By TwoOFour
Written Monday, February 18
Monday, and it is a good thing that nobody is going to trust me with their money today. I have a major cold, a hangover, sciatica (don’t ask), and diarrhea, and I just got my period. What is a girl to do? Stay in bed and watch a movie, of course. The movie I had have on hand was the last in a selection my husband had rented, very 20th century, at Blockbuster.
I check in on Cvillain, too. I find the notion that people are complaining that the content is too serious and boring laughable, where I find it remarkably relevant and eye opening. We discuss the suffering of animals, and there is a half hearted attempt to organize the capture of a hit and run perpetrator that hit a friend of a Cvillain in his car on Elliewood– what happened to the spirit of that?
The movie is entitled “Trade” and is loosely based on an article from the New York Times Magazine by Peter Landesman entitled The Girls Next Door about human trafficking and the sex slave industry. When I read the article back in 2004, I was perplexed over the extent of this horrendous crime, but mostly I was appalled by the apathy of law enforcement and lack of government intervention. It is estimated that between 80,000 and 100,000 little girls, boys, and women are abducted and brought into the U.S. every year, only to be sold as sex slaves and/or lives in captivity. Where law enforcement have busted these “houses,” they have been in suburban middleclass to upper middleclass neighborhoods.
We must be turning a blind eye, because the trade is rampant, and children are being sold on craigslist! I ask my husband what we can do, and he shakes his head and says it is just too lucrative, like drugs. The DEA has been fighting that fight for many years to little avail. Personally, I’d much rather see a taskforce of that magnitude fight to free these children and bring the perps to justice than see them wage war on drugs, just as I’d like to think that locating any lost child should take precedence over busting the local marijuana dealer.
Are there sex slaves stored away suffering daily abuses in Charlottesville? Are we not seeing this because we are in denial over a subject that is too brutal to face even though it is in our face? Can we, as an organized community, do something to rescue these innocent victims of scrupluless predators? Or are we but a complacent-no-good-couch-potato-turn-the-other-cheek blogging community? What can we do together?
If you have information about the commercial sexual exploitation of a child in the U.S. or abroad, notify U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement at 1-866-DHS-2ICE or contact your local FBI field office, or report at www.cybertipline.org.
www.ahavakids.org/about.htm
www.notforsalecampaign.org
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I’m adding this to my Netflix queue right now. Thanks for the tip, and I hope you feel better!!!
Sorry to hear you are ill, 2. Get well soon!
I wrote this last Monday, but thank you soo much….
I took the rekoP prescribed, and I now feel much better, still sad thinking about these kids though.
Last fall the WP did an extensive article debunking at least one aspect of the human trafficking furore, the Bush-related aspect. It’s a million word article,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/22/AR2007092201401.html
but I think it comes down to whether, within the U.S., the lack of prosecutions is due to the illegal network being so well-protected, or due to it being like the satanist day-car centers of the 1980’s. The Bush DOJ has spent a lot of money trying to find cases. That said, I would advise any teenage girl to trust no one, especially if you live in Eastern Europe.
Are we really this naive? C’mon, people… don’t you realize that the entirety of the American way of life is supported by slave labor? What else do you call southeast asian sweat shops using children and paying people pennies a day? It’s modern slavery and there’s no escaping the products of this slavery. Unless you don’t buy electronics or toys for your kids or … well… just about anything else these days.
I’m not saying that it’s right by any means. I’m just saying that Americans are blissfully ignoring the suffering required to support their lifestyles. We shouldn’t be surprised, though - every nation that’s been on top throughout history has engaged in such exploitation. In most cases the exploitation was more brutal and direct. You be the judge of which is worse.
You might be able to make the argument that a society that at least knows the depths of its own cruelty is honest, whereas a society that pretends to be so damned noble whilst exploiting others is hypocritical.
Argument, knowing, blah blah. Without actual political action supporting labor rights overseas, nothing will happen. Telling consumers not to shop for the lowest Walmart price is just pissing in the wind.
China’s a big place, so the ideologues of greed here in the U.S. will always find example where peasant girls are glad to go the city and earn some ready cash to send home, and not have to live back in the stix! But you’re right, tons of toys are made there by kids or in prisons for profit. Not to mention the environment.
Conscious consumers are nice, but it’s a distraction. It’s not all about you, despite what we’ve grown up reading on cereal boxes. We need laws & policy to support fair labor.
I think there is a huge distinction between child labor and the sex slave industry, where not only are they enslaved, but also sexually abused daily and sometimes tortured and killed. And it happens right in your suburban neighboorhood.
I didn’t get into what needed to be done, colfer. I agree with your premise, though. All trade agreements should contain labor/environmental protection clauses if for no other reason than it will help us compete in terms of jobs.
I understand that there are differences between sex slavery and industrial slavery, Two. I was merely mentioning that the lifestyles we lead are borne upon the backs of many types of slavery and that sex slavery in our backyards doesn’t particularly surprise me.
If we find a place here in town we should picket it. Stand outside and draw attention to it publicly. Call the newsplex and sh!t. I’d be in for that…
That maketh much sense. I gotta thing in my craw about ewweww Walmart campaigns, carbon offsets will fix the world, buy buy buy. I don’t know exactly why I was disagreeing with you!
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