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December 3, 2007
"Modern-Day Slavery"
In recent years, there has been a disturbing increase in the reports of slavery of immigrants. Fees charged by smugglers to bring migrants unlawfully to the United States from Mexico have increased from a few hundred dollars in the 1990s to a few thousand today. Fees are much higher for natives of other countries, including rthose in Asia, for example. At times, migrants have been forced to work off smuggling fees in a type of indentured servitude arrangement. Forced labor is often publicized in the sex industry but is a more general labor market problem in agriculture, domestic service, hotels and restaurants, and the garment industry.
The N.Y. Times reports on a criminal trial in U.S. District Court in New York that has been going on for the past month. The defendants are charged with what the federal criminal statutes refer to as involuntary servitude and peonage. Two Indonesian women, the government charged in its indictment, were victims of “modern-day slavery.” Accoring to the Times, "since passage of the 2000 federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, prosecutions have increased from less than a handful nationwide per year to about a dozen. The law is probably best known for its focus on prostitution and child-sex traffickers; yet in the last few years, in a few highly publicized cases like [this one], federal and state task forces set up to deal with sex trafficking have also begun to focus on the exploitation of domestic workers."
KJ
December 3, 2007 | Permalink
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It makes you wonder what a person is capable of doing in search of a better life. It is so sad to see that the American dream they came looking for became a living nightmare.
Posted by: Ben | Dec 4, 2007 7:38:21 PM
I have spent some time in India on different occasions doing business there. I have derived the following information from reading the local daily newspapers during my visits.
The solution to the ending of slavery is to allow the people to keep a larger portion of their earnings so that they do not have to sell their children into slavery. If the Peasants were armed, they would not have to pay for private protection. Can you imagine the anguish of having to sell your child into slavery to buy food for yourself and your remaining children? The way to eliminate these institutional protection rackets, crime and corruption in India (and other countries where the population is not armed) is to arm their population. Arming the population in New York City eliminated the similar protection rackets that controlled the population in that city.
The people of India are prohibited from owning handguns or any other type of firearm. The law-abiding population is totally disarmed (except for the politically connected). Every business in India from the large plantations and manufacturing industries to the Mom & Pop retail stores must pay armed people (gang members publicly carrying machine guns and pistols) to provide protection services. The particular local armed gang that claims the area (or the turf like the old New York City Protection Rackets) where the business is located requires that the business pay the gang for the protection services. Failure to pay for protection can result in death, rape, fire, theft, or other bad things happening. Turf wars are also a very severe problem in India.
Even the tenant farmers or sharecroppers are exploited to the point that part of their share of the crop is paid to the protection providers, in addition to the portion paid to the landlord. The sharecropper farmers are left with only part of their meager earnings. The only assets these people have are their children. Slavery is illegal in India but indentured servitude is legal (there is really no difference). The farmers sell their boys to the rug weavers at about 12 years of age, and they sell their daughters to the brothels at even earlier ages. The newspaper had articles with pictures of these farmers lined up in the mornings with their daughters waiting for the brothels to open to buy their little daughters. The maximum legal length of indentured servitude is 10 years. The going price for 10 years of servitude for a male or female child equated to about $45.00 U S Dollars. The local newspaper articles were protesting the fact that the brothels wanted younger and younger girls for their customers due to their AIDS epidemic. The newspapers were editorializing by proposing legislation to prevent the poor people from leasing (selling) their daughters to the brothels until they have at least had their first menstrual period. There is a constant demand for young girls since the girls are thrown out of the brothels to live on the sidewalks if they get pregnant or if they contract a venereal disease. Their families do not want them back either.
The larger businesses hire or form their own gang (of armed criminals) to provide protection from other gangs trying to control their turf. These gangs are offered additional money from neighboring businesses to provide protection from other gangs. If the businesses become successful, the protection "insurance" rates charged by the protection provider are increased so that the protection gang is actually a partner in (or the owner of) each business. The protection payments are normally established to be a percentage of the federal taxes paid to the federal government with the theory that the protection provider (racketeer) actually provides some beneficial service to the business and that the federal government provides none.
A few years ago when I was in India (September 1997), one province with one large tea plantation had two revolutionary groups (or really protection racketeer gangs) claiming control of the area, and with each gang requiring that the plantations pay separate protection taxes to each group, plus the federal government taxes. The central government dispatched a company sized military unit of 140 soldiers to be garrisoned in the capitol of that province for the benefit of the plantations. After one month in that province, the Indian Parliament passed a law that prohibited payment to any military personnel located in that particular province. Most all of the members of parliament are under the absolute and total control of the various protection racketeering gangs (and/or revolutionary groups), which assured passage of the legislation. The government withdrew the troops within a short period of time, and there was much publicity from the press decrying the rampant corruption of the government.
During October 1998, the Indian Medical Doctors Association (similar to the US AMA) got together and decided not to pay protection. As a result, some of these doctors were being dragged out of their offices into their waiting rooms and murdered in front of their waiting patients. The executioner would explain to the patients that this was an example to other Doctors that decide not to pay protection. The main daily issue in the daily newspapers was about the Indian Medical Association demanding that the parliament pass legislation automatically granting a pistol-carrying permit to every individual who has a medical doctor's license. The medical doctors were threatening to leave the country if parliament did not grant them pistol-carrying permits. I do not know the outcome of this legislation.
The various revolutionary groups in India do not really seem to want to take over the government, but they want to continue to collect protection insurance from their un-armed victims. If the corporations refuse to pay protection, the revolutionary groups or gangs will kidnap a corporation officer and after raping his wife, daughters, and other female members of the selected corporate officer's family, they will hold the corporate officer until the protection is paid by a published deadline. If the protection is not paid within the time frame allowed by the gang, the corporate officer is executed and his body dumped into a prominent public place for all to see as an example to others that might consider not paying their protection charges. If the corporation still refuses to pay, the kidnapping process is repeated, except with a different corporate officer. If the Central Indian government catches any person paying protection, that person is put in jail, not the kidnappers or the protection gangs.
If we were to ban handguns in the U.S., then we could awake into a situation similar to India, Africa, Russia, Bosnia, or New York City during the earlier part of the 20th century. Many New York City residents have since been licensed to carry firearms, and this probably is the main reason or maybe the only reason for the demise of the protection businesses in New York City.
If private ownership of firearms had been allowed in Yugoslavia, the various opposing Police Forces could not have committed so many rapes, murders, beatings, and other atrocities upon the various people that they did not like. Russia has become like India since the demise of the USSR. One of the first actions of each despot is to disarm the population so that they cannot object to his actions. In Africa various groups cut off one arm of their political opponents after asking if they want long sleeve or short sleeve (meaning to cut off the are at the forearm or at the bicep).
An armed population also presents problems. How about increasing the penalties for misuse of firearms to provide enough deterrent to prevent the misuse of firearms. The penalty for the use a gun during the commission of a crime should be an automatic death penalty. This might encourage this type of activity to stop? How about a mandatory death penalty for conviction of armed robbery, and a mandatory death penalty for conviction of murder with a firearm? We should also pass laws prohibiting mental insanity to be considered when a gun was utilized in the commission of a crime. How about a painful death sentence by hanging and/or horse drawing the condemned into quarters at a public place (such as the Astrodome with the state selling admission tickets), in lieu of a painless, semi-private death by injection behind closed doors? Public burning at the stake could be imposed upon those convicted of particularly heinous murders. The judge or the jury could decide upon how much pain would be inflicted as punishment with the death process. School children should be required to attend, and this would provide a deterrent to the child committing murder later in life.
How about at least changing our prisons to places of punishment with corporal punishment meted out at the will of the prison guards, in lieu of convicted prisoners watching TV and throwing fecal matter and urine at the guards. U. S. Constitutional amendments are needed (required) to repeal all of the recent federal court rulings that prevent punishment of convicts.
I did not worry too much about crime in the past, mainly because the criminals performed armed robbery at the "STOP & ROB" type convenience stores where I seldom frequent. The criminals have since grown in such numbers that there is not a sufficient number of "STOP & ROB" type convenience stores to serve their needs. The criminals in Houston have started to look for additional easy targets, such as the general public. The criminal element has discovered that most businessmen and elderly women in affluent neighborhoods carry jewelry, Rolex Watches, valuables, money, and are normally un-armed. The criminal element can follow these people home or to his business, beat up or shoot the individual as they get out of their auto, and take the billfold and jewelry with almost no resistance. The smart criminal will then shoot the victim, check to see if the victim is still alive, and if he or she is alive after being shot, place the gun in the victim's ear and fire a bullet into the victim's brain. The criminal knows that there is less probability of getting caught when he kills the victim, and the punishment is not very severe, unless he gets the death penalty. The criminal knows that he will probably not be convicted depending upon the selection of the jury. He knows that if he is caught and convicted of cold-blooded murder, he will be released on parole after a very few years of incarceration.
Car jacking and kick burglary (Actions that the papers call kick burglary is actually armed robbery) presents another growing area of opportunity for resourceful criminals. The average citizen is not wealthy enough to employ an armed guard 24 hours per day to protect him from the criminal elements (a la Rosie O'Donnell). The citizen deserves the right to be well armed with a pistol when the criminals come to harm him and his family.
Enough deterrent to prohibit widespread murderous criminal behavior could be possible if we could return to the criminal justice system of the 1950's (before the liberal judges were appointed and before the ACLU increased their activity in the defense of criminals), when murderer's were executed within months after conviction, convictions were easy to obtain, and the primary (only) issue that the criminal court addressed was the innocence or guilt of the accused. There were probably some innocent people executed for murder every year during the 1950's, but this is/was only a small percent of the innocent people murdered by criminals each year today in this country. The courts did not recognize the outrageous interpretations of the constitution that are espoused by the ACLU until the middle of this century.
One innocent person executed by the state is one too many, but one innocent person executed by some criminal is also one too many. At least the person executed by the state got some form of a trial and justice that the innocent citizen executed by the criminal did not get.
Banning the ACLU might be effective to reduce crime. How about a U S Constitutional amendment reversing all of the Supreme Court decisions in criminal matters during the past 55 years. How about monitoring the ACLU and passing a new U. S. Constitutional Amendment to close each of their proposed loopholes to release the murderers from prison to kill again as soon as each loophole is dreamed up by the ACLU.
Elimination of the people's right to protect themselves would result in total corruption similar to that experienced in many other countries that have disarmed their populations. I was 62 years old when I decided to join the NRA. The NRA group is the only organized opposition to the advocacy of disarming the U. S. population. I do not want this country to become criminally corrupt similar to India, Mexico, Russia, Yugoslavia, Central America, Africa, China or New York City before Gun Licensing. Without an armed population we could end up with a criminal dominated society. We must forever protect the right of individual citizens to keep and bear arms. This is the must important right of all.
In 1996, Britain banned handguns; since then, gun crimes have risen by 40%. Australia also passed severe gun restrictions in 1996 and made it a crime to use a gun defensively. In the subsequent four years, armed robberies rose 51%, unarmed robberies rose by 37%, assaults rose by 24% and kidnappings increased by 43%. The problem with these harsh gun laws, experts say, is that they take guns away from law-abiding citizens, while would-be criminals ignore them, leaving potential victims defenseless. The U.S. has shown that making guns more available is actually a better formula for law and order.
In the U.S., 33 states have right-to-carry laws. In those states, deaths and injuries from multiple-victim public shootings fell on average by 78%. It is estimated that 107 crimes per day are avoided by citizens using firearms to defend themselves and their families.
Sincerely Yours,
Gerald R. Spencer
3759 Drake
Houston, Texas 77005
1-800-383-9685 or
713-621-2482
Posted by: Gerald Spencer | Feb 26, 2008 5:16:49 PM
