Human Trafficking Day Quotes

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I marvel at the placidity of the Utopian who imagines that man is perfectible. There is no denying that the human creature is born selfish, abusive, vile. Just look around you and see. Society cynical and ferocious, the humble heckled and pillaged by the rich traffickers in necessities. Everywhere the triumph of the mediocre and unscrupulous, everywhere the apotheosis of crooked politics and finance. And you think you can make any progress against a stream like that? No, man has never changed. His soul was corrupt in the days of Genesis and is not less rotten at present. Only the form of his sins varies. Progress is the hypocrisy which refines the vices.
Joris-Karl Huysmans (Là-Bas (Down There))
Sloan & Dex... “You skipped puberty didn’t you?” Dex let out a wistful sigh. “It wasn’t for me.” Sloane laughed as he carried Dex out of the room. “You’re hopeless.” “I’m also nonrefundable.” “Surely there’s a return policy.” “Forget it. You’re way past the thirty-day refund period. You’re stuck with me now. And before you ask, I’m also nontransferable and nonexchangeable. If you donate me to charity there’s no tax write-off because technically that would be considered Human trafficking.” “Wow. You’ve got your bases covered.” “You bet. Should have paid more attention to the Dexter J. Daley boyfriend agreement.” Sloane dropped him onto the counter and stepped between his legs to pull him close. “I don’t recall this boyfriend agreement.” “You might have been sleeping at the time, but sleep during the reading of the DJDBA is covered in the fine print. As long as you have a pulse, you’re considered present and accounted for.” “Duly noted.
Charlie Cochet (Rack & Ruin (THIRDS, #3))
The people of the city of Savannah within their collective conscience could follow previous examples in history and forgive the atrocities of actual slavery committed against slaves themselves. But what was it [the city] to do with the knowledge that children completely unaware of the greater ramifications of slavery were led to the Civil War slaughter in its name? How does one acknowledge with forgiveness such an unforgiving mutilation of one’s own mind, body, soul, and legacy?
Aberjhani (Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah)
Summer turns and marches away, fed up with being handled like a child. Like she’s a glass doll that might break at any minute. She hasn’t been a child since the day she was whipped into muteness. Anxiety might strangle her sometimes, but she’s not some baby needing to be coddled.
Laura Kreitzer (Burning Falls (Summer Chronicles, #3))
What freedom are we to find when our restless minds are enslaved under the chains of human trafficking? What freedom do we preach when our females breathe through enraged wounds? They are used and abused, left in caves alienated and bruised. What is this language we speak of when we talk about the law, since the human right clause is ignored and flawed? Whom is it protecting because here we are protesting? Isn't this law ought to save the bodies of young females? Isn't this law ought to be brave and remove females from sex frames? Instead, it chooses for women and children to die leaving their loved ones with no goodbyes. Human trafficking, I say, has made enough money for the day.
Mitta Xinindlu
Saturday evening, on a quiet lazy afternoon, I went to watch a bullfight in Las Ventas, one of Madrid's most famous bullrings. I went there out of curiosity. I had long been haunted by the image of the matador with its custom made torero suit, embroidered with golden threads, looking spectacular in his "suit of light" or traje de luces as they call it in Spain. I was curious to see the dance of death unfold in front of me, to test my humanity in the midst of blood and gold, and to see in which state my soul will come out of the arena, whether it will be shaken and stirred, furious and angry, or a little bit aware of the life embedded in every death. Being an avid fan of Hemingway, and a proponent of his famous sentence "About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after,” I went there willingly to test myself. I had heard atrocities about bullfighting yet I had this immense desire to be part of what I partially had an inclination to call a bloody piece of cultural experience. As I sat there, in front of the empty arena, I felt a grandiose feeling of belonging to something bigger than anything I experienced during my stay in Spain. Few minutes and I'll be witnessing a painting being carefully drawn in front of me, few minutes and I will be part of an art form deeply entrenched in the Spanish cultural heritage: the art of defying death. But to sit there, and to watch the bull enter the arena… To watch one bull surrounded by a matador and his six assistants. To watch the matador confronting the bull with the capote, performing a series of passes, just before the picador on a horse stabs the bull's neck, weakening the neck muscles and leading to the animal's first loss of blood... Starting a game with only one side having decided fully to engage in while making sure all the odds will be in the favor of him being a predetermined winner. It was this moment precisely that made me feel part of something immoral. The unfair rules of the game. The indifferent bull being begged to react, being pushed to the edge of fury. The bull, tired and peaceful. The bull, being teased relentlessly. The bull being pushed to a game he isn't interested in. And the matador getting credits for an unfair game he set. As I left the arena, people looked at me with mocking eyes. Yes, I went to watch a bull fight and yes the play of colors is marvelous. The matador’s costume is breathtaking and to be sitting in an arena fills your lungs with the sands of time. But to see the amount of claps the spill of blood is getting was beyond what I can endure. To hear the amount of claps injustice brings is astonishing. You understand a lot about human nature, about the wars taking place every day, about poverty and starvation. You understand a lot about racial discrimination and abuse (verbal and physical), sex trafficking, and everything that stirs the wounds of this world wide open. You understand a lot about humans’ thirst for injustice and violence as a way to empower hidden insecurities. Replace the bull and replace the matador. And the arena will still be there. And you'll hear the claps. You've been hearing them ever since you opened your eyes.
Malak El Halabi
So how did it come to this? Why did the Australian government have to provide a protection visa for José on the grounds that a religious organisation it deems a tax-exempt charity had trafficked him? How could a church that claims to believe in freedom and human rights enslave and traffic its members? How could a church that in its own religious creed says ‘that all men have inalienable rights to their own lives’ separate a loving couple who wanted to get married and have a child, and force the woman to have an abortion? How could a church use Australia as a penal colony in the 21st century? To understand the madness of modern-day Scientology, you need to go back to the source, and the thinking that marked its very beginning.
Steve Cannane (Fair Game: The Incredible Untold Story of Scientology in Australia)
Instead of hiding bodies in mass graves, corpses were triumphantly displayed, as when the Jalisco New Generation (while still part of El Chapo’s Sinaloa cartel) dumped the thirty-five bodies on an avenue in Veracruz in September 2011. In reply, the Zetas scattered twenty-six corpses in Jalisco and a dozen in Sinaloa. On closer inspection, the bodies were those of ordinary citizens, not criminals: they were workers and students who had been abducted and murdered and displayed in order to strike fear in the heart of anyone who doubted the murderous resolve of the Zetas... In To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War, John Gibler writes about a related series of bizarre and violent episodes that took place in Torreón, in Coahuila state, bordering Texas: “Who would believe, for example, that the warden of a state prison would let convicted killers out at night and loan them official vehicles, automatic assault rifles, and bulletproof vests, so that they could gun down scores of innocent people in a neighboring state and then quickly hop back over the state line and into prison, behind bars, a perfect alibi. Who would believe that a paramilitary drug-trafficking organization formed by ex−Special Forces of the Mexican Army would kidnap a local cop and torture him into confessing all of the above details about the prisoners’ death squad, videotape the confession, execute the cop on camera with a shot to the heart, and then post the video on YouTube? Who could fathom that the federal attorney general would, within hours of the video-taped confession and execution being posted online, arrest the warden, and then a few days later hold a press conference fully acknowledging that the prisoners’ death squad had operated for months, killing ten people in a bar in January 2010, eight people in a bar in May 2010, and seventeen people at a birthday party in July?” Yet all of this actually happened. During April 2012, when El Chapo was at war with the Zetas, fourteen torsos — armless and legless bodies — were found in a car by the side of the road in Nuevo Laredo. Dead Zetas. Some of the torsos were in the trunk, for which there is a specific narco term: encajuelado (“trunked”; therefore, trunks trunked). Soon after, in Michoacán state, the Zetas met their match in the person of Nazario Moreno (called El Más Loco, the Craziest One), leader of the ruthless Templarios, the Knights Templar cartel, whose recruits were required to eat human flesh—their victims’— as part of their initiation rites. When Moreno was gunned down by the Mexican army in 2014, the Zetas flourished, and remain dominant. But there was a posthumous bonus for the Craziest One: he was promoted to sainthood. In and around his birthplace in Apatzingán, shrines and altars were erected to Saint Nazario, the dead capo represented as a holy figure in robes, venerated by credulous Michoacanos.
Paul Theroux
Obama declined to hold public services in the White House commemorating the National Day of Prayer, which had been the practice of his predecessors. • In September 2011, his Department of Health and Human Services terminated funding to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for its extensive program to assist victims of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. The reason? Objections to Catholic teaching on abortion and contraception.7 • In 2013 Obama’s inaugural committee forced pastor Louie Giglio, whose Atlanta church was nationally known for its efforts to combat sex trafficking, to withdraw from delivering a prayer at the inaugural ceremony after an audio recording surfaced of a sermon Giglio delivered in the mid-1990s referencing biblical teaching on homosexuality. When it came to praying at Obama’s second inaugural, no pastor holding to an orthodox view of Scripture had need to apply. • His Justice Department canceled a 30,000 grant to a program for at-risk youth because it allowed voluntary, student-led prayer, and the oath recited by its young charges mentioned God.8 • He advocated passage of a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act prohibiting private employers from declining to hire gays and lesbians that granted no exemption for religious ministries and charities. • The Defense Department canceled an appearance by Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse at a National Day of Prayer observance because of Graham’s alleged anti-Muslim bigotry. • Obama’s campaign removed a reference to God from the Democratic Party platform and only moved to reinsert it after news outlets reported the exclusion and controversy erupted. In rushed proceedings at the party convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, the name of God was reinserted to boos from the delegates.
Reed Ralph (Awakening: How America Can Turn from Economic and Moral Destruction Back to Greatness)
I’m also nonrefundable.” “Surely there’s a return policy.” “Forget it. You’re way past the thirty-day refund period. You’re stuck with me now. And before you ask, I’m also nontransferable and nonexchangeable. If you donate me to charity there’s no tax write-off because technically that would be considered Human trafficking.” “Wow. You’ve got your bases covered.” “You bet. Should have paid more attention to the Dexter J. Daley boyfriend agreement.” Sloane dropped him onto the counter and stepped between his legs to pull him close. “I don’t recall this boyfriend agreement.” “You might have been sleeping at the time, but sleep during the reading of the DJDBA is covered in the fine print. As long as you have a pulse, you’re considered present and accounted for.” “Duly
Charlie Cochet (Rack & Ruin (THIRDS, #3))
Added to the shock of the routine violation of their bodies was the trauma of having to relinquish their children to unknown slave-holders. [W.E.B.] Du Bois considered this physical, mental, and spiritual abuse of black women--with its inevitable result being the destruction of the traditional African family--the highest crime committed by slave-holders and the one thing for which he said he could not forgive them.
Aberjhani (The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois)
Technically, I’m a businessman.” “Is that what they call human trafficking these days?” “Human trafficking is supposed to bring a profit. Given your attitude, I’d have to pay someone to take you.
Suzanne E. Lang (Smuggled (Mercenary #1))
And now that mulch of dead imaginings beneath the feet of Temperance ladies, union-affiliated Vaudevillians and maimed men home from Europe has contaminated the groundwater of the upstart country's nightmares. Immigrants in their illimitable difference come to seem a separate species, taciturn and fish-eyed as though risen from the ocean waves that bore them in their transport, monstrous in their self-contained communities with bitter scents and indecipherable ululations, names, unsettlingly unpronounceable ensconced at isolated farms where beaten track is naught save idle rumour stagnant families nurse grievance, dreadful secrets and deformity in solitude; pools of declined humanity entirely unconnected to society by any tributary where ancestral prejudice or misconception may become the plaint of generations. Fabled and forbidden works of Arab alchemy are handed down across years cruel and volatile, trafficked between austere and colonial homes by charitable fellowships with ancient affectations or conveyed by fevered sea-captains, fugitive Huguenots or elderly hysterics formally accused of witchcraft. Young America, a sapling power grown suddenly so tall upon its diet of nickelodeons and motorcars, has sunk unwitting roots into an underworld of grotesque notions and archaic creeds, their feaful pull discernible below the weed-cracked sidewalk. Buried and forgotten, ominous philosophies await their day with hideous patience. Well! I think that's pretty darned good for a first attempt. A little over-wrought, perhaps, and I'm not sure about the style - I can't decide if its too modern of it's too old fashioned, but perhaps that's a good sign. Of course, I guess I'll have to introduce a plot and characters at some point, but I'll wrestle with that minor nuisance when I get to it. Perhaps I could contrive to have some hobo, maybe literally a hoe-boy or travelling itinerant farm labourer who's wandering from place to place around New England in the search for work; somebody who might reasonably become involved with all the various characters I'm hoping to investigate. Being a labourer, while it would lend a feasibility to any action or exertion that I wanted in the story, wouldn't mean that my protagonist was lacking in intelligence of education: this is often economically a far from certain country for a lot of people, and there's plenty of smart fellows - maybe even an aspiring writer like myself - who've found themselves leaving their homes and families to mooch around from farm to farm in hope of some hay-baling or fruit-picking that's unlikely to materialise. Perhaps a character like that, a rugged man who is sufficiently well read to justifiably allow me a few literary flourishes (and I can't help thinking that I'll probably end up casting some imagined variant of Tom Malone) would be the kind of of sympathetic hero and the kind of voice I'm looking for. Meanwhile I yawned a moment or two back, and while I'm not yet quite exhausted to the point where I can guarantee a deep and dreamless sleep, perhaps another six or seven vague ideas for stories might just do the soporific job.
Alan Moore (Providence Compendium by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows Hardcover)
And now that mulch of dead imaginings beneath the feet of Temperance ladies, union-affiliated Vaudevillians and maimed men home from Europe has contaminated the groundwater of the upstart country's nightmares. Immigrants in their illimitable difference come to seem a separate species, taciturn and fish-eyed as though risen from the ocean waves that bore them in their transport, monstrous in their self-contained communities with bitter scents and indecipherable ululations, names, unsettlingly unpronounceable ensconced at isolated farms where beaten track is naught save idle rumour stagnant families nurse grievance, dreadful secrets and deformity in solitude; pools of declined humanity entirely unconnected to society by any tributary where ancestral prejudice or misconception may become the plaint of generations. Fabled and forbidden works of Arab alchemy are handed down across years cruel and volatile, trafficked between austere and colonial homes by charitable fellowships with ancient affectations or conveyed by fevered sea-captains, fugitive Huguenots or elderly hysterics formally accused of witchcraft. Young America, a sapling power grown suddenly so tall upon its diet of nickelodeons and motorcars, has sunk unwitting roots into an underworld of grotesque notions and archaic creeds, their feaful pull discernible below the weed-cracked sidewalk. Buried and forgotten, ominous philosophies await their day with hideous patience. Well! I think that's pretty darned good for a first attempt. A little over-wrought, perhaps, and I'm not sure about the style - I can't decide if its too modern of it's too old-fashioned, but perhaps that's a good sign. Of course, I guess I'll have to introduce a plot and characters at some point, but I'll wrestle with that minor nuisance when I get to it. Perhaps I could contrive to have some hobo, maybe literally a hoe-boy or travelling itinerant farm labourer who's wandering from place to place around New England in the search for work; somebody who might reasonably become involved with all the various characters I'm hoping to investigate. Being a labourer, while it would lend a feasibility to any action or exertion that I wanted in the story, wouldn't mean that my protagonist was lacking in intelligence or education: this is often economically a far from certain country for a lot of people, and there's plenty of smart fellows - maybe even an aspiring writer like myself - who've found themselves leaving their homes and families to mooch around from farm to farm in hope of some hay-baling or fruit-picking that's unlikely to materialise. Perhaps a character like that, a rugged man who is sufficiently well read to justifiably allow me a few literary flourishes (and I can't help thinking that I'll probably end up casting some imagined variant of Tom Malone) would be the kind of of sympathetic hero and the kind of voice I'm looking for. Meanwhile I yawned a moment or two back, and while I'm not yet quite exhausted to the point where I can guarantee a deep and dreamless sleep, perhaps another six or seven vague ideas for stories might just do the soporific job.
Alan Moore (Providence Compendium by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows Hardcover)
caftans
Nancy Hartwell Enonchong (Harem Slave: One Thousand Nine Hundred and Four Days of Hell on the Persian Gulf (Human Trafficking Series))
That’s what most people do when it comes to human trafficking. Everybody knows it exists, and most will educate themselves on how to avoid it, but they can’t watch when it comes to the reality of it. Can’t listen. Can’t see the depravity. Because if they don’t look, then they can go back to their normal lives and live on as if there aren't thousands of people out here dying every day.
H.D. Carlton (Haunting Adeline (Cat and Mouse, #1))
Instead of the vulnerable person (who has now disappeared), the illusion of the invulnerable person is created - the person who, by definition, cannot become a victim. No one - not women, drug abusers, people subjected to human trafficking, people living in poverty, illegal immigrants, or even children with no other option but to dig in the trash for food - can be called 'subjugated.' The ideal of the superman/superwoman becomes the natural condition of the human. For whatever this invulnerable person's fate - to be screwed by multiple men per day, take drugs and contract HIV/AIDs at ten years of age, have her body covered in bruises, lie passively and let herself be used, or turn other children into slaves - she is, by definition, an active subject who exercises opposition and control. The only possible violence that can be exerted against her is by calling her a victim. It is worse than any other physical or psychological violation to speak of her as subjugated - only then does she become a victim. A consequence of this belief system is the conviction that if there are no victims, there can be no perpetrators. The unmentionables, the men, are completely exonerated in a highly convenient, imperceptible way.
Kajsa Ekis Ekman (Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self)
At any hour of the day or night, Stanton will get a call about the latest underage victim who was picked up in a prostitution bust or an undercover operation, and he makes his way to the detention center. He is always struck by how the girls change. When he first sees them in their "work outfits," they do not seem much like children, with skimpy dresses, daring hairdos, heavy makeup, and flashy nails. After they shower, clean up, and put on the detention center's sweatpants and tops, they lose their street-worn years. "Then it hits you, these are really just kids," Stanton says. Invariably, the girls are not receptive to him, at least not at first. They are tough, and they are angry, and Stanton knows he has to be straight with them. "I never try to bullshit them," Stanton explains. "These kids are sharp. They have radar. Their lives depend on reading a man, be it a pimp or a trick, so they know when someone is lying to them. You really have to be genuine to earn their trust.
Julian Sher (Somebody's Daughter: The Hidden Story of America's Prostituted Children and the Battle to Save Them)
Each day I wake up, my goal is to be happy.
Shara Hardy (A Letter to My Sisters: Reflecting on God's Promises)
On the morning of June 17, 1982, the body of an Italian banker was found hanging from scaffolding under Blackfriars Bridge in London, his pockets stuffed with thousands of dollars in foreign banknotes, and he was weighed down with bricks from a nearby building site. Roberto Calvi had, until the day before, been the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, an institution with a rich history founded in 1896 by a priest in Milan with a vision for providing credit to the local community in a way that was in keeping with Catholic teachings. It was also a bank mired in scandal, after the discovery that Calvi had authorized hundreds of millions of dollars to be secreted out of the company to a network of shell companies registered in Panama and Liechtenstein.
Gareth Gore (Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church)
Franco invited Escrivá to give a private, six-day retreat for himself and his wife at the El Pardo palace, where they lived.
Gareth Gore (Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church)