Wednesday, November 07, 2007

it's an unjust world

hello!


At the moment my excercise book is lying open in front of me, taunting me with as yet unrevised fun things to learn. What better thing to do, then, than update my poor neglected blog! This time with something of a bit more substance than name-alike people ... I've been meaning to for a while actually, to let you know about a book I've been reading for my history subject, one of the more confronting one's I've read in a while:





Granted, I haven't actually finished it (yet!), but I first started reading it on the bus home from uni one day, and was so drawn into it that I missed my stop - never have I done that before! That, I thought, is the sign of a good book (a non-fiction one at that!)

It's basically about modern day slavery - even though slavery is illegal in the world, there are 27 million people trapped in a new kind of slavery (e.g. it's not racial anymore). That there is still such a huge amount of slavery in the world today was a revelation to me - I thought that apart from a few abnormal situations, it was pretty much non-existant. But not so. It's a hugely lucrative business - big profits are made out of cheap lives. It's pretty hard reading - the second chapter's on Thai sex slaves, where young girls are lured away (or sold) from their villages and homes with a false contract. Anyway, if you're interested http://www.freetheslaves.net/ has got more info.

3 comments:

Samara said...

Sounds like an awesome book- it truly scares me when I read stories (true ones at that) that have people being treated so inhumanely in ways that I could never imagine...and here we are, complaining at the fact that we have to do exams... what an unfair world we live in...

Oh, and I love that you missed your stop- I know a good book when I'm on the train and have no desire to listen to the people's conversations around me, no matter how juicy they are...:P (This doesn't happen too often, I assure you!)

jesster said...

So true. It's shockingly sobering really, and has made me think more about what I should be doing with that sort of information - like the obligation we have as Christians right injustice in the world (in the small ways we can!.

And you're not alone in listening to people's conversations - one time I even had my earphones in on the bus, but never actually pressed 'play' because the converation going on next to me was too interesting!

by the way Samara, do you actually have a blog?

Samara said...

Oh my, i do that ALL the time- i'm glad i'm not the only one...

I don't have a blog, i tend to write up stuff on myspace...and with a facebook as well, i just couldn't handle an extra internet commitment!