What's Sex Slavery Got To Do With It?

[Plaid Adder]

Why did Bush end a speech that was supposed to be about begging for help in Iraq with a long digression about the international sex trade, I hear you cry. Well, credit where it's due: there IS a connection. It's just not an intuitively obvious one.

International slavery, sexual and otherwise, is made possible by the creation of enormous disparities between the standard of life in some parts of the world and the standard enjoyed in the first world--which means that a) a lot of people all over the world are so poor and desperate that they will do anything to survive and b) a lot of those same people are desperate to get the hell otu of their countries and into the industrialized world. That means that c) these people are easy prey for traffickers. And what CREATES these enormous disparities that make international slavery possible? How about WAR and INTENTIONAL UNDERDEVELOPMENT? How about bombing a country flat and then 'rebuilding' it in such a way as to render it economically and militarily dependent on the first world FOREVER?

George W. Bush, the international slave trade's most effective advocate since 1785.

So you see, Virginia, there IS a connection between international sex slavery and the current mess in Iraq...it's just not the one Bush would like us to be making.

:argh:

The Plaid Adder

[Don_G]

1. I Think The Explanation Is Simpler

Didn't National Geographic have a special on the human trade recently and wasn't the speech geared for domestic consumption?

For the next 14 months, Dimbo can "claim" that he went to the UN to resolve (get his a** out of the sling) on the Iraq issue but nobody would listen.

Just another Rovian ploy geared to the GOP faithful.

[Plaid Adder]

Oh, I do not for a moment think that GWB understands

the connection. He has never been one to groove on understanding the consequences of his actions.

NEvertheless, the connection is there, and it makes the whole thing so ironic it would be funny if it also didn't make you want to barf up your entire set of entrails.

@#$!,

The Plaid Adder

[izzie]

19. Maybe it was in the Bible reading of the day?

I understand he has someone that sets that thing up for him to read.

[izzie]

Not the Bible is a thing but that the lesson of the day thing,

OK?

[AP]

15. NG is part of the propaganda machine. If they did a story about this

it was to lay the groundwork for the Republicans to take up this issue.

My favorite shamless NG moment from the last few years was when, in 2001, they published that issue of the most compelling NG photos. They spent a week going around the TV shows talking about that picture of the Afghani woman. Four weeks later they PRETENDED that they just found the woman, and spent another week promoting that event.

There is no way in hell that those two events weren't organized ahead of time. I guarantee you they didn't go out with the publicity for the photo issue without first lining up the follow-up publicity of havning "just found" her.

[elfin]

23. Agree - "Sex Sells"

is why they put that in. And it sells to women voters in "04.

[PurityOfEssence]

2. It's this week's "cute little kittens" initiative

Don't you just love anyone who'd bring something like this up? That kind of person is just....oooh.

[veganwitch]

3. if bush really cared...

he would have asscrack going after international sex traffickers instead of tommy chong.

also interesting note, women (as they constitute the largest number of trafficked people) who want to apply for a T-visa (the visa created for victims of trafficking to stay in the country) have to pay 400 dollars to do so. many trafficking victims are debt slaves who have to "work" off their travelling fees (it can take years to "pay off" the 5000, 6000 dollars they are "charged" for getting them to the demand countries). talk about adding insult to injury.

[Plaid Adder]

4. Holy cats.

Do you have a handy link for this information? I feel a journal entry coming on.

Thanks,

The Plaid Adder

[veganwitch]

10. www.polarisproject.com

i volunteered there for a time. they started a database on sex trafficking issues--articles laws etc.

there was an anti trafficking act passed in 2000. if you check the INS (or what ever it is called now) do a site search for T-visa.

[Plaid Adder]

12. I'm getting a 404 not found

Have they gone out of business?

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[veganwitch]

14. .org

my bad. theyre non-profit.

[noonwitch]

5. Well, his brother with the Thai prostitute connection can tell him

all about the trade, most likely. Isn't Thailand the country with the largest problem with sex slavery?

[veganwitch]

13. the whole south asian rim...

has serious problems with the sex industry--especially children.

[WilliamPitt]

6. Brilliant

:)

[Plaid Adder]

9. Inspired by your rant, dude

I just didn't want it buried in the long thread full of "Amen, brother"s.

It just PISSES ME OFF to see this guy get up there and do his cowboy shtick about how we're going to take on all the big bad evil when we are caressing, stroking, and feeding nutritious meals to that very same big bad evil.

:argh:

The Plaid Adder

[AP]

7. You all need to read up on American history 100 years ago to

understand what this is all about. There was a liberal vs conservative debate about "white slavery" and prostitution then. The liberals tried to point out that it was the product of a society which impoverished the working class so that rich people could get richer. Conservatives used it to freak people out about immigrants, and the threat to American womanhood, and pretended that it was a problem with modernization and the circulation of people. If society would stop moving forward, we could stop worrying about the sex trade.

If Rove and the RW are trying to undo everything FDR achieved, and trying to get America back to what it would have been if McKinley hadn't been shot and followed by TR, then stoking the flames of this old RW mantra should have been expected.

(Incidentally Emma Goldman and Jane Addams both wrote about this issue from the liberal perspective and they criticized the popular misrepresentation of this issue by the media).

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

26. AP, do you know any good books about McKinley?

You're one of several people who has brought up McKinley in relation to the Bush/Rove/RW playbook & I must admit to total ignorance of his presidency.

Thanks if - hopefully - you read this & know of anything!

[sistersofmercy]

8. Perhaps, he can bring the ppl's attention to the children who were

formerly residing in an orphanage in Baghdad (which the coalition called a children's jail) are now prostituting themselves for food etc.
What a piece of stinking poo he is, f***ing liar!

[Brotherjohn]

11. It's his way of saying: "See! I'm good! Gooood!!" Like that Seinfeld..

... episode.

The shallow thinking of the Bush cartel believes that if he throws in a few words about slavery (and AIDS, I believe, was also discussed), that people will think "How can what he's saying be bad? He's speaking out AGAINST SLAVERY! If you didn't like his speech, you must be FOR SLAVERY!!" I'm surprised he didn't pull a kitten out of his pocket.

I think Rove has exhausted his bag of tricks. It's over.

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

21. Also, slavery of Christians in the Sudan is the human rights issue that is

most important to the Fundies. He was aiming it at his base.

[izzie]

16. Ashcroft group?

Did seem like a tack on.

[Beetwasher]

17. It's also a diversionary tactic

and a bait and switch. It's something for pundits to point to and say "see, isn't he such a good and caring man, too bad the UN is such a bunch of scum that they don't care about the issue of sex slaves". When critics start slamming his speech they will charge them with being supporters or sex slave traffickers. When the UN doesn't support the US's resolution, they will be deemed an irrelevant organization that is obviously unconcerned with an issue as repugnant as sexual slavery. See how it works? You link your repudiation of the most repugnant issue imaginable with you're twisted agenda and get to slam detractors as supporters of the repugnancy...Make sense?

[SeattleRob]

18. true...

It's the same thing with the repukes using "Gay Marriage" and civil unions as a campaign issue.. They need to divert attention away from their misdeeds.

[smallprint]

20. maybe he is using this as leverage:

March 10, 2003
UN Complicit in Balkans Sex Trade

"A senior United Nations official is demanding that her colleagues involved in the sex trade in Bosnia should be stripped of their immunity and prosecuted," reported the February 9th issue of The Scotsman. "Madeleine Rees, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Bosnia, has broken ranks to demand that UN officials, international peacekeepers and police who are involved in sex crimes be brought to justice in their home countries."

Prior to the mid-1990s, the Balkan sex trade was practically nonexistent. This changed abruptly when the UN took over administrating Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995. Since then, sex slavery - abduction of girls as young as 12 from eastern Europe to serve as prostitutes in brothels - has become a major industry in Bosnia and Kosovo (also under UN administration). UN officials, both civilian and military, are deeply involved in this despicable commerce.

Kathryn Bolkovac, a former UN police officer, was fired from her post in Bosnia for exposing the involvement of UN and DynCorp officials in the Balkans sex trade. (DynCorp is a U.S.-based military contractor.) "Bolkovac had revealed UN peacekeepers went to nightclubs where young girls were forced to dance naked and have sex with customers, and that UN personnel and international aid workers were linked to prostitution rings in the Balkans," observed The Scotsman. "At the time, Rees described it as 'the biggest cover-up I have ever seen,' adding that she believed thirty percent of those visiting Bosnia's brothels were UN personnel, peacekeepers or aid workers."

more: http://news1.beograd.com/english/articles_and_opinion/m/030310_UN_Complicit.html

[trof]

22. Well, see...it's just a GOOD thing to be against.

Like necrophilia, and infanticide, and genocide, and ring-around-the-collar, and...um...stuff like that.

Ya can just stand right up there in front of God and the U.N. and just EVERYBODY and throw back yer shoulders and stick yer chest waaay out and jut yer chin and do that John Wayne kinda squinty thang and look reely reely SERIOUS and say "WE ARE AGIN SEX SLAVERY!"

Boy, NOBODY can argue with THAT! Let's see them ol lefty guys on the nitely news try and spin THAT one. Yeah. Just try.
:eyes:

[On the Road]

24. In One of Those Old Doonesbury Cartoons,

Uncle Duke is invited to give a college lecture. He turns up late and stoned out of his mind. As the audience starts to restless and irritable, he says: "Wait -- I forgot to tell you about mother's tumor."

That's the first thing that came to mind.

[Andy_Stephenson]

25. here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=384851&mesg_id=384851