Contrary to popular belief, slavery didn’t end with Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Experts estimate that today there are 27 million people enslaved around the world. It’s happening in countries on all six inhabited continents. And yes, that includes the United States. The CIA estimates 14,500 to 17,000 victims are trafficked into the “Land of the Free†every year.
Why hasn’t more been done to end a dehumanizing, universally condemned practice? One challenge is that slavery today takes on myriad, subtler forms than it did during the Atlantic Slave Trade — including sex trafficking, debt bondage, forced domestic or agricultural labor, and chattel slavery — making it tougher to identify and eradicate.
Types of Slavery...
CHATTEL SLAVERY- is closest to the slavery that prevailed in early American history. Chattel slaves are considered their masters’ property — exchanged for things like trucks or money and expected to perform labor and sexual favors. Once of age, their children are expected to do the same. Chattel slavery is typically racially-based; in the North African country of Mauritania, for example, black Africans serve the lighter-skinned Arab-Berber communities. Though slavery was legally abolished there in 1980, today 90,000 slaves continue to serve the Muslim Berber ruling class. Similarly, in the African country of Sudan, Arab northerners are known to raid the villages in the South — killing all the men and taking the women and children to be auctioned off and sold into slavery.
DEBT BONDAGE- or bonded labor, is the most widely practiced form of slavery around the world. In Southeast Asia, where it is most prevalent, debt bondage claims an estimated 15 to 20 million victims. The staggering poverty there forces many parents to offer themselves or their own children as collateral against a loan. Though they are promised they will work only until their debt is paid off, the reality is much grimmer. Thanks to inflated interest rates and fresh debts incurred while being fed and housed, the debt becomes impossible to pay off. As a result, it is often inherited by the bonded laborer’s children, perpetuating a vicious cycle that can claim several generations.
SEX SLAVERY- finds women and children forced into prostitution. Many are lured by false offers of a good job and then beaten and forced to work in brothels. In Southeast Asia, however, it is not uncommon to find women coerced by their own husbands, fathers, and brothers to earn money for the men in the family to pay back local money lenders. In other cases, victims pay tens of thousands of dollars to get to another country and are then forced into prostitution in pay off their own debts. In still others, women or girls are plainly kidnapped from their home countries. The sex slavery trade thrives in Central and Eastern Europe and in North America. An estimated two million women and children are sold into sex slavery around the world every year.
FORCED LABOR- often results when individuals are lured by the promise of a good job but instead find themselves subjected to slaving conditions — working without payment and enduring physical abuse, often in harsh and hazardous conditions. Victims include domestic workers, construction workers, and even human mine detectors. Migrant workers are particularly vulnerable, as their constant changes of location make the organized crime rings that traffic them difficult to bust.
600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked internationally every year. Approximately 80% of them are women and children.
Slavery is an extremely profitable, international industry. Experts estimate trafficking in the US yields $9 billion every year. Around the world, trafficking in women for commercial sex purposes nets $6 billion per year.
Slavery was officially abolished worldwide at the 1927 Slavery Convention, yet it continues to thrive thanks to the complicity of some governments and the ignorance of much of the world.
In the 2000 Refugee Report, “Trafficking in Women and Children: A Contemporary Manifestation of Slavery,†former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright calls human trafficking “the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world.†Every two and a half minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted.
Here's the math. There are 525,600 minutes in a non-leap year (365 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes = 525,600). That makes 31,536,000 seconds per year (525,600 minutes x 60 seconds = 31,536,000).
According to the US Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey — the country's largest and most reliable crime study — there were an average of 200,780 sexual assaults each year in 2004-2005 (the most recent data available).
So: 31,536,000 divided by 200,780 comes out to one sexual assault every 157 seconds, or about one every two and a half minutes.
Sexual assault vs. Rape
Sexual assault is a broader category that the Justice Department uses to classify rape, attempted rape, and other violent felonies that fall short of rape (which it defines as "forced vaginal, anal or oral penetration").
Of the estimated 200,780 annual violent sex crimes, 64,080 were completed rapes. So, if you want a figure that covers only rape and excludes attempted rape and sexual assault, divide 31,536,000 by 64,080. That comes out to one rape every 492 seconds or so, or about one rape every 8 minutes.
What Happens to Rapists When They Are Caught and Prosecuted?
59% of rapes/sexual assaults are not reported to the police. Those rapists, of course, never serve a day in prison according to a statistical average of the past five years.
If the rape is reported to police, there is a 50.8% chance that an arrest will be made.If an arrest is made, there is an 80% chance of prosecution.If there is a prosecution, there is a 58% chance of a felony conviction.If there is a felony conviction, there is a 69% chance the convict will spend time in jail.
So, even in the 41% of attacks that are reported to police, there is only a 16.3% chance the rapist will end up in prison.Factoring in unreported rapes, about 6% of rapists — 1 out of 16 — will ever spend a day in jail. 15 out of 16 will walk free.www.invisiblechildren.com
How does vegetarianism affect YOUR everyday life?
In the U.S., animals raised for food are fed 70% of the corn, wheat, and other graines we grow. The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people- more than the entire human population on Earth Nearly Half of all the water consumed in the U.S. for all purposes is used to raise animals for food. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat, but only 60 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat. A total vegetarian diet requires 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day. Animal foods close the arteries, plant foods open the arteries.
Meat production produces huge amounts of sewage and other forms of waste, polluting our water, air, and land; 1.5 billion tons of waste in the U.S. per year alone. Livestock are one of the two or three most important causes of global warming, producing huge amounts of gaseous emissions-almost a fifth of all global warming emissions. Livestock grazing is also a leading cause of deforestation, soil erosion, and the destruction of native plants and animals. Livestock production also uses an enormous amount of fuel: 68 calories of fuel are needed to produce a calorie of pork. By cutting meat from your diet, you will save an acre of trees per year from being cut down, and will be the single most important thing you will do in your personal life to save this planet
840 million people go hungry every year. Meat production uses more resources-an average of ten times as many-than it produces in terms of calories and protein. This includes the land needed to graze animals, the grain needed to feed them, and the water needed to water them. Up to 16 pounds of grain are needed to make one pound of meat. 30% of the surface of the planet is devoted to animal agriculture, including 70% of the (former) Amazon rainforest, and 70% of all fresh water is used for animal production. Cutting out meat consumption by even 10% would save enough grain to feed an additional 60 million people.
Eating meat and animal products leads to heart disease, stroke and some kinds of cancer. Salmonella and E. Coli are bacteria that are found in livestock and infect tens of thousands of people per year. Mad Cow and Avian Flu are just two fatal diseases that originated in livestock and are passed to humans via the food chain.
Animals raised in factory farm conditions suffer horrific conditions over their short lifespans, and are protected by only two federal laws (the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act and the Twenty-Eight Hour Law which regulates transportation of farmed animals). Chickens spend their lives crammed into tiny wire cages, turkeys with thousands of others of their kind into windowless factories, pigs live their whole lives without ever seeing the sun or feeling the air, playful rabbits spend their short lives in barren wire cages, and veal calves are confined into tiny crates that don't allow them to lie down or turn around. Livestock are castrated, debeaked, branded, de-horned, repeatedly impregnated, and suffer a wide variety of health conditions that must be treated with drugs, just to keep them alive long enough to slaughter. That our society has turned living, feeling, thinking animals -just like your companion cat, dog or rabbit-into meat-producing machines is one of our most shameful accomplishments. By going vegetarian, you will save over 100 animals from slaughter alone.
Heart disease begins in childhood, and a vegetarian diet reverses heart disease. Over 1.3 billion human beings could be fed each year from the grain and soybeans that go to livestock in the United States.
This means that the entire population of the United States
could be fed (without losing any nutritional value) and there would still be enough food left over to feed one billion people. In a world where millions of people die each year of starvation, that type of food excess and inefficiency could be considered unethical. A USDA study found that 98% of broiler chicken carcasses had detectable levels of E. coli, indicating fecal contamination.
Slaughterhouse workers have among the highest rate of injury and illness in the country, and working in a slaughterhouse would dull anyone's sense of compassion.
There are more than 50 million cases of meat-related foodborne illness every year in the United States, thousands of which lead to death. Animals accumulate dangerous chemicals in their flesh and fat (which meat-eaters consume), including dioxins, antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, and even the most toxic form of arsenic.
Any animal with a brain could contract a version of mad cow disease, yet millions of pigs and chickens are still being fed the remains of diseased animals- in violation of World Health Organization recommendations and the laws of Japan and Europe.
Eating meat and dairy products causes impotence! Going vegetarian is a natural alternative to Viagra because before meat's artery-clogging action gives you a heart attack, it affects other vital organs. In one study, one-fourth of those in "the oldest age group" of men aged 40 to 79 reported frequent occurence of erectile dysfunction, while in another study, half of men over 40 reported that they experienced erectile dysfunction at least some of the time. DONT YOU THINK THAT IT IS ABOUT TIME YOU STOP AVOIDING THE TRUTH?
A few insights from celebrity vegetarians/vegans
Pamela Anderson: "Chickens, pigs, and other animals—they are interesting individuals with personalities and intelligence. But if farmers did to dogs and cats what they do to animals they're raising for food, they could be prosecuted for animal abuse and locked up." Alyssa Milano: I turned vegetarian after 9/11. A friend of mine came back from New York and said that he couldn't stand the smell of burnt flesh. It immediately reminded me of a barbecue.
Josh Hartnett-
"I gave up meat when I was twelve. ... One day I was cutting up a chicken for my mom, and I hit a tumor with the knife. There was [pus] and blood all over the place. That was enough for me."
(Cineman Syndicate) Russell Simmons (VEGAN): "Chickens raised for food today are … covered in excrement, they're diseased, and they're drugged up with all sorts of toxins that you are ingesting if you eat chickens. One recent study found that chicken flesh in this country has four times as much arsenic—yes, arsenic, the poison (which is used in the drugs the chickens are given) as any other meat … I have been a vegan for many years." Alicia Silverstone (VEGAN): "Once people spend time with farm animals in a loving way ... a pig or cow or a little chicken or a turkey, they might find they relate with them the same way they relate with dogs and cats. People don't really think of them that way because they're on the plate. Why should they be food when other animals are pets? I would never eat my doggies." Persia White (VEGAN): I have been vegan for two years, but I have been vegetarian since I was 12. My family wasn't vegetarian, I turned vegetarian... and ironically they all followed eventually. Joaquin Phoenix (VEGAN): "Animal rights is a part of my everyday life. When you live by example, you create a certain level of awareness. Friends of mine—people I have never discussed animal rights or vegetarianism with—are adopting vegetarian habits because they see it."
Andre 3000: When asked how he would spend his last day on Earth, Andre 3000 of OutKast replied, "I'd probably go for a great meal—some broccoli probably, because I'm a vegetarian."
Wu Tang Clan's Masta Killa: "I never really liked meat. I was a child that had to be forced to eat my meat. Whatever you ate before [going vegetarian] that you loved—like turkey slices—they've got a substitute now that's not hard to find."
If you have some time... Check out these sites! You may think differently... we do!!!
