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In most of the world, regardless of civilised or not, slavery is not connected with race, and in some countries is still going on.

Sure it is, perhaps not deliberately, but it's associated and that's a kind of connection. Some races are disproportionately targeted for slavery because they are easier to target.

This made me look around for a good definition. There's a pretty good one here. They're an advocacy group focused on eradicating slavery - a pretty good site.

Ah, right, so we should ignore the plight of the last legally oppressed group in our society, the young, because in your mind there are brown people to worry about.

"the last legally oppressed group in our society, the young". . ? Are you saying that with a straight face?

The education system certainly IS fundamentally (and imho very deliberately) broken, but none of these battles over the puppet theater of free speech on Facebook are going to fix or even address the underlying problems. And all of that aside, adults provide boundaries to the children under their care for a host of extremely valid reasons. While many of those adults are ignorant and thus dangerously inept, I really don't think that access to 'free-speech' for 17 year-olds is a particularly vital concern. I'd put brain-washing, economic warfare and simple malnutrition much higher on the list of problems. If children can survive that gauntlet into adulthood, then perhaps they'll have minds capable of seeing and comprehending the world, and thus be able to "use their words" to say something the state might deem worthy of repression.

And, yes actually, for fuck's sake. . ,

I certainly AM concerned with the U.S. thirst for slaves, both foreign and domestic. Any non-narcissist bloody-well ought to be, and no, I don't care what color their skin happens to be. Do you? Seriously?

-FL

"Wise man say, those that pursue the politics of fifty years ago are either historians or idiots."

Wise men don't call others idiots without having some excellent points to refute their arguments with instead of childish excuses for the fact that the Chinese have done far less damage transitioning over a billion people from an agrarian economy to an industrial one than we did in the same period merely sustaining our far smaller population. I suggest you actually check up on what Western industries have been doing, and in many cases still are doing since China started to industrialise in the late 1970s.

"My only concern is what is happening today and what will be happening tomorrow, history is just lessons, that people should not repeat, you kinda missed that whole not repeating history bit didn't you."

It's you that's missed the fact that the US and EU are _still_ polluting far more than China is with half their population. If we can't learn from our own history, then why should the Chinese be expected to do so?

"You kind of idiot logic means it is ok to keep repeating the same mistakes, the same abuses, the same lies over and over and over again."

My kind of logic holds China to the same standard as the rest of us. In case you hadn't noticed, the US generates more pollution than they do with 1/4 their population, so I suggest that you take the advice of a truly wise man, and avoid throwing stones while living inside a glass house.

"Why don't reach further back into history and cite Roman slavery at brick factories, I hear China repeated that example just in the last year, hey that's ok after all the ancient Romans did it too."

We don't need to go anything like as far back as the Romans, because the US and Europe are using slave and forced labour domestically, and their corporations are making big profits from foreign industries that use slaves:

http://www.antislavery.org/homepage/news/CMA%20agr ee%20161001.htm
http://www.injusticeline.com/slave2.html
http://soc.enotes.com/slavery-today-article/slaver y-united-states-serious-problem
http://www.iabolish.org/slavery_today/country_repo rts/do.html

There are plenty of other examples that somebody with enough brain cells to do a little research could find. So once again, we have you, the hypocrite, holding the Chinese up to a standard that your own country doesn't meet. And before you pipe up with some pathetically childish point about slavery being illegal in the Western world, it's also illegal in China, hence the fact that they arrested those responsible for using slaves in the _illegal_ brick kilns you were blathering about.

"as for China, let's have a democracy and really see what the 'Chinese People' actually think, rather than just a few corrupt politicians."

Because democracies have never been governed by a few corrupt politicians.

The Dutch don't have racial problems?
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pag ename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1 150927809973&call_pageid=968256290204&col=96835011 6795

Really?
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?su bchannel_id=19&story_id=30545&name=One+in+10+Dutch +people+are+racist%3A+poll

REALLY!?!?!?!?!?
http://www.antislavery.org/breakingthesilence/slav e_routes/slave_routes_netherlands.shtm

Apparently to most of my fellow Americans, Holland is just a magical place filled with Pot, wooden shoes, dikes (Is levy the new PC word?) and Windmills.

While the Unicef site does say bought, Asia Child Rights, the Bangladesh Human Rights Network and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights all agree that both happened pretty frequently. In fact, the organization I cited in the gp post got involved because of trying to track an abducted child from Pakistan who ended up in the UAE.

At least 20 Million people are still enslaved today [source]
Communism (or some varient there of) is alive in five countries [source]
It seems that we're doing most of the raping and killing in Iraq [source] [source]

Liberals, as it turns out, have been for US and UN intervention to end slavery world wide. They've been for withholding MFN status from China until the communist regime there did something about its human rights record. And the left has been 100% behind preventing AMERICANS from raping and murdering Iraqis.

The right, in contrast, has lept into the arms of communist China for the sake of making a few quick bucks. It's turned the other way as millions are enslaved around the world, some on our own shores. And the neo-cons refuse to hold accountable those that knew about the Abu Ghraib attrosities and yet did nothing.

As to your first question, let me ply my left wing university education. As plato once said, given the ability to elect their own leaders, the people will inevitably choose fools and naives.

Wow, thousands of years later and the guy's still got it pegged.

As the modern slogan goes- socialism without democracy is slavery. Even if the government pretends to pay for the work in a totally mythological money system they invented themselves. Of course, more conventional slavery happens there too, even outside of the forced labor camps run by the communists

And yes- I'm well aware that in the early 1800s, slave labor was common in Maryland. But then we had this little thing called a civil war, which ended with an Emancipation Proclaimation and a constitutional ammendment outlawing the practice. Which is why Americans who still want slave labor have to go to China (or certain countries in Africa).

Depends which set of Americans:

1. Large business owners who use cheap labor to cut costs- definately

2. Cheap people who don't care where the junk they buy at Wal Mart came from: Certainly

3. Manufacturing workers laid off due to Wal Mart insisting that Ohio Arts cut the cost of Etch-A-Sketches down to less than $.24/hr for the factory workers: Almost certainly NOT

I consider #1 and #2 to be traitors, and not real Americans, so I guess my answer is no, I'm not inferring that.

As to the guy who thinks that slavery doesn't happen in China, I provide this link

Slave labour on the increase in China