More than 12 million are modern slaves, U.S. says

[cory777]

Source: Yahoo News

A sobering new report from the State Department finds that more than 12 million people worldwide are victims of "trafficking in persons" — trapped in forced labor, bonded labor or forced prostitution. But just 4,166 people were convicted of trafficking last year, the report says.

Even so, awareness of the reach of modern slavery has made such crimes easier to report and police, the study says. Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca, who heads the State Department's anti-slavery efforts, noted that 116 countries have adopted anti-trafficking laws since the United Nations enacted a law against modern slavery 10 years ago. Last year marked a high-water mark, both in identifying trafficking victims and in mounting successful prosecutions.

"Countries that once denied the existence of human trafficking now work to identify victims and help them overcome the trauma of modern slavery, as well as hold responsible those who enslave others," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a letter accompanying the report.

But there's still much work ahead, the report says. The State Department estimates that only 0.4 percent of all modern slavery victims were identified last year. Human trafficking is a multibillion-dollar business — and will probably grow so long as global governments fail to crack down on it more forcefully.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100614/wl_ynews/ynews_wl2569

[notadmblnd]

1. it is said that the $$s from the exploitation of human beings will over take the illegal drug trade

within the next 10 years.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

2. I'm sorry they don't include the millions whose jobs pay less

than a subsistence level, and have no hope of advancing. Isn't this a form of slavery?

[Bobbieo]

4. You can thank Bush's Global Gag Order signed in 2000 -

his first official act which cut off funding for International Planned Parenthood - for part of this world wide slave problem!

[GoddessOfGuinness]

7. I guess he had to add more infants

to the global infant mortality rate, to offset the US stats.

[drmeow]

6. I think that maybe a kind of

permanent indentured servitude - not quite as brutal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant

[GoddessOfGuinness]

8. Not quite as bad

but bad enough.

[Scuba]

3. Does this include WalMart employees?

[awoke_in_2003]

9. better question...

does this include our prison population? Big money is made off of that labor.

[Scuba]

10. Yep, that's slave labor....

why do you suppose pot is illegal?

[awoke_in_2003]

11. No doubt...

got to keep the streets safe from maniacal potheads :) Hmmm, you think Frito Lay, Dolly Madison, Little Debbie, etc, would pool their resources and lobby congress

[tom_paine]

5. When the Age of Cheap Energy is over, the Global Aristocracy will reintroduce slavery

using only the finest PR and marketing techniques, plus the very likely ruthless, life-devaluing future the human race is likely headed for.

They will need someone to carry their sedan-chairs again...and they will get them.

If there is one thing I have learned about humanity since I began paying closer attention a decade ago, it's that humanity has not changed one tiny bit - only our energy budget has changed (expanded).

As it contracts, you can pretty much make book that we will be taking a return journey through all the previous historic time-periods which we "progressed" out of.

But we never progressed out of anything. We just got a larger energy budget which allowed the Aristocracy to temporarily do without the actual enslavement of the bottom 99% of us.

Because their "sedan-chairs" now ran on something other than Peasant Power.

Not to worry - we're going back, whetehr it be in a decade or a century - we're going back.

The Aristocracy, as usual, will maladjust the social mores to make slavery perfectly acceptable again. Oh, and fatness will become SEXY again.

[Doc_Technical]

12. Well said, tom_paine.

the people won't change
cycle repeats endlessly
yesterday returns

[SlipperySlope]

14. More than one kind of slave

If you are forced to work for "the system", even if you have a choice of what job you take within that system, then you are still a slave to "the system".

It is only when you can opt out and live freely that you are no longer a slave; but having to "opt out" without first opting in means you were born a slave.

When you are born free you never have to work for the system to begin with.

[AlanAdam]

13. This number appears to me to be ridiculously low ...

In India alone there are some 200 million Dalits. VERY conservatively assuming that only 10% of these live as virtual slaves, these alone would number 20 million modern slaves.