Man cuts off finger, eats it

Seriously. From Reuters: Man cut off finger to protest overdue wages:

BELGRADE (Reuters) - A Serbian union official who chopped off his finger and ate it in a protest over wages that in some cases have not been paid in years, said Monday he did it to show how desperate he and other workers were.

"We, the workers have nothing to eat, we had to seek some sort of alternative food and I gave them an example," Zoran Bulatovic told Reuters. "It hurt like hell."

Bulatovic, a union leader at the Raska Holding textile factory in Novi Pazar in southwest Serbia, used a hacksaw to cut off most of his left-hand little finger Friday.

Bulatovic said he decided to act after his deputy, "a single mother of three, was the first to say she would cut off her finger. I could not allow her to do that," he said.

State-owned Raska Holding was a major textile producer in the late 1980s with a workforce of 4,000. It suffered during the collapse of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and a loss of markets and mismanagement during a decade of wars and sanctions led to massive job cuts, leaving the company with just 100 workers.

Some employees have not been paid for years, only collecting social benefits, like free medical care.

About two dozen workers went on a 19-day hunger strike last year. They want the company's debt to be swapped for state-held equity and a welfare program for those nearing retirement.

Bulatovic said his comrades will not back down from their demands, but they will postpone planned self-mutilations at least until talks with government officials in Belgrade expected Tuesday.

First of all, WTF?! Secondly, gross.

And finally, this brings up a point that I've been thinking about lately. One day I was driving home at night and stopped at a light and I saw a homeless man sleeping on a shopfront. I sat there deciding if there was enough time for me to run out and give him RM5, and if it was a good idea, and if I'd get robbed/kidnapped in the process, and a multitude of other things. And then the light turned green, and that was the end of that.

But it begs the question of why I was more willing to give money to this person who did nothing and would probably continue doing nothing as opposed to the good people who walk around Bangsar trying to sell stuff.

I think because we sympathise more with the helpless (or faux-helpless) that we're willing to help them, but the second they look semi-presentable, they're ignored, and the outcome is that those who manage to drag themselves over the poverty line by fighting tooth and nail are then neglected when they're in real need. And now that we're in a recession, the poorest of the poor suffer, but so do they, and yet they're still neglected.

So what are we supposed to do? Keep giving money to the poorest of the poor, where giving $1 means you'll have to keep giving $1 for them to live; or give money to the marginal, where giving $1 means there could be a point where they can live on their own?

I hate the gray areas of life.