Homeless in Manila

Homeless in Manila, Philippines: hands down, the crowning achievement of modern capitalism has got to be the 100 million homeless children across this planet, with an estimated 2 million in the Philippines. Nothing confirms pieties about children being the future more powerfully than the utter depravity of the neglect, exploitation  & violence they face. They get by as beggars, pickpockets, drug abusers, prostitutes; they deal with hunger, parasites, ill-health, & fear of arrest under vagrancy laws, often resulting in physical & sexual abuse; in some places like the Philippines, they are victims of vigilante death squads, thought to be government sanctioned, who consider them vermin to be exterminated. Here Filipino children sleep near a highway in Manila. Imagine their bereavement & terror. Then consider that the Philippines has four billionaires, including Henry Sy, the real estate magnate behind the forcible evictions in Manila making thousands homeless so he can build shopping malls.   (Photo by Francis R. Malasig/European Pressphoto Agency)