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The AP beats this one around pretty good without ever really getting to the point.
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Shyima was 10 when a wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in their California home. She awoke before dawn and often worked past midnight to iron their clothes, mop the marble floors and dust the family's crystal. She earned $45 a month working up to 20 hours a day. She had no breaks during the day and no days off.
The trafficking of children for domestic labor in the U.S. is an extension of an illegal but common practice in Africa. Families in remote villages send their daughters to work in cities for extra money and the opportunity to escape a dead-end life. Some girls work for free on the understanding that they will at least be better fed in the home of their employer.
The custom has led to the spread of trafficking, as well-to-do Africans accustomed to employing children immigrate to the U.S. Around one-third of the estimated 10,000 forced laborers in the United States are servants trapped behind the curtains of suburban homes, according to a study by the National Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley and Free the Slaves, a nonprofit group. No one can say how many are children, especially since their work can so easily be masked as chores.
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I notice that they didn't interview anyone from the U.S., or the United Nations, who has made a living decrying the plight of families of ex-slaves right here in the U.S. Odd that.
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Schteveo
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28 comments:
You do realize that this is due to the unrestrained capitalism and gulf between rich and poor that you support, right?
The alternative is SOCIALISM!
...yeah, your right HLT. (or whomever)
My unrestrained purchases of Big Macs, HDTVs and Wranglers, FORCED a rich Egyptian to enslave a 10 year old.
I don't know about anyone else, but this gag has run it's course for me. The rest of you can play the silly game, but this tears it for me. Belittling slavery crosses a line I can't abide.
So sensitive.
We'd still have slavery if not for liberal thinkers.
We'd still have slavery if not for liberal thinkers.
Such as Honest Abe, the very first Republican president?
Who was also a liberal thinker. He certainly wasn't a status quo seeking conservative.
In a way, we're all liberals. The very ideas we trumpet the most- equality, freedom and opportunity- are very liberal when looked at from historical and cultural perspectives.
We just let the rest come along for the ride.
Annie .. Abe was just like a liberal .. he was racist, power crazy, and felt the central government was more important that anytyhing else
And also kind of dumb looking, so he must have been a liberal.
HLF sucks dead monkey puds
Lincoln was also wrong in preserving the nation. He should have let the south leave when he had the chance.
The downside is that we'd be spending most of our foreign aid helping them. Even now it's like a third world country down there.
Who was also a liberal thinker. He certainly wasn't a status quo seeking conservative.
Actually, according to your own definition in a long-ago and far-away discussion thread, my darling...Republican = conservative.
you are right Steve-0
HLF comments do not warrant reading or responding to...
so
HLF Filter: ON
All conservatives are republicans but not all republicans are conservative.
It will be difficult to argue that ending slavery was nything but a liberal idea.
The basic premise of conservatism is preservation of the status quo. They fight against any change, particularly social change. The fact that you get to vote and weren't relegated to being a secretary, teacher or nurse is due to liberals. Conservatives fought equality for women as they have for all groups seeking equality.
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Blue: Sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "I can't hear you!" will not change the fact that your ideas are whack.
Um, I am a conservative and I am not a republican.
From a non-Republican Conservative, i say Blue has the smartest response on the page. Let this brain-dead, liberal nitwit go back to the Dailykos where it belongs. (i wonder if the "kos" stands for kosher)
kosher? In a pig's eye!
"The alternative is SOCIALISM!"
That is where EVERYONE who in not in the elite party center is a slave to the state.
Were you aware that Breznev had the largest private car collection in the world?
obama's barber of the past 15 years is now flown in to do his hair. I wonder who is paying for that.
Conservative, in Annie's lexicon of political terms is defined as one who desires sound monetary and fiscal policy; who wishes to see the government end the idiotic practice of spending against revenue that has not yet been collected; who wishes to see the feederal government forced by constitutional amendment to live within its means; who wishes to see the folly of our fiat money replaced by a return to the gold standard.
Gay marriage, abortion and other social issues are either individual state matters or none of the government's business.
I'm going to start a political party with those objectives as our mission statement. I shall call it Anniearchy.
Under Anniearchy, individual liberty shall in all cases be superior to the needs of the state. That piece of legislative detritus, the USAPA shall be put out of its misery. The USAPA is the greatest affront to personal liberty since the trial of John Peter Zenger for seditious libel against the crown. The greatest affront to free speech in my considerable lifetime, the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act will be repealed and its sponsors shot.
"Gay marriage, abortion and other social issues are either individual state matters or none of the government's business."
Homos will NEVER go along with that. They want forced respect. *snicker*
liberals are fools
Hey, anybody seen Poots?
...flown in to do his hair.
What's to do? Get some dog clippers and have at it. Shoot, I can't stand him but I'd cut his hair for a free trip to Hawaya.
"The alternative is SOCIALISM!"
Which is just another name for slavery, only it is slavery for everyone.
It's worked so great in all the other places it's been tried. Cuba, for one, is simply a goddamned paradise.
The way that socialism fixes societal inequalities is not by fixing the injustice, it is by making everyone equally effected by that injustice. It doesn't fix slavery, it makes everyone a slave. It doesn't fix poverty, it just makes everyone impoverished. No more inequality, there, huh?
Remember Sir Winston Churchill's quote about capitalism vs socialism.
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the uneuql sharing of blessings. The inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of misery".
You cannot fix a problem of slavery for some by enslaving all, then calling slavery the norm. You fix it by reaching out to others to quash ignorance like this, and punishing it when it happens.
if it weren't for a healthy dose of socialism injected into this country decades ago, you'd still be shitting outdoors.
I have long said that we are ripe for a revolution in the US; only I assumed that it would be the people who were fed up with the intrusions of government into their lives that would revolt. Now, it doth appear that what the majority of people in this country want is a government that will fulfill their every need from cradle to grave.
All that is required for a revolution is enough people who believe they have more to gain by changing the status quo than they have to gain by preserving it. A revolution also requires a charismatic leader such as Lenin or Hitler who can play upon and heighten the the fears of the citizens and convince enough of them that he, and only he is their ticket out of the mess in which they currently find themselves.
What is that number? Who knows? I know that it is a finite number, and probably a lot smaller than we would like to believe. For more information on this "critical mass number," type "100th monkey theory"[beloved of most new-thought religions like Religious Science] into your browser and see what is returned. Who is that charismatic leader? Again, who knows? But I know that such a person exists who can motivate desperate people to take desperate actions.
Are we there yet?
We aren't looking for a government ot give us handouts, we're looking to a government that will enforce order and fairness, something the conservative and conservative-leaning governments of the past 30 years have neglected to do. The republicans have turned us into a South American-style culture where the dishonest are revered for "getting away with it" as long as they got rich. The republican credo is "get all that you can, as much as you can, and don't give a second thought to how you do it."
We're seeing the culmination of that in the theft of the treasury by the wealthy during these last days. It's like the vanquished monarchy taking everything not nailed down as they flee the castle.
Conservatism has visited profound ugliness and ignorance on this country. Seeing it destroyed and split into smaller countries is the answer and something I have been hoping for for years.
"if it weren't for a healthy dose of socialism injected into this country decades ago, you'd still be shitting outdoors."
Nice...
Public works does not socialism make. Eisenhower created the interstate highway system. I have no problem with municipal sewers and water systems, and that is not socialism. We must be working with different definitions of the word.
As far as this revolt or breakup that has been mentioned, I guess I am skeptical. Americans are not quitters, they are simply easily swayed. I don't believe that any of them will lightly or willingly give up on the idea of a UNITED states of America. i think that the history of this country proves that our popular passions swing back and forth like a pendulum. We swing away from whatever political party has most recently screwed things up, and towards the other party. The Bush Administration has had few successes, and far more failures, and as a result, we find ourselves currently swinging away from them and towards the left. Once the left is fully in power, we will begin the process of swaying back, by, in my opinion, electing a more conservative congress while re-electing Barack Obama (it is so hard to unseat an incumbent).
It is no mystery to me why the most prosperous years in our country are the same years that the balance of power is split between an executive branch of one persuasion and a legislative branch of another. You might all remember my posting on this from a while back, in fact.
This balance of power ensures that nothing radical happens, and that the popular passions of one branch are checked by the other, just as our founding fathers intended.
I would actually be happy to see an Obama administration, IF, and that is a big IF, a conservative legislature had been elected in turn.
You will see that the years that the republicans had full control with no balance were bad years (they thought that they had a mandate, and spending went out of bloody control!), and likewise for the years that the dems had full control (HLF, don't even start with the tired old "the repubs had control longer" please, weve all heard it, we all got it.). If we insist on continuing down this destructive path of a two-party system, then we need to make sure that both parties are always represented a the same time, because,no matter what, as soon as any one of them has complete power, they will totally abandon their base, and do whatever they like, whenver they like, and that is not good. Bush didn't veto a single spending bill until his second term. That sound good to any of you?
I'm sorry, HLF...
I simply do not feel like slinging insulting vitriol with you this evening. Another time, perhaps.
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