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[linnea]

I attended a lecture tonight that really moved me by Not For Sale.

Their presentation made me feel like I'd just been punched in the stomach. I'd never learned much about this until now, but I feel really strongly about it and this issue is important to me. I wanted to let you party people know about it. There is also a movie called "Trade" that's being released on Sept. 28th, and Lionsgate films is donating a huge amount (I think he said 5% of gross ticket sales) for all profits made during the first week of the film's release to help combat human trafficking.

The lecture I attended was given by a professor who works for NFS, he had his students start a mapping project to track human trafficking in their home city of San Francisco, and it snowballed from there.  The slave trade is the #3 top criminal activity on the planet, rivaling drug trafficking and the illegal arms trade.
It is a $32 billion dollar industry, and 27 million people worldwide are being exploited.
200,000 people live enslaved at this moment in the US.
700,000 children are forced into domestic labor in Indonesia, 559,000 in Brazil, 264,000 in Pakistan, 250,000 in Haiti, and 200,000 in Kenya.
People tend to think of prostitution as being the mainstay of human trafficking, but people are trafficked for other means as well, such as sweatshop labour and other forced labour. Women and children are the majority of trafficked individuals, but men are trafficked too.

If you sign up for OurStage, they will donate $2 for each signup to Not For Sale. It's free and it only takes a moment, so if you sign up I'd appreciate it.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men (and women) do nothing." -Edmund Burke

[mavies]

Damn, that's some harsh shit. I just signed up, not exactly doing much but it's something.

Apparently there's a major problem with this sort of thing here in Qatar (and the middle east in general).. people from the third world being exploited to fuck. There's a shitload of labourers brought here from villages in the arse-end of nowhere after signing a contract they can't even understand, then getting their passports confiscated and made to work outdoors in the scorching heat all day. Same goes with house-maids, except sexual abuse is said to be pretty rampant. They're treated like third-class citizens a lot of the time too, especially by the locals. They move out here to get money to send home to their families, then end up not getting paid or whatever. You don't hear about it much though, the government likely just covers it up. They aint adverse to the odd bit of censorship.

[side_show]

Yeah, slavery is alive and well in fourth world countries.  I took a special interest in puppetry while in Indonesia, and one common character is "the coquettish maid."  I brought home an intricately crafted maid puppet... she has a special cushion on her bum so that you can make it wiggle and dance to entice people... it's odd to say the least. The serving class was one of the more unsettling and uncomfortable parts of my visit.   

I was watching a doc. called "Selling Sex in Heaven" about sex tourism, prostitution, sexual slavery in the Philippines last night.  The women in the brothels live in 4X8 rooms, two to a room sharing a single cot and have sex with 15 men per night on average.  They are locked into the brothel at all times.  One of the film makers noted that the dream of meeting an American who will fall in love, marry you and take you to the US is what draws many into the life.  He was saying the likelyhood of this happening is about equivalent to the number of impoverished kids from the ghetto who make it into the NBA - i.e. just enough to keep hope alive.

[linnea]

Slavery is rampant in "first world countries" too, like the San Francisco example that I mentioned. A couple in Denver was recently busted for enslaving a woman as a maid . They took her passport, beat her several times a day, and sexually assaulted her thousands of times. People who are enslaved are everywhere, probably even in your hometown, but they're invisible. In the documentary I watched, a Russian trafficker boasted that she made $2k a week for each girl that she captured and sold to a brothel - $24,000 for a girl who had been enslaved three months.

There is a woman (Kru Nam) in Chiang Rai, Thailand, who was an artist. For a project she brought canvases to the street children of Chiang Rai and had them paint stories about their lives. She was totally unprepared for the horrors they painted. She started running into bars and nightclubs, grabbing 2 or 3 kids, and just running the hell out of there with the rescued children. She had to hide the kids she rescued, and bviously the pimps and traffickers realized what she was doing and put up a bounty for her so she had to leave Chiang Rai. http://notforsale.rightreality.com/video/kru_nam.html

Another woman worked in Lima, Peru. She worked with kids in detention facilities. After talking to these kids, she realized that most of them were from far away - children who had been trafficked to Lima to work in the sex industry. They would try to escape their pimps and live anywhere they could, such as sleeping in parks. Street kids are seen as untouchable scum, the lowest of the low. When the police picked them up, they would RETURN THE CHILDREN TO THEIR PIMPS FOR A BOUNTY. If they couldn't locate the child's pimp, they would take the kid to the detention center.

The kids at the detention center implored her to help the other street kids, since the ones who were in juvenile hall were somewhat protected. She started going out to parks and other places to give the kids food and try to help them. She told one of them that they could sleep at her office, which would be a safe place, and asked the child to bring others. When she stopped by her office later that night to check in on them, she could not force the door open. When they realized it was her and not the police, they edged open the door, and nearly six hundred children were sleeping there. At that point, she became committed to helping them and a dedicated abolitionist.

[theinevitable]

dude, Travis Bickle would fuck up some bitches.

but, yes, that is so fucked up. People are depressing.

[jough]

Yeah, some people are awful.  Maybe if we whine about it enough their hearts will magically be full of love and puppy dogs!

I'm against forced slavery (I'm all for people being allowed to sell themselves if they want, though) but these onanistic organizations just annoy me.

My life is poorer for the twenty seconds I spent on that web site.

[lprkn]

So I looked up onanistic, but I still don't see the connection.

These websites practice the old pull-out method?

[KeithHernandez]

I agree with Jough in a way--ie, these organizations usually don't do any good.  But I think they should still be around.

[AugustWest]

I can't believe you two.  That's some powerful stuff and some insane injustice going on.  I'm glad I saw it. 

It made me think for a minute, about man's inhumanity to man.  About the nature of human progress.  About the universal nature of cruelty. 

About the possibility that I should free my slaves.

I really will consider it.  After my pyramid is finished.

[KeithHernandez]

I mean, I am with them to a point, but there are things that need to be changed to cause the change they want, I guess (Workers of the World unite).  Mainly just the stuff like sign up and we will donate x amount to y.  I am skeptical of all that shit.  (oh yeah, because it is free.  Never mind.  But really, campaigning to white liberals with no slaves about slaves they don't have doesn't really do shit.  Unless you kill the slave masters.  I am all for that.)  Why not just give your money to y?  When sitting on your couch signing up for websites gives you a sense of accomplishment "they" win.

[linnea]

I mean, I am with them to a point, but there are things that need to be changed to cause the change they want, I guess (Workers of the World unite).  Mainly just the stuff like sign up and we will donate x amount to y.  I am skeptical of all that shit.  (oh yeah, because it is free.  Never mind.  But really, campaigning to white liberals with no slaves about slaves they don't have doesn't really do shit.  Unless you kill the slave masters.  I am all for that.)  Why not just give your money to y?  When sitting on your couch signing up for websites gives you a sense of accomplishment "they" win.

I guess I wasn't too clear in my post. I don't know about you, but I do a lot of volunteer work. That's how I heard about this organization, through one of the groups I volunteer with. The first step to changing anything is to get involved. I am learning more about this group and would like to donate my time to help this particular cause. That is a far cry from "sitting on my couch signing up for websites."

That being said, I probably will not be on the front lines, mapping trafficking locations and shooting documentary videos, but there are other people who will. That's where philanthropy and volunteer work comes in. You help the crazed activists fight the good fight, rather than sitting at home and bitching about other people who try to make a difference.

Also, I think the earlier post was the transcribed FLUT sound of Jough's brain realizing that all the cash he's shelled out to punch hookers has gone to help fund slavery.

[KeithHernandez]

No no, i understand.  I am just skeptical of everything, I guess.  See I believe that capitalism, and the problems it causes, lead to most of the horrible shit in the world.  That is my thing.


I volunteered from about the age of ten until I went to college at the OKC Salvation Army.  I will probably do more things like this after college, but, I think my main point is, IDK, it is like giving a homeless person a dollar.  That makes you feel good and like you are helping people, and the homeless dude gets his wine.  But there are a lot of homeless dudes and a bunch a sick fucks enslaving children.  You can't give them all dollars. 

This is hard for me to get across.  Alright, if you feed the people at the salvation army, or volunteer for the Not For Sale movement or whatever, there are still people that are hungry and enslaved.  Radical things usually need to occur for change to happen.  But you feel better about your position in the world and about yourself.  You genuinely want to help, and that is understood, but this type of thing usually need a rapture to be resolved.  Usually gaining huge amounts of power and then fighting for rights, but then, assuming once you are rich you are not a conservative worried about yourself and whats yours (a fairly huge assumption) you die and someone else controls your assets and eventually it gets to bad hands.

Again, with this being said, I will probably volunteer my time again after college (I volunteered for the Dean campaign, but I don't think that is the same thing), but, just, I mean it helps, but to a certain extent it helps the person who is doing the work more than the hungry.  It is still a good thing, but, idk, hopefully you understand what I am saying. 


One of the members of Blur was talking, in the documentary called "Live Forever", about the upcoming campaigns.  He was saying he agrees somewhat with the liberal party, but not really.  He wondered whether it would be better to give conservatives all the power until things are in such a bad position that some type of revolutionary change occurs, or let the liberals keep the country floating along, but not really improving things.  I think I am a fan of the first option.

Also, LFM had a great post, where it is I don't remember, which basically just said that, you know, people are trying to keep afloat and there are millions of ways to help and which is right, etc.  That is kind of the issue I am getting at.  I am not trying to belittle you in any way.  Just saying what, as someone who considers himself to be a liberal has thought about in relation to all the complexities of our society.

Also, as a (not very studious) history major, nearly all social change has involved a catastrophe (great depression--new deal), massive, massive amounts of people (civil rights),  some type of violent/racial/scare tactic type intimidation (a lot- prohibition is one of them- had the opposite effect in civil rights) or war.  Now, I don't really study any pre-Great War western stuff so...

[jough]

Well, I do believe in the inalienable rights of people to do whatever the fuck they want as long as they don't fuck up other people's shit (I'm paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson and Alaister Crowley) and that includes people's right to sell themselves (in whole or in part) if they want. My personal "no thank you" policy on prostitution has more to do with disease phobia than on dismissal on moral grounds.

As for people who abuse other people, like the couple who imprisoned their maid, or Rick James, what is this activist group going to do to help them? Write a carefully composed letter? It's already illegal to enslave someone so writing to Congress is out.  The problem with groups like this is that the only means they have to avoid ineffectuality is vigilante justice, but you'd have to find the slave owners first.

[jay-ell]

People who are enslaved are everywhere, probably even in your hometown, but they're invisible.

QFT.  About three years ago, the police shut down a brothel half a mile from my old house.  The rumor was that it was filled with Mexican slave girls, none of whom spoke English, who were locked in their rooms 24/7.  They had been brought in illegally by a legally-documented Mexican man.  The newspaper said in its only article on the subject that the place was empty when the police arrived, and they found "75 to 100" condom wrappers in the trash.  The story also said there was a pimp and two prostitutes involved, but I seem to recall there being a later story on the TV news stating that the two women were actually pimps as well, and the prostitutes were underage.  (That might have been another brothel that was shut down across town that same month, however.) 

There was a spot on The Daily Show recently, as well, focusing on slave trafficking in the US.  The journalist seems like kind of a dip to me, but it's still amazing that this kind of stuff goes on under our noses all the time and nobody pays any attention. 

[theinevitable]

One of the members of Blur was talking, in the documentary called "Live Forever", about the upcoming campaigns.  He was saying he agrees somewhat with the liberal party, but not really.  He wondered whether it would be better to give conservatives all the power until things are in such a bad position that some type of revolutionary change occurs, or let the liberals keep the country floating along, but not really improving things.  I think I am a fan of the first option.

the other day in Poli Sci we were talking about how plato basically says that right after Democracy governments devolve into a crazy left-wing thing where the people think they're in power-- redistribution of wealth, etc. he calls this a "tyranny," but that word doesn't really mean what it used to mean.