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The Global Shame of Sex Trafficking By Bob Jones

Thai law does forbid prostitution, and children, especially, are supposed to be protected from Western predators looking for a cheap night of pleasure

BANGKOK – With his pressed, white shirt and slicked-back hair, the young Thai man comes across as an earnest, trustworthy salesman. The product is sure to be satisfactory, he repeatedly tells the buyer sitting across a low table. But the buyer isn’t sure. He’s from the West, and he doesn’t know the laws of this hot, humid country. An older Thai man seated next to the salesman tries to be reassuring. He’s a police chief, and he knows the law. The buyer needn’t worry: He’ll have no trouble with the authorities on this particular transaction.

The product, meanwhile, fidgets restlessly and smiles uncomprehendingly. She doesn’t speak English, so she can’t be sure what the three men are saying. But she knows the salesman, and she’s seen plenty of other men like this Westerner. She must know that they are haggling over her price, or perhaps what services she will perform. Even in the grainy video, shot secretly by the International Justice Mission of Arlington, Va., the girl looks nervous and resigned—and very young.

She is, in fact, only 14. She’s not supposed to be in this room, in this situation. Despite the assurances of the older man, Thai law does forbid prostitution, and children, especially, are supposed to be protected from Western predators looking for a cheap night of pleasure.

But the law means nothing when law-enforcement officials can supplement their meager salaries by renting out such girls by the hour. And there’s no shortage of money to pass under the table: A young virgin from Thailand’s impoverished hill country or from across the border in China might be indentured for about $100. A single trick with a Western tourist or Japanese businessman repays that investment for the girl’s owner, or mamasan, and every additional customer is pure profit.

With the rewards so high and the risks almost nonexistent, Thailand’s prostitution industry has an endless appetite for fresh talent. Experts say that some 60,000 girls every year are trafficked into sexual slavery in Thailand alone. Because younger girls command premium prices and can work longer “careers,” children are especially prized by brothel owners. Small wonder that an estimated 80 percent of Thailand’s 1 million prostitutes are under the age of 16. For many of them, sex trafficking is a death sentence: At least half the child prostitutes in Thailand are thought to be HIV positive.

And Thailand is hardly the only—or even the worst—offender. The Protection Project, an international anti-trafficking effort based in Washington, offers statistics that seem almost inconceivable:

Some 200,000 Nepali girls, many younger than 14, work as sexual slaves in India.
The island nation of Sri Lanka has an estimated 10,000 children between the ages of 6 and 14 working in forced prostitution.
About 10,000 women from the former Soviet Union were forced into prostitution in Israel.
As many as 50,000 victims a year are trafficked into the United States.
The number of women and children trafficked worldwide each year, according to estimates by the CIA, could be as high as 2 million.

By their sheer magnitude, such numbers tend to dehumanize the problem. Groups like the International Justice Mission are trying not only to rescue the victims but to give them a face and a voice.

In another IJM video, shot during a recent brothel raid in Mumbai, India, rescuers force open a tiny door in a concrete basement wall. Out of the dark, low-ceilinged basement comes a steady stream of young girls, their dirty saris clinging to their undeveloped bodies. Their dark, round eyes blink in confusion and relief as they emerge into the harsh sunlight. Many bury their faces in their hands, as if they were somehow to blame for the things they’d been forced to do.

The U.S. government is trying to help, but critics charge Uncle Sam is fighting the traffickers with one hand tied behind his back.

In 2000, Congress passed the Victims of Trafficking Protection Act, which President Clinton signed, despite reservations, in the closing days of his administration. The new law required an office within the State Department to monitor sex trafficking around the world. Each year the department would issue a list of offending countries with the worst examples relegated to Tier 3—a categorization that would automatically deny them millions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid. Tier 1 and Tier 2 were designed for countries making real strides to combat trafficking. A nation in either of those categories might be mildly embarrassed, but wouldn’t suffer the huge financial consequences reserved for those in Tier 3.

Thanks to the slow confirmation process for new Bush appointees, the first so-called TIP (Trafficking in Persons) Report, issued in July 2001, was written largely by Clinton holdovers. It consigned 23 countries to Tier 3 status, but some of the most notorious trafficking nations, including Cambodia, India, and Thailand, managed to land in Tier 2, thus escaping economic sanctions. Conservatives hoped that the 2002 report, fully compiled in the Bush administration, would put those countries in Tier 3 where they belonged—and start the process of freeing hundreds of thousands of women and girls from sexual slavery.

Instead, the new TIP report, issued June 15, has many conservatives—and their feminist allies—up in arms. “A year and a half into the Bush administration, matters are at least as bad as they were in the Clinton administration, and in some ways worse,” says Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute, one of the leading voices in the campaign against trafficking. “In all my years in Washington, I have seldom seen as savage a battle going on beneath the radar screen.”

Round 1 of that battle between Bush appointees and entrenched State Department bureaucrats seems to have gone to the bureaucrats. Not only were India and Thailand not banished to Tier 3, but other serious offenders, including Albania, Malaysia, and Pakistan, were actually bumped up to Tier 2. In fact, the first Bush administration TIP Report lists only 19 countries in the lowest category, compared to 23 the year before.

No one believes that the laws of a single nation can fully halt the huge and lucrative trade in women and children, which ranks, in dollar terms, just behind drug smuggling and arms trading on the list of international crimes. But a law with stiff financial penalties could go a long way toward sparing girls from a life of sexual slavery—if only it were properly enforced.

On paper, the issue looks like a no-brainer for the Bush administration. Sexual trafficking is one of those rare causes that brings together right and left, evangelical Christian and secular humanist.

“You’ve got soccer moms and Southern Baptists, the National Organization for Women and and the National Association of Evangelicals on the same side of the issue,” Horowitz says. “Pro-family issues are usually controversial, but on this one, you’ve got everyone in agreement. Gloria Steinem and Chuck Colson together. Doesn’t the White House get it?”

Bush administration officials insist they do get it, but that the go-along, get-along culture of the State Department makes it difficult to achieve any sort of consensus on which countries should be sanctioned.

“It’s been a difficult process,” admits one official who asked not to be identified, per administration rules on speaking to the press. “We believe the intent of the law is to galvanize countries into action, and only when you place a country in Tier 3 will that happen. But some within the State Department believe that just being on the list is enough. They’re more cautious, basically, more aware of the diplomatic issues involved.”

In the wake of Sept. 11, even critics admit that the diplomatic issues are more delicate than ever. Did the United States really want to publicly embarrass Israel while that key ally was fighting for its very existence? What about Pakistan and Kazakhstan, two countries the United States needs desperately in its war against the Taliban? Likewise, could we afford to humiliate moderate Muslim nations like Malaysia, a bastion of stability in shaky Southeast Asia?

But anti-trafficking activists insist that by considering all those extraneous factors, the State Department is subverting the very intent of the law. “If you have to consider all these other political factors, then the process is critically flawed,” argues Lisa Thompson of the Initiative Against Sexual Trafficking, a broad-based coalition headed by the Salvation Army. “It’s not about the situation in Kashmir or the tension between Palestine and Israel or all these myriad other important issues. [The TIP Report] shouldn’t be used to manipulate other political debates or international relationships. Otherwise it’s a corrupt process and you might as well not bother.”

Beyond the normal “walk softly” attitude at the State Department, critics say the trafficking law is being hijacked by a committed band of ideologues intent on advancing an agenda too radical even for mainstream feminists like Steinem. They want to legalize prostitution, viewing it as a potentially empowering career option for poor women who voluntarily choose to sell their bodies. The legalization movement has already won in Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia, and similar legislation appears headed for victory elsewhere, including New Zealand and South Africa.

What bearing does legalization have on the trafficking of women? Those who favor legalized prostitution insist that “voluntary sex workers” are in a completely different category from those women forced by brutal owners to service men against their will. They say they can improve working conditions for the former while simultaneously rescuing the latter.

Nonsense, says Donna Hughes, a professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island and a leading expert on trafficking. “Where prostitution is illegal, if you find an act of prostitution, you know the law’s been broken. With legalized prostitution, the pimp simply says, ‘But she consented.’ Then it becomes like the current debate in this country over date rape. The woman has to try to prove that she didn’t consent. If the prostitution had not been legal, the pimp couldn’t make that defense in the first place. So it makes the job of law enforcement that much harder.”

The administration’s stance on legalized prostitution should be clear-cut. Laura J. Lederer, President Bush’s appointee as senior deputy adviser in the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, says flatly that prostitution as a career choice is unacceptable.

“This is not a legitimate form of labor. We’ve been fighting this trend that says if we could just get rid of the AIDS, STDs, and other diseases, the rape and violence, the organized crime, drug trafficking and drug addiction associated with prostitution, it could be a legitimate career option for women,” said Lederer.

“This administration is saying you cannot clean this up,” she said. “It can never be a legitimate way to make a living because it’s inherently harmful for men, women, and children. It goes in the opposite direction of President Bush’s pro-woman, pro-family, human-rights agenda.”

Lederer sees parallels between those who would legalize prostitution today and those who tried to improve the lot of 19th-century African slaves. “Some people argued that if we could just make the chains a little less tight and clean up the slave quarters, then slavery would be fine. They wanted to just regulate it, basically. Others said no, this is inherently evil and we need to abolish it. That’s the approach that we want to take—that this whole commercial sex industry is a human-rights abuse.”

Yet, incredibly enough, not everyone in the Bush State Department agrees. Anti-prostitution groups like Miramed, a pioneering nongovernmental organization working to stop the trafficking of Russian women, have seen their funding suddenly cut off. Meanwhile, groups like the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) continue to receive government grants for anti-trafficking efforts that hold open the possibility of legalized prostitution.

“In terms of the State Department, trying to find where the buck stops is next to impossible,” says Lisa Thompson of the Initiative Against Sexual Trafficking. “A lot of groups that do really good work are trying to get funding, and they’re totally getting the runaround. It makes you wonder how groups like IREX get to the trough.”

So entrenched are the pro-legalization forces after eight years of Bill Clinton that the State Department has yet even to formulate a clear stance on the subject. One draft policy statement unequivocally “rejects the view that the legalization of prostitution and related activities … should be treated as a legitimate or empowering form of work for women.”

Yet after weeks of debate within a Republican-dominated agency, the policy has yet to be adopted. Meanwhile, as the State Department fiddles with policy statements, much of the world burns. Millions more women and girls will end up as sexual slaves in the next 12 months, victims of greed, corruption, lust—and, perhaps, the Washington bureaucracy.

By Bob Jones

This article originally appeared in the June 15, 2002, issue of WORLD Magazine

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli, To repay $6.4 Million

Washington — The Supreme Court rejected Martin Shkreli’s appeal on Monday, after he was branded “Pharma Bro” for raising the price of a lifesaving prescription.

Martin appealed a decision to repay $64.6 million in profits he and his former company earned after monopolizing the pharmaceutical market and dramatically raising its price. His lawyers claimed the money went to his company rather than him personally.

The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is customary, and there were no notable dissents.

Prosecutors, conversely, claimed that the firm had promised to pay $40 million in a settlement and that because Martin orchestrated the plan, he should be held accountable for returning profits.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Martin was also forced to forfeit the Wu-Tang Clan’s unreleased album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” which has been dubbed the world’s rarest musical album. The multiplatinum hip-hop group auctioned off a single copy of the record in 2015, stipulating that it not be used commercially.

Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and defrauding them of millions of dollars in two unsuccessful hedge funds he managed. Shkreli was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals (later Vyera), which hiked the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after acquiring exclusive rights to the decades-old medicine in 2015. It cures a rare parasite condition that affects pregnant women, cancer patients, and HIV patients.

shkreli

He defended the choice as an example of capitalism in action, claiming that insurance and other programs ensured that those in need of Daraprim would eventually receive it. However, the move prompted criticism, from the medical community to Congress.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Attorney Thomas Huff said the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling was upsetting, but the high court could still overturn a lower court judgment that allowed the $64 million penalty order even though Shkreli had not personally received the money.

“If and when the Supreme Court does so, Mr. Shkreli will have a strong argument for modifying the order accordingly,” he told reporters.

Shkreli was freed from prison in 2022 after serving most of his seven-year sentence.

SOURCE | AP