The Modern Slave Trade

Picture credit: http://www.ishr.org
If you strip away Microsoft Word-generated Air National Guard memos, the bogus comparisons of Gitmo to mass-murdering Gulags, the fake but accurate Quran-flushing reports... if you strip away almost all of what passes for news these days, what are we left with?

The real stories. The important stories. The stories that CBS, Newsweek, and the Gray Lady should be covering. But don't.

No, it's left up to the Bush State Department, vilified for lo these many years, to expose the vast scope of the modern slave trade. Perhaps the mainstream media hasn't had enough time to research this "real news". After all, this is only the fifth annual Trafficking In Persons Report.

Look, only about 800,000 people are bought and sold each year, so I suppose Abu Graib, Halliburton, and the occasional, TV-friendly car bomb detonation should have top priority. Surely you don't expect the likes of Maureen Dowd to hoist themselves off their derrieres, do some real investigation, and write about true evil and injustice?

And, look, it only involves sexual slavery, child beggars, forced domestication, starvation, unreported rapes, beatings, and deaths, so I suppose these miserable souls (who number well under a million) don't deserve any investigative reporting. Leave it up to the State Department! The mainstream media has fake but accurate stories to cover!

Do me a favor. Click on any of the following search links for 'modern slave trade' at the LA Times, the New York Times, CBS News, or ABC News, just as a little test.

You see, the modern slave trade really isn't worth covering as news.

Because investigating this scourge on humanity would require scape-goating parties other than the Bush Administration and the U.S. Military. It would require delving into the true nature of evil. And, goodness knows, the mainstream media doesn't have any time for that.

Fox: The Modern Slave Trade and the State Department's 2005 Trafficking In Persons Report