Google Donating $11.5M To Fight Modern Slavery 302
walterbyrd writes "Google announced today that it will donate $11.5M to groups dedicated to ending modern day slavery. 'In what is believed to be the largest-ever corporate grant devoted to the advocacy, intervention and rescue of people being held, forced to work or provide sex against their will, Google said it chose organizations with proven records in combating slavery.'"
Great news (Score:5, Informative)
This is great news. The fact that slavery is still very much in effect in countries like Mauritania isn't something a lot of people are aware about. Hopefully this will raise the issue.
Re:Easy to do (Score:5, Informative)
You're an idiot. You understand that these factories don't just make Apple products, right? They make products for lots of big players.
Copy/Paste from Wikipedia's Foxconn page:
Acer Inc. (Taiwan)
Amazon.com (United States)[16]
Apple Inc. (United States)[18]
ASRock (Taiwan)
Barnes & Noble (United States)
Intel (United States)
Cisco (United States)
Hewlett-Packard (United States)[19]
Dell (United States)
Nintendo (Japan)
Nokia (Finland)[18]
Microsoft (United States)
MSI (Taiwan)
Motorola (United States)
Sony Ericsson (Japan/Sweden)[20]
Vizio (United States)
Re:So.. (Score:4, Informative)
Wasn't it something like: "Do no evil, or else." ? :p
Only kidding, I pretty much love Google. If Google were a person, it would probably be Tony Stark.
Re:Easy to do (Score:3, Informative)
Actually a bigger dent (and one that would be extremely unpopular... especially on slashdot) would be to put an end to pornography. The correlation between sex trafficking and pornography is very strong as pornography fuels desire for the real thing. For example, you can read this article [catholicnewsagency.com] for references to many government and private studies linking the two. This interview [stopchildslavery.com] with a government official who specialized in sex trafficking was also very interesting.
The statistics of sex trafficking in America are disturbing. There are an estimated 300,000 sex trafficking victims in the United States alone. Half of them are children (under the age of 18) and 90% of them are American citizens. The average age of entry into prostitution is 13 with an average lifespan once being trafficked of only 7 years. The average girl caught in sex trafficking is dead before she is even legally allowed to drink.
This is an important issue to me. I even wrote a song [youtube.com] on the subject and have started speaking out about this problem to raise awareness. If you start to look into this world, prepare to be very disturbed by what you see.
Re:Legalize it. (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately, the economics aren't as simple as you suggest in some cases. See for example this article. [thepublicdiscourse.com] If you don't want to read the whole thing, here's the important part:
But rather than eliminate sexual trafficking, the evidence has consistently revealed that legalizing prostitution fosters it. Dorchen Leidholdt, Co-Executive Director of the international NGO Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, stated:
Jurisdictions that have legalized prostitution have demonstrated just what happens when prostitution is legitimized and protected by law: the number of sex businesses grows, as does the demand for prostitution. Legalized prostitution brings sex tourists and heightens the demand among local men. Local women constitute an inadequate supply so foreign girls and women are trafficked in to meet the demand. The trafficked women are cheaper, younger, more exciting to customers, and easier to control. More trafficked women means more local demand and more sex tourism.
In other words, sexual demand is not as stable as you might think; it can be stimulated. Just consider what happened in Australia when its government decriminalized prostitution and took control of the industry: “in New South Wales where brothels were decriminalized in 1995, the number of brothels in Sydney had tripled to 400-500 by 1999, with the vast majority having no license.” In other words the illegal sector of the sex industry flourished once prostitution was legalized. The Netherlands are another excellent case study. Their brothels were legalized in 2000, but the number of reported human trafficking cases increased from 341 in 2000 to 909 in 2009. When the sex industry enjoys government protection, it thrives and demand increases. It also becomes much more difficult to identify instances of abuse and to prosecute trafficking.
Re:Easy to do (Score:2, Informative)
Well the conventional Christian doctrine is that Yaweh and Jesus are one, right?
Exodus 22:2-3 If a thief be found breaking up, and be smitten that he die, there shall no blood be shed for him.
If the sun be risen upon him, there shall be blood shed for him; for he should make full restitution; if he have nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.
and
“Ours is one continued struggle sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”
- Ghandi, Sept 1896
So Ghandi was a racist asshole. Anyone else?
Dearest world, (Score:5, Informative)
#65 - New Zealand - 199 per 100K pop.
#87 - England and Wales - 156 per 100K pop.
#111 - Australia - 133 per 100K pop.
Yeah bitches, now who's full of criminals.
Signed,
Australia.