Update:

Check out this Guardian article from 2012, by a so-called Christian priest, Paul Oestreicher, suggesting that Jesus was gay, based on misreading the word for love in the text of St. John (which is agape, or spiritual love, not eros, or erotic love).

Please note, I’m not demonizing gays here. My point is that these sorts of readings seemed to be based on obvious misinterpretation of the original text, and point to a consistent agenda.

Just as Doniger claims to be “HIndu,” Oestreicher claims to be “Christian,” yet both are inserting extraordinarily idiosyncratic and unsupported readings to impose a view that the objects of Christian and Hindu veneration are homosexual (and in the case of Hinduism, pedophilic).

Make sure to read through the comments at the bottom of this idiotic Guardian article to see that the majority of readers see through this kind of nonsense.

Aditi Banerjee, Oh You Do Get It Wrong, Outlook India,  October 28, 2009

[Note: Outlook India is a left-liberal outlet and the author of this trenchant critique of Wendy Doniger is not a Hindu fundamentalist but a Yale-trained lawyer.]

Note that while professing to be extremely sympathetic to Hinduism, Doniger, the most influential scholar in the field in the West, lacks first-rate facility in the languages she needs – Sanskrit and Tamil – for original interpretation and instead relies on her command of Latin and Greek to read secondary sources, and that too in a misleading way. ]

Wendy Doniger (Mircea Eliade Distinguished Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School and in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago) was recently interviewed in Outlook with reference to her new book, The Hindus: An Alternative History.  In the interview, she (1) falsely and unfairly brands all of her critics as right-wing Hindutva fundamentalists, and (2) grossly mischaracterizes (and misquotes) the text of the Valmiki Ramayana, calling into question her “alternative” version not just of the Ramayana, but also of Hinduism and Hindu history as a whole……..

Defamation of Critics

The introduction to the interview begins with a misleading quote:

“[Doniger] has continued to infuriate the Hindutva brigade with her unorthodox views on Hinduism and its sacred texts, earning for herself the epithet: “crude, lewd and very rude in the hallowed portals of Sanskrit academics.””

The quote implicitly attributed to the “Hindutva brigade” is actually from the BBC web site:

Professor Wendy Doniger is known for being rude, crude and very lewd in the hallowed portals of Sanskrit Academics. All her special works have revolved around the subject of sex in Sanskrit texts ranging from Siva: The Erotic Ascetic to Tales of Sex and Violence…Never one to shy away from sex, she threw herself into the job of translating the [Kama Sutra] … She was particularly interested by the parts that justify adultery and the list of ways to get rid of a man … When she was translating it (over a period of a few years and numerous Sanskrit classes), she frequently found herself having to take cold showers. [1]

The misleading use of this quote sets the tone for the rest of the interview —heaping blame on a nebulous, undefined, straw man “Hindutva Internet Brigade” for the whole continuum of criticism of Doniger’s work—criticism that has come mostly from moderate and liberal Hindus, secularists, non-Hindu scholars and even one prominent Harvard Indologist who is not known for being friendly towards Hindus.  Rather than confront the actual criticisms, Doniger pretends that her only critics are Hindu extremists, and by rebuking this “enemy” she tries to deflect any criticism of her work.

Just as some politicians resort to picking on their weakest critic to discredit all of their critics, Doniger picks one stray comment on the Amazon web site to characterize all of her critics—when asked to describe the Hindu-American response to her book, Doniger exclaims, “My favourite one on Amazon accuses me of being a Christian fundamentalist and my book a defenxe of Christianity against Hinduism. And of course, I’m not a Christian, I’m a Jew!”

It is totally irresponsible for such a prominent professor, whose career is built on writing about Hinduism, to stereotype and vilify the entire Hindu-American community on the basis of the actions of a few.

Doniger’s refusal to address her critics only worsens as the interview proceeds.  When asked why Hindus object to her writings, she flippantly replies:

You’ll have to ask them why. It doesn’t seem to me to have much to do with the book. They don’t say, “Look here, you said this on page 200, and that’s a terrible thing to say.” Instead, they say things not related to the book: you hate Hindus, you are sex-obsessed, you don’t know anything about the Hindus, you got it all wrong.

This is a bald lie. The first Part of the book, Invading the Sacred, documents and refutes dozens of statements by Doniger, as illustrated by the following:

• “Holi, the spring carnival, when members of all castes mingle and let down their hair, sprinkling one another with cascades of red powder and liquid, symbolic of the blood that was probably used in past centuries.”  (from Doniger’s article about Hinduism in the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopaedia—Microsoft Encarta subsequently removed her entry in 2004; while we do not know this for a fact, one can reasonably conclude that Microsoft Encarta came to an internal conclusion about Doniger’s lack of scholarship and objectivity).

• From a newspaper article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, dated November 19, 2000, entitled “Big-screen caddy is Hindu hero in disguise” written by David O’Reilly, Inquirer Staff Writer:

“Myth scholar Wendy Doniger of the University of Chicago was on hand earlier this month to lecture on the Gita.  “The Bhagavad Gita is not as nice a book as some Americans think,” she said, in a lecture titled “The Complicity of God in the Destruction of the Human Race.” “Throughout the Mahabharata, the enormous Hindu epic of which the Gita is a small part, Krishna goads human beings into all sorts of murderous and self-destructive behaviors such as war in order to relieve “mother Earth” of its burdensome human population and the many demons disguised as humans … The Gita is a dishonest book; it justifies war,” Doniger told the audience of about 150” (emphasis added).


Doniger may now claim that she was misquoted, but she has failed to obtain a retraction from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

• Prof. Michael Witzel, Wales Professor of Sanskrit in the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies at Harvard University posted the following remarks about Doniger’s translations to a mailing list and called her translations “UNREALIABLE” [sic] and “idiosyncratic:”

• Doniger’s “rendering of even the first two paadas [of the Rg Veda] is more of a paraphrase than a translation;”
• “In this hymn (of 18 stanzas) alone I have counted 43 instances which are wrong or where others would easily disagree.”
• “Note that all 3 translations are Re-translations. Mistakes of the type mentioned above could easily have been avoided if the work of our 19th century predecessors (and contemporaries!) had been consulted more carefully … Last point: Looking at the various new translations that have appeared in the past decade or so: Why always to Re-translate something done ‘several’ times over already — and why not to take up one of the zillion Un-translated Skt. texts?” [2]

Is that specific enough?

Nor can Doniger claim ignorance of these examples, having been made aware of them through emails, various conferences, journals and mailing lists by many people, including university professors, fellow scholars, and students.

As a scapegoat tactic to discredit her critics, Doniger plays both the sex card and the race card, without offering any evidence for being discriminated against on the grounds of her gender or her race:

I think I have a double disadvantage among the Hindutva types.  One is that I’m not a Hindu and the other is that I am not a male.  I suppose the third is that I’m not a Brahmin, but I don’t even get there because I’m not a Hindu.   I think it’s considered unseemly in the conservative Hindu view for a woman to talk about sex—that’s something men talk about among themselves (emphasis added).

But her critics have been concerned not with her gender or race but only with the content of her scholarship.  Race and sex bias are the “cards” Doniger uses to distract readers who are unfamiliar with the details of the substance of the critiques against her.

Hindu society acknowledges and celebrates any genuine scholars of Hinduism, irrespective of their gender, race or caste.  For example, the late Sir John Woodroffe / Arthur Avalon is regarded by even the most traditional and orthodox of Hindu acharyas, including the late Shankaracharya of Sringeri, as one of the great Tantric scholars of modern times—despite his being neither Hindu nor Brahmin-born.  In addition, Dr. Klaus Klostermaier, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Manitoba (Canada), is highly respected in Hindu circles. Linda Johnsen, neither male, Hindu, nor Brahmin-born, author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hinduism (2002) among several other books, is also highly regarded for her knowledge about Hinduism.

This respect is not just academic—non-Indian spiritual gurus have been revered by Hindus as well.  Daya Mata (Faye Wright), another female, non-Hindu, non-Brahmin (by birth) of the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) was highly regarded by the most traditional and orthodox of Hindu leaders, including (I have been told) the late Shankaracharya of Sringeri, a great scholar and authority on Hinduism. Similarly, Sister Nivedita (Margaret Elizabeth Noble), female, non-Hindu, non Brahmin-born, perhaps the most prominent of Swami Vivekananda’s disciples, has been revered as a true Hindu saint by many orthodox Hindus, including Brahmins; so also has Mother (Mira Alfassa), the Frenchwoman closely associated with (and successor to) Sri Aurobindo.  I could go on with a list of lesser known women of foreign birth who are equally acknowledged as true representatives of Hinduism.  I have not even touched upon the scores of Indian women who have been revered by Hindus from the Vedic times to the modern day—e.g., Gargi, whose open debate with the great sage Yajnavalkya is prominently featured in the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad.

Moreover, the idea that “it’s considered unseemly in the conservative Hindu view for a woman to talk about sex–that’s something men talk about among themselves” is another blatantly false stereotype by Doniger……...

There is also the celebrated account given in the Yoga Vasistha of Queen Chudalai, an advanced yogini, who initiates her husband, King Sikhidvaja, as her disciple; she tests his renunciation repeatedly and instructs him on the proper attitude towards sexual union and sensual pleasure…..

As these examples show, not only were women allowed to discuss sex, they had the authority and scriptural and social standing to challenge and teach the greatest of sages and the most royal of men with respect to all subject matters, including sex and eroticism……..

“In a personal context, I can say unequivocally that despite my birth and upbringing as an American and my liberal schooling in Boston and at Yale Law School, my most honest and open discussions of sex have been with the most orthodox and “traditional” of Hindu swamis and acharyas.  They helped me unlearn the associative guilt and sexual repression of Western mores.  They also taught me that sexual desire is, in the appropriate context, an integral part of life and that there is nothing sinful  or shameful about it, and that heightened sexual energies are not antithetical to, but can be an integral part of, spiritual development for people qualified (adhikaris) for those types of sadhana or spiritual practice.

In short, playing this race and sex card may be an attempt by Doniger to elicit sympathy—but this cannot substitute for sound scholarship.  In the traditions of true academic scholarship, Doniger should let her work stand or fall on its own merits and not hide behind false victimhood. ”

Update:

Since posting this, I checked up on Loftus, one of whose books, “The Betrayal of the Jews,” is linked in the post below.

It seems there is major disagreement about him.

While conceding his expertise and successful professional work, some who were on board the USS Liberty claim that his book on the subject is misleading and based on unnamed sources and false accounts. Right-wing propaganda?

Charles Burris at LRC:

As he was dying from lung cancer, the legendary Machiavellian CIA head of Counterintelligence, James Jesus Angelton, provided author Joseph J. Trento this startling candid confession:

You know how I got to be in charge of counterintelligence? I agreed not to polygraph or require detailed background checks on Allen Dulles and 60 of his closest friends . . . They were afraid that their own business dealings with Hitler’s pals would come out. They were too arrogant to believe that the Russians would discover it all . . .

Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars. The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. These people attracted and promoted each other. Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and loved being in it . . . Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Carmel Offiie, and Frank Wisner were the grand masters. If you were in a room with them you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell. I guess I will see them there soon.

Joseph J. Trento, The Secret History of the CIA, pages 478-479.

_________________________________

NOTE (Some previous blog posts relevant to the material linked above)

Blog posts related to  Angleton, Colby, Agora, and the rest.

“Doug Valentine on the Empire of the Lie,” December 29, 2009

World Gold Council, Rothschild-backed Fund, Buys Stakes in Bullion Vault,” June 23, 2010

Soros ad Shock Therapy In Poland,” April 20, 2012

“The Ronald Reagan of Columbia,” September 28, 2012

“Was Pegasus Behind the Murder of Bill Colby?,” August 29, 2012

“Paul-Lehrman Connection Meaningless, Says Daily Bell,” August 24, 2012

“Lila at the Daily Reckoning,”

“More Agora,” 2009, updated many times.

“Turning Beach Sand in Gold, the Goldcor Swindle, April 10, 2009

“Systematics threatened Agora over Danny Casolaro’s Death,” Sept. 27, 2012

Started in 2009, I believe, and then updated. I’ve put in dozens of links to material but they disappear mysteriously. Webpages to which I’ve linked are taken down or disappear. I’ve put the links back and they disappear again.  There is software that enables blogs to be hacked without leaving a physical trace. The multiple updates are to keep track of the lies of a certain net troll, who takes my pieces and then deliberately misrepresents them.  Possibly, has financial mafia connections.

Welcome to virtual reality.

COMMENT

The  post by Charles Burris at LRC started an immediate train of thought about the wider effects of revenge porn laws.

Would laws proscribing nude/sexual material put a crimp on outing anyone in public office?

The Weiner case has been cited, but not convincingly.

In the first place, I’m not sure that Weiner’s antics even rose to the level of a public issue….unless he really was stalking his constituents on Twitter.

Secondly, it’s perfectly possible for someone to reveal what Weiner was upto, without putting photos of his private parts on the net.

His targets could show chat sessions to journalists/investigators, who would affirm publicly that they had seen them.

If a president has prostate cancer, is there any need to publish a public photo of his body to “inform” the public?

Obviously not.

But what about my contention that publication of private email correspondence, private conversations, and candid camera shots, without consent, should also be clearly signaled as a violation of rights?

Wouldn’t that get in the way of outing criminals in government or their accomplices?

Not at all. There is, first of all, a distinction between matters of public concern (the behavior of government or police or intelligence personnel) and the behavior of private citizens.

In their public capacity, no business or political dealing of an official should be off-limits to public scrutiny.

What about private business transactions of public figures (that is, how they made money before coming to office)?

That is tougher to address in a principled fashion, because I think it’s still fair to leave public officials some room for privacy, because, contrary to net rumors, they are human beings.

However, I think their right to privacy should be limited to personal matters, not to business affairs, which inherently involve the public (that is, people outside their family and friends).

That means journalists would be free to access tax papers, business records etc., as needed, as far back as needed, as long as they did it legally.

If nothing, that would stop a lot of people from going into public office, in the first place.

My worry about conversations being recorded and used to threaten or coerce journalists stems from my own experience involving telephone conversations with a certain libertarian blogger, in which we discussed a number of other activists and issues.

I suspect very strongly that those conversations were recorded.

The very fact that journalists can be recorded  puts a crimp on their ability to blog.

How is THAT not chilling?

Far more chilling than any law that automatically criminalized non-consensual personal material on the net.

[Note my reasoning on this again:

The individual might have consented to having photos taken in a private context. Such consent doesn’t automatically extend to public display of the photos. If you give permission to someone to enter your home once to fix a sink, does that mean that they’re allowed to come in later to steal your furniture? Even if you gave them a key,  you still retain your right not to be robbed. ]

Obviously, there are invasion of privacy laws already on the books.

Equally obviously, it’s hard to charge someone with invasion of privacy if the person who did it might have been a proxy, rather than a principal.

In other words, the guilty party used someone else to do his dirty work.

Furthermore, invasion of privacy laws are pointless, if pursuing them damages ones privacy even further.

Finally, if malicious intent is used as a test, the law can easily be circumvented, since any anonymous blog can redistribute private material without a problem, as they can claim to be motivated by money or curiosity, not malice.

That’s why a simple, uncomplicated law against the public posting of private photos or conversations or emails that do not show explicit consent would restrain third-party dissemination, off the bat.

No malice would need to be proved.

There is nothing libertarian about hacking private conversations or recording them, even if some theorists have so argued.

On the other hand, laws attempting to circumvent anonymous commenting on blogs are on the face of it a violation of legitimate free speech protection.

Portable real-time eavesdropping on the brain is now working technology, according to a report at the Volokh Conspiracy:

“Consider this – one of my favorite neuroscientists, Jack Gallant, is building a brain-mind map. In one of his extraordinary studies, he showed subjects YouTube videos while monitoring their brain activity using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). He then built a computer algorithm “dictionary” of the brain (this brain activity corresponds to this image in the YouTube video, and so forth). Using his brain/mind/dictionary, he showed the subject new YouTube video clips that the computer didn’t get to “see” and the computer had to “guess” what the subjects were seeing. The results are really striking. Of course, an fMRI machine is enormous, so law enforcement isn’t going to use it in the field anytime soon (or ever). By contrast, portable brain monitoring has serious potential. (Full disclosure – I already own two Neurosky portable electroencephalograph (EEG) devices, which I use to hack into my own brain activity to improve my concentration, to meditate, and more.) The Parvizi study used electrocorticography. Since we already have really simple EEG devices (they don’t measure much just yet), you can bet it’s just a matter of time before we get high-quality portable brain monitoring. In fact, DARPA has been gearing up for just that (check out its “Portable Brain Recording Device & App” Project, SB131-002). Is this the future of law enforcement and surveillance?”

Eugene Volokh:

“Of course, I can imagine a few situations in which such depictions might contribute to public debates. But those situations are likely to be so rare that the law’s coverage of them wouldn’t make it “substantially” overbroad (even if the “no legitimate purpose” proviso is seen as too vague to exclude those valuable non-consensual depictions of nudity). Any challenges to the law based on such unusual cases would therefore have to be to the law as applied in a particular case. A facial challenge asking that the law be invalidated in its entirety, based on just these few unconstitutional applications, would not succeed.

I recognize that United States v. Stevens (2010) held that “The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech does not extend only to categories of speech that survive an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits,” and that First Amendment exceptions be limited to “historic and traditional categories long familiar to the bar,” such as obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement, and the like, which are “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem.” Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942).

But even under this sort of historical approach, I think non-consensual depictions of nudity could be prohibited. Historically and traditionally, such depictions would likely have been seen as unprotected obscenity (likely alongside many consensual depictions of nudity). And while the Court has narrowed the obscenity exception — in cases that have not had occasion to deal with non-consensual depictions — in a way that generally excludes mere nudity (as opposed to sexual conduct or “lewd exhibition of the genitals”), the fact remains that historically such depictions would not have been seen as constitutionally protected.”

Comment:

Volokh’s credentials, both as a libertarian and a scholar, are impeccable.

Even so, even if constitutional,  it doesn’t mean that the new law might not be poorly drawn up.

As a matter of fact, what I saw of the California law, with its reliance on proof of malicious intent, seemed quite toothless.

But it is at least a starting point.

Contra Volokh, an across-the-board  law against the posting of nude/sexual pictures, without the subject’s explicit consent, would be better.  Naturally, entertainment or pornography involving consenting adults would be excluded.  So the charges of “anti-porn” would be defanged.  Porn addicts can still download triple XXX stuff to their heart’s content. They just can’t download material with non-consenting subjects.

I think that kind of simple clear law is less likely to be gamed, actually, than one that is hemmed in by too many ifs and buts.

Amanda Marcotte at TalkingPointsMemo makes the essential point succinctly. There is nothing un-libertarian about standing up to forcing a woman to be in pornography:

“As long as revenge porn is legal, it is legal for a man that you’ve rejected to force you into a relationship with him anyway, and a sexual one at that, as he uses your body for sexual ends against your will online over and over and over again. With this understanding, we’ve already got laws limiting the trade of child pornography. Free speech will survive forcing men to merely mouth their bad opinions about their exes online instead of conscripting them into pornography.”

This is exactly correct.

Anyone whose pictures or intimate information  is forcibly put on the net against their will is  being subjected to public voyeurism, which is a misdemeanor, even off the net.

It should also come under the common law of tort, in that it is a public disclosure of private information.

But then consider the amplification provided by repeated downloading on the net and what you have is a multiplication of the original offense,  compounded by the fact that the voyeurs are strangers, often with a malicious intention.

The exact crime then would be multiple public voyeurisms, to which are added sexual humiliation, invasion of privacy, false light and defamation, and, of course, plain harassment and stalking .

Revenge porn is in addition enforced sex-work, a form of online prostitution, really, because a number of the viewers would be looking at the pictures in lieu of paid pornography.

Where I differ from the mainstream consensus is in not seeing this as a uniquely feminist or even sexual issue.

Enforced humiliation isn’t confined to sexual imagery of ex-girlfriends.

What about computer hacking of private information that is then posted online anonymously, as a way to coerce, punish, threaten?

What about emails or phone conversations with activists (in my case) where the content is not sexual but political?

What about medical information or pictures?

What about police galleries filled with mug-shots shaming people perpetually, often over trivial offenses?

What about sensitive financial information? Or photos that are doctored? Or emails that are faked?

There are scores of things that could permanently damage someone.

And that is the issue. The net is both quantitatively and qualitatively different from the non-virtual world. It’s time we recognized it.

We give a statute of limitations to crimes in the “real world” but when it comes to the net, everything stays for eternity.

Behavior that would considered criminal or sociopathic in the world (steaming open people’s postal mail, spying on their bedrooms or bathrooms, following them, threatening or blackmailing them) is somehow fine when it’s done on the net.

The question of how the law would work is a different one.

I’m not certain the current law being adopted in California and other places is even helpful, although it surely raises the issue powerfully.

The net has not been properly conceptualized and analyzed in the legal profession yet, so that existing laws aren’t properly interpreted to cover forms of digital crime. There may indeed be no reason for additional laws, if the current ones were correctly interpreted, but that hasn’t happened yet.

I just saw this:

“Nearly 30 million people across the world are currently living in slavery, according to a report published Thursday. The inaugural Global Slavery Index, compiled by the Walk Free Foundation, estimates the prevalence of slavery in 162 countries, based on both internal research and data from UNICEF and the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report. According to the report (PDF), slavery is most prevalent as a percentage of the population in Mauritania, Haiti, and Pakistan.

India, China, and Pakistan are among the countries where slavery is most prevalent in absolute terms; together with Nigeria, Ethiopia, and five other countries, they account for more than 75 percent of the world’s enslaved population.

[Lila: Well, India and China and Pakistan are the most populous countries, so that would stand to reason.]

Walk Free was founded last year by Andrew Forrest, an Australian billionaire who made his fortune in the mining industry. Its index has received endorsements from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

“I urge leaders around the world to view this index as a call to action, and to stay focused on the work of responding to this crime,” Clinton said in a statement provided to the Associated Press.”

Nobody would excuse the crushing problem of child-labor or the sex-trade in India.

But let’s take a closer look at these figures.

Here’s a piece on the sale of children, in Salon magazine.

The sale of children runs to 90,000 per year, it reports.

That is roughly 1/10th of a million or 1/100th of a billion. The Indian population is about 1.5 billion, so that means it’s about .05 percent of a billion.

Now that is bad enough, but given the whole complex of social ills, the vast size of the population and the general poverty of the country, I don’t find these figures terrible at all.

Indeed, I’d say they are far lower than I would expect.

In any case, when you see Rothschild entities behind a global drive, one has to be very cautious. When you have Bill Gates, Tony Blair, Hillary  Clinton, and the Australian billionaire behind WalkFree, Andrew Forrest, be sure there is something else at work.

Look at the statistics behind the headlines.

While the newspaper  I just cited headed its story responsibly and didn’t create the impression that India and China have the greatest problem with enslavement of people (i.e. proportionate to their populations), the rest of the Rothschild media was less cautious.

Here are two headlines:

“Revealed: India is home to half of the world’s nearly thirty million slaves”  (LA Times)

Lila: Since India is home to about a 1/6th, if not 1/5th, of the world’s population (roughly 1.5 billion) and since it is home to more than  of the world’s impoverished who are naturally desperate to work in any circumstance,  in that context, the numbers are far less alarming.

15 million or so is only about 0.1% of the population.

Compare that to Mauritania’s 20% of the population.

Remember that in terms of  per capita income, India is not there much ahead

of sub-h

ran Afria. In that context, the rates of domestic servitude (the correc

erm)aret

ltha t

raordiny.

Also,  what is being included in the term slavery?

All of the following:

1. Debt bondage

2.  Forced labor of men, women, and children

3.  Forced marriage

4.  The sex trade

5. Bonded labor.

6. Forced beggary.

This last is a horrible thing.

Young children are kidnapped and then mutilated and forced to beg. Giving them money only makes their exploiters greedier and more likely to kidnap another child, but not giving them money might end in the child starving. Besides, the child is forced out on the streets alone, so there’s no knowing who’s behind it.

But how many kidnapped children are there?

The report notes “by far the largest proportion of this problem is the exploitation of Indians citizens within India itself, particularly through debt bondage and bonded labour.”

The whole piece is quite misleading, in that it is lumping low-wage labor ($33 a month) in homes in the same category as the child-sex trade.

$33 a month in a country is about Rs. 2000/mth (or Rs. 24000/yr), which, while it isn’t high is certainly not starvation wages, especially since most homes also give the servants free medicine, free supplies, food, and a place to stay.  Indian per capita income is nearly Rs. 6000/mth (roughly Rs. 68000/yr) or about three times that wage.

America’s per capita income is around  $ 42,000/yr, so the equivalent figure in the US would be about $14,000/yr or something less than $2000/mth (versus Rs. 2000/mth for Indian “slave wages.”)

The Indian figures might have a different purchasing power, but are they really that startling?

Many professionals made that amount only a few decades ago.

The only problem is thanks to rampant money printing, the Indian rupee is at all time lows against the dollar. For that, and for the dreadful economy, the globalist “privatization” of the economy, coupled with hijacking of the financial system, is to blame.

But the propaganda is all part of the on-going psychological warfare against India, specifically, about which I blogged at and here and here, and against immigrants (see “Patrick Buchanan sings the white man’s blues”).

“”Although other countries have a greater proportion of their population in bondage, India’s estimated 13.9 million enslaved people is by far the greatest, more than four times that of the next largest country, China, with 2.9 million. Pakistan ranked third with 2.1 million people. The 162-nation survey found that modern-day slavery exists in most countries in some form, including the United States, Canada, Japan and Western Europe nations.

Much of the traffic in enslaved Indian domestic workers is organized by dubious employment agencies that are virtually unregulated despite an order from the Delhi High Court that mandated the government to set operating guidelines.”

So, there it is. The labor is UNREGULATED and that’s what’s got the globalists worried. The cheap pool of labor competes with the labor available to the multinationals and makes home-grown businesses a threat. I daresay that’s the real motivation behind this new-found interest by the power elites in domestic labor in India.

Meanwhile, what are the stats about slavery in the West?

“At the other extreme, Iceland was estimated to have just 100 slaves for a population of 320,000. And even though Canada and Western Europe ranked low on the survey, they are still home to thousands of slaves, while the U.S. had an estimated 60,000 and Japan around 80,000.”

So Iceland, the best country, has 100 per 320,000, which amounts to 1 in 3200, which is about 30 times fewer, true, but in a country whose GDP is also roughly 30 times higher.

The US at 60,000 in a country of over 300 million is at 1 in 3000.

Relative to the rates of literacy, the GDP, and the other social problems in the country, I don’t see the Indian numbers as all that remarkable at all, although still a horrendous tragedy.

Simultaneously, the NY Times on Oct. 6, 2013 had a piece about sex-trafficking in India:

“Persistent poverty is a major factor. Many vulnerable women and girls are lured by promises of employment, and some parents are desperate enough to sell their daughters to traffickers. Rapid urbanization and the migration of large numbers of men into India’s growing cities creates a market for commercial sex, as does a gender imbalance resulting from sex-selective abortion practices that has created a generation of young men who have little hope of finding female partners. India’s affluence is also a factor, luring European women into India’s sex trade. The caste system compounds the problem. Victims of sex trafficking disproportionately come from disadvantaged segments of Indian society.”

I would dearly love to know exactly how many European women are in this Indian sex trade.

This is of dubious significance and  likely inserted as racial baiting.

The number s for global sex-trafficking can be found here.

They run at 4 million world-wide; in the  US at 45-50,000 annually (about 1 in 6000); at about 200,000 sex-workers in cities in India (that is about 1 in 7000, which is lower than the US numbers.

Moreover, these numbers have vastly swelled since the liberalization of India in the 1990s, when the influx of multinational corporations created a huge migration from the villages to the cities, with all the attendant problems. Add to these, the vast difference in pay between foreign-employed and locally-employed or unemployed youth, the burden on the infrastructure by this huge migration, rampant corruption not simply in the government but in the private sector, and you get the picture of a country undergoing huge economic stresses. Such stresses usually exacerbate social problems.

The concept of honor, now derided as so medieval, so Islamic, was alive and well in America only a century or so ago.

Dishonor, not death, was the thing most greatly feared and the quality of life that developed around that ideal was one we to which we look back in nostalgia as something utterly lost to us now.

From “The Compleat Gentleman: The Modern Man’s Guide to Chivalry”:

“The first duel in America was fought in 1621 and the last — well, perhaps it has yet to be fought. “Judicial Combat” as it was sometimes known — ironically since it was generally illegal — was governed by the twenty-five rules of the Code Duello, established in Ireland just after the American Revolution.

So popular did dueling become in the States, though, that in 1838 the governor of South Carolina, John Lyde Wilson, felt compelled to revise and update the code for a specifically American milieu.

The 1804 duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, fought along the banks of the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey, is the most famous in American history, but many other prominent Americans also dueled. Andrew Jackson was nearly killed in one. Charles Dickinson shot at the future president but only wounded him. Jackson swooned and collapsed, but not before he aimed and fired. Dickinson fell dead and a good thing too. He’d previously killed twenty-six of his fellow citizens in duels.

The Code included provisions for apologies after the first shots were fired. If the quarrel was settled with swords, and the man challenged to the duel won but spared the life of the challenger, the dispute was settled … unless, that is, the challenger wished to revive it: “Rule 23. If the cause of the meeting be of such a nature that no apology or explanation can or will be received, the challenged takes his ground, and calls on the challenger to proceed as he chooses; in such cases, firing at pleasure is the usual practice, but may be varied by agreement.” A sense of civilization is in there someplace. At least the Code Duello protected bystanders from barrages of bullets in taverns and on Main Street — until the Old West gunfight became popular, anyway.

But beloved General Lee would have none of it. His sense of honor was exactly the old franchise of the knights, as we see in this excerpt from a letter he wrote to his son:

“You must study to be frank with the world. Frankness is the child of honesty and courage. Say just what you mean to do, on every occasion, and take it for granted that you mean to do right…

Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one; the man who requires you to do so is dearly purchased at the sacrifice. Deal kindly but firmly with all your classmates; you will find it the policy which wears best. Above all, do not appear to others what you are not.

If you have any fault to find with any one, tell him, not others, of what you complain; there is no more dangerous experiment than that of undertaking to be one thing before a man’s face and another behind his back…

Duty, then, is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things like the old Puritan. You cannot do more; you should never wish to do less. Never let your mother or me wear one gray hair for any lack of duty on your part.”

If that sounds like Polonius, listen more carefully. This is a man speaking his own words from his own heart.

When Lee died, the London Standard wrote: “A country which has given birth to men like him, and those who followed him, may look the chivalry of Europe in the face without shame; for the fatherlands of Sidney and Baryard never produced a nobler soldier, gentleman and Christian.”

And G.K. Chesterton called Lee “the last of the heroes”. As the old general expired, his last words were “Strike the tent!”

From “My Father,” by T.S. Arthur:

“”Anna,” he said, after a brief silence, during which even my unpracticed eyes could see that an intense struggle was going on in his mind, “Anna, you will have to give up your visit to Saratoga this year.”

“Why, father!” It seemed as if my blood were instantly on fire. My face was, of course, all in a glow. I was confounded, and, let me confess it, indignant; it seemed so like a tyrannical outrage.

“It is simply as I say, my daughter.” He spoke without visible excitement. “I cannot afford the expense this season, and you will, therefore, all have to remain in the city.”

“That’s impossible!” said I. “I couldn’t live here through the summer.”

“I manage to live!” There was a tone in my father’s voice, as he uttered these simple words, partly to himself, that rebuked me. Yes, he did manage to live, but how? Witness his pale face, wasted form, subdued aspect, brooding silence, and habitual abstraction of mind!

“I manage to live!” I hear the rebuking words even now–the tones in which they were uttered are in my ears. Dear father! Kind, tender, indulgent, long-suffering, self-denying! Ah, how little were you understood by your thoughtless, selfish children!

“Let my sisters and mother go,” said I, a new regard for my father springing up in my heart; “I will remain at home with you.”

“Thank you, dear child!” he answered, his voice suddenly veiled with feeling. “But I cannot afford to let any one go this season.”

“The girls will be terribly disappointed. They have set their hearts on going,” said I.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But necessity knows no law. They will have to make themselves as contented at home as possible.”

And he left me, and went away to his all-exacting “business.”

When I stated what he had said, my sisters were in a transport of mingled anger and disappointment, and gave utterance to many unkind remarks against our good, indulgent father. As for my oldest sister, she declared that she would go in spite of him, and proposed our visiting the store of a well-known merchant, where we often made purchases, and buying all we wanted, leaving directions to have the bill sent in. But I was now on my father’s side, and resolutely opposed all suggestions of disobedience. His manner and words had touched me, causing some scales to drop from my vision, so that I could see in a new light, and perceive things in a new aspect.

We waited past the usual time for my father’s coming on that day, and then dined without him. A good deal to our surprise he came home about four o’clock, entering with an unusual quiet manner, and going up to his own room without speaking to any one of the family.

“Was that your father?” We were sitting together, still discussing the question of Saratoga and Newport. It was my mother who asked the question. We had heard the street door open and close, and had also heard footsteps along the passage and up the stairs.

“It is too early for him to come home,” I answered.

My mother looked at her watch, and remarked, as a shade of concern flitted over her face,

“It certainly was your father. I cannot be mistaken in his step. What can have brought him home so early? I hope he is not sick.” And she arose and went hastily from the room. I followed, for a sudden fear came into my heart.

“Edward! what ails you? Are you sick?” I heard my mother ask, in an alarmed voice, as I came into her room. My father had laid himself across the bed, and his face was concealed by a pillow, into which it was buried deeply.

“Edward! Edward! Husband! What is the matter? Are you ill?”

“Oh, father! dear father!” I cried, adding my voice to my mother’s, and bursting into tears. I grasped his hand; it was very cold. I leaned over, and, pressing down the pillow, touched his face. It was cold also, and clammy with perspiration.

“Send James for the doctor, instantly,” said my mother.

“No, no–don’t.” My father partially aroused himself at this, speaking in a thick, unnatural voice.

“Go!” My mother repeated the injunction, and I flew down stairs with the order for James, our waiter, to go in all haste for the family physician. When I returned, my mother, her face wet with tears, was endeavoring to remove some of my father’s outer garments. Together we took off his coat, waistcoat and boots, he making no resistance, and appearing to be in partial stupor, as if under the influence of some drug. We chafed his hands and feet, and bathed his face, that wore a deathly aspect, and used all the means in our power to rekindle the failing spark of life. But he seemed to grow less and less conscious of external things every moment.

When the physician came, he had many questions to ask as to the cause of the state in which he found my father. But we could answer none of them. I watched his face intently, noting every varying expression, but saw nothing to inspire confidence. He seemed both troubled and perplexed. Almost his first act was to bleed copiously.

Twice, before the physician came, had my father been inquired for at the door, a thing altogether unusual at that hour of the day. Indeed, his presence in the house at that hour was something which had not occurred within a year.

“A gentleman is in the parlor, and says that he must see Mr. W—-,” said the waiter, speaking to me in a whisper, soon after the physician’s arrival.

“Did you tell him that father was very ill,” said I.

“Yes; but he says that he must see him, sick or well.”

“Go down and tell him that father is not in a state to be seen by any one.”

The waiter returned in a few moments, and beckoned me to the chamber door.

“The man says that he is not going to leave the house until he sees your father. I wish you would go down to him. He acts so strangely.”

Without stopping to reflect, I left the apartment, and hurried down to the parlor. I found a man walking the floor in a very excited manner.

“I wish to see Mr. W.—-,” said he, abruptly, and in an imperative way.

“He is very ill, sir,” I replied, “and cannot be seen.”

“I must see him, sick or well.” His manner was excited.

“Impossible, sir.”

The door bell rang again at this moment, and with some violence. I paused, and stood listening until the servant answered the summons, while the man strode twice the full length of the parlor.

“I wish to see Mr. W—-.” It was the voice of a man.

“He is sick,” the servant replied.

“Give him my name–Mr. Walton–and say that I must see him for just a moment.” And this new visitor came in past the waiter, and entered the parlor.

“Mr. Arnold!” he ejaculated, in evident surprise.

“Humph! This a nice business!” remarked the first visitor, in a rude way, entirely indifferent to my presence or feelings. “A nice business, I must confess!”

“Have you seen Mr. W.—-?” was inquired.

“No. They say he’s sick.”

There was an unconcealed doubt in the voice that uttered this.

“Gentlemen,” said I, stung into indignant courage, “this is an outrage! What do you mean by it?”

“We wish to see your father,” said the last comer, his manner changing, and his voice respectful.

“You have both been told,” was my firm reply, “that my father is too ill to be seen.”

“It isn’t an hour, as I am told, since he left his store,” said the first visitor, “and I hardly think his illness has progressed so rapidly up to this time as to make an interview dangerous. We do not wish to be rude or uncourteous, Miss W—-, but our business with your father is imperative, and we must see him. I, for one, do not intend leaving the house until I meet him face to face!”

“Will you walk up stairs?” I had the presence of mind and decision to say, and I moved from the parlor into the passage. The men followed, and I led them up to the chamber where our distressed family were gathered around my father. As we entered the hushed apartment the men pressed forward somewhat eagerly, but their steps were suddenly arrested. The sight was one to make its own impression. My father’s face, deathly in its hue, was turned towards the door, and from his bared arm a stream of dark blood was flowing sluggishly. The physician had just opened a vein.

“Come! This is no place for us,” I heard one of the men whisper to the other, and they withdrew as unceremoniously as they had entered. Scarcely had they gone ere the loud ringing of the door bell sounded through the house again.

“What does all this mean!” whispered my distressed mother.

“I cannot tell. Something is wrong,” was all that I could answer; and a vague, terrible fear took possession of my heart.

In the midst of our confusion, uncertainty and distress, my uncle, the only relative of my mother, arrived, and from him we learned the crushing fact that my father’s paper had been that day dishonored at bank. In other words, that he had failed in business.

The blow, long suspended over his head; and as I afterwards learned, long dreaded, and long averted by the most desperate expedients to save himself from ruin, when it did fall, was too heavy for him. It crushed the life out of his enfeebled system. That fearful night he died!

It is not my purpose to draw towards the survivors any sympathy, by picturing the changes in their fortunes and modes of life that followed this sad event. They have all endured much and suffered much. But how light has it been to what my father must have endured and suffered in his long struggle to sustain the thoughtless extravagance of his family–to supply them with comforts and luxuries, none of which he could himself enjoy! Ever before me is the image of his gradually wasting form, and pale, sober, anxious face. His voice, always mild, now comes to my ears, in memory, burdened with a most touching sadness. What could we have been thinking about? Oh, youth! how blindly selfish thou art! How unjust in thy thoughtlessness! What would I not give to have my father back again! This daily toil for bread, those hours of labor, prolonged often far into the night season–how cheerful would I be if they ministered to my father’s comfort. Ah! if we had been loving and just to him, we might have had him still. But we were neither loving nor just. While he gathered with hard toil, we scattered. Daily we saw him go forth hurried to his business, and nightly we saw him come home exhausted; and we never put forth a hand to lighten his burdens; but, to gratify our idle and vain pleasures, laid new ones upon his stooping shoulders, until, at last, the cruel weight crushed him to the earth!

My father! Oh, my father! If grief and tearful repentance could have restored you to our broken circle, long since you would have returned to us. But tears and repentance are vain. The rest and peace of eternity is yours!”

Agora-affiliated (which libertarian outlet isn’t?) Daily Bell is back in the saddle.

Despite its coziness with certain enemies of mine, I see this as a positive.

I don’t agree with all of their analyses but Anthony Wile’s opposition to the state is always couched in thoughtful terms and he has been alone among big libertarian outlets in taking on some stories, like the Snowden business.

Why they closed up and why they reopened is a bit mystifying.

But apparently, their Snowden analysis wasn’t enough for them to go down, as I’d earlier wondered.

Even if they are intelligence-linked, like so many American media initiatives, they nonetheless articulate valid concerns of the business/financial classes that don’t always get a hearing from the academic-media complex.

Even the CIA can have a legitimate point.