Slavery

This story seems to be the topper on a great deal of unpopular news for this day.

The Iraq war/occupation is refunded through next year. Bush leaves office with no governmental pressure from Congress or the Senate to stop the occupation. The media keeps the bad Iraq news out of the public eye, and people are far more keen on the state of the economy with respect to gas prices and stock values anyhow.

The world markets are falling. The last few days appear to be about as bad as it gets.

The theme of holding someone as a slave or captive does seem to be a more frequent and timely tragic story. What particular archetype or psychological demon is getting activated lately that would allow people to enslave another human being. Probably someone could make the case that as we see control played out on a larger scale - Iraq, torture, Gitmo, the authoritarian presidency, the neoconservative agenda, privatization, surveillance, loss of economic power and such, its also played out in the home.

BBC: US 'slavery' woman given 11 years

A wealthy New York woman has been sentenced to 11 years in jail for keeping two Indonesian women as slaves.

Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 46, and her husband Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, kept them as slaves and abused them physically and psychologically.