New Blog Address: Red Markets.com

This blog will be moving to a new address to help promote my upcoming book Red Markets: Every Body Has a Price. Last week I finished a first draft of the manuscript while at the Ledig House International Writers Residency and am very excited to start getting the word out. The book is a fast paced investigative romp that opens with a crime scene on the Indio-Nepal border and traces the spread of tissue economies across the globe.

When I first pitched the idea to Harper Collins/William Morrow in 2008 I came up with this sample cover art. Hopefully we'll find a more talented illustrator to make this look even sharper.
So come along for the ride and check out my new blog address http://www.redmarkets.com. I've also started a new homepage for my work http://www.scottcarney.com which should be online soon.

Temple of Do

The international trade in human body parts is by no means confined to essential organs, tissue and muscle. In fact, one of the most lucrative markets is human hair. On Nostrand avenue in Brooklyn where I live dozens of bodegas and beauty parlors sell top-quality Indian locks for big money--mostly to African American women who want to change their hairstyles rapidly. In this month's issue of Mother Jones I reported on how Indian temples shave the heads of their devotees and ship tons of hair from one side of the world to another. I attended a hair auction where distributors broke out in to fistfights with one another as they tried to corner the hair market and had a temple devotee shave my own head. So check out the piece here, and don't forget to see Sonja Sharp's related story on how some of that hair ends up in the American food supply.

Tiffany at the Grooming Room on Nostrand Avenue curls the hair of her client. She specializes in extensions.

Laborers in a hair factory in Chennai sort through thousands of poinds of hair, remove lice and prepare raw hair for export.

Processed hair is hung on racks to dry before bundled for export.

A tribal man in a small village outside of Chennai has learned to make money collecting shorn locks from barbershops and selling them to international hair suppliers. This cottage industry is entirely tribally run.

Further reading: The New York Times wrote a very interesting piece on how hindu hair became a major issue in the orthodox Jewish community who shave their heads and wear wigs as a sign of humility. When they discovered that the hair was offered in a pagan sacrifice they started to burn wigs.

Interview on NHPR: Word of Mouth

This month Mother Jones published a story of mine about surrogate mothers in India. Today I New Hampshire Public Radio interviewed me about the article on their show "Word of Mouth." Listen to the interview here

I'll post a link to the story in Mother Jones once they post it online. In the meanwhile you can check it out on newsstands across the country.

On Anthrojournalism

There are two fields that explore the little known facets of the world and bring them to the light of day that are on the verge of collapse. Journalism is facing the scourge of dwindling profits and a severe cutback in jobs, while anthropology has been struggling with making itself relevant to the modern world for decades. But the problems facing both could also be an opportunity for a path forward.

My own work as a journalist is deeply indebted to my anthropological training. I was one of a very few American journalists in India who spoke Hindi, and the features that I write tend to delve into the analytical ambiguities that are the stock and trade of anthropology. Specifically, my work on the commercialization of human tissue (and my forthcoming book "Red Markets") parallels the last ten years of Nancy Scheper-Hughes' career.

But anthropology is in trouble. The problem can be boiled down to simple economics. The supply of anthropology Ph.D.'s vastly outpaces career opportunities. Every year departments mint several hundred new doctorates for only a handful of jobs. Tenure track positions are dwindling with the economic crisis and even top candidates are lucky to find low-paying adjunct positions. Relevant jobs for anthropologists outside the academy almost never require a Ph.D.

I believe that this is in part due to the fact that the supply of anthropological writing far exceeds the demand. While anthropologists produce a huge amount of literature every year, very little of it ever gets read by more than a few interested specialists. Professors get promoted to tenure based on a point system that marks the number of publications, not necessarily their relevance. Most dissertations gather dust in libraries, and journals circulate around a very small audience and conferences. Anthropologists frequently lament how little influence their research has on larger public discourses, and yet steadfastly argue that "knowledge for knowledge's sake" is a sufficient reason for the work that they do.

In effect, there is a mismatch in the sort of products that anthropology produces and its reception in the community. Jobs in anthropology can't be tied only to the education of new anthropologists. The current model is a ponzi scheme that is perched to topple like the sub-prime mortgage industry once academic budgets begin to contract.

I spent three years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison pursuing my Ph.D. in anthropology before switching over to journalism. I left the program disappointed. I felt that there were very few career options other than teaching, and that the courses focused almost exclusively on theory and lacked any methodological training. With few and fewer job opportunities available on graduation, sometimes the degree program is a Faustian bargain. On top of that graduating with a Ph.D. takes anywhere from 5 years (at the absolute fastest) to ten (increasingly common). It is worth it to point out that a medical degree takes only four years, and a law degree three.

The thing that attracted me to anthropology in the first place was its ability to rigorously reexplain the world based on hard observations and theoretical insight. At their best, anthropologists are thorough researchers who can contextualize important social phenomenons across geography, time, space and cultures. Even today, the heart of an anthropology degree rests on years of fieldwork, often in remote locations. They learn the local languages, and seek to get involved in the community as much as possible in order to get a holistic vision of their subjects.

But there is a solution to the problem. The world needs people who are skilled at bridging the gaps between cultures. 80% of the planet doesn't even have an e-mail address, let alone speak each other's language. Even more importantly, the long term skill sets of an anthropologist is the perfect background for long-form journalism. As we all know, journalism is having a crisis of its own as profits plummet and cheap online content leeches the marrow out of the backbones of the print industry.

The trend in journalism has been to cut back on costs and quality of writing leaving a gaping hole in our knowledge base. I believe that the hole could be filled by a new mode of anthropology that realigns itself to reach out to a popular audience. Let's call this new mode "anthrojournalism". It wouldn't be too hard to for anthropologists to leverage their positions in the communities into hard-hitting and intelligent feature stories. Anthrojournalists could do more than just write about global inequalities: they could expose them. Ethnographic filmmakers could drop the academic title and become documentary filmmakers.

On the other hand, journalists could realign themselves with anthropology and make a serious long term investment in their stories. While anthrojournalists could never supplant the need for daily reporting, we need investigative journalism more now than we ever have.

This year Nation correspondent Jon Nichols and professor of communications Robert McChesney released The Death and Life of American Journalism, a ground breaking analysis of the current failure of journalism. In it they argue that journalism is more than just a profit factory, but a public trust and valuable organ of democracy. They argue that news-making should be subsidized and protected by the government so that it can continue to exist now that profits have been sucked out of of the business model.

For the last hundred years the entire field of anthropology has only continued to exist because of massive amount of government funding by way of grant programs, publicly backed academic departments and in a few cases, institutional endowments. Maybe it's time for a few academic departments to invest in training a new generation of anthropologists who write for the public at large. Why not carve out a space for well researched and well written investigative anthropology within the mass media? There are more than enough anthropologists with no outlet for their work. Meanwhile there are fewer and fewer investigative reports being produced in the mainstream media. It seems like there is an opportunity for synergy. Clearly this isn't a solution to the total problems facing both fields, but there is enough energy and money available to produce some interesting work.

I'd love to see collaboration between the two fields. However it would require some mutual understanding between two entrenched disciplines. Few anthropologists respect the publishing process and don't realize how rigorous fact checking and editing can be. Meanwhile few journalists think that anthropology has been relevant since the days of Margaret Mead.

I would love to hear from people in both fields. Perhaps there is a way forward? What do you think?

“Cutthroat Capitalism” strips down story to chase pirate treasure

The Nieman Storyboard is a Harvard initiative that aims to promote innovative approaches to narrative in journalism featured a piece on my story about Somali piracy this week. Here's an excerpt:

In WIRED’s recent take on Somali piracy, “Cutthroat Capitalism”, Scott Carney leads what might have been a meaty narrative straight into a piranha-infested stream. What he pulls out on the other side is a story picked clean of words, revealing foundational economic forces that drive modern day pirates, expressed as a series of well-dressed equations. It’s the narrative equivalent of one of those painted skeletons in a Dia De Los Muertos parade: the bones of a story coated with bright eye-catching paint.

[read the rest of the article at the Nieman Storyboard

For the last few months I've been working on a similar narrative approach for a story in WIRED about markets in human bodies and body parts. However, I'm learning that combining graphics and feature writing is can be a herculean task. Cutthroat Capitalism took almost six months to conceive, report and write. The piece appears elegant on the page only because it had to go through several stages of refining. First I had to collect enough information to write a full-length feature. Then we had to boil down all that research into nugget sized chunks that make room for an artist to create a beautiful layout. But there's the rub. With only a few words for each idea, retaining a sense of narrative structure through it all is pretty difficult. In the pirate story we (my editor Ted Greenwald, designer Siggi Eggerson and several people on the art team) split the piece up into a single hostage situation--"the Attack, "The Negotiation" and "the Resolution", which provided a base to build a larger argument about piracy in general.

However, not every story breaks down so easily. In the piece I'm writing now, I'm not looking at a single type of event, rather a dozen ways that the body gets funneled into commercial markets. Coming up with an elegant solution that encompasses the whole concept while also informing readers about broader theoretical implications of Red Markets is a narrative obstacle course. I still don't know how I'm going to resolve the problem without removing key pieces of my argument.

For instance, take a look at how different the pitch for "Cutthroat Capitalism" is from the final product:

Pirate Gambit

Everyone knows that you don't negotiate with terrorists . . . but pirates? That's a different story.

Case in point: Last September, the Ukranian freighter Faina, carrying scores of Russian tanks and grenade launchers plus a crew of 21, was overrun by 50 gunmen. Later, encircled by destroyers from the US, UK, and Russia, the attackers demanded $20 million in return for the boat and its contents. Last week, a helicopter dropped $3 million onto the deck. The brigands released the crew unharmed (though one had died of a heart attack during the ordeal). They dumped some guns overboard (presumably to pick up later) and slipped away to plan their next attack.

The Faina incident is by no means unique. Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, off the Horn of Africa, attacked 111 commercial ships in 2008 alone — triple the previous year’s total. Armed with rocket-propelled grenades, automatic weapons, and speedboats, they captured 14 vessels and took 300 hostages. In every case, the ship owner struck a deal, paying for the return of the ship and passengers, and letting the bandits go free.

The Somalis owe much of their success to a simple innovation. For centuries, pirates have operated in a familiar way: Board the target, take everything of value, and flee. That’s the way Indonesian and Caribbean marauders work to this day. Their counterparts in the Gulf of Aden, on the other hand, demand a ransom. The Faina’s $3 million settlement may seem small, but it’s the largest ever in such a caper — and, in any case, it’s a fortune compared to northeastern Somalia’s average per-capita income of $180 a year.

The new business model depends on a delicate dance among four parties: Somalis struggling to survive amid total economic collapse, shipping companies in need of protection, insurers trying to minimize payouts, and private security firms looking for work. It’s a cozy relationship in which everyone benefits. The pirates can make a living without demanding more than the market will bear. Shippers absorb the ransom as a minor cost of doing business; with typical cargo loads worth tens of millions of dollars — and ships upward of $125 million — a few million is small change. The insurance companies charge higher premiums, up from $900 to $9000 per trip within last few years multiplied by 20,000 ships passing through the Gulf annually. And the security companies earn a handsome fee for resolving a crisis. (Even the US Navy allegedly accommodates the pirates, directing them to harass its
enemies and leave its friends alone.)

In a way, the Gulf of Aden’s troubles are an unintended consequence of efforts to make the region safe for international trade. The notoriously unstable Horn of Africa is the gateway to the Suez Canal— so everyone is willing to pay to minimize risk. The outlaws start with outrageous demands, but they’ll settle for a modest purse. They know that harming crewmembers would bring their operations to an abrupt and bloody end, so they treat hostages well. Ship captains, like convenience-store clerks, are trained to surrender. They’re allowed to defend themselves with high-pressure water hoses, sound cannons, and evasive maneuvers, but “beyond that, we are not to resist," says Jayant Kohli, who regularly sails the Gulf. And negotiators know they’ll settle on an agreeable sum sooner or later. "Paying ransom to criminals isn't criminal in itself," says Leslie Edwards, a former British Special forces commando who now works with Clayton Consultants, a security company. "We're not there to solve the issue of piracy."

I’d like to explore this symbiosis between piracy and globalization. I’m in touch with top security experts and former hostages. The reporting presents obvious challenges: several journalists have been kidnapped at the port of Ely, where pirates are based, and security companies are bound by confidentiality contracts. However, it looks likely that I’ll be able to travel through the Gulf of Aden on an escort boat. With attacks surpassing 100 a year, I might well see some action. I have placed enquires with the US, UK, and Indian navies and I’m working the back channels at several
security companies.

Lit Search: The fate of the Faina and Somali piracy in general have been covered extensively in the daily press and in the trades (particularly shipping and insurance). However, most reports cover only breaking news. There have been a few magazine articles (The Spectator debunked a reported relationship between the pirates and Islamist militants, McLean’s profiled the chief of the Somali coast guard), but nothing that traces the business priorities that help make this new style of piracy so pervasive.

In the pirate piece, the story I pitched was meant to explore the collusion between insurance companies that hire hostage negotiators and pay ransoms and pirate gangs. Both pirates and insurance companies are getting rich off of lack of security in the Gulf of Aden, and they work together to keep the situation unstable. I'm not so sure how many readers got that out of the piece. Instead, I think readers got an understanding of the business model for pirates, not how the business model requires the consent of insurers. Of course, every pitch ends up being different than the final product. But the graphic format makes the changes much more radical.

Sexual Professional

This almost needs to be posted without an explanation. For more about the songwriter see more of Dave Lohenson on Speechwriters Llc.

Cutthroat Capitalism: The Game

In the last issue of WIRED I showed how the Somali pirates who operate in the Gulf of Aden are more than just criminals: they're a well-oiled business machine. Using the equations that I used to explain pirate motivations and profitability from that article, the good people at WIRED News put together this killer flash game called "Cutthroat Capitalism: The Game"

In the game you play a pirate, and your goal is to make enough money to recruit a huge pirate crew and plunder your way through the world's shipping resources. Think you're up to the task? Try it out and tell me how you did.

A lot of people deserve credit for this. First and foremost Shannon Perkins at Smallbore Webworks who designed the back end and WIRED News's Dennis Crothers who transformed Siggi Eggertson's designs into a game format. Also Pamela Statz who brought everyone together and made this happen in the first place.

Goodbye Chennai and the American Victory Lap

It is hard to leave a city that you has become part of you, but after three and a half years in Chennai, my time time in India has drawn to a close. In July my wife and I packed up our apartment in Kilpauk and took a melancholy taxi ride to the airport to catch a flight back to the United States. When I arrived in India I didn't know much about what it meant to be a journalist in a foreign country, but I've had the opportunity to write some ambitious and thought provoking articles on a range of subjects (from skeleton traders, to the introduction of the world's cheapest car). I've seen some of the best and the worst things that happen in South Asia, and I feel lucky to have been a witness.

We decided to move back to the United States when my wife, Padma, was accepted into the masters program in Anthropology at Columbia University in New York. She has handed over the reigns of the Shakti Center to the capable hands of Aniruddh Vasudevan, her comrade in arms since the founding of the organization. On my part, I'm going to be pretty busy for the next year writing a book about the international trade in human body parts and will likely be back in India for short trips during my research.

But merely arriving back in America and getting back down to work would be a terrible tribute to mark the change. So we decided that most fitting way to readjust to our home was to take a well-deserved victory lap around the country, starting from my mother's house in Seattle, down to the Mexican border in San Diego, and then across the country through the deserts in the Southwest, the endless rough Texan terrain, to the ghostly remains of New Orleans, and up through Atlanta, Washington DC, and finally New York City.

Rather than give you a play by play of each stop, I thought I'd leave you with a few images of what we found on our American Odyssey. One thing is for sure: life's adventures will not end now that I'm back home. In fact, it looks like they might just be beginning.

Padma tries on cowbow boots in Austin, Texas.

I shot a Glock in Atlanta. I'm a much better shot than I had expected. Evildoers Beware!

Finding the high school Mascot of my dreams.

A 40 foot cactus in Arizona.

Padma invents a new sport: Katana Beerball.

Cutthroat Capitalism: Somali Pirates and Insurers Share the Booty

Off of the coast of Somalia close to 1000 armed men troll the seas praying for a chance to score some booty. Since 2007 Somali piracy has caught the world's imagination and the number of hijacked boats has skyrocketed. But the pirates don't work in isolation. Piracy exists in Somalia not only because the nation is in a near constant state of revolution, but because the people charged with controlling piracy are actively helping to promote the underlying conditions that make hijacking ships so profitable. Not only have ransom payouts begun to routinely top $1 million (a Donald Trump-like fortune in Somalia), but whole anti-piracy industries have sprung up in response to piracy and created profitable business models of their own. Security contractors, insurance companies and maritime lawyers don't have any incentive to curtail the brigands when they reap millions in cash for every vessel they free.

In this month's issue of WIRED I've crunched the data and shown how the rise in ransom payouts in the last year has corresponded with a rise in insurance premiums, hijackings and shipping costs. And while hundreds of innocent crew members are held at gunpoint on their ships, the people who control the shipping industries have written it all off as a business expense.

Check out Cutthroat Capitalism here.

A Photographer who Captures India's Soaring Hights and Crashing Lows

When photographer Tom Pietrasik caught a flight from Delhi to Chennai he was long overdue for a vacation, but he thought he would bring his camera with him, just in case. A British journalist on the same flight laughed when he saw Pietrasik weighed down with a heavy bag of lenses and camera bodies, saying that there was no way that he would be able to relax if he brought his work with him. Two hours later when they landed an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra sent its massive tidal wave across Asia killing more than 225,000 people and laying waste to the coasts of seven countries. Pietrasik was glad to have his equipment with him.

Just a month after losing their parents to the Asian Tsunami, children play games at a government orphanage in Cuddalore. Tamil Nadu, India 2005.

Unlike many journalists who came in for a week and left when the news turned to other events, Tom Pietrasik has repeatedly returned to India's coasts to follow on the lives of a group of orphans growing up as refugees in Cuddalore. The picture above is one of my favorites of that series.

For the last eight years Tom Pietrasik has documented the soaring heights of India's economic boom as well as the nation's most vulnerable moments. His pictures have appeared in National Geographic Adventure, Newsweek and in an ongoing project with UNICEF. I've had the opportunity to know Pietrasik for the last several years and am eagerly awaiting a chance to collaborate with him on a project. It hasn't happened yet, but hopefully will soon.

Juhu Beach carnys amuse India's rising middle-class, 2002

He's allowed me to post a few of his pictures on this blog, but there is a lot more interesting work on his website http://www.tompietrasik.com.

Ruhelin Bai Bagdaria is among a handful of literate women in a village where only one in four can write their name. Maharashtra, India 2008.

Somali Pirates' Homemade Video

For the last three months I've been working on a story for WIRED that will explore the economic linkages that keep piracy in Somalia a profitable business. Last week I began interviewing pirates and pirate contacts and came across a small trove of videos that pirates took on board the hijacked Yasa Neslihan. According to my sources, this video was taken by the hijackers to prove that the ship was in good condition before final delivery of ransom. To my knowledge, this is the first such video that has been released to the public, though the practice of recording while on board is commonplace.

What is most interesting to me in this is that the pirates seem to have cordial relations with the captured Japanese crew. You can see them mingling with the pirates while on the bridge. It's also striking that it only took a handfull of lightly armed men to capture several hundred million dollars of equipment and cargo.

Above is the edited version that aired on WIRED News on April 10, 2009. To see the unedited footage follow this link: Somali Pirates Homemade Hijacking Video.

William Morrow (Harper Collins) Picks Up "Red Markets"

William Morrow, publishers of Freakonomics, has agreed to publish my first book. Tentatively titled "Red Markets", the book is going to explore the economics of death and the movement of body parts between people and across the globe. Red Markets will offer an expanded view of stories that I've written for WIRED, Mother Jones and Nerve.com.

Two Radio Appearances for Adoption Story

The response to "Meet the Parents: The Dark Side of Overseas Adoption" has been overwhelming. People from all over the world have been writing in expressing their support for Nageshwar Rao and Sivagama and wishing for a positive ending. Several people have pledged money, and an adoption agency in New Mexico has offered to help with legal services. I saw Nageshwar Rao and Sivagama two days ago and they were very happy that the story had come out, but were still very sad that they have had no contact with the family in America. "We just want them to call," he told me again.

In the next week I'm going to post an update on Mother Jones about the case and show how the adoption agency in Amercia has been invovled in several questionable adoptions here in Chennai. In 1999 an adoption agent in this city is said to have been involved in as many as 20 similar cases. These children are presumably all across America.

In the meanwhile, I've done two radio appearances that you might enjoy listening to.

The first, was on Here and Now, a nationally syndicated program across the United States that devoted a full half-hour to the topic.

The second, was a shorter (and unfortunately, less coherent) piece that aired on Free Speech Radio News.

(photo: funkypancake @ flickr)

Meet the Parents: When Adoption Means Kidnapping

Meet the Parents
After hours hunched behind the wheel of a rented Kia, flying past cornfields and small-town churches, I’m parked on a Midwestern street, trying not to look conspicuous. Across the way, a preteen boy dressed in silver athletic shorts and a football T-shirt plays with a stick in his front yard. My heart thumps painfully. I wonder if I’m ready to change his life forever. . . (Read the story at Mother Jones)

Between 1999 and 2002 dozens, if not hundreds, of children were kidnapped off the streets of Chennai by a corrupt orphanage and sold into the international adoption stream. In August, I reported on the story of Zabeen who had been picked up by an employee of the orphange Malaysian Social Services, and wisked away and held until she was ultimately sold to an adoption agency in Australia. A few days after I met Zabeen's parents, I met Nageshwar Rao and Sivagama, in the Puliantope slum on the North side of Chennai. Their story bore distrubing similarities to what happened to Zabeen. On February 19, 1999, according to my investigation, their son was snatched away from them while he played at a nearby waterpump and sold to an unsuspecting American family who believe they were adopting, not buying, a child. In October I followed court documents and leaked files from police sources to the American mid-west where I found the pre-adolescent boy who seemed to be the spitting image of Nageshwar Rao.

That story, which appears in this month's issue of Mother Jones, is my first attempt and understanding the vast and lucerative market in kidnapped children. These incidents are not confined to a few corrupt orphanages and officials. They are part of a global problem fed by first-world parents' desire for children and the handsome fees that they pay agencies to arrange adoptions.

It is difficult to know for sure how far the corruption goes up the ladder. Do American adoption services know when the children they bring to America have been ripped away from their birth parents? Or do they simply not ask the right questions when confronted by suspicious circumstances? In some cases, such as when the French agency Zoe's Ark attempted to smuggle 103 children of Chad, the charges of kidnapping stick without much problem. But in others the orphanage director's commitment to doing good puts blinders on their eyes when things start to go awry.

In the case of Nageshwar Rao and Sivagama's child Subash, the adoption agency in America is at least implicated in not trying to rectify the situation once they learned of the allegations against MSS in Chennai. They didn't even bother to notify the adoptive families that there could have been a problem despite admitting to knowing about the scandals when they first surfaced a decade ago. In fact, my subsiquent investigation of their case shows that at least two other suspicious adoptions handled by that agency. In the story that appeared in Mother Jones we chose to disguise their identity, but in the coming weeks as I sort through more documents, we may decide it is in the public interest to reveal that agency's name for other journalsits and enforcement authorities to follow up on.

Nageshwar Rao (center) spent so much money on finding Subash, that he wasn't able to afford an education for his daughter Sasala, 17 (right)

Underneath their reluctance to tackle the issue of smuggled children is the disturbing underlying assumption that as long as adopted children are put in good homes, they are better off living in America than they would be growing up in a third world slum. The crime of kidnapping is easy to overlook when the so-called "victim" gets the benefit of a Western education, health care and a loving family to watch over him. This logic has allowed the FBI and attorney general's office to drag its feet in processing an INTERPOL request to collect DNA samples that could conclusively prove the child's identity. It has also let State Authorities in charge of policing adoption irregularities look the other way.

But ignoring the problem only makes matters worse. Children who need adoptive families are crowded into orphanage dirty cribs two at a time, and are often malnourished and dying. However, western families don't want sick children. They want cute kids who won't cause them problems. So the orphanages look outside their walls for a fresh supply. The children kidnapped off the streets of Chennai had homes and loving parents and are exactly the sort of comodity that will draw in substantial adoption fees. The adoption industry has done little to help India's actual needy children, rather it just treats adoption as a business, and tries to source the best possible products for its customers.

Previous reports in America on child kidnapping an adoption irrecularities have fallen on deaf ears. They have been relegated to the realm of urban myth in the same way we tend to think that kidney thieves don't exist. But other countries are taking notice. After reports in TIME magazine and ABC, The Australian government is taking issue seriously. Officials have begun investigating the role of MSS and other orphanages in illegal adoptions and are currently looking at 30 possible cases of kidnapping and adoption fraud form Chennai. Lawmakers are informing adoptive families who have fallen victim to predatory adoption practices and will likely encourage reunions with the stolen children.

I'm hoping that this story in Mother Jones is a first step in raising awareness of the problem faced by internaitonal adoptions and kidnapping. At some point we need to stop looking the other way, and ask tough questions about our own complicity in creating incentives to support kidnapping rackets.

Chief Minister Refuses to Eat in Response to Riot

Now in its fifth day the struggle between thousands of disgruntled lawyers and the police has drawn the attention of the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M. Karunanidhi who says he intends to fast until the two groups sort out their differences. The octogenarian politician is currently recovering from a spinal surgery in a local hospital and is apparently guilt-tripping both sides to stand down. He isn't actually taking a stand to resolve the differences that have led to a "shoot on sight" by the police order and severe unrest around the High Court that has resulted in a destroyed police station and the burning of dozens of vehicles.

The lawyers outside the court are of two minds about the Chief Minister's actions. One group of 300 lawyers has decided to follow his lead and start their own fast to shame the police into submission. Another group has kept on with its riotous activities and stabbed a police constable.

Meanwhile the courts have been shut down until next week when they will open up to record case backlogs and the business-as-usual approach that has made a travesty out of the Indian legal system.