Having lived and worked all over the world (including Hungary, by the way, I even still retain just a little bit of the Hungarian that I learned there) I get the whole language thing, but believe there's more to it than that.

I do agree with your stance that undisclosed manipulation is wrong when it comes to composite work and the like.

Facial retouching however, is not such a great sin as you make it out to be.

I tend to go along with Moose Peterson's philosophy on nature work. He won't even crop his nature photos, but will manipulate the heck out of other types.

Digital can be just as honest as film and film can be just as deceptive as digital. It all comes down to one's personal ethics.

Digital can also better reproduce what our eyes see than film can.

Just to pull a relevant example, your swan photo in another thread is beautiful, however the black on the face is completely lacking in detail. The rest of the image is wonderful. I'd have NO problem boosting the exposure in that one area were it my photo.