Slavery

[DMB]

Slavery is alive and well and happening in many parts of the world. Despite the fact that chattel slavery is often supposed to have been totally abolished, it still goes on in parts of Africa.

In India, there is a great deal of the form of slavery known as "bonded labour". See, for example, this article (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6150253.ece).

Monisha, 11, another child worker,was sold by her father for about £150 to a factory owner when she was 7. With the transaction she became one of the estimated 15 million child slaves in the country.

Monisha does the type of work that qualifies as the worst child labour under the International Labour Organisation’s code — the kind that causes, among other things, “eye damage, lung disease, stunted growth, and a susceptibility to arthritis”.

She can leave the factory only if she repays the £150 loan that her father took from her employer. She will never be able to repay it because the interest charges exceed her wages. She is a slave.

Then we get state-sponsored "forced labour", as in China.

At the UN in Geneva this week a farce is going on known as Durban II. Durban I was the held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 and was billed as the first international conference against racism. The current one is supposd to be a follow-up, but it is so heavily politicised that nothing much good can possibly come out of it. One of the issue is supposed to be slavery, but so many aspects of contemporary slavery are completely ignored, that it is nonsense. The historic transatlantic slave trade has been rightly and justly discussed and condemned, but no mention is allowed of the Arab slave trade that continued for 1000 years and killed and enslaved many millions.

Does anyone think that we can do anything about slavery that is going on now?

[lpetrich]

That de facto slavery in India is illegal there but the authorities are reluctant to do anything about it. Could it be that there is not much bribe money to be made for doing so? That's a very cynical thought, but Third-World government officials are often very corrupt.

[DMB]

India has lots of laws that are poorly enforced.

[Troglodyte]

Yup. Everyone likes to make such a big deal - which it certainly is - about the slavery that occured on the Ivory Coast by the Europeans/Westerners, but little to nothing is ever mentioned about the slavery on the Horn and Western Africa done by and continued by Arabs.

What a tangled web foreign relations are. Too many countries beholden to others that have them by the nads, so they keep their yaps shut instead of sticking to some principles and to hell what the fall out at home then becomes.

Case in point, oil and the arabs vis-a-vis here in the US. We need each other. We need their oil, and they need our money and our protection - specifically from Iran.

There's a power play going on in the world that most people are totally unaware of. Iran going nuclear isn't only or just about Israel or the US. You can bet your bottom dollar that the Saudi government and arab controlled nations - specifically in the oil rich Persian Gulf area - are highly concerned with what is going on in Iran.

We could well see a shift in power over there within the next decade, away from the southern arab, oil rich nations to the Shiites and also to other Sunni governments, specifically Turkey.

As kooky and irrelevant as we think and know he is, Qaddafi recently has been calling for a neo-Fatamid khalifate. The Fatamids were a Shiite kingdom based in Egypt, but Qaddafi is clearly looking to Iran. Shiites are not just centrally located in Iran and southern Iraq. There are sizable populations of Shiites in northern Saudi Arabia - around the major portion of SA's oil fields, the UAE, other Persian gulf nations and stretching into India. And I daresay I don't think that most of the Shiites - specifically Iran - are going to play as nice nice to the US and the West as the arab oil barons effectively have been.

What is going on in Europe in relation to Islamism is the tip of the iceberg. There are larger issues going on, and frankly too many people in the West, especially the US are getting too flippant about what is going on and what might be coming down the pipe.

To hell with Bush, who caused this or why. Frankly, all of this was a long time coming, step by step, with many factors, nations, actions and issues growing it. Too many people are getting too caught up in the past and too busy pointing fingers. Instead, people need to be paying attention to the future and the present and get a grasp on what is occuring and will occur geopolitically. Yes, the economy is a major concern, but I daresay, what is going on in the world of Dar-Al-Islam and how we relate to it will become as big if not a bigger issue within the near future.

[premjan]

India has lots of laws that are poorly enforced.
The low respect for law and order has no doubt to do with the origin of the nation in non-cooperation movements.

[HinduWoman]

India has lots of laws that are poorly enforced.
The low respect for law and order has no doubt to do with the origin of the nation in non-cooperation movements.

Yep. That is one cause. Tagore warned against it on grounds of lawlessness and forcing people to participate.

Another is nowadays the system is so corrupt that no one believes in it anymore.

[Free Thinkr]

I can't recommend enough for the thread the chapter from Henry George's Social Problems (http://www.schalkenbach.org/library/george.henry/spcont.html), entitled Slavery and Slavery (http://www.schalkenbach.org/library/george.henry/sp15.html). Therein, George explains how slavery is a gradient, and that, in a sense, it operates still today; and more importantly, how it still operates.

I simply cannot express how important it is for this relationship to be recognized.

ETA: here's a brief excerpt. It's quite provocative, but, when you think about it, makes a lot of sense:
Chattel slavery is, in fact, merely the rude and primitive mode of property in man. It only grows up where population is sparse; it never, save by virtue of special circumstances, continues where the pressure of population gives land a high value, for in that case the ownership of land gives all the power that comes from the ownership of men, in more convenient form. When in the course of history we see the conquerors making chattel slaves of the conquered, it is always where population is sparse and land of little value, or where they want to carry off their human spoil. In other cases, the conquerors merely appropriate the lands of the conquered, by which means they just as effectually, and much more conveniently, compel the conquered to work for them. It was not until the great estates of the rich patricians began to depopulate Italy that the importation of slaves began. In Turkey and Egypt, where chattel slavery is yet legal, it is confined to the inmates and attendants of harems. English ships carried negro slaves to America, and not to England or Ireland, because in America land was cheap and labor was valuable, while in western Europe land was valuable and labor was cheap. As soon as the possibility of expansion over new land ceased, chattel slavery would have died out in our Southern States. As it is, Southern planters do not regret the abolition of slavery. They get out of the freedmen as tenants as much as they got out of them as slaves.
The legacy of slavery and segregation is today much less intense than it was; but slavery and segregation meant that descendants of the oppressed tend not to own the land that makes up the US. How, then, is it any surprise that those same individuals are less successful, on the balance?

[DMB]

I can't recommend enough for the thread the chapter from Henry George's Social Problems (http://www.schalkenbach.org/library/george.henry/spcont.html), entitled Slavery and Slavery (http://www.schalkenbach.org/library/george.henry/sp15.html). Therein, George explains how slavery is a gradient, and that, in a sense, it operates still today; and more importantly, how it still operates.

I simply cannot express how important it is for this relationship to be recognized.

Not sure what you mean by "in a sense". Chattel slavery is still alive and kicking in parts of Africa.

[Free Thinkr]

I can't recommend enough for the thread the chapter from Henry George's Social Problems (http://www.schalkenbach.org/library/george.henry/spcont.html), entitled Slavery and Slavery (http://www.schalkenbach.org/library/george.henry/sp15.html). Therein, George explains how slavery is a gradient, and that, in a sense, it operates still today; and more importantly, how it still operates.

I simply cannot express how important it is for this relationship to be recognized.
Not sure what you mean by "in a sense". Chattel slavery is still alive and kicking in parts of Africa.
My mistake, if it's officially sanctioned by any government.

[DMB]

I can't recommend enough for the thread the chapter from Henry George's Social Problems (http://www.schalkenbach.org/library/george.henry/spcont.html), entitled Slavery and Slavery (http://www.schalkenbach.org/library/george.henry/sp15.html). Therein, George explains how slavery is a gradient, and that, in a sense, it operates still today; and more importantly, how it still operates.

I simply cannot express how important it is for this relationship to be recognized.
Not sure what you mean by "in a sense". Chattel slavery is still alive and kicking in parts of Africa.
My mistake, if it's officially sanctioned by any government.

They deny that it happens, even when presented with the clear evidence.