THE SLIMY SLUM DOG MILLIONAIRE FILM

Va bene! It won an Academy Award. So what does that have to do with the price of rice and eggs? In today's world that is a very pertinent question as people are starving in the hundreds of millions.

As a Cinderella story, the original fairy tale is far more believable.A beautiful orphaned girl works body and soul from morning till night seven days a week. Her abusers are her wicked step-mother and her equally malevolent three step-sisters. A kindly fairy Godmother appears out of nowhere so that she can go the the ball hosted by the Prince of their kingdom. He intends to select a bride on that very night.

Remember the Simply Red's memorable hit song, "You Can't Go to the Ball?" How many millions upon millions will never go to the ball? But I digress.

The fairy Godmother with a magic wand, but of course, fetes her with a breathtaking ballgown and gives her a makeover. Oh give me a break. After working among the dirt and cinders, that's how Cinderella got her name dahlings, she needed a long shower and bath and all the trimmings. You just know she is someone extraordinary because FGM ( fairy Godmother) shods her in crystal slippers. Those editions which say "glass slippers" are not credible. Trust me. A fairy god-mother had the magical power in her wand to transform Cinderella into the Beauty she truly was - inside AND out. Glass would have been too nouveau riche - tacky and dangerous. It shatters. So, crystal shoes then, that shimmered on her small feet. But, and there is always a but in Life, she is told clearly conditio sine qua non " You must leave the Prince's Palace before Midnight because everything will return as it was."

Cinderella and the Prince fall in love as we all know. Alas! Tempus fugit. She hears the first bell strike midnight. She literally rushes out of the arms of Prince Charming and dashes down the long majestic stairway. We are then told that she loses one of her slippers. Rubbish!. The poor girl went barefoot all the time. She would not know how to run down a path let alone stairs in crystal slippers. How many of us would? She did what any smart girl would do, she took off her shoes. That makes sense now doesn't it? She can really sprint away before the magic is up. Just a moment. How did the Prince end up with one slipper? I think she left it on the steps deliberately. How else could she prove it was truly her shoe? In those days ID's, fingerprints, retinal scans and video watchers did not exist.

Eventually Prince Charming finds her, thanks to the crystal slipper "and they lived happily ever after, "declared the fairy tale. I think that's when the real problems emerged but let's face it as a seven year old who had already seen my share of tragedies and massacres I sort of bought it because I wished it so.

Slum Dog Millionaire is not a fairy tale. It is a nightmare from which those who exist in it can never flee. Why? Because slums are created and abetted by the Malefactors and Corruptors of Lucre. Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. Paupers in the slums have no voice, I doubt they are even allowed to vote. They haven't the slightest possibility of an opinion in whatever occurs in their tortured existence. What's more, generations heaped upon generations live and die there.

If slums/inner cities/ghettoes/bad neighborhoods did not exist, and we can use euphemisms to mask the words, they would need to be invented. Slums have always been with us throughout the world and they will always be with us. The poor must always remain poor. They must have children because slave labor is good for business. It serves the organ industry well. The rich must not be allowed to die because they addled their kidneys with alcohol or stuffed their blood with heroin or cocaine and destroyed their livers with designer drugs.

It would be a sin for a Billionaire whose companies are stocked with 15, 30, or 100 thousand drones/employees/slaves, try calling them human beings or souls, to die because of his life style.

"Nothing personal," say the businessmen, "it's just a question of dollars and cents."

The slums of Mumbai are overflowing with such tragic amd pitiful men, women and children. More humanity enter every year. Dante's words before the gates of hell are prophetic "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

As usual, Hollywood shirked its awesome responsibility to show us true compassion and empathy. It opted instead for its more familiar Propaganda. It showed us a story that taxed the credibility of the viewers. Selim, Jamal and Latika are lost children. They were doomed the moment they were conceived.

In the story Jamal and his older brother Selim are left to fend for themselves when their Mother is brutally murdered by rampaging Hindu fanatics. In truth India has always been a far more tolerant country than the United States or Europe, particularly as regards its Muslim minorities which might be about 70 million. In the Arab world, the have not Muslims are discriminated against, mutilated, tortured and slaughtered in the wink of an eye. Those in power are brutal towards their fellow Muslim. There isn't even a shadow of anything remotely democratic in their governments. India, it must be said is the world's largest democracy. It is chaotic and confusing but it is democratic in concept if not in practice.

It's true that gangs of roving criminals feed and clothe these tragic children in order to exploit them by amputating a limb, an arm or by blinding them.Most Indians give the blind child beggars money because they know that if they do not come up with a quota for that day as set by the Indian Fagins, the child will be beaten.

We see this in other parts of the world as well. In Manila, Bogota, Lima, Quito, and Mexico City. More than beggars, Africa has street smart kids. They are con-artists. This is especially true in Kishasa, Congo and Lagos, Nigeria.

Some areas of Amsterdam are wall to wall beggars. No, they are not Muslims. They are white packs of wild young men and women that prey on anyone they chance upon. Warsaw is a grim place to be poor in. So is Detroit, the Bronx, Watts, parts of Los Angeles, Miami, Queens, Appalachia,and Cleveland. There's much more but I think I have made my point.

In London, poor adolescents join so called baby gangs and use flame throwers to destroy posh and high-powered motor bikes or cars. They vomit on people's luxurious doorsteps just out of sheer spite.

I cannot say I blame them. "How dare you be so rich.? That is what this acts of vandalism and rage tell us. We don't listen. That is to be expected. We are just indignant at their vulgarity and their ability to work the corrupt system by living on the dole.

There is no way in Hades Jamal could have survived without facial scars of some sort. The skin diseases which these slum dogs are subjected to are too fearsome to name them all. I'll cite just four. Leprosy is endemic if not pandemic. When I "walked the streets of Calcutta with Mother Teresa", now a Saint, almost every child we encountered was afflicted with leprosy.

The slum Alpha Criminals gash the children's faces deeply with symbols as a sign that they belong to this or that group. They make sure the scars are deep and ragged so that they are disfigured for life. It is also a good means of identification.

If a child is good looking, their faces and bodies are left intact. Pedophiles from the West as well as from the Middle East and that includes Israel, pay high prices for children on the grounds that they will not be infected with HIV-AIDS.

Pedophiles and Child Pornographers will sometimes scar and mutilate children during sado-maso films. It excites the degenerates who watch such filth and the DVD's cost more than the usual sort.

As with other critics I have a bone to pick with Jamal's flawless skin and his impeccable English.
No way! Even merchants, doctors, and professionals who have studied at English and American universities still have heavy traces of their Mahrati or Hindi cadenza.I know a tycoon who has never gotten rid of his slight Indian accent. Not that he has ever tried to or even cared about it. Lotsa lolly is a great equalizer.

I disagree with the critics who claimed that the blind boy was incapable of distinguishing the numbers on the dollar bills or if the paper money itself was genuine. I'm sure they mean well. They have just not been privileged enough or trusted enough to witness what I saw in Hong Kong. Who are the critics going to ask for verificaton today of what I am about to say? The Banker - Gangsters roaming our planet?

The world's biggest bank in tems of liquidity was then based in Hong Kong. The Masters of Lucre entrusted the task of authenticating British pounds, dollars U. S. and Hong Kong dollars etc. to blind experts. To be sure, they had very sophisticated machines but they made mistakes. The blind had a better record. They could also tell with unfailing precision between counterfeit or genuine bills or real ones with printing errors which rendered them valuable to numismatists.

'Who wants to be a Millionaire?" Chances are the game is conned from the start. It is all one massive lie fed to the desperate masses and middle classes. I doubt few win 20 million rupees without paying a percentage / percentages to the producers, the television host and more importantly, to someone on the telephone who procures their presence on the show in the first place.

If you think India might be the only culprit, think again. All or most of the countries that have featured "Who wants to be a Millionare" have at one time or another participated in this Deception.

The Italian journalist who went to the slums of Mumbai to interview the mother of the girl who plays the child Latika, said her daughter received the sum of 2,000 Euros for 10 hours a day for 40 days. She has eight children to feed and look after. Her debts to usurers alone surpass the 2,000. When this hullabaloo dies down, she will have nothing left.

The chid who played Selim has a father dying of tuberculosis. My Indian friends who have foundations and such to help the poor could not tell me if any of them would actually go out of their way and make provisions to place the families of the slum actors in better housing and health conditions.

So what is the morale of this fable? There is none. There never was. There never will be.

The producers made millions and will continue to make them. That is the morale. Is Honesty the best policy? I am loath to answer that. The children, the adolescents and the youths who portrayed Selim, Jamal and Latika will soon be forgotten and swallowed up by the monsters in the slums who love Money more than anything else in this life. They will be dead within a few years from hunger, disease, drugs, sexually transmitted horrors and murder by the criminals because they said or did something not to their whimsical liking.

Let us pray to the Prague Child Jesus for them. Let us direct our sorrowful incantations to Allah. May Krishna protect these helpless ones. May the Buddha guard them. We surely stand helpless and impotent before the vast millions of poor and disenfranchised.