Human trafficking in Amsterdam

A blogger from the Netherlands who visited prostitutes in Amsterdam was horrified to find that some of them are in the sex trade involuntarily - victims of human trafficking. And the cops and human rights organizations turn a blind eye to it.

http://fleshtrade.blogspot.com/

Look around. Everything you buy is basically co-manufactured by slaves. The cacao in all the chocolate in the Netherlands is made by child-slaves in Africa. Yet we all eat chocolate....

I follow the debate about human trafficking in the Netherlands up close. I’ve made a horrific discovery. It turns out that the people who we
should trust most: the aid-workers, want the victims of human trafficking to be in the legal brothels. At least they are [safe] up there.

My favourite journalist Ruth Hopkins states that most of the prostitutes in the window-brothels in Amsterdam are slaves....

How can I know (the client) when a prostitute I visit is a real prostitute or a sex-slave when the good people want the victims to be there?

ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES: "Alito's wife cried in the hearings. What does this mean? Was it her migraine headache that made her cry?... No, it was the rude Democrats attacking her husband for hours on end.... The media will run with this because the hearings are b-o-r-i-n-g and who on earth cares about the tears that Alito will cause sitting on the bench?

I sympathize with Ms. Bomgardner. It must be hard to hear your husband's beliefs and qualifications questioned publicly. But that is what the nomination hearings are for. What on earth are family members doing at the hearings in the first place?"

Rigorous Intuition: Let's Pretend Politics

Rigorous Intuition: Let's Pretend Politics: "I find it useful to think of corporations as egregores, i.e group-minds that have a life of their own. A few months back in these comment threads I proposed an idea (that has probably been proposed before) that the whole raison d'etre for corporations is to serve as material vehicles for existing discarnate entities. Prunes' comment -- Etymologically, consider the intransitive verb 'incorporate': to give a body to something that does not have one. -- hints at this. Whether or not it is in fact true is of course subject to debate, but operationally corporations behave as totally immoral and vampiric egregores."

Wherein, musings on the Canadian election give rise to speculations about The Corporation as a metaphysical entity.

The Commons

The Commons:
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the evilest of all?

"Many people regard the incompetence, corruption - the sheer cravenness - of the Bush Administration as unprecedented in American history. But there is a robust argument that he was outshone in propagating evil and idiocy by the Administration most responsible for shaping modern times - that of Ronald Reagan."

Covert History

Covert History: "To really illustrate what is wrong with the state of our country, one need only note the fact that Gary Webb, a real reporter who documented the Contra/cocaine connection, was professionally ruined, and Oliver North, who was at the center of the whole thing, went on to be a highly-paid 'journalist.' "

Some good material on the Kennedy assassination at this site, too.

blogged in the desert

blogged in the desert: "Alaska Volcano Observatory - Augustine - Eruption Page: 'Current Level of Concern Color Code: RED"

"Katrina Plus Four Months, Part 3"

The Rude Pundit takes a trip through what's left of New Orleans.

AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth

AMERICAblog: "In Iraq, we broke it, but we're not fixing it - 1/02/2006 - Hey, just because the U.S. invaded their country and destroyed the infrastructure, doesn't mean we're actually going to rebuild the country. Because, think about it, everyone in America know that clean water and electricity are so overrated, right?"