Justice for Women

March 18, 2014

The UN estimates that each year, nearly 4,000,000 men, women, and children are sold into slavery through human trafficking. Ships, planes, trains, trucks and vans worldwide transport them. The victims of this $10 billion industry (40% of whom are women and children sold into sex indenturment) do not willingly purchase tickets for their rides — they are victims of kidnap, extortion, and trickery.

While the international collaboration to find the likely sunken Malaysian aircraft 370, and the lost lives in its cabin, (12 crew members and 227 passengers from 15 nations) is a good sign, the failure of technology apparent, the lack of military psychics who are trained to see ‘everywhere and everywhen’ not surprising, but disappointing none the less. Forensics might reveal gas warfare-like traces in the bodies of the passengers, explaining the lack of cell phone texts to loved ones, and perhaps notice one male and one female no longer on board who parachuted to their sea rendezvous, where they were secreted away by boat, having put the plane on auto pilot knowing its fuel supply would only go so far, who were in fact hired by Russia to distract attention from their invasion of Ukraine. Everyone can imagine a good story line when no one yet knows what the true one is. That’s the power of TV, to draw us into stories other than those that are true. That any of it passes for news is dubious, that it brings higher ratings, obvious.