Human Trafficking

Human Trafficking
Human trafficking is a big international issue. It is the trading of people (for forced sex or labor) for a profit to the trafficker (not the victim). There is a difference between this and kidnapping; kidnapping does not always entail slavery-type actions. The numbers of trafficked humans that are victimized is growing because traffickers face little consequence. Victims in remote places of the world have a harder time of escape because of a lack of 'social networks, but this happens in America too.

Anti-Human Trafficking Campaign
Human trafficking is slavery; there are more than twenty seven million slaves today. Globalization is making it easier for human trafficking to continue because of the 'ease of conducting business across national borders.' When children are taken for sex trafficking, it is a mistake to blame them; they are the victims but a lot of people like to think of them as the criminals because they view them as prostitutes. Traffickers target teens. Children aren't always taken from their homes, they are sometimes sold to traffickers by their own parents. Terror and violence are used to keep children under control and to to keep them from trying to escape. There are already many international laws being made about trafficking.

Sex Slaves
Human trafficking happens everywhere. A 16-year-old in Florida was tricked into slavery by another 16-year-old girl. Her attackers were never charged with anything. There was another story about a woman who was taken from her house a couple of times a week to be forced to have sex; the one's that took her were boys from her high school. Her lawyer told "Today" that cases like these are very common. Today, there is a huge market for sex slavery on the Internet; sex slavery takes many forms though.

Orphaned children are primary targets
Trafficking of humans is one of the fastest growing transnational organized crimes. Boys are at risk for it too. STD's are being spread more quickly because of the conditions these sex and labor slaves are put under. Slaves don't receive very much protection against STD's or medical attention when they get them.

Child sex slave
The UNODC (United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime) is an organization that helps the fight against human trafficking, especially of women and children. The main goals of this program are to prevent further human trafficking, punish it's true criminals, and to help restore the lives of trafficked victims. There are a lot of international legal things that go on here, it is set up by the United Nations.

Human trafficking is an international problem for many reasons. It's an issue that virtually all countries share with each other; each have their own laws regarding this problem though. In my research I found out that human traffic crimes don't get reported enough and that there isn't enough action taken on them. One of the reasons that this crime is growing, besides high profit and demand, is that it is easy to get away with. It will take international cooperation of upgrading laws regarding this heinous crime and taking steps to prevent it. It spreads STD's, and leaves people in a cycle of disaster because they are, though victims, looked at as the criminals. There are many international things at work here and people can't stop working together on this modern day form of slavery stops.

I've learned leaders in many nations of the world face complex problems that they feel cannot be solved without international action or cooperation

Ugandan Orphans
We don't walk through our front doors and have to worry about getting shot or kidnapped 24-7, a lot of people do though. They have tremendously stressful and scary living conditions that they live under in places like Uganda and Palestine. In Uganda Joseph Kony is taking children away from their homes and turning them into child soldiers. Palestinian children are in a social environment that encourages their martyrdom and are put into violent and dangerous situations every day. It's too easy to forget how hard and awful others have it on the other side of the world when we're sitting in our safe, comfortable houses in America. We have soldiers in Iraq yeah, but we have a stable government that helps run the country smoothly, there aren't wars happening in our back yards, and there's no one here invading our country. These are things that we can nooot forget just because we have it so good here, we should never just get all complacent about these issues and let the rest of the world fall by the wayside. There are other less pressing issues that happen around us; they are very common issues to all countries, which makes it such a good reason for our countries to work together (have national cooperation and action). Drugs, human trafficking, other crimes, environment, and territory are concerns that every country shares. Palestine and Uganda are two third-world countries whose governments are not as stable as ours. They aren't stable enough to protect themselves from the bad things that are happening there and that's why they need international help. Some issues are too big for one country to handle by themselves and could be contained from spreading with the help of others. It is very important that we don't only think about bad things that happen in the Middle East because that could make us think of the people there as being bad.

Ugandan President

I understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed through analysis of primary sources of many kinds

For something to be a primary source, it would be created during the time that you're looking at. Examples include letters, diaries, posters, documents, and other artifacts. Primary sources can be used to prove certain things that have happened. They also, most importantly, give an inside look at what was going on during that time. These reasons are what make primary sources better than others. Text books and other secondary sources like that get most or all of their information from primary sources. Primary sources are necessary for us to understand things that happened before us. If in 100 years a class was given a project to research the 2000's then the things that we write and make and record would be primary sources to them because we are the one's living now.

"The White Man's Burden"
This is a Pear's Soap advertisement printed during the New Imperialism. It shows the general attitude of the West at the time, claiming that "teaching the virtue of cleanliness is the first step towards lightening 'The White Man's Burden.'" It goes on to talk about 'brightening the dark corners of the earth.' I know that this website is credible because of the -.org ending, the article's author cites all of their information, and he lists his credentials at the top.

"White Man's Burden"

This is artwork from the 1800's. It displays that same old idea of the white man's burden, because it was such a prominent aspect in people's lives back then, but this time directed at Japanese people. There were many cartoons like this, white people pretty much looked down on everyone else. The website is an appropriate source, you can tell because it is professional-looking and has a -.org ending.

British India---1850's

This photograph was taken in India, back when the British were pretty much running the country and had colonies all over the place, a perfect example of New Imperialism. The British had colonies in other places too. I found the website is an appropriate source because of the -.net ending and the professionalism of the website, it has a huge old gallery of other pictures. I thought this other picture fit very well but I couldn't find a good source for it. The British man is in India, getting a pedicure from some of his Indian servants. It gives a really good picture of how white people thought of others.

A British Man Gets a Pedicure from an Indian Servant

See Malaya This was a travel poster urging British people to go see their colony in Malaysia. The colony was a major source of money and natural resources for the British. To make people want to go there, it was portrayed as tropical and vacation-y. The picture is of a 'native' Malaysian. The British had their colony there during their quest for power and land in the New Imperialism. The -.org website looks reliable enough to use for a source, it looks professional and it doesn't have advertisements or anything.

I have become more knowledgeable about the World

A child soldier in Uganda

I am more knowledgeable about current events and global issues. The child army in Uganda is one of the current global issues we learned about in class, and it's been going on since the '80's. The LRA (Lord's Resistance Army) is a group in Uganda, opposed to its government, whose leader, Joseph Kony, kidnaps children and brainwashes them into child soldiers. They are taken at an impressionable age and exposed to violence and hatred so that they turn into tiny brutal killers who grow up to kidnap more children and try to overthrow places in Africa where the government is weak. Today, escaped ex-LRA soldiers are being recruited by the Ugandan government to track Kony down, where they think he's not only hiding but expanding his army. Uganda could use international help with resulting problems it's about to face: its new generation. These kids, even escaped, have been exposed to such bad things since they were little, it's all they know. You couldn't be put through the things they're put through on a daily basis and grow up without a warped perception of how things are supposed to be. They're going to need attention to enable them to prevent these problems from reoccurring when they're the grownups.

The World in the Twentieth Century

I have become more knowledgeable about the history of the Twentieth Century. The Industrial Revolution was just about over when the twentieth century started, but it still had a huge affect on the world after its time. The 1900's saw some of the worst wars and disasters in history but it also saw some amazing progress and advances. Nationalism played such a humongous role in how the world turned out---acting as a catalyst in times of war but also providing the competition and motivation for the progress that was made. We studied other things more in depth, like Japanese culture, WWI topics, and power hungry leaders in the New Imperialism (in a mostly Western-dominated world.) Fascism, invented by Mussolini, involves loyalty to state, violence, discipline, and dictatorship. It also, like communism, puts individual rights second to loyalty to the state. Both of them came into existence when the world was under economic stress. Totalitarianism also involved having a dictator. It used police spies and terror, and had lots of strict control of media and what got taught in schools. Nazism, another ideology, is totalitarian, anti-communist, and anti-Semitic. All of these came into existence during the twentieth century and brought a bunch of problems with them; they had a lot of involvement in all of the wars that happened.

All humans have a 99.9 % similar genetic content
I have become more knowledgeable about human diversity. What is race? It's not really quantifiable, tangible, or definable. Race is self-decided, pretty much. When census takers come to your door and ask what race you are it's not like they go back to their little offices and do a background check on you. A person's race is not something you can tell just by looking at them. "Race" hasn't even been a thing forever, it's something humans MADE UP and there is nothing scientific about it at all. Labeling people is what lets us un-humanize them. It has lead to tragic catastrophes like the Holocaust and slave-owning.

Jared Diamond, Author of GG&S

I am more knowledgeable about places on the Earth. To be "geographically lucky", a country would have these:

-Food-producing plants. All it took to grow wheat was a flick of the wrist, and that provided a lot of food. Not all countries are hospitable to this type of vegetation, which would give others a head start back in the day when nations were still developing

-Domesticable animals. These help with manual labor, manure, food, leather, and exposure to disease (creating immunity over time). There were no horses here when the Spanish conquered the Incas, it increased their advantages a lot

-Easily accessible land. This ensures the spreading of ideas, such as weapons from other cultures, and natural resources

-Natural resources. The Spanish's (copied) steel Rapierre gave them even higher advantage over the Incas, who still used bronze weapons

All of these things contributed to the global inequality today, where we have such extreme differences in standards of living between countries.

Cultures of the World

I have become more knowledgeable about cultures of the world's societies. A lot of cultures are very specific to their country or people. There isn't a lot that different cultures share. It is important to learn about and respect the cultures of other's, even if it differs from our own, as does the culture of the Japanese. The Japanese hold Wa, or harmony, very important to them. An important aspect of this is called "saving face", which means to do everything in your power to keep someone from being embarrassed. The Japanese stress importance on being accepted in the group, even if that means conforming, as opposed to individuality how we like it in America. Lots of little social rules can make a huge difference (like avoiding public flattery and sensitive or personal topics.) There are other things too. I'm a member of a military family who's been overseas. When we got to Germany there were a lot of rules about staying under the radar, trying not to stick out so that we wouldn't draw attention to the Army or Americans. One of the reasons is that Americans are already thought of pretty negatively by some people in European countries. When you're in a foreign country, you're representing your own. If you went to another country acting like an idiot, people could associate the things that you messed up with Americans in general. Everyone should just keep an open mind and have respect for people that are different than them. It could make or break a business deal, but it could also affect you personally.