Cyber Slaves in Asia

When I formed a question I thought AI (Copilot) would give me, I got this:

 "Response stopped
Sent by Copilot:
I apologize, but I won’t be able to continue discussing this topic. If you have any other questions or need assistance, feel free to ask. Thank you! "

It was about slave computer scammers. The computers weren't "slaves," but the educated, unfortunate men working the scam were. Governments across a vast swathe of Asia - including Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan - have sounded the alarm reports BBC. I'd seen the story in the WSJ but with a pay wall so I wasn't able to read the whole story--thus I was looking at other sources.

 
We in the U.S. are so blinded by the slavery of the 17-19th centuries which corroded our own history, that we ignore modern day slavery that surpasses by many millions the transatlantic era. This kind of "investment" doesn't get used up--it's renewable. There's labor slavery and sex slavery, and there's child slavery in mines to pull from the earth the minerals we need to run the smart phones and equipment that enslaves minds. The WSJ story is almost too bizarre to comprehend--cyber slavery.

This is from BBC: 

""I was forced to make 15 friends every day and entice them to join online gambling and lottery websites… of these, I had to convince five people to deposit money into their gaming accounts," he said.

"The manager told me to work obediently, not to try to escape or resist or I will be taken to the torture room… Many others told me if they did not meet the target, they would be starved and beaten."
The abuse often results in lasting trauma. Two Vietnamese victims, who declined to be named, told the BBC they were beaten, electrocuted, and repeatedly sold to scam centres."

When I kept looking, there were numerous articles, some documentaries, and perhaps sourced from the same report. In this case the cybercriminals are themselves victims of the crime.

Obama's marxism a bit dated

It's no wonder I recognized it from my college courses--he's apparently stuck back in the 1960s and 1970s with Bill Ayers and friends, while Europe and Asia struggle to release themselves from his type of chains. Here's a summary about marxism in Asia at the Irish Left Review.

From Marx to the Market
Not so long ago, there seemed to be a very different light shining from the East. It’s barely thirty years since the final defeat of the South Vietnamese regime set the seal on the most humiliating defeat the USA has suffered since appointing itself as the world’s policeman after 1945. The victory of the Vietnamese Communists was one by-product of a curious fact: the Communist International, founded by the Bolsheviks with the primary goal of spreading revolution in Western Europe, had its greatest impact in East Asia. Nobody would have found that more surprising than the Bolsheviks themselves.

Communist parties were able to take power under their own steam in China, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The Korean Communists had the benefit of support from the Red Army but still had a strong domestic base when they took over the north of their country. There were also long-running Communist insurgencies in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, while Indonesia was once home to the largest non-ruling Communist party in the world.

A quick glance at the regional scene will tell you that the challenge once posed by Asian Communism to the capitalist order has been almost entirely eclipsed. The Indonesia CP was smashed by Suharto’s bloody coup in the 1960s, while the Communist guerrillas in Thailand and Malaysia have long since been defeated. The Filipino CPP/NPA survives, but is a much diminished force. The turnaround is most striking, though, in the states where Communist parties or their descendents are still in power.

China’s great leap forward has grounded itself on the embrace of private enterprise (although not, it should be said, the dogma of the Washington Consensus). . . and much more."

The author neglects to mention the millions of deaths of our South Vietnamese allies caused by the shameful exit of the U.S. at the end of the war; or the millions and millions of Chinese who met their early deaths on the road to restoring the economy of China before it scambled on their bodies to capitalism. Oh well.

The Bali Earthquake

After the ridiculous vision of 10,000 people flying to Bali to discuss global warming and stay in tents (imagine the "carbon footprint" and pollution), and then having an earthquake on Dec. 7 remind them all that they are in no way in charge of the planet earth, well, it was just too rich. Virtually every story is the same AP report, which down played it (called it a jolt), but over at Forbes.com I did find:

JAKARTA (Thomson Financial) - A 5.9-magnitude earthquake struck off Indonesia's Bali on Friday, officials said, and it was strongly felt at a UN climate conference in the resort island. The earthquake, which hit at 17:45 pm (1035 GMT), struck 261 kilometers southwest of the Bali resort of Nusa Dua, where delegates are meeting to craft a strategy to combat climate change, Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said in a statement. There was no threat of a tsunami, and the quake struck at a depth of 10 kilometres, the agency said.

If you don't care for the Genesis account of creation (who did it and why and how long it took) try the more poetic Job 38-41 where the Lord asks Job, "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? . . . Can you set up God's dominion over the earth?" And Job admits he spoke of things he didn't understand which were too wonderful for him to know. And he repented.