London Times

Slavery, Still - Syracuse Post Standard Editorial

Slavery, Still: Congress should strengthen human trafficking law
Posted by Post-Standard Editorial Board
November 18, 2008 5:02AM
Categories: Editorial


AP, 2005 FLORENCIA MOLINA, a victim of human trafficking, shown in 2005. Molina became virtually enslaved at a dressmaking shop near Los Angeles where she worked up to 17 hours a day, seven days a week.

The world is finally waking up to the plague of human trafficking. Still, far too little is being done to protect the millions of victims of the modern-day slave trade.

The United Nations reckons that at least 12.3 million people are victims of forced labor or sexual exploitation worldwide. Other estimates put the figure closer to 27 million.

The traffickers prey on the most vulnerable targets. Most victims are children and young women. Many are lured into traffickers' clutches by false promises of a better life through marriage or employment. Others are simply abducted.

The slave-holders cow their victims into submission with brutality and psychological abuse. That results in a high incidence of health problems, mental illness and addiction among victims.

Many nations have laws that criminalize human trafficking for the purposes of prostitution or pornography, but do not offer harsh penalties (if they have penalties at all) for trafficking for forced labor. And far too many governments are willing to turn a blind eye to illegal activities within their borders.

The problem extends far beyond impoverished countries. More than half of all U.S. law enforcement agencies serving large jurisdictions have investigated human trafficking cases. The Department of Justice estimates that between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked annually into this country for forced labor or sexual exploitation.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 was the first comprehensive federal law to protect victims of trafficking and prosecute offenders. It stiffened penalties and provided resources to police and service agencies that help victims.

In addition to the federal law, at least 33 states, including New York, have passed legislation criminalizing human trafficking. New York, however, is one of only a handful of states to establish services and assistance for victims.

Reauthorization legislation now in Congress would strengthen the federal law by, among other things, giving special protections to aliens who might testify against traffickers. It makes the federal government responsible for ensuring that unaccompanied alien children in the United States are safely repatriated back to their own countries.

And it prohibits aid to any government that has or supports armed forces that recruit and use child soldiers. It is estimated that more than 250,000 children are currently members of armed forces or militias around the world.

Congress should pass the reauthorization and the president should sign it right away.

Slavery is an obscene, barbarous practice that should not be tolerated anywhere on the planet. Those who traffic in people need to be punished severely. And their innocent victims deserve the help and sympathy of all of us.

Blame the Banks by Sebastian Mallaby

Summary: Mallaby's update to his January/February 2007 essay ''Hands Off Hedge Funds.''

Sebastian Mallaby directs the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is writing a history of hedge funds.

The chaos in financial markets has embarrassed many on Wall Street, and hedge funds have come in for their share of criticism. Gleeful headlines trumpet bad results and outright blowups in various corners of hedge land. In March, the eminent Financial Times commentator Martin Wolf declared that the hedge fund model was so flawed that the entire sector might end up on the scrap heap. Yet the truth is that the turmoil since last August has largely vindicated the funds' virtues. The central argument of my 2007 essay holds true today.

The most striking fact about the ongoing financial mayhem is that it is concentrated not in lightly regulated hedge funds but in more heavily regulated commercial and investment banks. It is banks that created subprime mortgage securities. It is banks that mispriced them. And it is banks that filled their own coffers with this toxic paper, losing hundreds of billions of dollars. A somewhat breathless March 31 Financial Times article proclaimed the closing of the worst month for hedge funds since the collapse of the infamous Long Term Capital Management in 1998. But the average fund tracked by the Chicago-based firm Hedge Fund Research declined by a mere 2.4 percent in March, bringing the cumulative fall for the first quarter of 2008 to 2.7 percent. By contrast, the bank-heavy financial services component of the S&P 500 fell 12.3 percent in the first quarter.

more

related essay: Hands off Hedge Funds

So be it

So be it
by WILBERT A. TATUM
Publisher Emeritus and Chairman of the Board
Originally posted 7/24/2008

As the Denver Moment comes closer and closer to reality, Black Americans sit on tenterhooks believing with quiet desperation that at the time when they thought it could never happen, it did.That which America believed with all its soul and heart could never come to pass is on the cusp of reality. A Black man—in truth a Black and white man—has a real possibility of becoming president of the United States. Perhaps no one believed this could happen except Mrs. Obama and the children and then a friend or two, then some neighbors, then some guys and gals from academia, then some folks from the pool halls, factories, schools, and then people on street corners, subway lines, in churches and beyond. And now we believe. We were afraid to believe before.Some were afraid it might happen and some were afraid it might not for different reasons. Who in the hell would believe that racist America could choose a Black man to become leader oftheir free world? Many would hope but few would believe. They could not believe because the script isn’t written that way in any normal worldly script or stage play we have ever seen or heard of regarding the American condition and what is to happen to it. Therefore, don’t blame us for not believing. One is a belief built on hope that says, in effect, “You made your point, boy. Now go home. We believe you can do it but don’t try anymore. These people want to kill you.”This may well be true. And each day and every hour —hour after hour — proof of our forced belief comes down as thunder and we see the possibility of Senator Obama’s winning and a more real possibility that someone will try to kill him. It comes in a voice that is shrill and certain, a voice that intones “This time we’ll get it right.” And there in the wilderness of our dreams, some where there comes a stop to what has been suggested, a stop to all this nonsensical rhetoric. Sure, the man is going to win. Don’t you remember during the last phases of the campaign as we listened to gospel music blaring through Black radio and then the discussions about the state of Black America where some elderly woman, as convinced as anything that Gods was good, gracious and kind, saying over and over again talking about our candidate, “He be winning. He be winning. He be winning.” On reflection, there is no thought of death anymore except the thought of the demise of a racist America. Surely this is something to pray for, something to hope for and something to demand. And then, as suddenly as anything can happen—call it a flash of light or a clap of thunder —with these words as soothing and as gentle as could be coming from a talking machine of some kind to fill our ears, we hear, “And I fall on my knees, with my face to the rising sun, saying, ‘Oh Lord, have mercy on my soul.’” Then came a lesson of instruction and a reprimand: “You did not believe my son and now you believe. It came in time. You faced your maker and he stood you down. Lord have mercy on your soul.” One need not be concerned much anymore about the outcome of this election. For those who are the Black religious in our country attending the rock-and-roll churches are convincing our Black brothers and sisters who have strayed away from the Almighty to seek some comfort in churches that are not their own, in communities that refuse to have them while closing their eyes to the goodness and to the grace of all of us in all our years that the die is cast. The Messiah will come. Knowing that the light of life and the light of love are in all of us, we pray for the health and wealth of Senator Barack Obama during his trip to our destiny. So be it.

Of Human Bondage WSJ

June 10, 2008; Page A16
The biofuels boom has contributed to the recent spike in food prices that threatens the world's poor. In Brazil, home of ethanol made from sugar cane, it's had another unintended consequence: slavery. The use of forced labor to work in sugar cane plantations is "a growing trend," according to the U.S. State Department's latest report on human trafficking.

The annual report, released last week, documents sexual exploitation and forced labor in 170 countries. It is always a tough read. This year's edition records the appalling abuse of men, women and children in brothels, factories and farms – often while government looks the other way – and spots trends. Every country receives a ranking based on its record in prosecuting exploiters, protecting victims and preventing abuses.

Oil-rich Russia, for instance, is now more likely to import prostitutes and forced laborers, often from Central Asia, than to export them. India, which has taken welcome steps to protect prostitutes and child laborers, has done little to help bonded workers, usually of lower castes. China is cited for, among other things, a recent scandal involving the relocation of children from the interior to work in electronics factories in coastal Guangdong province. It's also criticized for its treatment of tens of thousands of North Korean refugees, who are sold as brides or into brothels or forced to work under brutal conditions in logging camps.

The report also lists products made with forced labor. They include shrimp from Thailand and Bangladesh; clothing from Bangladesh, India, Jordan and Malaysia; cotton harvested in Uzbekistan; cocoa from Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire; and pig iron from Brazil. Not all products in these industries are made with slave labor, and it's too bad the report does not identify companies that buy or sell tainted products.

There is some good news. Among the countries that improved are Mexico, Croatia and Kenya. Madagascar is the only nation in Africa to receive top marks, thanks to a government determined to wipe out sexual tourism. The United Arab Emirates is the only Middle Eastern country other than Israel to reach the second tier, due to its efforts to combat abuse against foreign workers employed as domestics or in construction.

U.S. Ambassador Mark Lagon says "there is now more awareness" of human trafficking than there was seven years ago when his office began its work, and more countries have enacted laws to combat it. That said, modern-day slavery remains a scourge. The more light that can be shed on it the better chance of wiping it out.

Behind the Food-Price Riots - Vincent Reinhart - WSJ

By VINCENT REINHARTApril 18, 2008; Page A17

With a dramatic rise in the prices of foodstuffs, riots have flared up in dozens of hotspots around the world. Panicky politicians are responding with precisely the wrong policies, including production subsidies and trade controls.
The problem is clear enough: According to the International Monetary Fund, food and beverage prices have risen 60% in the past three years, and more than doubled since 2001. Even in the U.S., increases in the food-price component of producer- and consumer-price indexes over the last 12 months have been in the neighborhood of 5%. ... What is going on?

The Trouble With Brand Hillary by Michael Zeldin - WSJ

...On a related point, Mrs. Clinton has been arguing to primary voters that she is more electable than Barack Obama because "she has been vetted fully so there will be no general election surprises." Well, the recently released tax returns appear to undermine this argument as well.

Specifically, these returns demonstrate the former President Clinton made tens of millions of dollars on the speaking circuit and by helping to broker business deals or make introductions around the world. This is his prerogative as a private citizen. What the returns do not tell us, however, is who paid for these speeches; who his clients were/are; whether he can unwind his business relationships (he is being sued by one of his clients for fraud in state court in California); what conflicts of interest or appearances of conflict reside in his seven-year, private-sector career. (Remember the difficulty Geraldine Ferraro's husband created for her candidacy?). A lot more openness and transparency will be required by Bill Clinton before it is known just how vulnerable Hillary Clinton is as a general election candidate.

Still, the Clinton Library has yet to provide the list of its largest donors, or explain how their donations were solicited; as well it is not yet known whether Hillary Clinton played a role in President Clinton's pardon decisions including the 11th-hour pardon of Marc Rich. The Republican National Committee and related advocacy groups will surely allege a coverup if all this is not disclosed before the general election....

A Gangsta Household

A trial could expose futility of life in gangsta household

By Peter Gelzinis Wednesday, April 2, 2008 http://www.bostonherald.com/ Columnists
Photo by Herald file

This morning, Lakeisha Gadson will officially be charged with six counts of contributing to the death of her 8-year-old son, Liquarry Jefferson.

On Friday, Gadson’s oldest son, Jayquan McConnico, 16, will follow Mom into the arraignment dock where he will face similar charges for his role in last June’s shooting death of baby brother Liquarry.

As twisted as the tale may seem now, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. If and when a jury is seated in a year or so, the public will be given a rare and harrowing glimpse into the pathology of what can only be described as a “gang family.”

We’re familiar with the sociology of gangs as replacement for family, as substitutes in the lives of inner-city kids abandoned to the care of, say, an over-burdened grandmother. This story is different. Liquarry Jefferson perished in the care of his mother, aunt, siblings and cousins who were all steeped in the gangsta life.

No doubt a defense lawyer will ask Lakeisha Gadson if she really wants to lay bare her personal story. How, for example, by age 31, she’d had five children by three different men, all of them known gang bangers who’ve been in and out of jail.

The lawyer will remind her what a jury will hear: On June 24th, as her little boy lay dying in his bedroom of a gunshot wound to the stomach, Gadson chose to lie to the police and paramedics.
Both she and her then-15-year-old son, Jayquan, told conflicting stories about home invaders bursting into her Grove Hall apartment and opening fire, after she allegedly helped Jayquan hide the illegal gun she knew he had - the same gun that killed little Liquarry.

“Clearly, all (Lakeisha’s) relationships were involved in the gang and drug culture,” said one law enforcement source, “and that’s not counting her own record of assaults. This was a mother who completely subscribed to the street life.”

Before Liquarry’s younger cousin picked up a gun that was lying close by and fired the fatal bullet, Boston police had been compiling the sorry multigenerational profile of a family that formed its own crime wave.

“From the documentation that already existed,” said BPD Commissioner Ed Davis, “you could foresee the potential for tragedy.”

In the seven years that separated Liquarry Jefferson from his older half-brother, Jayquan, there is the gap when one child was lost to the streets and another wound up being lost forever.

“The shame is that it was probably too late for Jayquan,” the law enforcement source noted. “He was already into packing a gun and there’s little doubt he would’ve used it on someone else, if he hasn’t already. But Liquarry, he wasn’t there, yet. This was just an innocent little boy who liked school and was looking forward to the summer - a little boy who was never more in danger than when he was inside his own home.”

It may seem strange to say, but here’s hoping that Lakeisha Gadson does not opt for a plea. In a very real way, she would be performing a public service by going to trial and letting the rest of us glimpse what it is like to grow up in a gang household.

While fishing for a deal is certainly an option, some believe that the same instinct for survival that saw Lakeisha Gadson lie to the cops at the moment her son was dying will ultimately compel her to take her chances, and perhaps play a mother’s anguish, in front of a jury. After all, wouldn’t any mom facing such a miserable dilemma lie to the cops?

“You’re right,” Ed Davis said, “it is a sad and fascinating story in many ways. But it has to be more than just a story. Stories by themselves don’t amount to much. The public tends to move on and forget them. There has to be systems in place and ways to intervene, ways to prevent another chilld like Liquarry from dying at home.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1084365

Related Articles:Mom, half-brother charged in boy’s shooting death/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1084087

Republican, but is he right? - Patrick J. Buchanan