon now.
She contacted KATU when she realized more children were dying. She said she is related to many of them.
She keeps their obituaries in an album.
“Everybody hears about the Oregon City trials and the Oregon City churches,” she said. “What they don’t understand is the Idaho churches are more rigid, they are unbending, and they are more ruthless then the Oregon churches are.
“It happens one at a time, and the church is so good at covering up that most people don’t even know what’s going on next door to them.”
Jerry Gardener.
Jerry was Linda’s cousin. In 1980, he died from diabetes at the age of 11.
Both Martin and Dr. Garrison are frustrated Idaho hasn’t followed Oregon’s lead.
In Idaho, you can use faith-healing as a defense when it comes to children.
In Oregon, you can’t.
Syble Rossiter.
Syble was 12 when she died in Albany, Ore., last February.
Her parents, Travis and Wenona Rossiter, face manslaughter charges.
They belong to a congregation called “Church of the First Born” in Brownsville, Ore. According to Linda Martin’s family tree and other historical sources, that church is related to the Followers of Christ.
There’s at least one significant difference between the churches: When a child dies in Idaho due to lack of medical care, the parents aren’t breaking any laws.
“The state of Idaho has the religious shield laws to where you can just about murder your child in cold blood and claim religious exemptions and get away with it,” Martin said.
So many more names.
Of the 553 marked graves at Peaceful Valley Cemetery, 144 appear to be children under 18. That’s more than 25 percent.
Those deaths happened primarily in three different counties, which are manned by three different coroners who aren’t bringing the information to the public.
Very few people had a good idea how many children were dying until now. Linda Martin started a Facebook page to keep track of them. That’s still probably not a complete reckoning.
There are four such churches in Idaho, and they don’t get along.
Followers of Christ church in Marsing, Idaho.
“Difference of opinions, difference of religion, different ideas – we follow the word for what it is, what the bible says,” said Mark Jerome, who attends the Followers of Christ Church in Marsing, Idaho.
Followers members use at least two more cemeteries.
The caretaker at Star Cemetery in Star, Idaho said a Followers member recently showed up saying he needed to bury a baby. The baby was in the back seat of his car. The caretaker said he made the church member get a death certificate before he buried the child.
A spokesman for Idaho Governor Butch Otter asked to see the results of this investigation.
The state recently put together a child death review team, which will likely be looking at faith-healing deaths soon.
No significant move to change the laws is underway.
McBrolloks 
By the way, I see you published a book on Amazon Kindle, McBrolloks. How do you go about establishing your copyright there? Do you just say so?
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I guess copyright law is pretty simple. You write it first, then publish it, and you are all set. If someone “steals” your work, they could get sued and also labeled as plagiarists.
I guess that is how it works. But I am not sure.
I doubt anyone will want the credit for rewriting the old testament anyway. 🙂 You will have more enemies than friends.
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The old testament’s in fashion these days. Chuck in a couple of Merlots and Chardonnays among the Shilos and Preshtons and there shyou are.
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Strange names a lot of these children had. “Jackson” for a girl? Micah, Shilo, Garrett, Preston, Arrian. Who on earth dreams up names like this?
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People are people in their own right. They can believe in what they want to. Don’t you think christians can believe in what they want to?
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The trouble with fundies is that they don’t recognise that other people have rights, such as to privacy and the unhindered enjoyment of their own property.
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Dit is bitter kak om te lewe. Ek wil veral nie hoor by een of ander fundie hoe wonderlik daai fucked – up, asshole, douchebag van ‘n god is nie. Wat laat hulle dink dat god so wonderlik is. Gegewe die feit dat daar probably nie so iets is nie. As daar so ‘n ding is en ek sien dit in die hiernamaals eendag, sal ek vir hom vra hoekom hy soos ‘n absolute, totale fucked up, spitefull doos opgetree het.Het hy een of ander lekkerte uit my suffering uitgekry? Hoekom tree hy soos ‘n spitefull doos op? Ek haat hom met my hele hart en siel. Geen liefde sal ooit so sterk of groot wees soos my haat vir daai gedrog nie. Afskuwelik en uiters onregverdig is hy. Swak smaak!!!! Is al wat ek vir hom sal se.
Hierdie fundies is van hulle donners koppe af. Hulle sien die feite voor hulle maar kan nie glo nie. God is ‘n monster of hy is totaal en al fake. Maar nee, more sit ons weer vir die hoeveelste keer in die kerk. Nou het ons nog nie eens by hulle ware fucked – up gedrag uitgekom nie. Aaklige ding so ‘n god.
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Dit waaraan jy aandag gee bepaal die kwaliteit van jou lewe – het ek êrens gelees as jou aandag heeltyd by die haat in jou hart is dan voer jy daai haat tot groter hoogtes. So waar jy is – is die “lewe” wat jy self geskep het vir jouself, jy kan ander blameer as dit jou beter sal laat voel, maar aan die einde van die dag is al waaroor jy beheer het – jy kan besluit wat jy in jou gedagte wêreld wil toelaat en ek voel jy dink dat daar geen uitkoms vir jou is nie, maar ek maak weer die voorstel – vra jou shrink wat is die geloofsprong en doen dit – wat het jy om te verloor?
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“Wat het jy om te verloor?” – baie. Rasionele denke, eerlikheid, integriteit geskoei op ‘n stewige fondasie,…..om maar ‘n paar te noem.
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The last thing anyone suffering with depression should do is become religious. Then you become a crackpot as well as miserable. There is no god that makes people feel miserable according to who is good or bad. A psychopath does not feel miserable.
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I agree. I know a person suffering from severe depression (bipolar). His pastor told him to throw his medication away. Just trust in god. The end result was two suicide attempts.
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Very few people are actually bipolar. It has become the fashion among general practitioners to call every second person who says they feel happy sometimes and sometimes not so happy, bipolar. Depression is far more common and is just as life threatening as what used to be called manic depressive disorder. Nobody with severe depression or manic depressive disorder should listen to what a silly pastor has to say. Faith healing is imagination gone wrong, it’s the same illusion repeated so often and for so long that it becomes a hallucination. Hallucinations can seem very real to people who have hypnotised themselves, or had themselves hypnotised, into believing that what they think they are seeing or hearing is real. But if you’re really sick, put your health in the hands of a good specialist, not Jesus. Incidentally, I have been suffering with the most painful sciatica in my lower back for a couple of years which was incorrectly diagnosed as arthritis. I finally found a good orthopod who had me scanned and treated and am now a lot better. Sciatica is not a condition you should go on your knees and pray to Jesus for.
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Funny that you mention sciatica. I had this a year ago resulting in my one leg going totally numb all the way to my foot; and combined with the most terrible pain. The doctors wanted to replace a disc, but I decided to live with the pain for a bit before taking the invasive operation route. Went to a physio and got some weird exercises to do on a daily basis. It was a slow process, but one year later and I’m fully recovered. Now, if I was a godiot I would make the statement that “the doctors gave me zero chance of recovery without the op, but low and behold; god healed me miraculously! Halleluja!” Bunch of nitwits, these godiots.
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My orthopod also told me about the option of having a disc replaced, but first of all had me injected in the spine with painkillers and cortisone – oh the bliss of having no pain at all! – and then sent me to a physiotherapist. There is apparently no difference in the end result between surgery and more conservative methods, over time. The surgery works in the short term, the injections and physio in the longer term. I still have chronic bursitis in my left hip but not to the extent I have to hobble around with a walking stick; I can walk unaided. I take so many anti inflammatories that the arthritis developing in my fingers has buggered off in fright. The prospect of surgery would get any reasonable person to hobble away in fright; rather have the injections, if needs be, and physio.
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Emphasis on the living with the pain for “a bit”, not forever. Had a rethink and for me, they can rather take the offending piece of vertebra out and stick a plug in the space. Also makes one very clumsy when you try to avoid movements that will worsen the pain.
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This woman is such a harridan that Christopher Hitchens chose to rather bugger off than listen to her tirades. She is right when she says she has no problem obeying the ten commandments. Nobody is likely to lead her into temptation, unless she gossips about and slanders people.
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Wherever you find extreme religion, you will find that women and children suffer the most.
Religion as the root of sexism
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The central premise of Christianity is that human beings are to be allowed into heaven, only because God demanded, and got, a blood sacrifice of his allegedly beloved son, to bring about redemption from their original sin, after God had formerly left all of them unsaved. The blood sacrifice was essential. The bible says that all things are purged by blood, and “without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. 9:22).
St. Augustine and other church fathers insisted that only this blood sacrifice could have atoned for Woman’s original sin of disobedient apple-eating, which brought death into the world, and with which all generations were infected simply by the passage of every child through a female body. God laid his curse on Eve: “In sorrow shalt thou bear children, and thy husband shall rule over thee” (Gen. 3:16), which was interpreted as a punishment deserved by all “daughters of Eve” forever. All three major patriarchal religions still use this same text.
The early Christian Tertullian told Everywoman that she is another Eve, the “devil’s gateway,” and on account of her “even the Son of God had to die.” So Woman, rather than God, was made responsible for the death of Jesus and even for the existence of death itself. Jesus’ death as atonement for original sin seems especially pointless today, when even the Catholic Church is willing to admit that the story of Eden is just a myth.
Still, ever anxious to absolve God of the murder of his son, early Christians often blamed the Jews along with Woman, calling them “Christ killers.” Throughout the centuries, churchmen pointed to the passage in Matt. 27:25, where the Jews declare their responsibility through all generations: “His blood be on us, and on our children.” But this was a misinterpretation of what was actually a ritual formula repeated at all sacrificial ceremonies where a god-surrogate, human or animal, was killed. It meant that all present, and their descendants, would be “washed in the blood of the Lamb,” so to speak, and redeemed.
In ancient Rome at the Taurobolium, for example, celebrants stood under a grating where the sacrificial bull was killed, and literally bathed in the divine blood, and were said to be “born again for eternity.” Jesus was by no means the only human savior-god whose death was thought to redeem his followers. There were literally dozens of similar, earlier, virgin-born, miracle-working “sons of God” in the ancient world. All their myths contributed to the Judeo-Christian synthesis.
But none of the others were so replete with sexism. Clement of Alexandria said every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman, and quoted Jesus’ words from the Gospel According to the Egyptians: “I have come to destroy the works of the female.” St. Peter’s remark in the Gospel of Thomas was that “women are not worthy of life.” St. Odo of Cluny said that a woman is nothing more than “a sack of dung.” Andrew the Chaplain said woman is by nature inconstant, fickle, disobedient, and prone to every evil. John Scotus Erigena taught that the sinless part of humankind is embodied in man, the sinful part in woman.
St. Thomas Aquinas claimed that every female is a birth defective, imperfect male, begotten only because her father was ill or in a state of sin. In the 19th century, Anglican churchmen declared women “intrinsically inferior in excellence, imbecile by sex and nature, inconstant in mind, and imperfect and infirm in character.”
Even today, the Catholic Encyclopedia says “The female sex is in some respects inferior to the male sex, both as regards body and soul.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote: “There is nothing more pathetic in all history than the hopeless resignation of woman to the outrages she has been taught to believe are ordained of God.”
Wife-beating and enslavement have been so prominent in Western culture that a standard symbol of “marriage” on Alsatian New Year’s decorations was a toy man beating a toy wife. From the pulpit, men were ordered to beat their wives, and wives to kiss the stick that beat them. An ecclesiastical “Rules of Marriage” text from the 15th century said that a husband must bully and terrify his wife, and if that didn’t work, he must “beat her soundly, for it is better to punish the body and correct the soul.”
A man’s home was said to be his castle, and his wife’s prison. Up to the middle of the 20th century, American law upheld the “doctrine of immunity,” which meant that the sanctity of the home could not be invaded to arrest a husband for assaulting his wife, because this would “destroy the peace of the home.” Only in 1962 did a judge rule that there was a certain lack of peace in the home of a wife-beater. Even so, most churches still retained the bride’s marriage promise to “obey.”
Churches now try to deemphasize the holocaust perpetrated against women under the Inquisition and other European witch hunts, but it is clear that many millions were arbitrarily tortured and murdered during the 500 years of inquisitorial domination, simply because clergymen taught that women were evil.
The Inquisition persisted for centuries because it was a highly profitable extortion racket, developed for the economic benefit of the Church. Immediate confiscation of the property of accused persons was its raison d’etre. The popes publicly praised the rule and noted that “the business of defending the faith languished lamentably” when confiscation was not promptly carried out. There was no need to wait for a confession, though the use of torture made confession almost inevitable in any case. It is estimated that about 85 percent of the Inquisition’s victims were women, who committed none of the crimes of which they were accused, such as consorting with devils, raising storms, causing illnesses by magic, or keeping familiar spirits in the form of dogs, cats and other animals.
Islam’s abuses of women
Restrictions on and abuses of married women, similar to those of traditional Christian culture, are still evident in Islam. The “great theologian” Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, whom the Encyclopedia of Islam calls the most influential authority after Mohammed himself, agreed with Jews and Christians that Eve was the original source of all sin. Because of Eve’s offense, Allah ruled that every woman must be punished in various ways in addition to bearing the “sorrow” of childbirth.
She must be separated from her parents and married to a stranger, which can be accomplished when still a child. She cannot divorce her husband, though he may divorce her and turn her out of his home any time, just by saying “I divorce you.” He keeps the children and may also have up to four wives. She must never leave his house unless accompanied by an adult male relative. She must keep her head covered, even at home. She can have no control over her own person.
Under Sharia law, women have a lesser share in inheritance, and cannot serve as judges or rulers. They have no recourse if their husbands choose to beat, starve, rape or mutilate them, or even kill them for the sake of “honor.” A majority of Muslim women have little or no formal education and know nothing of any religion other than Islam.
Religions perpetrate a great many lies. Some are harmless enough, even rather charming, like fairy tales. But two lies are the vilest and most destructive of all human concepts.
The first is the lie that “our” way of believing is the One Truth, and that all other ways are false and of the devil. It’s only a short step from this to fanatical aggression and “holy war” against all those who doubt “our” doctrines or call “our” god into question. The Truthers are terrified of any doubt or scholarly examination of their beliefs, and their terror can make them collectively homicidal lunatics.
The second most destructive lie is the denigration of woman as the source of all evil — the lie that has blackened all three major patriarchal religions throughout history. It still clings to credence in many parts of the world. Until this particular lie has been fully disproved and abandoned, no religion deserves a hearing.
We may talk of mutual tolerance and freedom of religion as good, humane goals, but there is no freedom where women, the mothers of the race, are suppressed or abused. The myth of Eve’s guilt may be the vilest lie ever perpetrated. It deserves not tolerance but blame.
http://ffrf.org/publications/freethought-today/item/13784-religion-as-the-root-of-sexism
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Violence and discrimination against women encouraged by UN.
Sexism, religion and culture
05 December, 2013 11:23
If you need evidence of how religion and culture are inextricably bad things, you need only look at a recent resolution passed by the UN.
In order for the resolution to pass, Norway had to cut a paragraph saying that states, “strongly condemn all forms of violence against women and women human rights defenders and refrain from invoking any customs, traditions or religious consideration to avoid their obligations.”
Now the thing about this, is that when you get right down to it the defence of human rights is generally something that happens in a bid to change customs, traditions and religious considerations that are not worthy of respect.
In fact all protests as always in conflict with one or more of those categories, as all protests are based upon bringing about some sort of change. Even a labour strike essentially challenges corporate culture and the traditional dominance of the boss.
If under a given religious teaching a husband has the right to beat his wife, then frankly those religious teachings should not be tolerated. The state should be neutral on religion, but that does not translate into the state being neutral on wife beating.
The same thing goes with gender discrimination.
In its guidelines for how to deal with the invitation of controversial external speakers, Universities UK said this:
“Assuming the side-by-side segregated seating arrangement is adopted, there does not appear to be any discrimination on gender grounds merely by imposing segregated seating. Both men and women are being treated equally, as they are both being segregated in the same way”.
Now the reason for that is religious and cultural sensitivity – the problem with it is illustrated by history.
In 1937 Poland legalised “Ghetto benches” in its universities, benches specifically for Jewish students, where Jewish students had to sit. This was introduced due to the ‘cultural sensitivities’ of bigots.
The benches essentially meant that anti-Semitic professors could ignore those benches set up for Jewish students, while answering questions from the rest of the class.
It is not that the same thing might happen with gender segregation in the UK’s universities, it is that it inevitably will.
Separate but equal never works, because the point to separating people is to make keeping them unequal easier.
If one is to allow people to invoke religious considerations for treating other people unequally, one allows one of the major sources of unequal treatment to go unchallenged.
The same thing goes with customs. Female genital mutilation is a cultural practise for a fair chunk of Africa, generally practised in part due to huge cultural importance placed upon virginity.
I should also point out that our country’s problem with ‘corrective rape’ is largely a product of highly toxic masculine culture, and challenging that culture is going to have to be a part of dealing with it.
There is not a single church, mosque, traditional leader or temple that preaches corrective rape in our country – yet it is still a feature of our country because part of our culture views women as anything other than people.
Protests against this practice are protests against culture and against traditions. If one allows states to point to custom and tradition in a bid to avoid their obligations regarding women’s rights, then one ends up with a resolution that means nothing.
But in order to get that resolution to pass, it had to be thus neutered, otherwise many states in Africa, the Middle East and the Vatican (so much for how much better the current pope is than the last bunch) would have refused to sign it.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2013/12/05/sexism-religion-and-culture
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http://youtu.be/kHPK2dI_WLg Why not just give assistance and shut up about Jesus. It always has to be a control trip.
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Evangelical Christians like this are so terribly irritating, but you have to bear in mind that they’re mental midgets. They’re like small children living in a fantasy world.
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Madiba kan mos sjampagne pis en kaviaar kak. Hy is mos god.
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There is no god.
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Politics is ongelooflik fucked – up!!! Fok Mandela!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Adriaan jy moet tog nie jou rasionele denke verloor nie.
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We’ve all had an overdose of Mandela mania for the last couple of days. The people who jeered Zuma at Mandela’s memorial will vote him in again next year. The masses are duped because they wish to be duped. I remarked in a restaurant this afternoon that most of the poor deserve to be poor because they are stupid. We must always feel sorry for the poor yadda yadda yadda instead of celebrating and taking a cue from the lives of successful people, by far the most of whom have worked hard all their lives. An old white socialist walked out in disgust. Yep, you get them, white socialists. From the UK. The type that Margaret Thatcher succeeded in getting to emigrate when she clamped down on the trade union in the eighties. Labour got back in and stuffed things up to the point where you couldn’t get a white Englishman to do a day’s work, so they got all these immigrants to do the work the English wouldn’t do. So now they sit with the legacy of their own laziness and greed. Nobody gives a stuff what the English think because England is stuffed.
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England has sliced his own throat. Beautiful old Europe, not cradle of civilization anymore.
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