Bob Herbert: Today’s Hidden Slave Trade

[babylonsister]

Today’s Hidden Slave Trade


By BOB HERBERT
Published: October 27, 2007

The woman testifying in federal court in Lower Manhattan could hardly have seemed more insignificant.

She was an immigrant from South Korea and a prostitute, who spoke little or no English. She worked, she said, in brothels in New York, Philadelphia, Georgia, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

She did not offer a portrait of the good life. Speaking through an interpreter, she told about the time in D.C. when a guy came in who looked “like a mental patient, a psycho.” Weirded out, she wanted nothing to do with him. But she said the woman who ran the brothel assured her everything would be fine.

It was fine if you consider wrestling with Hannibal Lecter fine. The john clawed at this woman, gouging her flesh, peeling the skin from her back and other parts of her body. She was badly injured.

According to the government, the woman was caught up in a prostitution and trafficking network that ruthlessly exploited young Korean women, some of whom “were smuggled into the country illegally.”

In prior eras, the slave trade was conducted openly, with ads prominently posted and the slaves paraded and inspected like animals, often at public auctions. Today’s sex traffickers, the heirs to that tradition, try to keep their activities hidden, although the rest of the sex trade, the sale of the women’s services, is advertised on a scale that can only be characterized as colossal.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/27/opinion/27herbert.html?em&ex=1193630400&en=7d3f60416fa6d158&ei=5087%0A

[undergroundpanther]

1. I wonder the kinds of shit heads

who would BUY a human being.For a trade to "thrive" there must be buyers wanting the product.
Users of prostitutes are called johns .That's a male name.So it is mostly MEN who are buying sex,and so buy a human being paying her to use her up to satisfy himself alone. . Sex without love or at least kindness can very easily become abuse.

When will more men learn slaves is where their porn often comes from,it comes from these exploited women.
Because slaves are CHEAP and if you want more profit you will seek CHEAP suppliers. It's Business.This is business of selling human beings and their sexuality for profit..

When will MORE men stop excusing and rationalizing the massive exploiting of women by INDUSTRIES and stop standing by trying to point out how they themselves are so blameless just because they buy porn or whatever,pretending as if it has no connection to the exploitation of women.

When will more men realize where the source of the products they consume come from and WHY it is at a womans expense? Human trafficking is a business and it costs her, her sanity,trust and her body...When will MORE men give up their ego gratifying but tainted privileged patriarchy and see how it feels to live as a woman in this kind of sick sad inequality? Empathize with women instead of self? More men need to empathize with women and listen to women even if they don't like what they hear or feel ashamed by hearing it...Then once their hearts are opened maybe they can stop being so defensive and start standing by us as our equals and fight with us against those men who consider it their right as men to dehumanize,buy,dominate and use women by proxy through porn pictures or directly by human trafficking,or owning a slave or using one because if you get beneath it all,all genders of human beings are still human beings first.And all human beings are at times vulnerable and can be harmed by other humans,sometimes they never recover..This shit needs to stop.And men they need to stop doing their part to keep such soul crushing evil businesses from even making a profit from the sale of women...to Johns.to other men.Men do have a responsibility for checking the conduct of their own gender and educating others about the businesses other members of their gender too often rationalize as normal.

[tomreedtoon]

3. Be careful. You'll be flamed by the pro-prostitution people.

There is a vocal number of people here who promote the legalization of prostitution and sex industries. They continually say that prostitution is a "victimless crime," that it could be taxed and regulated, and that it would promote a positive and healthy attitude towards sex.

I won't dignify that with a comparison to owl residue.

The way you speak, undergroundpanther, you sound like someone whose life has been touched by this stuff. Somebody who knows what he or she is talking about, someone not subscribing to fantasy. That, in itself, will bring flames here.

Also, there is a percentage of people whose lives depend on the questionable business of sex industries. In my town, the only newspaper with pretentions to "liberal" political views is a weekly sponsored by gay dating services, massage parlors and drug rehab ads. Whether justified or not, they were recently busted by the local police vice squad for accepting classified ads that were clearly advertising prostitution services. (And no, I don't mean getting your prostitute's plugs changed and the oil drained.)

I always found it awkward that people who promote what we like to consider progressive causes had to ally themselves with sleaze. In a fair society - or a society where some people who call themselves progressives didn't choose to ally with the dark side - this wouldn't be necessary. Heck, maybe it isn't necessary; maybe it's just my local bunch of people who abandoned their principles.

[flashl]

2. Sex, Citrus Farms, Prison Industrial Complex. Slavery is all around us. n/t