Humor More on black and white physics 14 Jul 200818 Sep 2017 Language Log has a very nice summary of the reasons why some holes are black, and some are white. Read More
Evolution Desecration, blasphemy in public, and manners 12 Jul 2008 When does a person’s religious beliefs constrain someone who is not religious? What sorts of redress can a religious person expect in a secular society? These questions arise from the recent to-do about PZ Myers defense of the stealing of a communion wafer from a Catholic church. As a result,… Read More
Politics The stupidity of ISP filtering no barrier to its implementation 29 Jul 2008 The Labor government has a policy to force ISPs to filter web requests to prevent child pornography. Sounds nice in theory, but I’ve been using a filtered ISP at my university (they’re running a trial) and what I can do online at home in one minutes takes the better part… Read More
You mean the Mormon link? (NB: Anytime you see the word “Deseret” in connection with anything, think Mormon. Doesn’t mean it’s factually wrong; just means it’s coming from a Mormon source, to serve a Mormon agenda. Anyone who requires additional source material is encouraged to double-check everything.) The numbers look reasonable to me, as a godless American lefty, but that’s purely anecdotal.
As it stands, that is a genetic fallacy. I find Mormon sources often very good (for example, about evolution) except where it contradicts their basic doctrines. I can’t see how this would.
Ack, I keep forgetting that it’s wide-awake time where you are, instead of insomniac time where I am. It may be a genetic fallacy (and goodness knows how much I’ve been wrestling with fallacies and biases in an attempt to become a better skeptic). But there’s no primary sources on the numbers, and I’m still reeling from all the atheistic confirmation bias after reading all the glowing obits of that amazing writer, sloppy thinker, and confirmed misogynist, C. Hitchens. The article seems to be mostly about sex-trafficking. And it’s hard for me to take White Slavery seriously, considering the kind of baseless moral panic that gripped the US in the early 20th. c. What’s next? “Reliable” statistics on Baby Farms?
I know people in the sex industry, and I think that sex trafficking is real. It’s not about “white” slavery, though, but slavery. And it happens in Australia too. This is not really about good white girls being kidnapped and traced by Liam Neeson, but about poor and vulnerable women being exploited and coerced by criminals. This happens in the US, and elsewhere, and often these are ethnically subjected women. There is also forced labor of men, but mostly this is a problem with women and children. As to the lack of figures; it’s a newspaper report. They mention they get the figures from the UC Berkeley, the department of Justice, and an academic study published as a book. I would imagine it would not be hard to track those down.
I should get into the habit of putting a note under these images. Generally though, I don’t put up images that aren’t mine without a link to the source. It’s bad netiquette.
The Deseret/Mormon connection is well known, but I do not see how this article promotes the LDS agenda.
It’s not only Mormon newspapers that publish sex-slave hysteria. In the week before the last Super Bowl (in Dallas), the Dallas Morning News ran articles speculating about all the sex-slaves who were sure to be imported from other cities for the event. One article per day, for an entire week. It sells newspapers.