21st century slaves
I was reading an article in the National Geographic the other night and it was shocking stuff: Slavery, contrary to popular opinion, has not yet been abolished. In fact, there are 27 million slaves worldwide and there are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Sobering stuff. Makes you think about the things you buy and the labels they carry. Especially when Italian leather handbags could have been made by Chinese immigrant children in Italy, or fireworks make by children in China, or a silk scarf made by a child in India who is gradually been poisoned by the dyes whilst working on a loom 14 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I guess I knew that there was child slavery but it’s the sheer extent of it that’s so overwhelming. Plus child slavery isn’t the only issue, apparently debt slavery is the most common form of servitude today, and also human trafficking is big business. Nearly 20,000 people are trafficked in the USA every year. There are 116 countries where more than a hundred human beings are known to have been trafficked last year (including the UK) but only 25 countries actively prosecute trafficking in human beings as a serious crime. Moreover, there’s a clear link between slavery and government corruption.

The basic problem is poverty – “vulnerable people are lured into debt slavery in the expectation of a better life. There are so many of them because there are so many desperate people in the world.” (Anti-slavery International) Here’s another scary statistic: 3 billion people – nearly half the world’s population – struggle to live on less than 2 dollars a day. That’s nuts.

Strange Pets
Was watching TV the other night, saw a programme called “Strange Pets” & actually I think it should have been called “Strange people”! It was pretty rare. I’m not dissing pet owners (I’m not a pet owner so I don’t have the same level of empathy I know) but some of these people just took it too far. It always bugs me when I hear statistics about animal charities getting far more funds than children’s charities. What is wrong? It seems like people try to deal with their pain in life with loving animals, but sometimes I think they lost a grip on reality in the process. The programme was all the more ridiculous having just read the article on slavery.