Réal Laplaine's Blog, page 10
July 3, 2018
Sex trafficking is today's slavery
Slavery is a word most of us associate with a generational period, a time when the British Empire enslaved colonial lands; when ship-loads of indigenous Africans were sent off to America and sold into bondage; a time when landlords of old times exercised the rights of ownership over people who worked their lands.
Human trafficking is far from dead. Although figures vary, since traffickers don’t report their taxes and revenue, it is estimated that up to a million or more people are trafficked yearly, many of them into work-camps, sweat-shops and forced labor, and many of them, young girls, women and children who are forced into a life of sexual servitude. It is happening all around us, not just in lands across the seas and it is a massive global industry today.
Much of the problem with human trafficking is that we refuse to accept that it is all around us. Sweat-shops which produce our clothing or running shoes or whatever, far too-often, are manned by forced-labor. Young girls, women and even children are sold by the hundreds of thousands every year into sexual bondage, a conservative figure by the way, and forced to work in brothels and the sex-industry, under threat of punishment or danger to their families, and usually held hostage by traffickers who force them to toe-the-line by denying them freedom, their passport, money or other means of escape.
The victims of trafficking are all around us. The young girls forced to prostitute. The women forced to sit on streets and beg for money. The laborers who work for peanuts under threat of being sent back to poverty elsewhere.
How do we end trafficking? First we have to stop pretending that it is not a major issue in the world and continue to raise awareness that behind closed doors, this travesty and dehumanizing operation is happening. Secondly, we must take action to cut off the demand and supply.
An NGO in Sweden, one of many such around the globe, called Real Stars, campaigns to introduce the Swedish model for countering-human trafficking. Sweden was the first country in the world to make it a crime to shop or buy sex. They stopped criminalizing the victims and started targetting the buyers - consequently, prostitution and the sex-trade in Sweden has diminished. There are many other organizations and individuals providing models to help eliminate this modern-day slavery.
At Behind Closed Doors, an initiative I started to help expose human sex-trafficking, I offer my book See Me Not, for free, a story based on true facts, as an ambassador to help spotlight the issue. To get a free copy, go to this page on my site (BEHIND CLOSED DOORS).
There is little that the human race cannot accomplish when we put our minds to it. The problem with the issue of human trafficking is that not enough minds have collectively put their shoulders to the wall and pushed hard enough to topple the empire of slavery. It's time!
Article by author Réal Laplaine
See official blog at www.reallaplaine.comSee Me Not - Hope Never Dies
Human trafficking is far from dead. Although figures vary, since traffickers don’t report their taxes and revenue, it is estimated that up to a million or more people are trafficked yearly, many of them into work-camps, sweat-shops and forced labor, and many of them, young girls, women and children who are forced into a life of sexual servitude. It is happening all around us, not just in lands across the seas and it is a massive global industry today.
Much of the problem with human trafficking is that we refuse to accept that it is all around us. Sweat-shops which produce our clothing or running shoes or whatever, far too-often, are manned by forced-labor. Young girls, women and even children are sold by the hundreds of thousands every year into sexual bondage, a conservative figure by the way, and forced to work in brothels and the sex-industry, under threat of punishment or danger to their families, and usually held hostage by traffickers who force them to toe-the-line by denying them freedom, their passport, money or other means of escape.
The victims of trafficking are all around us. The young girls forced to prostitute. The women forced to sit on streets and beg for money. The laborers who work for peanuts under threat of being sent back to poverty elsewhere.
How do we end trafficking? First we have to stop pretending that it is not a major issue in the world and continue to raise awareness that behind closed doors, this travesty and dehumanizing operation is happening. Secondly, we must take action to cut off the demand and supply.
An NGO in Sweden, one of many such around the globe, called Real Stars, campaigns to introduce the Swedish model for countering-human trafficking. Sweden was the first country in the world to make it a crime to shop or buy sex. They stopped criminalizing the victims and started targetting the buyers - consequently, prostitution and the sex-trade in Sweden has diminished. There are many other organizations and individuals providing models to help eliminate this modern-day slavery.
At Behind Closed Doors, an initiative I started to help expose human sex-trafficking, I offer my book See Me Not, for free, a story based on true facts, as an ambassador to help spotlight the issue. To get a free copy, go to this page on my site (BEHIND CLOSED DOORS).
There is little that the human race cannot accomplish when we put our minds to it. The problem with the issue of human trafficking is that not enough minds have collectively put their shoulders to the wall and pushed hard enough to topple the empire of slavery. It's time!
Article by author Réal Laplaine
See official blog at www.reallaplaine.comSee Me Not - Hope Never Dies
"Fake books" - is that next?
In the wake of Donald Trumps’ propaganda campaign against free press, popularizing the meme, “fake news” as a means of discrediting any media which has exposed his scandalous background and dictatorial Administration, “fake books” might be next.
According to numerous analyses of past disastrous dictatorships, one of the very early signs of a dictator is an attack on free press and free expression. Such "leaders" uniformly negate free speech out of terror that they will be exposed for who they are and that the media or writers in other arenas, will help sway public opinion against them.
Now that “fake news” has been adopted in other lands, a term now being casually used by other “leaders” who simply want to shut down any opposition by entering reasonable doubt into the equation, it is likely that authors and writers will be next on the target list.
It sounds extreme, of course, to think that in this day and age, anyone would censor free speech and media, but in the past several years, since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on NSA secret surveillance and intrusion of privacy rights nationally and abroad and was labelled a traitor to his country; and then Donald Trump with his insistence that the media should not have the right to criticize him, are we seeing the rise of the Third Reich again? A sort of Nazism where it becomes dangerous to speak out against the party line? Where one can be publically attacked and ridiculed, and even targetted as a traitor to the nation because one spoke the hard truths?
The day books and their writers, are labeled as "fake" is the day we must be prepared to act against the dictatorship and its supporters, because that is a line across which no democracy can exist - and already, that democracy is being seriously threatened today.
Article by author, Réal Laplaine
See official blog at: www.reallaplaine.comThe Deception People
According to numerous analyses of past disastrous dictatorships, one of the very early signs of a dictator is an attack on free press and free expression. Such "leaders" uniformly negate free speech out of terror that they will be exposed for who they are and that the media or writers in other arenas, will help sway public opinion against them.
Now that “fake news” has been adopted in other lands, a term now being casually used by other “leaders” who simply want to shut down any opposition by entering reasonable doubt into the equation, it is likely that authors and writers will be next on the target list.
It sounds extreme, of course, to think that in this day and age, anyone would censor free speech and media, but in the past several years, since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on NSA secret surveillance and intrusion of privacy rights nationally and abroad and was labelled a traitor to his country; and then Donald Trump with his insistence that the media should not have the right to criticize him, are we seeing the rise of the Third Reich again? A sort of Nazism where it becomes dangerous to speak out against the party line? Where one can be publically attacked and ridiculed, and even targetted as a traitor to the nation because one spoke the hard truths?
The day books and their writers, are labeled as "fake" is the day we must be prepared to act against the dictatorship and its supporters, because that is a line across which no democracy can exist - and already, that democracy is being seriously threatened today.
Article by author, Réal Laplaine
See official blog at: www.reallaplaine.comThe Deception People
June 21, 2018
Is reading dangerous?
Woman EX
According to one study, reading catalyzes bouts of imagination and happiness – distracting the reader from “reality” and vaulting them into another world. The inherent danger, apparently, is that one loses touch and fantasizes about other realms.
Another study suggests that authors are part of a secret conspiracy designed to rock the proverbial boat with ideas and visions which offer alternative paradigms.
According to some “experts”, reading is dangerous as it unsettles established norms, and makes people question mediocrity. The conclusion offered is that those engaging in this activity do so at their own peril.
In the introduction to his American Dictionary of the English Language of 1828, Noah Webster warned that by permitting literacy to drop below the waterline, words could be redefined, so that concepts such as freedom could easily transition to something entirely different, for example “sacrificing some freedom for security”, using the very terms that regulate a democracy as tools of oppression against a population with a limited vocabulary.
Authors would unanimously agree that reading is healthy, and some might even face heinous accusations of outright heresy for suggesting that reading beats rifling through social media …
Article by author, Réal Laplaine
According to one study, reading catalyzes bouts of imagination and happiness – distracting the reader from “reality” and vaulting them into another world. The inherent danger, apparently, is that one loses touch and fantasizes about other realms.
Another study suggests that authors are part of a secret conspiracy designed to rock the proverbial boat with ideas and visions which offer alternative paradigms.
According to some “experts”, reading is dangerous as it unsettles established norms, and makes people question mediocrity. The conclusion offered is that those engaging in this activity do so at their own peril.
In the introduction to his American Dictionary of the English Language of 1828, Noah Webster warned that by permitting literacy to drop below the waterline, words could be redefined, so that concepts such as freedom could easily transition to something entirely different, for example “sacrificing some freedom for security”, using the very terms that regulate a democracy as tools of oppression against a population with a limited vocabulary.
Authors would unanimously agree that reading is healthy, and some might even face heinous accusations of outright heresy for suggesting that reading beats rifling through social media …
Article by author, Réal Laplaine
