When we think of slavery, many of us think of historical or so-called "traditional forms" of slavery – and of the 12m people ripped from their West African homes and shipped across the Atlantic for a lifetime in the plantations of the Americas.
But slavery is not just something that happened in the past –- the modern day estimate for the number of men, women and children forced into labour worldwide exceeds 40m. Today's global slave trade is so lucrative that it nets traffickers more than US$150 billion each year.
The article asserts that much of today's slavery is being driven by the demand for electronic goods.
[Edit: fixed ILO links]
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Slavery Was Never Abolished – It Affects Millions, and You May Be Funding It
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(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @02:22PM
I'm vegan. Besides, I'm a wage slave too, so I welcome them.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @02:27PM
They can always be unemployed.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @02:36PM
some get enslaved, some live free like me.
sorry but i have to go now, if i don't work and pay for the leases i end up homeless or in prison.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @02:41PM (62 children)
Slavery was abolished in the United States. I don't know about other parts of the world. It's hard to expect the US to be the world's police force (especially with the impotent current occupant of the White House), because when they act like it many people don't like it (both here and abroad).
Isn't this something the UN should be acting on? Human rights - especially the right to be free - should exist worldwide ... but they don't. It's tragic, but it's not a surprise.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @02:54PM (35 children)
The UNHCR and associated NGOs encourage people trafficking. They are pro-slavery - what the hell do you think "mass immigration" is?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @03:09PM (2 children)
"Mass immigration"? Do you mean people fleeing from oppression, war zones and ethnic cleansing? If that was for the purpose of "slavery" wouldn't it easier just to round everybody up and ship them off to the countries that bid the highest? Why make them trek for thousands of miles - and endangering their lives - when they would be worth more if they were healthy and properly fed? Sounds like you may need to rethink your trollish position.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @03:52PM
Things the UN should be preventing?
Sounds like you might need to remove your head from your ass [humanrightsfirst.org] and stop supporting human trafficking [politico.eu] by conflating economic migrants with refugees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @09:53PM
It's cheaper and kills multiple birds with one stone to make them travel without having to coerce them directly.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday October 19 2018, @03:12PM (31 children)
I see you wear your ignorance on your sleeve like a badge of honor!
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday October 19 2018, @03:30PM (23 children)
No way, people moving from place to place of their own will is exactly the same as slavery.
It is true that some of the authoritarian enforcement of immigration laws certainly enables modern-day slavers by removing chunks of the population from any willingness to engage with the law, if they're, say, robbed of their documentation and threatened with false deportation if they don't follow orders. But I can't help but think that maybe this user wants a little more of that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @03:42PM (21 children)
You should read more [oup.com] much more [theguardian.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday October 19 2018, @03:48PM (20 children)
Or you could read your own dumb paper, dumbass
Man, that sure sounds like exactly the point I was making, almost point for point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @03:58PM (19 children)
Sounds nothing like.
Illegal immigrants are illegal, border enforcement prevents slavery and discourages trafficking (AKA: slavery). Nice try though.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday October 19 2018, @04:19PM (18 children)
Man, it's almost like your entire worldview and everything about it is trash and even the sources you use to justify it to yourself are practically screaming at you that you're creating a humanitarian crisis for a vague notion of law and order.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Friday October 19 2018, @04:32PM (17 children)
Also, if you want to read about how ICE has been turned against people convicted of trivial offenses like traffic violations, while being green card holders, people present on valid work visas, or even US citizens(6% of deporations are full on citizens. 6%) read this [american.edu] report on the consequences of increased enforcement.
You are an enabler. You make slavery happen, AC.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @05:14PM (15 children)
A Green Card is a work and residence permit, you can still be deported for breaking the law. Imagine that! [thelocal.se] Denaturalization occurs when a citizenship application has been deemed invalid due to fraud - typically failure to mention being subject to criminal investigation. None of this has anything to do with slavery.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @05:24PM (1 child)
Fun how this idiot focuses on the tiny aspects that can help steer the topic back to what they want. 6% you clueless fuck, 6%!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @05:42PM
I thought we were discussing modern slavery.
6 people out of every 100 deportations were naturalized citizens who had their citizenship revoked due to fraudulent applications and decided not to leave and seek readmission of their own volition. [uscis.gov] What exactly is it that you find so confusing here?
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Friday October 19 2018, @05:33PM (12 children)
Yes, yes, please tell me more things I know and just posted a link to a detailed analysis of. Does your sanctimony and condescension totally makes up for your profound and unending ignorance?
the fact that legal immigrants can be and are deported for trivial offenses is exactly what makes them vulnerable to enslaved you absolute dumbshit. Did you read the report, 90% of the cases of that are legal trivialities like parking and traffic violations. You vile inhuman monster who creates laws that rapidly increasing levels of human slavery [thehill.com]. And then you come here to post about how that very slavery you went out of your goddamn way to abet, can be fixed with more of the same.
Do you have any idea how psychopathic your politics are? Do you? Do you realize how much human suffering exists because of you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @06:26PM (11 children)
People are deported for breaking the law when they go on holiday, the idea of holidaymakers are vulnerable to slavery due to the threat of deportation is brilliant. Somebody should write a comedy about it.
Psychopathic like pity-plays and emotional blackmail?
(Score: 3, Touché) by ikanreed on Friday October 19 2018, @06:43PM (10 children)
Look, you can whine and complain about being a victim when people quite rightly point out that you cause tremendous amounts of human suffering. I can't stop you from being a vile piece of shit, and I definetly can't stop you from being a whiny bitch about it.
But I could at least make you aware. And how you pointlessly rationalize your inhuman beliefs is really out of my control.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @06:54PM (8 children)
Your work is appreciated, always gotta speak out against crazy or some suckers might think they have some validity.
(Score: 3, Touché) by VLM on Friday October 19 2018, @07:31PM (7 children)
The crazy is endless explanations of how the USA is the most evil place on the planet filled with horrible white males and thats why we need to send more immigrants here so we can torture them.
I'm just saying, if I know going to Taco Bell means explosive digestion issues, I have a trivial solution which is not to go there. Its not like the whole freak'n rest of the world doesn't have something to eat.
Why do some people want to torture brown people by sending them to the hateful hitler-filled white male dominated USA? Thats kinda evil... Them brown people didn't do anything bad enough to deserve having to live in the USA. In fact the leftists should probably leave, to teach those right wingers a lesson, LOL.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @08:07PM (2 children)
That's a good frist step, but it's incomplete as is. I mean, you can go to a local, authentic Mexican place, but those are all sit-down restaurants. What about when I want a decent smothered burrito or a couple carne asada tacos on the go?! We desperately need taco trucks on every corner if we expect to drive Taco Bell out of business!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @09:45AM (1 child)
With the key word being "decent", you won't go to Taco Bell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @05:54PM
Taco Hell: where bad tacos go when they die...
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @04:44AM (3 children)
Your crazy levels are too high, I recommend a coffee enema followed by Bikram yoga and some cleansing kale smoothies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @09:46AM (1 child)
You sound like the colon specialist. How long have you had your head in other people's asses?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @07:39PM
Oh I got mine out a long time ago, I recommend you try it. Fresh air is good for the brain.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday October 21 2018, @12:05AM
There is not enough kale in the world to move the amount of shit that guy's full of. It's not helped by having his head firmly lodged in the way of the only exit, either...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @08:26PM
Or simply insist that the rule of law is enforced.
Thankfully. Adios [ice.gov] and hasta luego. [ice.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @05:42PM
That was an article from a law journal? Could have fooled me, the beginning of that article was something about how good it was that an illegal alien didn't get legally deported.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @08:18PM
"No way, people moving from place to place of their own will is exactly the same as slavery."
By that definition just about every American is descended from slaves. I doubt my German immigrant grandparents would have bought into that proposition.
"But I can't help but think that maybe this user wants a little more of that."
And I can'tell help but think you are a shrill asswipe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @03:38PM (6 children)
No, I wear your ignorance [medium.com] on my sleeve like a badge of honor.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by khallow on Friday October 19 2018, @04:47PM (5 children)
A typical dumbshit fantasizing about imaginary villains and conflicts. Smuggling on any of the US borders has been a thing for almost a century since Prohibition started (and given that's the author is talking about the Mexican border, one can add another century on to that to include such things as Comanche Indian raids). It's no more "corporate" now than it was then. They certainly don't hold to some imaginary doctrine that corporations (whatever that's supposed to be) should somehow be supreme in some aspect of society.
Boy, I hope you're trolling. Because otherwise life is going to be harder for you just due to those utterly stupid beliefs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @05:20PM (4 children)
Interesting, so how many illegals does khallow have in his closet? Do you have a different slave for every day of the week or do you take Sundays off?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 19 2018, @05:26PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @06:03PM (2 children)
Your case is the objection to corporations being considered the exclusive importer of slave labor and if you'd made it coherently, it would have been conceded. You point about contraband is another argument unless you want to discuss people and narcotics being trafficked over the border and arms being sent back. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 19 2018, @07:01PM (1 child)
What corporations? Neither the article or you mention a single one. I'm not the only person here with any obligation to make coherent points.
Given that was what was being discussed in the article (the article mentioned "north of the border"), of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @08:14PM
Corporate supremacist confirmed.
This is a discussion about slavery which includes human trafficking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @03:44PM (1 child)
Britain abolished it before the US.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Saturday October 20 2018, @05:44PM
In Britian you have subjects ruled by a king, in the US you have a country where every person is their own king. The king by degree make slavery illegal after we ended the slave trade here, it took extra time and 250k freedom loving lives to end the practice in america for good. AMerica earned it, it was granted to the brits.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 5, Informative) by fyngyrz on Friday October 19 2018, @04:03PM (19 children)
No. It wasn't. From the US constitition, the highest law in the land...
...as you can clearly see, any law, justified or not, that turns you into a "criminal" (for instance, drug use, prostitution, gambling), then you can be turned into a slave. Does it happen? Yes:
FPI, AKA UNICOR [wikipedia.org] operates factory operations within federal prisons nationwide, offering more than 100 products and services in 80 Federal Supply Classifications (FSCs), in areas including clothing and textiles, electronics, fleet management and vehicular components, industrial products, office furniture, recycling activities; and services including data entry, computer aided design (CAD), and distribution.
All physically able inmates who are not a security risk or have a health exception are required to work, either for FPI or at some other prison job. Inmates receive from 23 cents per hour up to a maximum of $1.15 per hour.
This is in addition to remuneration-free mandatory cleaning and maintenance tasks.
This is a case of forcing people to labor against their will for meaningless "compensation." Failure to comply results in serious punishment and can lead to extension of prison time. It is straight-up slavery.
On top of this, the government has turned normal / victimless human pursuits (examples include drug use, gambling, prostitution) into "criminal" activities. This keeps the net wide, the slave population high, and slave-generated profits in the vicinity of half a billion dollars flowing into the pockets of the slave owners.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Freeman on Friday October 19 2018, @04:41PM (7 children)
You call Drug Use, Gambling, and Prostitution Normal / Victimless human pursuits, but I don't think you understand the meaning of Victimless. Each of those pursuits do have victims. They just tend to be the children/family of the gambling addict, or the drug addict, or the children that are pushed into Prostitution. Perhaps, some of that would be negated by legalizing certain things, but none of those pursuits can claim to be victimless.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @04:51PM
!= drug addict
And which drugs are you even talking about? SSRIs? Warfarin? Statins? Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs? Epipens?
!= gambling addict
You sound like you're addicted to moralizing.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by khallow on Friday October 19 2018, @05:08PM
Sigh.
That would be wrong. In the first two situations, they are harmed by the behavior of the addict of whatever. In the second case, that's highly illegal, even if (or rather when) one legalizes prostitution.
Then we get to the enforcement of laws against these activities. Once again, we see evidence of the lack of victimhood with far more harm created by law enforcement and incarceration than by the alleged crimes themselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Friday October 19 2018, @05:24PM
And then, rather than address the underlying problems, we further victimize the family through non constructive incarceration of the addict. And instead of teaching them that working steadily carries rewards, we prove to them that it's just exploitation.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Friday October 19 2018, @06:23PM
On the contrary.
Drug use: someone who smokes a joint "harms" other people just as much a someone who drinks a beer. However, the pot smoker can be fined, imprisoned and enslaved for their action. The victim here is the pot smoker, and their family — and the state creates the victims. Without the law, there would be no victims.
Gambling: the person who throws $1 into a bet for/against some legislatively-forbidden outcome "harms" other people just as much as someone who buys a $1 lottery ticket. However, the former can be fined, imprisoned and enslaved for their action. The victim here is the former bettor, and their family — and the state creates the victims. Without the law, there would be no victims.
Prostitution: The person who pays $100 and receives a blow job from a willing, informed provider, "harms" other people just as much as a person who puts out $100 for dinner and receives a blow job (and, to be fair, dinner.) However, the former can be fined, imprisoned and enslaved for their action. The victim here is the former recipient of the sexual activity, and their family — and the state creates the victims. Without the law, there would be no victims.
In all three cases, by moving these activities to the black market, the participants are prevented from accessing remedies when one of the parties does something nonconsensual.
Where legislation is appropriate — people being forced into such life choices — it already exists, as it should. However, in no case is slavery any kind of appropriate remedy. All that does is teach the incarcerated that human life is the lowest possible value coin, but coin it is. If you have a complaint against people being enslaved, you should stop supporting laws that encourage it and teach it to others.
Any sane definition of liberty is based firmly upon the idea of informed, consensual/personal choice. As soon as you step on that idea, you're well off into the land of the oppressor.
You don't like some personal choice? That's perfectly okay. Don't make that choice. You don't like that someone else making such a choice? Feel free to complain, and feel free to provide as much information about why you think some other choice would be better.
But as soon as you try to force them to make personal choices your way, you've stepped well over the line. You have no right to do so, even if, by some abject exercise in malfuckery, society has given you or your legal system the power to do so, as is definitely the exact circumstance with various kinds of "sin" legislation. The other person's freedom to choose is far more important than any imaginary right you might think you have to not be offended.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday October 20 2018, @07:42AM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @06:03PM
oh fuck you! in this goddamned country the state has no business being involved in "fixing" bad family budgets due to poor life choices. it's all you government "fixes" that caused the black markets and crime to begin with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 27 2018, @12:12AM
Not being able to get jobs as 'child labor' because their grades are too low to qualify for a job waiver, jobs are unwilling to hire teens for jobs, and the welfare system isn't providing enough for them or their parents to fund their basic needs and ensure their education.
I actually had a friend whose sister got into prostitution. She did it because her mom was a diabetic native american who had foot ulcers, could only work during her 'good times', only got like 800/mo in assistance from the government, and had been thrown out by her tribe because her baby daddy wasn't a tribe member. The dad ended up being a deadbeat who abandoned them too.
I've heard a number of stories since that sound very similar. Not economically enfranchising the poor is the most common cause of prosititution. And if you REALLY wanted to cut down on exploitation you wouldn't arrest the prostitutes, only the pimps or parents, and allow independent sex workers to continue in the business free of harassment. If they like/want to continue doing it because it pays the bills, provides them job satisfaction, or helps free up hours they would otherwise be slaving in a dead end job, more power to them. It isn't a line of work I would support or enter myself, but freedom requires looking beyond yourself and seeing what benefits things you find distasteful provide for others.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Friday October 19 2018, @04:45PM (1 child)
It's even worse in some state systems. Four states don't pay for prison labor at all.
Louisiana's state pen at Angola is a converted plantation and inmates are put to work there picking cotton.
Being enslaved to the government might make more sense than being enslaved to a private corporation, though. Corporations like Starbucks and Victoria's Secret have made deals with prisons to use prisoner labor. That's one problem with the government keeping slaves -- the temptation to engage in "convict leasing" is ever present. Look up the history of "Black Codes" and "convict leasing". There is nothing accidental about this.
Oh, and I'll amplify the point about a wide net. You don't even have to use drugs to wind up in prison. Here's all it takes to be guilty of "conspiracy to distribute": https://seattlecriminallawyerhelp.com/blog/ignorance-of-the-law-obstuction-of-justice/. [seattlecriminallawyerhelp.com] I'm three handshakes from someone who hitchhiked, got picked up by a van of hippies, and they had a brick of LSD. Everyone in a vehicle is legally guilty of possession, so he got a double digit Federal sentence for "with intent to distribute" -- for hitchhiking.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Friday October 19 2018, @05:13PM
One led to the other. It makes no more sense to be enslaved by the government than anyone else.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Friday October 19 2018, @05:25PM (3 children)
except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted
I just voted to remove that language from my state's constitution. So, hopefully, that won't be the case anymore in my state at least.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @10:04PM (2 children)
The US Constitution overrides state constitutions.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday October 19 2018, @10:50PM (1 child)
The US Constitution overrides state constitutions.
Not in this case it doesn't.
Federal law is effectively a minimum standard. The bit that includes crime-slavery is direct from the 13th amendment. States are free to pass more stringent bans on slavery if they wish.
The 13th would only override the state constitution if it wanted to allow more slavery.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday October 21 2018, @12:09AM
Just wait until the new SCOTUS decides that because FPI is a corporation that operates across state lines, the state laws are overridden because hurr durr interstate commerce clause. I can see them doing that.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @06:45PM
Sorry, punishment for duly convicted criminals does not equal slavery. That is why maintaining presumption of innocence and equality under the law is vital despite #metoo hysteria.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday October 19 2018, @07:15PM (2 children)
I actually participated in this once. A labor for a project I leaded was outsourced to a prison for females (normally we would outsource to India, but the client demanded data to stay within borders).
Those women we eager to work and they had to actually earn a right for this work with nominal pay. In Gulag Russia, scientists were doing the same.
My point is, how do you call a system, where a human being wants to be a slave and work for nothing?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @09:23PM
Human. Pleasing others at the detriment of oneself fosters social cohesion, and makes large societies work. The capacity for self-deprecation is an evolutionary advantage from the point of view of the entire species.
But to answer your question, a system that allows people to exploit that capacity in others for their own gain is called exploitative.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @10:08PM
Of course they wanted to work. That job probably payed a dollar a day rather than 10 cents. Now, go look up how much commisary (where you get clothing, hygienic supplies, and food with slightly more nutritive value than cardboard that doesn't come in boxes labeled "Not Fit For Animal Consumption"), phone time, and medical care (they don't accept insurance), costs when you're behind bars. Exploitation is exploitation, and institutionalization makes people happy to be exploited.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday October 20 2018, @02:31PM
In Orwell's 1984, the Party operates forced labor camps to punish misdemeanors.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Informative) by NewNic on Friday October 19 2018, @04:44PM
No. Slavery was merely limited in the United States:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday October 19 2018, @05:10PM
>Human rights - especially the right to be free - should exist worldwide ... but they don't. It's tragic, but it's not a surprise.
However, what is a surprise is the number of countries where it isn't, that we have established free-trade treaties with, or even given active military support. Both of which serve to make us more complicit with their crimes.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Sulla on Friday October 19 2018, @06:50PM (1 child)
Every problem around the globe is Americas fault and something that America is expected to fix, until they try to fix it and either succeed or fail, at which point either way they are evil and tyrannic.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday October 20 2018, @04:32PM
Well one example is America's support of Saudi Arabia, a country with defacto wide spread slavery, is one example. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Saudi+Arabia+slavery [duckduckgo.com]
As long as America supports countries with horrible human rights, it is America that is supporting evil and screaming that you're being oppressed because freedom includes supporting evil, others are going to see you as evil.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @02:49PM (3 children)
Or, maybe not lucrative? $150B / 40m = $3500/slave/year. So, how can that be lucrative? It's on margin of society, if anything. Sounds to me like mostly poor and criminals exploiting the poor.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @03:03PM
I had a friend in Nairobi. He was an English professor at a university and one time he made an assignment to write an essay about what good things happened to their country. One of the students wrote about all the good things that came out of the slave trade. He said at first he was dumbfounded, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized it was true.
$3500 is nothing in the west, but a few years of work in developing countries.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Friday October 19 2018, @03:05PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @09:42PM
Why do you make such a calculation? The rich doing the exploitation don't give a rats ass how many slaves there are. All they care about is getting that $150B annually. If anything they want more slaves so their income would likely go up and their risk per unit would go down...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 19 2018, @03:21PM
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/02/entertainment/kanye-west-13th-amendment-clarification/index.html [cnn.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday October 19 2018, @03:26PM (13 children)
So are we talking about nontraditional forms of slavery, now? Or are we talking about the traditional form continuing to exist? If we're not talking about the traditional forms of slavery, what exactly is the difference in this modern incarnation?
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 19 2018, @03:38PM (9 children)
I had my own questions about "traditional slavery". It's important to understand that the US did NOT practice slavery as it was recognized throughout the world. In virtually all other societies, a slave was a slave, for life at most. His/her children didn't become slaves automatically. Slaves were mostly recognized as humans, and accorded at least meager respect as humans. Especially in Islam, all a slave had to do to escape slavery in perpetuity was to convert to Islam. Refuse to convert, and you were screwed for forever. Native American and many other societies rewarded faithful service with acceptance into the tribe. The Jews had their Jubilee. The English had their bond servants, whose servitude was limited to a definite point in time.
Slavery in the US was especially oppressive, and not "traditional" at all.
(Score: 2) by schad on Friday October 19 2018, @05:31PM (4 children)
"Slavery" is an umbrella term that means you're forced to work against your wishes. There are additionally several types of slavery. "Chattel" and "traditional" are synonyms for each other, and they do indeed refer to the flavor we had in the US. Other types include indentured servitude, serfdom, and forced marriage.
Chattel slavery has been pretty much the same everywhere it's been practiced, and it has been practiced in most parts of the world. (Probably all parts; slavery predates written human history.) I think what's throwing you is that past cultures often practiced multiple kinds of slavery at the same time. An educated Greek man enslaved and sent home to tutor the children of rich aristocrats did not have the same life as the million Gallic slaves Julius Caesar brought back with him to Rome.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Friday October 19 2018, @05:43PM (3 children)
That's very close to but not quite true.
Chattel slavery as practiced in the United States(and some of the other colonial Americas, Brazil and Cuba e..g) was perhaps uniquely barbaric. It was pretty historically unprecedented to ban teaching literacy to slaves in the historical Ottoman, Asian or medival and ancient European varieties of institutionalized slavery. It was also extremely uncommon to have "slave patrols" to gather and return slaves who escaped. It was frequently the case that protections against excessive physical abuse or murder of slaves were encoded in the law. There was about an 80/20 split on freeing children of slaves versus keeping them, but surprise, we ended up on the side that was vile and shitty. Some small percentage of slaves even had mandatory leave and minimal pay, but it'd be dishonest of me to pretend that was the norm.
Things that were common in every variety of slavery, though: raping slaves, hard manual labor, being forced into the local religion(though, as others noted, this freed you in Islamic slavery), dispassionate lack of care for basic needs.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Friday October 19 2018, @08:12PM (2 children)
The irony is despite immense staggering levels of social pressure from non-black sources, around 40% of blacks refuse to participate in education and won't graduate high school. Insert anecdote about leading horses to water vs drinking, such that seen from contemporary perspective this is more of a "stop wasting money" argument. Its tragic to whip and beat a white child to stop them from learning to read, but also consider that in the current year the truancy police can't whip and beat black kids enough to get them to attend school long enough to get a "participation trophy" diploma, you kinda have to use a multicultural perspective when analyzing this stuff. To this day, "book store owner" is not a realistic career path in historically black neighborhoods, with minor exception for leftist gentrification regions.
Also everyone knows the straw dog thats always proposed that there were never any rules in slavery, although a few moments with google show that as you'd expect of a literate euro culture there were in fact tons of laws about slavery; slaves were relatively expensive and valuable property and property attracts laws like flies. Admittedly like all laws ever passed in every culture on the planet, the exact level of enforcement was unclear. And like many laws taken out of historical context, those ancient laws would not be acceptable in the current year; although that's hardly unique to slave law and as such "proves" very little about slavery.
Another slavery apology straw dogging topic not discussed enough is clearly today any african living in white countries has a staggeringly higher quality of life than those africans still living in Africa, but this was also the situation in the pre-civil war era despite how awful slavery was compared to being white. Yes the quality of life was awful in the south USA, but the quality of life in Africa was even unimaginably worse. The Africans and Jews running the slave business back in Africa were much more ruthless than the average regulated plantation owner, despite how horrible plantation life was.
The reality of slavery is it was more of a failed immigration policy than anything else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @04:47AM
Apparently your stupid levels are also too high, I hear they are getting close to brain transplants so maybe you'll get lucky. Failed immigration policy, lolol wtaf?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday October 21 2018, @12:12AM
So what are you saying, VLM? Because this post reads like a gussied-up, lipstick-on-a-pig way of saying "Black people were better off as slaves and should be made slaves again." Only you'd pronounce "black people" with two Gs in it. Who the fuck do you think you're fooling?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday October 19 2018, @07:24PM (2 children)
Furthermore, in classical Rome case a slave could buy himself out. There was in fact a common scam to get Roman citizenship with all associated social protection. Say a Greek or a Jew would sell himself to slavery to a Roman citizen and later on buy himself out with a little premium. Then he would bring his family.
The current American system is not much different and arguably less humane.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Friday October 19 2018, @11:26PM (1 child)
Some American slaves bought themselves out too. It wasn't a right though. Your master had to agree to set aside a portion of what you earned for him, account for it, and then sign your papers or something. Because slavery was race-based, there was always the risk of somebody kidnapping you or otherwise refusing to recognize the papers and pulling you back in. It wasn't a foolproof way out, but it happened.
I'm less familiar with the circumstances under which Roman slaves bought themselves out. Was it a right, or likewise at the whim of a master as in the US?
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 27 2018, @12:25AM
Most of what later became 'traditional slavery' in the US was originally indentured servitude (albeit abused to keep them in defacto chattel slavery) from the 16th to 18th centuries. It wasn't really until the few decades predating the revolutionary war that chattel slavery became the norm during political conflicts between the colonies over indentured servitude, which lead to the chattel slavery decree.
I can't remember the citations for this right now, but indentured servitude was the norm and the abolishment of it is what lead to the compromise of chattel slavery but only against africans and native americans who hadn't accepted Christ. Everything after that is the history you know, but not the backstory of what lead to it.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @09:17PM
So what if the slave converts to Islam and gets set free? He has already been castrated. This is why Saudi Arabia is not mostly black African.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Friday October 19 2018, @03:39PM
Oh that's easy.
"Traditional" slavery was defined by people being chattel slaves. Property of their owners. Enforced by laws. In the racist US version it was furthered by an explicit understanding that your owner could subject you to whatever abuse they felt like handing out. Older forms often had some few protected rights for slaves. It was defined by a society that understood it to be an institution.
Modern slavery is different. More often than not, it's backed up with some kind of backhanded threats, and uncaring authorities. In Saudi Arabia, for example, it's traditional form is to invite "workers" to come in on temporary work visas at decent wages, then when they arrive, steal their passports, and threaten them with being turned over to the authorities as criminals if they don't work at wages lower than promised(or none at all depending on access to escape routes). The authorities don't explicitly protect slavery as a thing that they want, but the ways rules are enforced allow private individuals to control the entire lives of other individuals.
It probably won't surprise you to learn that the US version is similar, but the slavers promise to get your children thrown in those dog cages. Rarely are the actual slavers punished in "immigrant raids" by ICE and the like.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @04:03PM
Explained here [antislavery.org]
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Sulla on Friday October 19 2018, @06:52PM
Slavery moved from being in bondage to being forced to work in order to pay for food or a place to live to soon being forced to work to buy your newest iphone.
Hunter-gatherers are slaves to nature
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday October 19 2018, @03:47PM (3 children)
One of the very common situations for slaves is being sold into prostitution. What, you thought all those 14-year-olds in Bangkok were choosing their profession freely?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Friday October 19 2018, @05:01PM
This is happening in the US. There's even an unofficial connection to the criminal justice system.
Turns out, if you post bail for someone, you can revoke it at any time and they go back to jail.
There are crooked bail bondsmen who will bail out a woman and then inform her that she has a new job in sex work where she doesn't keep the earnings, and if she doesn't like it she gets locked up again. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jun/29/revealed-how-us-sex-traffickers-recruit-jailed-women-for-prostitution-the-trap [theguardian.com]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday October 19 2018, @08:29PM (1 child)
There's been a huge propaganda push WRT the Asian Massage Parlour "rub n tug" being slavery and human trafficking.
The situation with the morality police is such that its not entirely clear if this is true or just a weird angle along the lines of marijuana "Reefer Madness" style BS.
I'm not sure it really works as propaganda, given the historical straw dogging about pre-civil war black slavery and whipping blacks to death for not picking enough cotton or starving them, it's a hard PR sell that its horrible that some asian women has a nice office job that occasionally involves some hand jobs, compared to how awful the working conditions are at some perfectly legal yet higher paying jobs. Given that a lot of strip malls have the Asian trifecta of the rub -n- tug, the nail salon, and the Chinese take out, you can kinda see the long term career progression path, such that rub -n- tug isn't even the worst working conditions of their lives, although maybe its clearly the most prurient for PR purposes. Assuming they aren't ending up as "long pork" in the stir fries, its not all that bad of a life.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday October 20 2018, @03:52PM
Some massage parlors are legit. Some are thinly veiled prostitution fronts. Some of both of those are slavery operations, and if you're a customer you may not recognize them as such because you aren't supposed to pick up on it.
The reason many slaves are forced into prostitution is that it's a highly lucrative business and requires basically no capital expenses other than the people being prostituted. And it's worth noting that enslaved prostitutes are an issue even in places where prostitution is completely legal, such as the Netherlands.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 19 2018, @04:01PM (1 child)
Shop at Walmart? Have an Apple device? Maybe we can devote a sub-thread to identifying those companies that either use, or made their fortunes on the backs of slave labor.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @09:28PM
It's better to make a list of companies that are known-clean. That list is much shorter...
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Friday October 19 2018, @04:02PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Friday October 19 2018, @05:16PM (9 children)
This is like saying "Murder was never outlawed -- it kills millions and you may be paying to feed the murderers*."
I.e. deliberately idiotic drivel delivered as propaganda.
Here's how. The logic is along these lines: Your taxes go to food benefits such as "food stamps." A percentage of benefit recipients commit murder. Therefore you are paying for murder and so therefore it was never outlawed.
The problem with this heartfelt line of logic is that it is a pile of warm, steaming completely wrong wrapped in let's-lie-for-propaganda-purposes.
Murder is illegal and so is slavery, like so many illegal things, in that only the government may practice them and then only as specified under the law.
That's not a perfect system, but it's a pretty far leap from "I saw somebody speeding yesterday" to "speeding was never made illegal." Specifically, you have to journey from the realm of the true to the realm of the completely false.
"Traditions" are not the defining quality of slavery. Slavery is a process that involves enslaving someone. It may be practiced openly, or secretly, but it's not dependent on anyone's tradition. It's degrading and wrong and evil and heartless regardless of your personal cultural traditions.
Even if you want to attack "traditional" slavery, I think you're full of it. Traditional, culturally-encouraged, legally-approved slavery where people and their offspring are treated as property without rights, is not practiced in any significant culture anywhere. The closest thing to an institution of slavery is probably in Sudan [sudanupdate.org], and even there it's still illegal. And I don't see you listing any efforts you've undertaken to remedy that wrong, just sitting here lying about laws as they apply to slavery using sophistry.
That doesn't mean that it's not illegal or that it was "never abolished." This is not rocket science here. The prevalence of cocaine and heroin doesn't mean that they were "never abolished" either. This is pretty simple stuff.
The article also asserts some outright false things. Flat-out lies.
Look, isn't slavery bad enough? Shouldn't we work to end illegal slavery because it is wrong and victimizes people?
Do we have to lie and say it is not prohibited before we can make excuses to be against it? Because that sounds very, very petty.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Friday October 19 2018, @05:37PM (7 children)
Abolished is not the same thing as banned or criminalized. Abolished means actually eliminated. If someone says murder is illegal, they are correct. If they say murder is abolished, they are wrong because it still happens.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Friday October 19 2018, @06:46PM (4 children)
I mean, I sympathize with you here, you're annoyed a pedant who is purposefully missing the intended meaning of words to focus on some irrelevant technicalities.
But within the realm of those technicalities, per wikitionary:
This is a case of "when you look up abolish in the dictionary there's a picture of slavery" level wrongness you're going for here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @09:30PM (1 child)
Except the bulk of the original comment was founded on the author's interpretation of the meaning of the word "abolished". It's hardly irrelevant.
First, you're quoting Wiktionary.
Secondly, the usage examples in dictionaries are just that; examples of usage. They should not be seen as a source of universal truth, even when it's not a dictionary that can be edited by anyone.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Saturday October 20 2018, @12:59AM
Oh come on this isn't a prescriptivist/descriptivist or source quality(though websters also uses slavery as an example) thing.
"This is a sound way to use this word" is pretty well established by any dictionary. Regardless of whether you believe in a rigid theory of language or not. I really hope we don't continue this conversation, because this is about to hit a level of pedantry unseen by nerdkind.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday October 20 2018, @05:14PM (1 child)
As [url:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slavery_and_serfdom] shows, slavery was far from illegalized in the 19th century, with some countries only illegalizing it in 2007. As for abolishing, too many countries still turn a blind eye to it.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday October 20 2018, @05:16PM
Should have been https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slavery_and_serfdom [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @06:51PM (1 child)
You're just dense and playing word games.
Merriam-Webster:
"Definition of abolish
transitive verb
: to end the observance or effect of (something, such as a law) : to completely do away with (something) : ANNUL"
In law, abolishing never means "completely eliminated in practice." It means "completely eliminated in the law."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Friday October 19 2018, @08:32PM
Hilariously I've seen defs like "formally put an end to" such as for example setting up the SEC in 1934 means insider trading in the financial markets in the USA was abolished in 1934. If you think much more than a superficial dent was ever put in, I got a bridge to sell ya...
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday October 19 2018, @11:01PM
"Murder was never outlawed -- it kills millions and you may be paying to feed the murderers*."
If you were paying someone to go to a country where murder was legal to murder people and eat them it would be a fair comparison.