Man, simply WTF? Its crap like this that makes me think the death penalty is a good thing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080627/ap_on_re_us/forced_labor

Bill

Well the wife got 11 years!  That's not bad.  Nice to see some justice served, certainly.

Quote from: walkerp;220300Well the wife got 11 years!  That's not bad.  Nice to see some justice served, certainly.

And each of the women will get 1.1 mil but damn. The husband though, gets 3 1/3 years ands 12,500 fine. The fine just seems, I don't now, kind of trivial compared to the crime.

Bill

Quote from: HinterWelt;220298Man, simply WTF? Its crap like this that makes me think the death penalty is a good thing.

From what I understand, that sort of thing is not all that uncommon in certain wealthy parts of the Middle East.  There is also plenty of sex-based slavery going on in the US and Europe.  Most of those women will never see a penny.  Look closely and there is still a lot of nasty in the world.

I just saw something similar to this on Law and Order SVU last night!

I wonder if the guy was schtupping the maids on the side as well, which is why the wife was so particularily cruel, or if not actually doing it, maybe attracted to one of them.

The UN and Amnesty tell us that while the percentage of the world population enslaved is the lowest in human history, the absolute number of people enslaved is the highest ever.

Slavery takes many forms. Commonly these days the slavers don't call their victims "slaves", it's just, "well, I smuggled her into this country, that cost me a lot, I lent her the money, now I pay her wages, hey look at that once I subtract the cost of her accommodation and interest on her debt to me, she has nothing left, oh well I guess she works for me forever, what a shame. But she's in this country now, she should be grateful to me."

Indentured labour is the most common form of slavery in the modern day, from Mexican illegals picking fruit in Arizona to Russian prostitutes in London (or Vietnamese in Melbourne) to domestics in Mali to former independent farmers now labourers on a landlord's farm in India or Bangladesh.

I read an article a few months back by a reporter who decided to find out how easy it was to buy someone.

He flew to Romania, and had bought a twelve year old girl with Down's Syndrome for about $800.   The whole process took less than 48 hours, no working knowledge of crime syndicates.  Just a willingness to ask cabbies if they knew where to find such things.

That is some seriously fucked up and scary shit.  Makes me wish guys like the Punisher were real.

Yeah...eeewwww.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;220333The UN and Amnesty tell us that while the percentage of the world population enslaved is the lowest in human history, the absolute number of people enslaved is the highest ever.

Slavery takes many forms. Commonly these days the slavers don't call their victims "slaves", it's just, "well, I smuggled her into this country, that cost me a lot, I lent her the money, now I pay her wages, hey look at that once I subtract the cost of her accommodation and interest on her debt to me, she has nothing left, oh well I guess she works for me forever, what a shame. But she's in this country now, she should be grateful to me."

Indentured labour is the most common form of slavery in the modern day, from Mexican illegals picking fruit in Arizona to Russian prostitutes in London (or Vietnamese in Melbourne) to domestics in Mali to former independent farmers now labourers on a landlord's farm in India or Bangladesh.

While not quite slaves, I am seeing the problem here in downtown Cedar Rapids.  After the floods finally died down, independent contracting firms swarm in to do the cleanup.  And several of them use a lot of probably-not-legal immigrants - who they make sign contracts in English for low pay, and then further reduce the pay to mere pennies a day by taking out the "costs" of lodging, transportation, and meals.

Worse, no one in law enforcement or government is doing anything about it because they want the restoration work to get done as fast and cheap as possible.

A group of local ministers tried to talk to some of the workers, but their handlers get quite upset and threatening if you approach any of them.  After the newspapers and the churches started making noise, all the non-white guys suddenly stopped working outdoors where anyone could see/talk to them.

I have to wonder if the interior workers have any level of protective equipment from all the mold and fumes.  The health effects of long-term exposure could be very bad.

And to think that these workers have it much better off than all the poor people in actual indentured servant or slave positions.

That's the free market, jgants. Just, you know, without that pesky "democracy" thing to mess it up. It's a brave new world!

Quote from: jgants;221148Worse, no one in law enforcement or government is doing anything about it because they want the restoration work to get done as fast and cheap as possible.

Have you spoken to anyone in law enforcement or government to verify this and/or to report it? If they've just shut you down, have you spoken to the press?

Note I'm not saying you should - I wouldn't; I don't really care - but you seem to care, so I'm wondering if you've done something about it.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;221166That's the free market, jgants. Just, you know, without that pesky "democracy" thing to mess it up. It's a brave new world!

I don't know that democracy has much to do with it but it is buyer beware. I mean, if you sign up with a group to work as a slave, I don't know that I am all that upset. You are a big boy, you can make your own decisions. Now, if the deal changes, as with the original story, where you get where you are going to work and they take your passport, start beating you until your moral improves and lock you away...well, that is just one step away from raiding the village and taking the peasants as slaves.

I guess I am a bit of a hardass here. I am sure someone will do a bait and switch on me but indentured servitude, voluntary by a consenting adult, is the fault of the signee. If you volunteer for the suicide mission and die, hey, you volunteered. If the agreement is above board and enforced, yeah, I don't think the guy indenturing people is noble peace prize material, but as long as he is not forcing anyone, hey, it is their choice. I do not subscribe to "protect the ignorant from themselves". But then, I am probably some sort of heartless conservative now.

Bill

QuoteA group of local ministers tried to talk to some of the workers, but their handlers get quite upset and threatening if you approach any of them. After the newspapers and the churches started making noise, all the non-white guys suddenly stopped working outdoors where anyone could see/talk to them.

On a lot of farms these days they've just flat out resorted to having them live entirely on site.  Not allowed to leave.  Not allowed any contact with the outside world.  Kept as slaves in shacks, often under threat of violence.  

It's fucking sick, it is.  And it goes on in part because the nature of the immigration situation.  It's the real reason behind much of the anti-immigration push, besides of course the big fat steamy racism.  It's not because they actually want to keep them out.  It's because they want to keep all those people in non-person status, terrified of being shipped back, because it's that fear they can exploit and use to get away with shite like what you describe.  

They want to keep exploiting the cheap labor, as long as possible, because this whole fucking country is built on the backs of glorified slave labor like that.  People whine about them "stealing our jobs", but who the fuck is going to go out and roof your house or pick lettuce for well below minimum wage?  If all these people suddenly become legal, become citizens, then they can suddenly start demanding better wages, better treatment, better working conditions.  

If there's any one thing I can still muster some respect for in our current President, it was his attempt to actually grant real legal status to these people, to finally open the doors like they were so long ago now, when my families came across the borders.  Of course, the bill was defeated, and he was torn apart by his own party for even daring threaten the new American slavery.  I wonder at times whether it's going to take as much, if not more, to tear apart this one as it did the last time.  

I do know one thing.  It, more than anything else in the whole country, makes me disgusted by my very citizenship.

Quote from: HinterWelt;221169I don't know that democracy has much to do with it but it is buyer beware.

Democracy has everything to do with it. Why do you think the Klan tried to stop blacks from voting after the Civil War? People who are active participants in the democratic process are harder to push around, and they tend to do vicious nasty things like demand a fair day's wage and not let you rape them.

Quote from: HinterWeltI mean, if you sign up with a group to work as a slave, I don't know that I am all that upset. You are a big boy, you can make your own decisions.

By which reasoning, every woman who stays with an abusive husband had it comin'. This lack of empathy may be common, but I don't share it.

People make choices in their lives without a full understanding of the consequences of those choices, and then find their later choices limited by their earlier choices. For example, once someone makes the choice to leave the slums, sneak across the border and become an illegal immigrant, their choices about other things become more restricted.

After all, the two women in the story you posted with such disgust could have walked out the door at almost any time. Of course, they didn't know where to go, and feared detention without charge or trial and deportation, but that was their choice, right?

jgants' little story differs from the one you posted only in degree.

Quote from: HinterWeltI guess I am a bit of a hardass here. I am sure someone will do a bait and switch on me but indentured servitude, voluntary by a consenting adult, is the fault of the signee.

Yes and no. It's a matter of degree.

A common form of indentured labour is in India or Africa, let's imagine that for a moment. You have a hectare of land, half of it goes to pasture for the cow which gives you and your family a gallon or two of milk a day, another three-eighths goes to rice or wheat or maize or sorghum or something, and the remaining eighth is a little vegie garden, with maybe a goat or some chickens. You have a wife and a few kids, they work on the farm, too.

In good years when the weather is right you do pretty well, you feed your family and have some surplus to sell. One year you buy a diesel pump for the well to irrigate your fields, now one of your kids can get off the treadle pump and go to school, maybe end up a clerk in Bombay or Lagos and send money back home, that'd be nice.

In bad years the land floods and everything is swept away. So you go to this guy in the village, he's pretty well-off, he has six hectares and three families working his land for him. You ask him for a loan, just enough to feed your family and you for a season while you rebuild. He generously allows you it, though with heavy interest. It's your choice, this loan. Your alternative is... um... living in the slums of the capital. But it's your choice. You figure there can't be two bad years in a row, next year will be good, you'll pay him back and that's that.

Next year is bad, there's a drought, you can barely feed your family, forget about the interest on the loan, let alone the principal. You take your kid out of school to work the land but it's still not good enough. Along comes the wealthy guy. He feels for you, really he does. He says he will take your land, but because he is so nice allow you to live on it rent-free and work it as before, but any surplus you generate goes to paying off your loan. Or you can just walk away to those slums, but really he likes you and wishes you'd stay. Hey, it's your choice.

You go to the local authorities but it turns out they don't care much. Some have been paid not to care, others once cared but after taking a few of theses cases to court and seeing all the indentured labourers line up as witnesses on behalf of their lord and master, they gave up. So you're back on what was once your land wondering what to do. It's your choice.

Congratulations, you are now an indentured labourer. A slave.

Alternatively, your land never suffered flood or drought, but a large country bordering yours made a free trade deal, and then flooded your country with cheap products, and you couldn't sell your crops for more than the cost of production. Same deal, you borrowed money then lost your land. So you went off to live in the slums, and if you were "lucky" got a job in the new free trade zone towns making shoes for ten cents a piece. You thought it was a bit rough that after eight hours work nobody was allowed to go to the toilet, so you got half the factory together and went to the boss demanding toilet breaks. He sacked you all, and replaced you within a day. But hey, it was your choice.

Back in the slums, you were watching tv, and saw pictures of the wonderful life in that country bordering yours, the one whose cheap products had fucked you. Why not go there? Surely they owed you something? So you scraped together some cash for some dodgy bastard to sneak you across the border late one night, you stayed with some cousins along the road, and now there's this city that's flooded and needs rebuilding, well you can do that. They get you to sign a contract, you don't understand the words very well but you know you'll be paid, at the end of the first week you get your pay packet, it's a lot thinner than you expected. So you go to the foreman and ask why, and he explains all the deductions you signed for. And he says, "if you don't like it, fuck off back to the slums." Hey, your choice, right?

If you are part of the democratic process in the country you're in, that shit just does not happen to you.

So I'm afraid it's not as simple as you paint it. People's choices are shaped by their circumstances and previous choices.

As JA points out, don't scorn their stupidity or servitude too much, it's a significant part of the basis of your prosperity. What George Orwell wrote of coal miners applies as much today to illegal immigrant workers in the US, or indentured labourers getting rubber or fruit for Australia.
   In a way it is even humiliating to watch coal-miners working. It raises in you a momentary doubt about your own status as an 'intellectual' and a superior person generally. For it is brought home to you, at least while you are watching, that it is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can remain superior. You and I and the editor of the Times Lit. Supp., and the poets and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Comrade X, author of Marxism for Infants--all of us really owe the comparative decency of our lives to poor drudges underground, blackened to the eyes, with their throats full of coal dust, driving their shovels forward with arms and belly muscles of steel.