Product Description
In his 1999 book, Disposable People, Kevin Bales brought to light the shocking fact of modern slavery and described how, nearly two hundred years after the slave trade was abolished (legal slavery would have to wait another fifty years), global slavery stubbornly persists. In Ending Slavery, Bales again grapples with the struggle to end this ancient evil and presents the ideas and insights that can finally lead to slavery's extinction. Recalling his own involvement in the antislavery movement, he recounts a personal journey in search of the solution and explains how governments and citizens can build a world without slavery.
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 Mounds of passions Abundance of commitments ( doowatt )
"You powerful ones are unconcerned about your slaves; because of your position you lose touch with your brothers." Mozart
"In 1865 slaves were freed in the United States and dumped into the economy without access to credit, education or political participation...what was done virtually guaranteed their long-term second -class citizenship...just like the American emancipation of 1865 the abolition of slavery in Nepal in 2000 was botched"
In the beginning the author did not believe there was a global problem with trafficking, however his own birds eye experience shown to him by the very people in the field, has convinced him that slave trafficking was, is and maybe always has been a problem.
Unknowingly or knowingly the author has shown the modern anti-slave campaign that was started in England then on to the U.S., during the early centuries, while successful in those country's was ultimately, transferred to other geopolitical areas then hidden, protected or disguised as something else, then brought back at least to the U.S.
Starting in 1926 the Slavery Convention sponsored by the League of Nations, England sought to protect slavery in their Colonies and the U. S. excluded forced labor for private purposes, to protect Southern states that were still practicing slavery. India currently has the largest amount of slaves, however the slavery system set up in Japan was surprising. Brazil has the best systems/laws/ in place to fight their country's trafficking.
The author offers a variety of real manageable strategies for ending slavery including compensation for the groups that were wronged, psychological evaluations, health care, jail time and confiscation of property as remedies and deterrents. Including a viable plan to get the United Nations, World Trade Organization, UNICEF, International Criminal Court and World Bank more involved in the antislavery fight.
What is needed now is long term support for those in the field who are actively engaged in the abolition of slaves.
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Disturbing Truth with Hopeful Potential ( jackturner3 )
For anyone who has ever doubted that forced labor is still a problem in the 21st century when, in our inflated egotism over our supposed enlightenment, we believe that we in the developed and even developing world should have overcome such a barbaric practice, Bales' book is a much needed wake up call. For me personally, the most important facet was the early point that something is either slavery or it isn't, and we should call it what it is rather than, in my view, assuage our consciences with weasel adjective "virtual," "-like," or "near." The book is also informative in that it provides the reader with an inside look at how the slave trade is being combated in the modern world, sometimes successfully, and sometimes not. This insider's view is both helpful and disturbing. His advice as to how the individual can contribute to freeing slaves (and why its in all of our best interests to do so), both in big and small ways, should be helpful to anyone looking to make the world a more humane place by ending a truly inhumane practice.
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 WOW....... ( danayb19720 )
A disturbing and sad commentary on the institution of slavery in this modern day era; Bales not only identifies the countries that are the biggest offenders (India leads the pack), but also identifies the main reason behind slavery today. Bales drives home the point that it is not enough to simply "free the slaves;" we must also give them the ability survive on their own once freed....especially if one comes from generations of debt-bondage enslavement. Most important of all....Bales gives instructions as to how we can help to rid the world of this blight upon humanity....an awesome, informative and sobering read.
DYB
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What an eye opener! ( sha-2 )
This is a great read, highly recommended. It brings to light the issue of slavery in a world where most people think that concept is a thing of the past. Kevin Bales writes an action plan of what's needed to bring such an atrocity to an end. What's most troublesome is the children in the world that affected by this. It most stop.
The book will enlighten you and challenge you to to get involved and end modern day slavery by the best means you can.
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 nice subject for a book, but a little dry . . . ( aliled )
I'm very interested in the subject of oppression, and lately there's been a spat of excellent books about the violation of human rights in a number of areas. A very new boo, "Underground America," tackles the lives of undocumented workers in the USA, almost entirely through their own words. It's an eye-opener, if for no other reason than it presents a point of view that everyone thinks they "know," but probably have never truly heard.
I wish I could say the same for this book, The subject - the enduring existence of slavery on the planet - is certainly worthy of people's attention. But this book has some very basic flaws.
For one, it's fairly dry. Many were interviewed for the book, and individual examples of slavery situations and solutions are provided, but these specific examples and points of view are rendered fairly colorless by lack of any sort of first-person feel. It's not a difficult book to read by any reason, yet the overall feeling is that rather writing a kind of intense tome, the (presumably academic) author just wrote it simply enough for everyone to understand. My junior-high school niece borrowed it, read through half of it and said, "It's okay, but he sure makes it boring."
It's also very repetitive. There's *lots* of fairly simplistic narrative that has the effect of making the reader feel that they've got to pay their dues before getting to any real detail. Slavery's awful, no one's doing enough and things can change if we work at it. That last sentence, strung out to a length two thousand times longer, represents about half of what the books says, excluding detail.
It's worth a skim simply to hit the interesting points (which will be easy to spot once you get the basic format), but it's not as inspirational or emotionally direct as it could have been.
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