Media In India/elsewhere -2

dhu · (This post was last modified: 04-02-2007, 11:06 AM by dhu.)

QUOTE(ramana @ Mar 12 2007, 01:32 AM)I got to see the '300' last night at a theater in a small town in US. The theater was packed with people of all ages.

The movie is based on the historical event of battle of Thermoplyae where 300 Spartans under King Leonidas stopped a Persian invading force under Xerxes. However the film directed based on a graphic novel and has quite few interesting depictions. Mainly the Persians are portrayed as some sort of sub-humans and perverts. A lot of computer animations was used for the gory scenes.

What was interesting was the films view of the Persians as some sort of overlords of the East who were bent on imposing their will on the free Greeks. But in contrast to the West which had the mission of bringing in light to the heathen it was the heathen trying to impose their rule over the Enlightened Greeks. With recent scholars like VDH claiming the West and the US in particular inheriting all that is good in Greek culture there were murmurs of approval in the audience at some dialogs asserting the superiority of Greek culture.

One thing peculiar was having Xerxes be borne on palanquins with rams' head motif. For those who know Biblical stories that is the iconography of Baal. This is a unwarranted cross linkage for the Jews were taken to Persia from captivity by Nebuchadnezzar and it was in Persia that the idea of light and darkness etc came into the Bible. So depicting Persians as Baal worshipers or followers is an unwarranted inaccuracy might have other reasons to show that. And the Greeks had their own gods whom they worshiped and they are shown formless a la Hebrew theogony. Yes there is a female oracle but is disparaged by the King Leonidas and the oracle priests are shown in grotesque form again implying disparagement.

What I realized was that this story is the historic/eternal European fear of being overwhelmed by Asia. This is the root cause of the various geo-political moves that have shaped the European and Asian interaction through out history. These moves have happened over vast time periods and have involved both sides. The players might have thought they were in a little game but the bigger game always was this historic fear.
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QUOTEhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_%28Bible%29

On God's instruction, Gideon destroyed the town's altar to the foreign god Baal and the symbol of the goddess Asherah beside it. He went on to send out messengers to gather together men from the tribes of Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, as well as his own tribe Manasseh in order to meet an armed force of the people of Midian and the Amalek that had crossed the Jordan River and were encamped in the Valley of Jezreel.


Midianites are a northern arabian tribe.

The uberspartan narrative has all the elements of the Gideon original:

-300 chosen uberwarriors rout/delay the main enemy force into the hands of an awaiting larger ambush party.
-ubermensch from the east
-identity defining moment for morally superior natives

dhu · 04-02-2007, 01:03 PM

QUOTEhollywoodjesus.com
Wasnât Gideonâs army eventually withered away to exactly 300 as well? It sure was. God used Gideon, a man of zero amounts of faith, to lead an army of three hundred to defeat an army of much larger proportions.

unsurpisingly, the jesuswalas have wasted no time in picking up the connection.

04-02-2007, 11:14 PM

dhu,Apr 2 2007, 10:54 AM Wrote:[quote=ramana,Mar 12 2007, 01:32 AM]I got to see the '300' last night at a theater in a small town in US. The theater was packed with people of all ages.

The movie the superiority of Greek culture.

One thing peculiar was On God's
Midianites are a northern morally superior natives
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I saw the movie 300.It not take me more then 30 minutes to see the western versus orient ideology .The democratic greeks(simbolising the westerners by this narrow minded movie-makers)) versus oriental decadence.Very disapointing .
But why was this movie made today?A simbolic battle betwin USA(greeks) and ayatholah Iran(persians,the axe of evil).?
But the spartans are not a good choise as they was a strong sclavagist society(whit hylotes slaves).So what democracy?

dhu · (This post was last modified: 04-03-2007, 09:33 AM by dhu.)

It may an attempt to bring a radicalized racial pagan consciousness to Muslims, who have been relatively immune to witzelian type appropriation tactics. We are getting increasingly mainstream narratives about a benign zoroastrian to jewish/christian/islamic timeline. Their rank failure to contrive even a western version of the Bhagavad Gita (you know, something really substantial) out of the standard pedestrian greecian fare may have prompted them to seek mideastern sources.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 04-03-2007, 01:08 PM by Husky.)

Post 104:
QUOTE(dhu @ Apr 3 2007, 08:44 AM)It may an attempt to bring a radicalized racial pagan consciousness to Muslims, who have been relatively immune to witzelian type appropriation tactics.Â We are getting increasingly mainstream narratives about a benign zoroastrian to jewish/christian/islamic timeline.Â Their rank failure to contrive even a western version of the Bhagavad Gita (you know, something really substantial) out of the standard pedestrian greecian fare may have prompted them to seek mideastern sources.[right][snapback]66469[/snapback][/right]Dhu, I don't understand. Can you explain this in some more detail.

QUOTEWe are getting increasingly mainstream narratives about a benign zoroastrian to jewish/christian/islamic timeline.How has '300' in any way presented the Zoroastrians respectfully, let alone accurately? I've only read reviews so far - I refuse to watch or fork out money for a film that lies in order to insult the Persians, else I'd have jumped at the opportunity to watch something about Ancient Greece.
But it seems that in the movie the Persians/Zoroastrians are just randomly referred to as 'Persians' (coupled with their horrible characterisation, that effectively turns the word into an insult); they are at best accorded vague, 'exotic'-looking religious iconography that has more to do with something christoislamists might understand and less to do with Zoroastrianism, and are characterised as literal monsters or general villains.

I suspect such a film would get the islamic world to feel 'I told you so about the kafirs', sooner than it might get them to go 'wow, the Zoroastrians/Persians were admirable; way better than anything islam ever accomplished'.
It's witzellian alright. But about Zoroastrianism, not about islam.

QUOTETheir rank failure to contrive even a western version of the Bhagavad Gita (you know, something really substantial) out of the standard pedestrian greecian fareDon't know how to compare with the Gita - it has particular significance to us (and to some European philosophers of the 19th century). We don't know whether the Ancient Greeks had religious literature that was as meaningful and profound to them as the Gita is to us.

Much of Greek literature, particularly the religious literature, went into the fire thanks to the piety of early christians. The world is lucky to have what has survived.
What undiscerning students of Greek and Latin still learn about the Ancient Religion is all about the 'pettyness' of the Greek Gods. As if. That's only the christian spin. Only the Ancient Greeks knew what the accurate versions of all the narratives were, and even then, what the meaning and deeper significance of each was. The Hellenes of today might also know.
But in any case, one must sift the christian dawaganda (and any insertions) out of the Greek religious narratives that still remain today. And that can't possibly be done by Mythologists who are neither sympathetic to Greek Religion nor take it seriously. It's all but 'interesting nonsense' or 'curious fantasy' to them. Imagine if the same had happened to all Hindu literature, including the Gita. Oooh. Hard to bear thinking about.

dhu · (This post was last modified: 04-03-2007, 04:47 PM by dhu.)

Husky,

Thanks for the detailed reply. I will just give a few one liner responses as this is still a very nebulous area, especially when correlating the pedestrian and overstated Greecian culture with the neighboring originals Egypt, Iraq, Persia. Why does the so stated fountainhead western culture start in the extreme southeast of so called Europe? Obviously it had to with the residual effects of the mideast civilizations percolating upwards. Greece is a highly barren area, near moonlike. Population today is just 10 million.

Are you willing to concede that Buddhist teaching was present with the Greek Therapeutae before Indic monks made the trek there? What about Mongolia? What was the need to copy all those Buddhist manuscripts if every community already possessed that knowledge. Why set up Nalanda? (sorry for the polemic) This is about culture capital as RM would say. When Westerners forcefeed their ancient original greecian culture to the rest of the world it has nothing to do with respect for pagans, but is more a witzelian power trip than anything else.

Muslims have a peculiar brand of rhetoric which they pull up from time to time, that is: the Muslim as the "protector of Asia". Arundhati used this very effectively in her defense of obl. Westerners of course are experts in this brand of rhetoric. A side effect of this film is the intensification of this type of rhetoric among the muslims. In the coalition of thieves that is the abrahamic religions, they will knowingly or unknowingly strengthen each others' hands, at least against the common enemy.
QUOTEWe don't know whether the Ancient Greeks had religious literature that was as meaningful and profound to them as the Gita is to us.

They had plenty of chance to spread dionysianism and socratism all over the place but these were obviously nonstarters in terms of influence in the ancient world, where Buddhism reigned supreme. What they did end up exporting was christianity..

Husky · (This post was last modified: 04-03-2007, 05:12 PM by Husky.)

Post 106:
Thanks for the explanation. A few more questions - ignore if they're a bore:

QUOTEAre you willing to concede that Buddhist teaching was present with the Greek Therapeutae before Indic monks made the trek there?I thought I read that the Therapeutae were a Buddhist conclave in Greece. Not Greeks who had Buddhist influences, but real practising Buddhists. (Moreover, I was under the impression that they were Indian or even westeren Afghan by ethnicity, but ethnically Greek is at least as possible I guess.) So that's not the case? Did I misread/misunderstand?

QUOTEIn the coalition of thieves that is the abrahamic religions, they will knowingly or unknowingly strengthen each others' hands, at least against the common enemy.The only common enemies for Jewish people are the ideologies that have regularly led to their genocide: christianity and islam. I don't know to what extent they are affected by communism today, but communist Russia thanks to its christo conditioning murdered huge numbers of Jews too. So their enemies by this straightforward calculation are the same as those of every other non-christoislamicommunist people.
It's unfortunate therefore that the convenient phrase 'Abrahamic religions' automatically includes them. Replacing it with the more particular 'christoislamism', and I see your point.

QUOTEMuslims have a peculiar brand of rhetoric which they pull up from time to time, that is: the Muslim as the "protector of Asia". ... A side effect of this film is the intensification of this type of rhetoric among the muslims.Your meaning, then, is that the movie is further fanning the flames of anti-pagan sentiments in the islamics by re-inforcing the feeling - which they already entertain - about having a grand and special role in Asia? (They have a special role alright: the scourge of Asia, similar to what christianity has been to western nations.)

QUOTEWhat they (Ancient Greeks) did end up exporting was christianity..As per Joseph McCabe, who is knowledgeable on this matter, christianity started catching on in the eastern parts of the Roman empire: Syria mostly; and Armenia I think it was. Not Greece. It was the brainwashed amongst the Syrians that spread the meme that wiped out Greco-Roman civilisation. Of course one can't blame Syrians in general for it, it's a catchy meme apparently, but the Greeks are not in any way to blame for that one.

Thank goodness. I found it. See here - http://freetruth.50webs.org/Appendix1.htm :
QUOTEThe Christians were mainly in the ignorant east, especially Asia Minor (which had a larger population then than now) and Armenia. Antioch was the greatest city of the east, and it had half a million inhabitants. Its famous bishop and orator, St. John Chrysostom, tells us that he had in it one hundred thousand followers about the year 385. This was after seventy years of imperial favor, under the fanatically Christian Emperor Theodosius and the greatest orator of the Christian world. I would add that the figure is (as religious writers forget to say) a mere guess. What John really says, in a sermon in which he has every reason to exaggerate, is: "I believe we reach the number of a hundred thousand." In any case, we can safely assume that seventy years earlier even at Antioch, the heart of eastern Christendom, there were not more than fifty thousand Christians.

In short, it is liberal to grant, in the year 310, three million nominal Christians amongst the hundred millions of the Roman Empire; and the persecution had driven most of these back to the temples. Moreover, the vast majority were in rural Armenia (to which Schultze assigns no less than two million out of his three million seven hundred and fifty thousand), Syria, and Asia Minor. The gospel, after nearly three centuries of propaganda, was a failure.I think that absolves the Greeks.

dhu · (This post was last modified: 04-03-2007, 07:05 PM by dhu.)

Husky, you have stated the conventional wisdom but you are forgetting the most important part that this entire region was under the greco-roman boot. I find it hard to believe that this ideology "meme" arose spontaneously among the jews but did not affect their blood brothers, the arabs, till seven centuries later ( despite all the arab desert heat, harsh conditions, blood feuding, and other such deprivations, which are typically touted as formative to this particular "meme"). Meanwhile, the entire greco-roman civilization had bitten the dust. There are parts of the story missing.

The two Eastern traditions of Zoroastrainism and Buddhism which verifiably intrude into this hectic space and have a formative effect on Judaism just happen to get labeled as monotheistic and atheistic, respectively (in addition to being ideological!) and the actual greco-roman oppressors of the Jews get off scot-free as non-ideological!!! Really amazing!!!!!!

Even from the purely practical standpoint of Hindu defense, it would pay to apply the equal equal tactic to both greco-romans and jews. Why acquiesce in the historical lynching of the jews as the deficient developers of this meme.

04-03-2007, 09:54 PM

QUOTE(k.ram @ Mar 19 2007, 07:21 AM)Achuthanandan points to CIA-journalists link
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CPM leaders in Kerala revives the CIA ghost
QUOTEIn fact, the accusation of being funded by CIA is nothing new to the media here. It was the late US ambassador to India, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who exposed secret funding to the Congress to thwart the Communists' revolution in Kerala in 1957. This he revealed in his memoirs A Dangerous Place. Ever since, the Marxists have been conveniently targeting the media for all its ills and worries.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 04-04-2007, 01:45 PM by Husky.)

QUOTE(dhu @ Apr 3 2007, 06:58 PM)Husky, you have stated the conventional wisdom but you are forgetting the most important part that this entire region was under the greco-roman boot.Â I find it hard to believe that this ideology "meme" arose spontaneously among the jews but did not affect their blood brothers, the arabs, till seven centuries later ( despite all the arab desert heat, harsh conditions, blood feuding, and other such deprivations, which are typically touted as formative to this particular "meme").Â Meanwhile, the entire greco-roman civilization had bitten the dust.Â There are parts of the story missing.Â

The two Eastern traditions of Zoroastrainism and Buddhism which verifiably intrude into this hectic space and have a formative effect on Judaism just happen to get labeled as monotheistic and atheistic, respectively (in addition to being ideological!) and the actual greco-roman oppressors of the Jews get off scot-free as non-ideological!!! Really amazing!!!!!!

Even from the purely practical standpoint of Hindu defense, it would pay to apply the equal equal tactic to both greco-romans and jews.Â Why acquiesce in the historical lynching of the jews as the deficient developers of this meme.
[right][snapback]66482[/snapback][/right]You misunderstand me. In my saying that the Greeks and mainstream Romans weren't the one's who started catching christianity in large numbers, I didn't imply that the Jews were the authors of this historical faux-pas.

QUOTEI find it hard to believe that this ideology "meme" arose spontaneously among the jews
...
Why acquiesce in the historical lynching of the jews as the deficient developers of this meme.I don't know the facts of how christianity was created - as every historian says, the church has wiped out all the tracks, and the past can now only be pieced together from the mistakes in the babble and some archaeological inconsistencies. Most of which point to the fact that the religion itself as we know it today was manufactured by the Church mostly in or after the 3rd century. The ideology as it existed before then was thoroughly liquid: it had no shape, and barely had one uniform doctrine that the various jeebus sects believed in (the resurrection and miraculous birth were both unknown to all at that stage). All they had was 'jeebus, the saviour'.

But as far as the 1st century Jews are concerned, I suspect that they had very little, if anything at all, to do with the invention of christianity. (I don't fully believe that the modern Ebionite movement started as an original in the early 1st century. Rather, I think this was merely another early sect that caught the meme that was going around, like other small groups were catching it then and had done before them. For instance, the early Ebionites didn't know of any resurrection, whereas the modern ones refer to the tale of doubting thomas which is centred on the resurrection.)

None of the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses. The gospel of Mark is the oldest. Mark's original contents - besides not mentioning anything about jeebus after any resurrection - was written by person(s) who had never been to Palestine, the region wherein jeebus was supposed to have lived and preached. And Luke and Matthew got lots of their content from Mark, John plagiarized/was composed from other documents and did not originally state that John was an eyewitness at all. See http://freetruth.50webs.org/B2c.htm#NotEyeWitnesses

Who are these people, if not entirely doctored characters. How Jewish could Mark have been if he'd never been to Palestine? (Besides, Mark is a Roman name). The name Matthew is the only one that can be considered Jewish, but how ignorant are the authors of the gospel of Matthew, when all its contents are from Mark?

There is no indication that the authors of the Gospels were Jews. Even Paul, of purported Jewish origin, has yet to be shown to have existed. There is so much evidence that he was made up. One school of NT scholarship thinks he was formed from Marcionite writings. The Marcionites were anti-Semitic non-Jewish christian 'gnostic christians' from Caesaria in Asia Minor (now Turkey).

The people who wrote the OT (or Greek Septuagint) knew such poor Hebrew that they mangled the original Jewish scripture to the point that the Jews had to tell them what a botched job they'd done. It all points to non-Jewish people wanting to start a new religion rather than jeebus converts from Judaism who wrote stuff down.
See here http://freetruth.50webs.org/B1b.htm#VirginBirth

That the Septuagint is Greek does not mean that the person who wrote it was Greek by ethnicity: many in that region knew Greek, including Syrians and Marcionite christians.
There were mutually exclusive christian sects with mutually contradicting doctrines all over the Roman Empire from the very beginning of christoism (not just in the 4th century and onwards). For instance, you've got the Gnostics who turned christian among the Syrians. The only clearly matching messiah-related movement one might possibly find in early Palestine would be the Ebionites and I already aired my suspicions about how authentic the modern variant is, and how original the old.

Who invented christianity? I don't know. My personal idea is that it was actually the pot-pourri of religions and ideas in the region of the whole empire that led to the unfortunate upstart religion. Lots of religions and religious characters got merged including from 'jeebus' sects: the non-corporeal saviour of Gnostic christianity, John the Baptist from the Mandaeans (sp?), the Messiah-idea from Judaism, the resurrecting saviour Gods from Greco-Roman religion. It feels like someone was really experimenting with a unifying religion for the empire, a religion that had a bit of everything already present within its borders. In any case, everything was mashed and smashed together to give one icky squash that is still being sold today.

For the most part, the Romans, Greeks, and Jews are not the ones amongst whom this new 'idea' caught on greatly in the initial stages. Syria, Asia Minor and Armenia are the places it really took root according to McCabe. (Of which, it is known that Armenia was forcibly converted.)

I know the christian version of The Glorious Events says that christianity started amongst Jewish followers in Palestine who then spread The Good News all over. But then, modern christians need to say that: they require that at that earliest stage of the religion, a significant number of Jewish people 'realised the truth' of jeebus being the messiah and so ceased to wait for anymore messiahs. This story is also important to christians because it allows them to continue to undermine Judaism: "Jews even in Jesus' time realised that he was the messiah. Why would you doubt now?" (After all, from the christian viewpoint, Judaism must be undermined to prove the truth of the new religion. The fact that some Jews didn't convert to christianity means some didn't recognise the non-existent jeebus as the messiah. The continued existence of Judaism continues to disprove christianity in that way. Why then did the Jewish people continue to identify new messiahs for many decades after the death of the purported messiah: the jeebus of the gospels? Christians have a predictable but unsatisfactory explanation ready for this one)

Why is it that only in the christian babble do the 'Jewish' characters hear of jeebus and accept or deny he is the messiah, whereas in Jewish literature no one even mentions this guy. (Their literature and that of the Romans of the time do mention many messiahs, some of them called jesus, and none matches jesus of the gospels.)

QUOTEgreco-roman oppressors of the JewsThe Romans, yes. I do agree.
From Roman records, some Greeks in parts of the empire quarreled bitterly with the Jews there and vice-versa, but then they didn't elsewhere.
And when it came to sticking up to the Jews against christians, only the Greeks and Romans of the Ancient Religion did so consistently. So it has to be taken in context. The Romans did not persecute Jews elsewhere in their empire; their oppressive dealings were against the Jewish nation in the Jewish heartland rather than their religion.
Also, the Roman Oppression has to be put in a timeline to get the appropriate perspective, because in 300+ ce the unconverted Romans (as too the Greeks) were much better vis-a-vis Jewish people.
There are sites that discuss Roman and Jewish history from only a couple of selected centuries, ignoring the events just a few centuries after, because at that point the empire had finally absorbed (through violence) the Jewish heartland - which was the whole goal of Rome anyway. From that point onwards the Romans were no longer oppressing the Jewish population in the empire. Unfortunately the intermission of freedom was brief, as christianity gained power and even more extreme persecutions against Jews started and did not cease for over 1.5 millennia.

dhu · 04-05-2007, 03:23 PM

QUOTEhttp://www.adath-shalom.ca/greek_influence.htm#tab1
3.1 Under the Hellenistic Monarchies (332-167 BCE)

The first major Jewish contact with Greek culture was when Judah was ruled by the Ptolemies. The Jews in Judah did not meet Greek scientists, philosophers or historians.Â The Jews met mercenaries, tax collectors, petty officials, money lenders and merchants who penetrated even the most obscure village[15]. Jews outside Judah proper, who lived near Greek cities, also had to suffer the generally rapacious colonists.

Under Persian rule, Judah had been a theocracy under the rule of the high priest with the Torah recognized, by the Persians, as the law of the land.Â This situation continued under the Ptolemies and Seleucids.Â Although 40 âGreekâ cities were founded in Palestine, none were within the autonomous province of Judah.Â Eventually,[16] one faction of the Jewish ruling class, led by priests, attempted, with royal support, to abolish the Torah as the royal law of Judah and to refound Judah as the territory of a new polis â Antioch of Jerusalem. It is possible that such a transformation would have conferred on the ruling class a right to exploit Jewish peasants without restraint, perhaps trading privileges within the empire and certainly social acceptance as Greeks within the vast Hellenistic world. 

This led to the Hasmonean revolt which put an end to religious Hellenization in the sense of abandoning the Torah for a Greek life style.Â It also led to an explosion of new varieties of Judaism â Apocalyptic Judaism, Hasidim (not to be confused with the modern mystical variety), Essenes, Sadducees, Pharisees and no doubt others. 

In the wake of the success of the Hasmonean revolt cultural and linguistic Hellenization in Eretz Israel continued apace until, by the third or fourth century CE, Greek was probably the majority language of the country.

âThe motivation of the Hasmonean revolt has often been misunderstood.Â It has been contended that this revolt came in protest to the process of Hellenization in Judaea, but this was patently not the case.Â The Maccabees revolted in response to the persecutions imposed by the king and, according to Bickerman and others at least, at the instigation of radical Jewish Hellenizers. The fact is that the Hasmoneans themselves quickly adopted Hellenistic mores; they instituted holidays celebrating military victories (Nicanor Day on the 13th of Adar) as did the Greeks, and signed treaties with Rome and forged close alliances with the upper strata of Jerusalem society.Â The latterâs Hellenized proclivities â like those of the Hasmoneans themselves â¦ are attested by names such as Alexander, Diodorus, Appolonius, Eupolemus, Antiochus, Numenius, Jason, Antipater, and Aeneas. â[17]

04-07-2007, 11:06 AM

Post 111:
So much thereof is fascinating. For instance,
QUOTEThe motivation of the Hasmonean revolt has often been misunderstood.Â It has been contended that this revolt came in protest to the process of Hellenization in Judaea, but this was patently not the case.This is the only event in the above that I've heard of I think. (And I'd only read of the misunderstood version of the revolt.)

A question, Dhu. It concerns:
QUOTEUnder Persian rule, Judah had been a theocracy under the rule of the high priest with the Torah recognized, by the Persians, as the law of the land.AndQUOTEThis led to the Hasmonean revolt which put an end to religious Hellenization in the sense of abandoning the Torah for a Greek life style.Quite a long time back I had read in several Iranian sites that Persia was the one that sponsored monotheism among the Jewish population through Persian patronage of Yahwism and sole support for the Temple. I do not know how true this is, but the Iranian sites cited sources which gave examples of how before Persian contact more Gods were recognised amongst the Jewish populace than were afterwards (most of these examples can be found even in the OT of the christos' babble), and what changes to Jewish scripture resulted from said Persian contact.
I am assuming this in the following paragraphs. (Regardless, it is said that a great many Persian religious motifs entered Judaism from this contact, like angels and demons and other stuff that usually get listed.)

In the material you posted above, it says that the Greeks were enforcing 'religious Hellenization'.
What is it about a relatively small part of the world with its unique people and culture, that it was such a target for being religiously moulded? Why did both the Persians and the Greeks aim to religiously influence the Jewish people so greatly after their own fashion? Was the Jewish heartland seen as a strategic location and was moulding their religious character therefore considered merely as powerplay by the Greeks and Persians? That is, were both Persia and Greece trying to get Jewish people to fall in line with them by getting at them from the religious angle (maybe somewhat like how the US is trying today with its missionizing all over the world, especially in strategic places). Or did both the Greeks and Persians take such a great interest in these people for other reasons, so much so that they wanted to somehow get them to convert even if they couldn't convince them? Or did they see Judaism as it originally existed as some kind of threat to their own other interests in the region at large?
In short, what was it that everyone wanted to get a hand in this region for and why were they trying to alter the religious character of the people to accomplish this?

Not sure if I've phrased the above clearly. (Don't know much about Jewish history, some of it would occasionally pop up in books whose main topics were other people or events.)

An additional related question just occurred to me:
Or did the Persians already find some monotheists amongst the Jewish population (the Yahwists) and seeing a kindred monotheistic spirit in them, sponsored them and their Temple as the main religious tradition of Judea?

And about the following in your post 111:
QUOTEThis led to the Hasmonean revolt which put an end to religious Hellenization in the sense of abandoning the Torah for a Greek life style.Â It also led to an explosion of new varieties of Judaism â Apocalyptic Judaism, Hasidim (not to be confused with the modern mystical variety), Essenes, Sadducees, Pharisees and no doubt others.Do you then suppose it might be these Hellenized individuals of Jewish origin who, in trying to push for further Hellenization of their homeland, accidentally added to process of the creation of christianity?
It would explain why the authors of Paul's epistles were anti-Semitic in that they were anti-Judaic while still claiming that they ('Paul') was of Jewish origin. Paul's character as per these scribes was very Hellenized and quite far removed in understanding of Judaism. He mistook the meaning of several Jewish terms and ideas and gave them his Hellenistic interpretation of them: for instance, sacrifice. That is why much of the NT's concepts make no sense to the Jewish perspective; even though the words he used were known to the Jews, the meaning he gave these words were alien to them.
What if these scribes who made up Paul were Hellenized Jews who had no idea of Judaism and so weren't really Jewish anyway?
What does it matter - who knows what happened? The events have been obscured so much, there's no way to trace them.

The stuff you posted in #111 is briefly referred to here:
http://www.medmalexperts.com/POCM/triumph_...ic_judaism.html
Especially the bit in the grey box titled "Judean Paganism". Go down to that bit and then also read the stuff in the yellowish-coloured box underneath it.

04-08-2007, 02:15 AM

It would explain why the authors of Paul's epistles were anti-Semitic in that they were anti-Judaic while still claiming that they ('Paul') was of Jewish origin. Paul's character as per these scribes was very Hellenized and quite far removed in understanding of Judaism. He mistook the meaning of several Jewish terms and ideas and gave them his Hellenistic interpretation of them: for instance, sacrifice. That is why much of the NT's concepts make no sense to the Jewish perspective; even though the words he used were known to the Jews, the meaning he gave these words were alien to them.
What if these scribes who made up Paul were Hellenized Jews who had no idea of Judaism and so weren't really Jewish anyway?
What does it matter - who knows what happened? The events have been obscured so much, there's no way to trace them.QUOTE
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Seems Paul mixed semitic belives whit indo-european ones.
In semitic belives ,the hero fail to obtain eternal life-Adam fail ,and sumerian Ghilgames also fail to keep the plant of life(was stolen from him by the snake).
In IE belives the hero is usualy succesful to defeat the forces of death.
In semitic belives ,the sin is considered a brake of the law,while in IE fraim ,the sin is ontological.
Paul mixed the sacrifice of the succesfull hero of IE whit animal sacrifice of jews(made for erasing the sins) .
Even the trinity of gods is take from regional belives.People arange the gods in form of trinities.In Egipt we have Isis-Osiris-Horus.To celts we have Lug(a god who combine the 3 main gods of celts Taranis-Cernunos-Toutatis).At Thracians we have Dionisos-Zbelthurdos-Bendis.
From neo-platonism was taken the idea of divine esence.

04-09-2007, 06:25 PM

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--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /> Dogs, Frogs and Dalits: The Indian Model Minority Has A Dark Side
By Brenda Walker

When Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western Civilization, he famously answered, "I think it would be a good idea."

His smug reply was more than just an unsubtle insult to Europe and America. It also indicated his assumption that India was morally superior to the Westâdespite copious evidence to the contrary.

India has brought the world an array of cruel social norms, from bride burning to the still-existing caste system, a racial social stratification in which those on the bottom are sometimes called "untouchables" (âdalitsâ). But Gandhi and many after him apparently believed that India's supposed spiritual heritage outweighs this rather serious deficit on the side of social justice, particularly regarding women's rights.

Make no mistake, Gandhi was convinced of Indian superiority:

"â¦Modern civilization represents forces of evil and darkness, whereas the ancient Indian civilization represents in its essence the divine force. Modern civilization is chiefly materialistic, as ours is chiefly spiritual. Modern civilization occupies itself in the investigation of the laws of matter and employs the human ingenuity in inventing or discovering means of production and weapons of destruction, ours is chiefly occupied in exploring spiritual laws." [GANDHI: Biography, Ideology, Resources]

Gandhi had a highly selective view of a society which remains largely unchanged despite the current image makeover in techno-hubs like Bangalore. The internet may be widely available for the middle class, but cows and untouchables remain, along with the usual assortment of Third World dysfunctions, from the subjugation of women to the high incidence of child labor, continuing religious violence and widespread poverty.

Incidentally, since "peace" activism is in the news, we should keep in mind that the pacifism which Gandhi espoused was absolute. He made no exceptions for self-defense. He thought the Allies should have surrendered to Hitler in WWII and that Jews should have hopped willingly into the gas ovens. Needless to say, none of this gets mentioned by today's peaceniks when they speak admiringly of Gandhian nonviolence. [The Gandhi Nobody Knows, By Richard Grenier, Commentary, March 1983]

Here in the United States, Indian immigrants have a reputation as being a model minority who have above-average incomes and education. We haven't seen many Indian gangs as yetâalthough they have become a problem in Canadaâand for that we are grateful. Indians see themselves as hailing from the "world's largest democracy" (over one billion served). Some among them say openly that this will be the Indian century. And with greater wealth due to the outsourcing of American technology has come the desire to erase the tacky images of bovine creatures roaming city streets.

The Washington Post reported an Indian immigrant mom who objected to U.S. school materials: "American children will think India is some Third World country with pagan beliefs and backward thinking, not a forward-thinking country," Sandhya Kumar complained [Wiping Stereotypes Of India off the Books, By Maria Glod, April 17, 2005].

Frankly, it's hard to regard a country as "forward thinking"âor uniquely spiritual, in the Gandhian viewâwhen it has engaged in an ongoing genocide of females. Males are valued, and females have been killed off through sex-selection abortion and infanticide. The number of "missing" Indian women and girls is estimated to be 50 million.

Such attitudes are hardly new in South Asia, where sons are frequently seen as economic assets and daughters as liabilities, given the need to marry them off with large dowries. Some parents have resorted to murder, smothering or starving their newborn daughters or even poisoning them with opium balls. [The Desperate Bachelors: India's Growing Population Imbalance Means Brides Are Becoming Scarce, By John Lancaster, Washington Post, December 2, 2002].

Modern technology has made sex selection easy. Many villages have an ultrasound machine. So unwanted female fetuses can be easily detected and discarded. Prohibitions against using sex-selection technology are widely ignored and never enforced.

Indiaâs gender disparity has been rising as a result.

There is some understanding in the public mind that if no one has any girl children then many little boys will grow up to be bachelors. But the old preferences persist, outweighing any rumblings of individual responsibility, so many Indians want someone else to bother with girls, who are seen as more expensive and troublesome. Let Sanjit do it.

Thereâs evidence that a large gender disparity undermines social stability in fundamental ways. Some in government evidently agree, because the state Andhra Pradesh began offering cash rewards for girl babies in 2005.

Because of today's permissive multiculturalism, Indian immigrants to the U.S. see no need to leave their objectionable cultural baggage behind. Indians have brought sex-selection abortion with them to America, despite the fact that they are free to have as many children here as they want. According to a New York Times article, "Clinics' Pitch to Indian ÃmigrÃ©s: It's a Boy", [By Susan Sachs, August 15, 2001] services to deliver male heirs do a brisk business among Indian (and Chinese) immigrants.

CASTE
Another noxious custom which has been imported to America is the caste system, a kind of Asian-flavored apartheid. Even the diversity-loving New York Times had to do a little tapdance to excuse Indian immigrants' attachment to their ancient social categories: "just as descendants of the Pilgrims use the Mayflower Society as a social outlet", the paper opined about why Indian immigrants still retain caste [Family Ties and the Entanglements of Caste, October 24, 2004].

Caste in America is justified into more acceptable terms, like the computer programmer quoted by the NYT as saying, "That's why I went into the Brahmin group, because I wanted to give my children the same values." But the fact remains that Indians come to America, a society with minimal class distinctions, and see no problem with bringing their discriminatory caste system with them. Social mobility is certainly not an Indian value, although they expect to benefit from US egalitarianism when they immigrate here. When it's time to consider marriage, many parents want to choose a spouse of the appropriate caste and may want an astrologer's consultation as well.

The caste system extends back into India's history and has a racial basis. The Brahmin class of hereditary privilege is light-skinned while the Untouchable dalits are darker. It has been reported that newly affluent Indian women are spending millions of dollars on beauty products to lighten up unwanted dark skin, noting "It's believed that caste occupations were originally decided by skin color, with dark-skinned people assigned to the latrines and light-skinned people assigned to the Hindu clergy" [Modern India's complex connection with complexion, By Mike McPhate, Toronto Globe and Mail June 6, 2005].

The caste violence that remains an accepted fact of life in mother India has been brought to America too, although not as flagrantly as the brutal gang rapes and murders of dalits who don't know their place.

The case of Lakireddy Bali Reddy shocked liberal Berkeley a few years ago. Successful immigrant Reddy procured two teenaged sisters from the poor Pratipati family in his hometown, Velvadam India. The two were brought to America through a fraudulent H-1B visa scheme, and one of the girls later died from carbon monoxide poisoning due to a malfunctioning heater in one of Reddy's rathole apartments. When the Pratipati sisters were not providing sexual services for the wealthy landlord they were working on Reddy's rental properties. The autopsy of the dead girl, who was believed to be 16 or 17, revealed she was pregnant.

At trial, a cultural defense was employedâthat the virtual slavery that the sisters endured at the hands of a powerful man was a social norm of India. But the Alameda County jury nonetheless found Reddy guilty of smuggling illegal immigrants into the country for sexual purposes. The judge sentenced him to eight years in prison, a longer term than the one requested by the prosecutor.

But the caste aspect of the Reddy case was little discussed. Reddy was born into a respected landowner clanâin fact the family name Reddy is a casteâand Pratipati sisters were dalits. So it was perfectly normal for the parents to hand over the girls to him to do with as he pleased. In India, members of the landlord class get to do what they want with their social inferiors and no one complains. "He's god in my village", the mother said about Reddy after the death of her daughter.

Another Reddy victim, a 20-year-old who shared the fateful apartment with the Pratipati sisters, told federal investigators her father had sold her to Reddy because of economic hardship when she was 14. Some reports allege the Pratipati sisters were purchased by Reddy.

Other forms of slavery, including indentured servitude of children and adults, are also accepted as normal in India. The World Bank estimates 44 million children, aged 5-14, work in India.

Such attitudes are part of traditional Hindu culture that believes that you are born into the appropriate social class because of your karma, resulting in punishment or reward for actions in previous lifetimes. Dalits are regarded as deserving their sorry state. While dalits as a whole have bettered their social standing in the last few decadesâthere was even a dalit president, KR Narayanan, from 1997 to 2002âthe old prejudices are hard to eradicate, particularly in the countryside. In tech-hip Bangalore, dalits do the jobs higher-caste Indians don't want to do, e.g. the nightly cleaning of toilet pits, until 2003 when machinery was introduced. Of course, a female dalit is lower than low, so it's not surprising that "Gang rapes are mostly of Dalit women" according to Human Rights Watch.

One might think that India's increasing modernization would improve the status of women. But in one way at least economic improvement has contributed to more murders. While some retro customs are dying out in the cities, the new consumerist urge reportedly fuels the increasing number of âdowry murdersâ occurring in well-to-do families as well as among lower classes. It is a speedy way for a young man's family to acquire cash and desired consumer goods. Woe to the young woman whose family doesn't cough up. [India's dowry deaths, BBC 7/16/03].

Ranjana Kumari, who runs seven domestic violence refuge centers for women in Delhi, believes up to 70 cases a month are linked to rows over dowry. "Sometimes women are tortured to squeeze more money out of their families and in extreme cases they're killed. Then the husband is free to remarry and get another dowry", she told the BBC.

Many Americans learned about India's increasingly extortionist dowry customs when Sixty Minutes featured the story of a young Indian woman, Nisha Sharma, in 2003. After her family had put itself into serious debt for the dowry prior to marriage, Nisha stopped the wedding when her future mother-in-law demanded an additional $25,000 as the ceremony was about to begin. A shoving match between the families ensued and Nisha called the police to prevent more havoc.

But instead of being condemned, Nisha has received kudos from women's groups, offers of marriage and an appearance on Oprah. Indians' positive reaction to Nisha's repudiation of dowry is one small sign of genuine progress beyond the much celebrated increase of information technology.

OTHER CULTURAL CURIOSITIES
No toilet, no seat. In the ongoing effort to improve the quality of candidates for public office, the rural development minister proposed that anyone running for village council must have indoor plumbing at home. The idea is to promote plumbing generally, since "more than 65% of India's rural population defecated in the open, along roadsides, railway tracks and fields, generating huge amounts of excrement every day" which is a problem for the water supply.

Women face accusations of witchcraft in rural India. The old superstitions live on in the countryside: the weather or someone's bad luck may be blamed on a woman of low status.

Doggie Marriage. No analysis of the subcontinent's colorful culture would be complete without mention of canine-human nuptials. In certain ethnic groups, a child whose first tooth appears inauspiciously located in the mouth is married off to a protective canine. For example, little Karnamoni Handsa, a member of the Santhal tribe, was wed to a rather ordinary stray pooch named Bacchan as reported by the BBC. The ceremony was no perfunctory affair: it was attended by over 100 guests who celebrated to drumming and drank home-made liquor.

Fortunately, the girl's doggie marriage will not preclude a more normal pairing when she grows up.

Froggie Marriage etc. When drought strikes, the thing to do may be to invoke a higher power by marrying off a couple of toads with appropriate flourish to propitiate the rain gods. In another curious wedding, a teenaged boy married a hill in Jharkand state to remove a curse from his mother. In Orissa, a woman became connubially attached to a cobra out of affection, it was reported.

The odd and objectionable cultural practices of Indians may not seem important when millions of Mexicans are turning the Southwest into a colony of their homeland. But the 2005 Census count of India-born immigrants was 2,319,222âa not insubstantial number.

Furthermore, the whole foundation of diversity in immigration and the ideology of multiculturalism is the idea that all cultures are morally equivalent. But a closer examination of even this "model minority" shows values that are not agreeable to Americans. It's another example that the whole edifice of multiculturalism is false, worthless and rotten.

India has gotten a free ride from cultural critics. While Islamic societies are rightly condemned for their brutality toward women, India has been given a pass even though its misogyny is in some ways even worse. Even the demonstration by Nobel-prize-winning economist Amartya Sen that tens of millions of women and girls are missing from India has found little attention among those who claim to value human rights.

Instead of pursuing genuine reforms, India puts on a show of being an up and comer. It has employed public relations strategies to convince American business that its tech workers are not only inexpensive, they are also smarter and better educated than their US counterparts. Just being dirt cheap doesn't have the same cachet.

This image makeover of a rather backward Third World country is an instance of monumental denial. This delusion is often aided by immigrants with a case of amnesia overlaid with arrogance and is stoked by too many viewings of the hagiographic film Gandhi.

And if mother India is doing so well (as suggested by immigrants returning home), then Indians don't need to immigrate here at all. All parties involved would be better off with less diversity in immigration.

And less immigration period.

Brenda Walker (email her bwalker11@comcast.net) lives in northern California and publishes two websites, LimitsToGrowth.org and ImmigrationsHumanCost.org. She began practicing yoga at age 11 and in later years was disappointed to learn that the culture of India is not very spiritual at all.

04-09-2007, 09:59 PM

What was the point of publishing that "drain inspector's report", Mr. Manmohan Kumar?
It did not even have an original allegation. It rehashes the same allegations made in the last 20 years, forces us to resort to the same old rebuttals. What is the point of the post, if not to give publicity to an anti-Hindu viewpoint?

There is one novel allegation in the whole post, though. That Lakireddy had "bought" the SC girls off the hands of her parents. Here is the US DOJ case reference as rebuttal:
CODEMr. Reddy admitted that he and other defendants arranged for the entry into the United States of between 25 and 99 Indian nationals on the basis of fraudulent visas. At least some of these aliens were vulnerable victims because they were young women and girls who came from poor families in India and who were dependent upon the defendant for employment, housing, sustenance, and income both in India and in the United States.
So, when the parents said "he was a God in my village", they meant "he was a pillar of the community", and he was until then, both in the US and in his village in India. So, when the parents sent their daughters to him, they sent them with the idea that their futures would take a turn for the better - with his help.

04-09-2007, 10:17 PM

<!--emo&

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /> My pov of putting this here was to engage in email exchange w/:
bwalker11@comcast.net

04-09-2007, 10:21 PM

Capt Manmohan Kumar,
In place of posting here you should post in NRI corner for email response.
Make sure, you post your post on right thread and please provide link/url.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 04-14-2007, 07:59 PM by Husky.)

Can I request Mudy or other Admin to move posts 53 to 56 as well as this one - and any others of mine to follow on the same topic - to the Media in India and Elsewhere thread? It might be more appropriate there.

QUOTE(Capt Manmohan Kumar @ Apr 9 2007, 06:25 PM)<!--emo& Sad

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /> Dogs, Frogs and Dalits: The Indian Model Minority Has A Dark Side
By Brenda Walker

When Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western Civilization, he famously answered, "I think it would be a good idea." [right][snapback]66682[/snapback][/right]I'm so tired of having to read the same accusations originating from the US over and over again. All in the same tune, same theme. I wonder how any self-respecting Hindu lives in that country. Wonder if the pay's worth so much more than the work done for it that it compensates for the incessant humiliations against one's identity.

Whether the west constitutes a civilisation or not is irrelevant. Civilisation is a western word, and the English-origin countries have every right to self-designate themselves as they choose. Also, the very existence of many good people in/originating from those countries (as also from all countries) constitute good arguments for the case that the west is in fact a civilisation - if not in the colonial past, it is today.

As Brenda Walker has played Sewer Inspector of India (although paid by higher-ups to paint the foulest picture), I now have the right to write on the infinitely shadier side of the west. If India's sewer according to B Walker's partially-researched, partially-informed, selectively-informing, biased 'expose' was a stinker, the west by the same calculation will be 'The Pool of Eternal Stench'.
But I won't have to rely on inventing 'facts' and hiding inconvenient ones, like B Walker did (at her very best she referred to the likes of Amartya Sen for supporting 'evidence' - never a good sign).

I want to write about, this:
QUOTEEven the demonstration by Nobel-prize-winning economist Amartya Sen that tens of millions of women and girls are missing from India has found little attention among those who claim to value human rights.Ignore that it's Amartya Sen (pretend the stats are reliable). Look at that word FROM. And think of what that entails. It means these women and girl children have gone elsewhere, because they've gone "missing from India". That means that there's a market for them elsewhere. Isn't that right? So what does that say?

All here might be aware about that despicable scourge on this planet, the Traffick in Women and Children.
If not, let me acquaint you/refresh your memory with a little of it. B Walker has mentioned India. Let me talk of the west, perhaps the US in particular. Let's start with the Phillipines and I'll make my way to other places after that.

Phillipines
Several years back I had watched a very disturbing documentary on how huge numbers of the unfortunate beautiful women of Phillipines, who thought they were going to the US to work in respectable jobs actually found themselves in anything but. They returned to their homeland in bodybags <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/furious.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='furious.gif' /> (For those Indians who don't know what that is: they were murdered, and only their bodies returned in a bag for burial.) Many bodybags of Philipino women arrive from the US each year. The Land of Opportunity didn't say what kind of opportunity it was that was awaiting them. But may these unfortunate women be happy with their ancestors now.

It is a HUGE problem in the Phillipines. No need to guess why, it's a christian colonised Asian nation. Western christo-exploitation of converted nations is the worst. This exploitation and the associated high-speed 'development' had also led to many prostitution and other exploitation rings to be started in the Phillipines itself.
I'm not going to discuss the matter of child exploitation and traffick here, that's another sick topic.

Some pathetically simple googling for data on this gave the following:

http://www.gabnet.org/campaigns/purplerose/prc2.html
QUOTETrafficking of Filipino Women and Children IN THE UNITED STATES
* From the 1980s on, around 5,000 Filipinas are married to American men annually through the so-called mail-order bride agencies or the international match-making agencies. These agencies comprise a multi-million dollar business.

* Wife battery and control are usual features of these marriages, where the divorce rate is estimated at 70%.

* The fiance/husband/male client usually believes he has been taken advantaged of when the Filipina tries to divorce or leave him. His retaliation runs the gamut of mild (maxing out credit cards and making sure the court divides the debt between him and his to-be-ex-wife) to killing her, as what happened in a Seattle courtroom.

* Several young Filipinas were married to psychopaths and/or serial killers. Estelita Villa Reeves in Texas disappeared and the police discovered that her husband had married two others--a Latina and a Vietnamese--before her, both died mysteriously.

* An estimated 25,000 Filipinas have been brough into the US to work at brothel houses, bars, nightclubs and illegal sex farms in various states and in the vicinity of US military bases and camps.

* Some 25 sex tour operators in the US each send 15-25 men each month to the Philippines to engage in sex tourism. A Philippine Adventure Tour, for instance, costs $1,645 including RT airfare, hotel and guided tours to the bars where women are purchased for sex for as low as $24.

* Neither the Philippine embassy and its consulates nor the US government has any adequate program to deal with the problem. US legislators of Philippine ancestry focus largely on whether the women should be called "mail-order brides," the agencies "mail-order bride agencies," or some other term which would effectively hide the fact that women are being sold.
http://media.www.thevarsity.ca/media/stora...s-2772603.shtml
QUOTEFilm fights for Filipino women's rights
Amy Smithers
Issue date: 3/12/07 Section: News

Like the designer rose, women from the Philippines are reguarly moulded-physically and mentally-to fit the desires of their buyers. For example, the Phillipines are the only predominantly Christian Asian country, and many men troll websites trafficking Filipino girls they feel are likely to honour traditional Christian family values.

On Thursday evening, a concerned group gathered to view Say I Do, a documentary chronicling the experiences of Filipino mail-order brides. The event was one of many put on by the Philippine Women Centre of Ontario, in conjunction with Concerned Students of POL 108 and SAC, as part of the Purple Rose Campaign, an international movement against the sex trafficking of Filipino women and children.

"A lot of [the men] have been divorced and don't want to go through that again, and they know divorce is not acceptable [in the Filipino culture]," said SAC VP student life Camille Cendana. "It's this perception of the Philippine women that drives the industry."

The websites in North America are privately run, and connected with recruitment centres in the Philippines.

"They arrange tours to the Phillipines and also operate a group of women you can meet while you're there," said Sioson.

Some men will write letters to ten or more girls a year. They then book a tour to meet each of them and decide which potential wife they would like to sponsor. The immediate problem with Canadian law is that there is no limit to the number of women one man can sponsor.

"There's no way for the women to screen the men, to find out that the man has already sponsored three wives," Sioson adds.

Roughly one in nine Filipinos currently live abroad, sending home a total of US$12 billion in remittances each year. The increasing influence of globalization has made the Phillipine people themselves some of the most valuable exports that the country has to offer.(Red bit above Smile

Having converted the Phillipines to christianity was a stroke of genius. But isn't it always? It makes the people ready for (and helpless to) exploitation.

http://members.tripod.com/~gabriela_p/8-ar...0601_prose.html
Stop Sex Trafficking of Filipino Women and Children!
QUOTEWhy does the problem of sex-trafficking exist and persist in the Philippines?
As poverty worsens and living conditions deteriorate, the number of women and children who become vulnerable to sex-trade increases. As the crisis intensifies, women's economic rights are incessantly infringed upon. Presently, women and children make up the largest section of the reserved labor force. According to government reports, the number of unemployed has reached 3.9 million and 40% of these are women. (Philippine Star, June 12, 1999)

Philippine society remains semi-feudal and semi-colonial. The economy remains "export-oriented and "import-dependent" â the reason for the country's continued widespread poverty. The implementation of the policies of privatization, liberalization and deregulation has meant greater exploitation of the Filipino masses. The Estrada administration warned that wage increase will result in the rise of prices and the devaluation of the currency, an increase in the unemployment rate and will drive foreign investors out of the country. (Manila Times, April 30, 1999) The Estrada administration falls short in admitting that the country's economy depends so much on foreign investors whose interest is not the welfare of our people but their capital gains.

With the advent of imperialist globalization, underdeveloped countries like the Philippines are fast removing economic barriers in the name of "free trade". Particularly in the Philippines, this means unhindered entry of imported products and capital and the export of raw materials. It also means repatriation of profits in collaboration with big land owners and bureaucrat capitalists in the country. The implementation of these economic programs has also been accelerated under the dictate of the IMF-WB through the Structural Adjustment Policy (SAP) and the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade â World Trade Organization (GATT-WTO).

With the so-called "free-trade" among countries, legal barriers are gradually being eroded to make prostitution legitimate, especially in semi-colonial countries like the Philippines. Under these circumstances women become more vulnerable to exploitation in "sex-trade" and prostitution. The number of women and children in prostitution will rise even faster when and if prostitution is loosely defined as "work" or "sex-work". At present, there are approximately 600,000 prostitutes in the Philippines. 50,000 to 60,000 of this are children forced into prostitution.
Low regard for women persists as perpetuated by the church, home, school and mass media. Not only women's labor power but women's bodies has become a commodity.
I was surprised to find that so many Phillipino women were trafficked to South Korea. But when I looked into it, it became clear as to who and what was the cause:

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/2396.htm
QUOTEThird World Network Features
Geneva: Over 5,000 women, mainly from the Philippines and the former Soviet Union, have been trafficked into South Korea for the sex industry since the mid-1990s, with the largest employers of Filipino women being bars located near US military bases, according to new research published by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
http://action.web.ca/home/catw/readingroom...6d7508850d41038
QUOTEFilipinas in Prostitution around U.S. Military Bases in Korea: A Recurring Nightmare
by Jean Enriquez
CATW-Asia Pacific
In the recent years, Filipino women have been migrating in flocks to neighboring countries, despite and because of the Asian economic crisis. Push factors for women in the Philippines are numerous. These include the feminization of poverty wherein the Filipino women suffer the worst impacts of structural adjustment programs, on which loans from World Bank and IMF are contingent. 'Women fisherfolk are edged out by corporate fishing, indigenous women lose their lands to mining interests, urban poor women are displaced by development infrastructure, and rural women are enduring a steady decline in incomes because of agricultural free trade.' There is also increasing trend in casualization of labour among big companies, mostly victimizing women workers. In terms of employment, only 46.8% of women are employed compared to 85.7% of men. The severe economic burden experienced by women, in connection with their roles within the family and status within society, compels women to work abroad.Woohoo, US Free Trade! American imperialism is no different from the violence of communism.

Is it any wonder who has brought this on?
http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2006/10/119914.shtml
QUOTEPhilippine Women's National Day of Prtest
US-BASED WOMENâS GROUP GABRIELA NETWORK COMMEMORATE PHILIPPINE WOMENâS NATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST; DECLARE U.S. CULPABLE FOR EXPLOITATION AND OPPRESSION OF FILIPINAS

The US introduced large scale systematic prostitution to the archipelago, creating red light districts in and around its military bases that entertained 10,000 soldiers daily during the height of the Vietnam War. With the arrival of close to 12,000 US troops in early 2002, when the Philippines was declared the Second Front in the US-led âwar on terror,â sex trafficking of Filipino women and children increased to 600%. The US remains the largest importer of mail-order brides from the Philippines. The US is the biggest supporter of Macapagal Arroyo, giving her administration the fourth largest US foreign military aid package in the world, at over US$400 million. Around 5,500 US troops are in the islands.

This state of militarization has had detrimental effects especially on the women. Almost a year ago, 22-year old âNicoleâ was allegedly raped and tossed aside by six US Marines outside of a club in Subic Bay, Olongapo City (former US naval base site). The verdict of the case, which will be decided next month, looks grim. According to Nicoleâs defense team, the best they can hope for is one conviction and, at worst, all marines will be freed. Nicoleâs case is further example of the way women in the Philippines have been and are being treated by US-backed Macapagal Arroyo: easily disposable cheap commodities. Last year alone, over 700,000 women were exported to other countries to work as overseas contract and migrant workers. Everyday, an average of 10 body bags arrive in the Philippines carrying the remains of Filipinas.Such cases of US Army abusing non-American women in other nations is not unique to converted Phillipines. It happens in Japan and happened in Buddhist Vietnam where women and children have been raped and even murdered by the American 'officer and gentleman'.

Ah, the joys that would await a converted India! With such incentives, I wonder why us stubborn Hindus are not leaping to grasp at the offer... 'Eternal salvation' and a wonderful life of exploitation, plus a free body bag for the womenfolk!!!!
(I'm being sarcastic. No disrespect meant to the Phillipino women victimised or their families or country.)

My question: if, as per Amartya Sen, 10s of millions women and girl children have gone missing from India where have they gone missing to?

Husky · (This post was last modified: 04-11-2007, 03:11 PM by Husky.)

(Thanks Admin for moving the posts.)

Traffick of women and children
Of course, it is not only the Phillipino women. No. The largest numbers that I have heard of are from Eastern Europe and Russia.
These good women are kidnapped, or tricked because of their troubled economic conditions, to eventually become exploited to death in the West.
(Russia has a 10 million+ surplus of women at present due to the ravages of the wars. I don't know the numbers of surplus women in other ex-Soviet countries.)

http://www.belgium.iom.int/STOPConference/...ical%20Data.pdf
QUOTEEuropean Parliament
Hemicycle (Spaak building, 3rd floor)
Rue Wiertz, Brussels, Belgium
18-20 September 2002

Trafficking in Women from Central and Eastern Europe:
A Review of Statistical Data
Trafficking of women from Central and Eastern Europe is not restricted to the EU; Central and Eastern European women are trafficked to North America as well and, as in Europe, the trafficking of women to the US and Canada is not a recent phenomenon. In the US, there have been recent reports of cases of trafficking in at least 20 different states, with most cases occurring in New York, California and Florida. In the latter state, some law enforcement officials claim that they are being âinundated with trafficked women from Russia, Ukraine and Central Europeâ (Richard, 1999: 3). Source countries for women trafficked to the US are primarily in South-East Asia and Latin America, although there are also several countries from CEE and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), notably Russia, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic (Richard, 1999: 3). Although Asia remains the single largest region of origin for trafficked women in the United States, the number of women trafficked from CEE and the CIS is increasing rapidly.
To get an idea of the numbers of stolen women involved, turn your horrified eyes onto this atrocity:
http://www.old.iom.int/documents/publica.../tm_23.pdf
QUOTEIn 1998, the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior estimated that 400,000 Ukrainian women had been trafficked in the past decade, although Ukrainian NGOs and researchers believe the number to be higher.Yes, you're reading that right. That's AT LEAST 400,000 from Ukraine alone!!!! And where are by far the most going again - what is their Destination of Exploitation? Oh, that's right, to the 'west'. West of Russia and Eastern-Europe, that is.

The land of the free is only free for the christo Caucasian male of *Western-European origin*. It costs you your life if you are not. If you're Eastern-European/Russian, African, Asian - who cares about you? No one. You're cheap, easy, free-for-all and all-for-free. Them grabbing hands grab all they can.
Meanwhile, they will write articles about how your civilisation is to blame for it all. Yeah right. Only if you're a fool will you believe American 'journalists'. Their own sewers are overflowing and they're living in it, but meanwhile they will drop by to inspect yours and castigate your whole village for a clogged drain you can't yet afford to fix.

http://www.old.iom.int/documents/publica.../tm_23.pdf
also states this little thing of some concern to people of Indian ethnicity:
QUOTESouth Asian women are trafficked to the Middle East and Gulf states, often for forced domestic labour. In an effort to curb exploitative practices, Bangladesh has banned the emigration of women as domestic maids.The above has carefully avoided the issue of the sex trade in the Middle East, a large number there are still stolen from E Europe and even W and S Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India)
Just like the christians abuse women of christian countries/ethnicities lower in their christian hierarchy, the islamics do the same. And so, the Dar-ul-Islams in the Middle-East prey on what they see as the 'expendable' populations of TSP and Bangladesh. The world must be made islamic, but not all islamics are equal of course. Some are meant only for domestic work (or less pleasant exploitation), just as they were in the medieval islamic empire.

The article 'International Trafficking in Women to the United States: A Contemporary Manifestation of Slavery and Organized Crime' (available from cia.gov site, see also http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/391464.html) is not giving the full figures. Even taken as is, the numbers for the year 2000 - which is 50,000 women trafficked into US - are outdated now, because just the admitted figure of E European women trafficked into US was already at 50,000 in 2002 - that's not even including the large numbers of Latin Americans and SE Asians!

Predictably "CBS News" repeats the super understated figure 50,000 here - but we must be grateful that at least they're repeating it:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/04/01/...ain179014.shtml
QUOTEWomen Suffer Modern Slavery
NEW YORK, April 1, 2000
(AP) As many as 50,000 women and children from Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe are brought to the United States under false pretenses each year and forced to work as prostitutes, abused laborers or servants, according to a CIA report, The New York Times reported Sunday. 
50,000 S-American, SE-Asian and Russian/E-European women were trafficked into the US in 2001; while the data for 2002 puts the number of Russian women alone trafficked into US at 50,000! (These conservative numbers are from Amnesty International) What a grand development! (In spite of the economic set back of the WTC bombing.) Baptist and petro dollars buy free foreign women for exploitation.
The difference is due to something else: exposure to more Russian women on TV, like those pretty tennis stars. As a consequence, rich American men just bought themselves what they could otherwise never have got, but what Free Trade and the consequent exchange rate had rendered so cheap: human beings from Russia who were in desperate economic straits.

But christian nations of the West don't just prey on the converted colonies or even the christian East. No. Of course, it's open season on the 'heathens', like those women of Buddhist Thailand who are economically-cornered:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2...114950.htm
QUOTEAustralian Broadcasting Corporation
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
Broadcast: 24/05/2004

Trafficking figures prompt prostitution ban call
Reporter: Suzanne Smith
TONY JONES: It is estimated that there could be at least 1,000 bonded sex slaves in Australia - prostitutes trafficked mainly from Thailand on false passports and visas.Where there's demand, there is supply. Whoever's got the money (by squeezing it out of other nations) will make most desperate beggars of all the rest.

Just as a flip side of the coin - the miracle of communism is the same:
Rapid and unnaturally evolving (that is, enforced) economic development coupled with miserable gender control has bad effects for all.
Communism or Free Trade (western innovations both) - what's the difference? Many more may soon have to learn to live in servitude and be exploited before things change for the better:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK256138.htm
QUOTEChina women, children face growing trafficking risk
BEIJING, April 4 (Reuters) - Women and children in China face a growing threat of being trafficked and sold into marriage or sex work, as labour migration and a widening gender imbalance put them at risk, an international aid group said on Wednesday.
(Would be most useful to know the ideology of this 'international aid group'.)

About 119 boys are born in China for every 100 girls, an imbalance that has grown since Beijing introduced a one-child policy more than 25 years ago that has bolstered a traditional preference for boys, resulting in abortions of female foetuses and abandonment of baby girls.

The strict family-planning policy means China will be home to 30 million more men of marriageable age than women by 2020, state media has reported.

"The number of women and children from poor and underdeveloped regions who migrate due to employment and or business considerations, but end up being abducted or trafficked, will continue to grow," Wang Jinling, a researcher at the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences, said in a paper.

"Some of them will be sold and married, and some will be forced to become offenders, such as sex workers and drug traffickers," Wang wrote.(Eventually western vultures will descend on the vulnerable among the Chinese women.) What communism is doing to China's village character is the same as what western imperialism (globalisation! Free Trade!) is doing to the 'third world': enforcing a culture and a rapidly changing, unreliable environment conducive to exploitation.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 04-14-2007, 08:00 PM by Husky.)

This is going to be another long post. Sorry for taking up the bandwidth.

Post 114 again:
QUOTEDogs, Frogs and Dalits: The Indian Model Minority Has A Dark Side
By Brenda WalkerQUOTEThe odd and objectionable cultural practices of Indians may not seem important when millions of Mexicans are turning the Southwest into a colony of their homeland. But the 2005 Census count of India-born immigrants was 2,319,222âa not insubstantial number.Ummm. Heard that Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego and many more, were all stolen from Latin America in a very recent century (recent even by American standards). The Central Americans are just migrating back to where they came from. Western-European Protestant Americans stole it from native S Americans and the SW-European settlers. There's certainly no need for B Walker to be all openly racist about it, doesn't she know the Confederates lost and with it she lost the social rights to express her icky racist thoughts in public?

That reminds me. How does the entire world, except for N America, perceive S Americans of European-origin as? As Caucasian, 'white'.
But watch any American movie with Mexicans in it - or even Spanish women playing Mexican - and you will know the racist Casta system of the WASPY Americans. For example, watch 'Fools Rush In' with Salma Hayek and the dude who played Chandler in Friends. They talk of the 'white' Americans and the 'brown' Latin Americans even in those cases where the latter are of European origin (okay, Salma Hayek is part European origin, and part Syrian or something).

A far more ridiculous example is from the US movie 'Spanglish', which has an authentic Spanish actress - the lovely Paz Vega - playing a Mexican mother. At one point, she speaks in Spanish (with a Mexican acccent she had to study for the film) to Adam Sandler's character, something about his "white" people and her "brown" people - the bit is subtitled in English. Never mind Paz Vega is wholly European - she is from Spain; and looking at her, she is very white. But not to the American world, where even Spanish actors are only accepted if they play the S American who knows their place: the housekeeper, the nanny, the unemployed, the 'latin' cop, whatever. S Americans know that in America there's a ceiling and it's not made of glass but of concrete. If you are number one in your S American country, it doesn't matter. You're down in the hierarchy in America. You're not 'white' even when you are European and white; in America you are 'brown', because only the W-Europeans are allowed belong in the 'white' clique. Guess Cameron Diaz is a pain (not to mention Heather Locklear because she is part native N American).

I'm surprised though that Paz Vega went through with the farce: the US discovered she was so lovely after her famous Spanish films, so they had to have her in a US film. Somewhere. But not as a Spanish woman: there's no room for that in America, of course. No, the closest thing allowed is to play a S American, and know her place.

QUOTE(B Walker writes Smile

The caste system extends back into India's history and has a racial basis. The Brahmin class of hereditary privilege is light-skinned while the Untouchable dalits are darker. It has been reported that newly affluent Indian women are spending millions of dollars on beauty products to lighten up unwanted dark skin, noting "It's believed that caste occupations were originally decided by skin color, with dark-skinned people assigned to the latrines and light-skinned people assigned to the Hindu clergy" [Modern India's complex connection with complexion, By Mike McPhate, Toronto Globe and Mail June 6, 2005].What, no mention of that perennial favourite of christian missionaries and christian colonials alike? No reference to that 'glorious' fantasy which is always invariably brought up: The AIT, the Grand Tale of the Oryans and the Dravidoids? What a domper. Here I was expecting a direct allusion, and all we get is a sneaky indirect one. Shows America is 'changing': they still hang on to their beloved AIT, but have perhaps learnt to be embarrassed about the entirely christian-racist origins of the Oryan-Dravidioid story.
Yes, perhaps even B Walker has found out the very christian, very biblical origins of this: that the architects of the AIT fantasy originally called the Oryans Japhetites and referred to the Dravidoids as Hamites. To her sorrow, Walker would then have realised that it was not the Indians who ever called their own people as such, but that it was the christian missionaries and christian colonizers who invented these terms based on their christian-racist system and the consequent value judgments they made about the Indian skin-colours they saw.

Terribly embarrassed as B Walker must have been, it is only natural for her to still desperately cling to the same tale but not make any direct mention of the biblical Japhetites (Oryans) and Hamites (Dravidoids). How else could she blame India then without incriminating that most sacred faith of racists - christianity - in it? So instead, B Walker avoids the fundamental AIT myth altogether and is careful to use only terms like 'racism' and 'skin-colours'; Walker is obviously as adept in half-truths and untruths as any missionary. And to cement it as fact, she refers to one Mike McPhate's article from a Canadian paper. 'That proves it' apparently.
Most are familiar with the circular reasoning that western christian racists and their hired mercenaries, the psecular stooges in India (like Amartya Sen), always engage in - they are all working for one and the same anyway and find it most convenient to refer to each other's work to provide back-up for their own. (Hence, this makes it circular reasoning.)

"It's believed that caste occupations were originally decided by skin color, with dark-skinned people assigned to the latrines and light-skinned people assigned to the Hindu clergy" says B Walker's source McPhate.
"It is believed" he says - yet who believes it, but the christian missionaries and the organisations/scholars/journalists they fund, as well as the christian colonial-minded people of today, as also the Indians they spend their money to brainwash in India's christian schools? As per McPhate himself, it is an article of faith and no more. Blind faith and belief against incontrovertible evidence are things only christians are adepts at, they have certainly pioneered it. They also spend vast amounts of money making sure their charges in Indian christian schools buy it too.

Yet Walker and her friend are incapable of showing any evidence from the Vedas or any other ancient Indian religious texts that brahmins were people 'chosen for their light-skin'. Or that 'dalits' ('dalit' is incorrectly applied - it's the name christians and muslims take when they've been converted from a Hindu Harijan community) were 'assigned to the latrines' for their 'dark skin'. There is no evidence for any of this at all. Such bigoted behaviour is however consonant with what WASPY people of Protestant N America do: they get the 'brown' Mexicans to clean their house and toilets. But 'tis rather foolish to project christian American values on ancient Hindu India, most especially when there's no factual support for it...

The Vedas, and other Hindu scriptures like the Gita and epics like the Mahabharata, do explain how Brahmanas were chosen, but skin-colour was never a matter of any consideration. It has clearly been explained in Hindu scriptures that it is the sincere love for and pursuit of Truth, and a love for all creatures as equals, that defines a Brahmana.
B Walker and McPhate show only the christian means of 'pursuing' truth: that is, to paint all others as liars.
To give the lie to their face, then, here is the highly-learned and knowledgeable Yudhisthira from the Mahabharata explaining what makes a Brahmana:
QUOTE"Yuddhistira (the son of the God of Justice) is asked what is the cause of being a Brahmana. He declares that neither birth nor learning makes a Brahmana, that only proper conduct does. Even a Brahmana learned in four Vedas cannot be considered as a Brahmana if his conduct is evil. [However it must be noted that performing proper rituals is also included in the passage as the mark of a Brahmana (Vanaparva, 312).] In another place he is asked by a serpent who a true Brahmana is. He answers, "The person in whom resides truth, charity, forgiveness, courtesy, rejection of cruelty, austerity, is a Brahmana". The serpent argues that the Vedas have given every varna their dharma or law. "Therefore truth, charity, forgiveness, non-violence, rejection of cruelty, and compassion based on Vedas is noticed even in Shudras. If even in Shudras these symptoms of Brahamandharma appear, then Shudras too can be Brahmanas". Yuddhistira's answer is, "In many Shudras symptoms of Brahmana appear, and among many of the twice-born, symptoms of Shudras appear. Therefore it is not that to be born in a Shudra family makes one a Shudra or that to be born in a Brahmana family makes one a Brahmana. The persons in whom such behaviour [the qualities mentioned above] ordained by Vedas appear are Brahmanas and those in whom they do not appear are Shudras" (Vanaparva, 180)."There goes B Walker's and McPhate's carefully constructed falsehood. Their lies melt away in the all-purifying Wind. But one need not worry - their false step won't hold them back. I am certain B Walker has many more lies in store, as there are even many more in the rest of her article.

But before I stop picking on her caste statement, I want to go over that much-heralded 'beacon of compassion' and 'social upliftment' - christianity (being sarcastic here). That it was a most foully racist ideology in the past (and still is elsewhere) is not under any doubt. But here is its undisputed recent record in India:
http://www.dailypioneer.com/displayit1.asp...jain/jain55.txt
Baptised, but boundary remains by Sandhya Jain
QUOTEUntil 1991, out of approximately 134 Catholic Bishops in the country (14 in Tamil Nadu alone), there was no Dalit or tribal until the ordaining of Bishop Ezra Sargunam, a Dalit. Barring the States of Goa and Kerala, Dalits and tribals comprise a major percentage of Christians, yet they are hardly visible at the level of Bishops, Vicars-General, priests, Directors, Professors in seminaries, and surgeons and heads of departments in Christian hospitals and medical colleges.

Even Archbishop George Zus, a high ranking member of the Vatican Hierarchy, commented adversely on this situation while addressing the Catholic Bishops' Council in Pune, in December 1991. Dalit Christians, he said, "make 65 per cent" of the ten million Christians in the South, but less than four per cent of the parishes are entrusted to Dalit priests. There are no Dalits among the 13 Catholic Bishops' Council of Tamil Nadu or among the Vicars-General and the Rectors of seminaries and Directors of social assistance centres.We need not be as hasty as B Walker and her equally unreliable McPhate in concluding that the discrimination ingrained in christianity is the cause for this. But then, we need not be slow like a tortoise to come to this most correct conclusion either. It is there for all to see, and we must finally admit it. Discrimination controls who is ordained a priest in Christianity, as it has ever done. 'Social upliftment, equality, compassion' - yeah right.
(All of that Sandhya Jain Article is worth a complete read. It also covers cases where missionary NGOs are mistreating their 'dalit' converts. No surprise there.)
In western Europe, it had long been thus that only those of blue blood (=aristocratic ancestry) were allowed to become high-ranking priests: bishops, cardinals, Pope. None of a 'modest' casta/class was allowed to presume to such a 'holy' station. Hence second sons of aristocrats were given to the Church to get training for the higher Priesthood.

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