That was Vietnam and its surrounds. It was a possession of France. The A-bombs had been dropped and there was no invasion of Japan. I did not have to go. Everything was very confused. Just ending High School, I knew a man who had been to Indo China on a tramp freighter.

For the sum of ten dollars, he and four other men bought five young (About 13 years old) girls and a big house.

They had their fun for a season. When they left, they freed the used girls and gave the house to them. Having the house would give the girls the resource to support themselves.

I do not know how they made out.

Click on my name to see the current Pat Oliphant cartoon.

You probably meant to say...."HE" has his fun for a season. Five young girls and one adult male, you can bet they weren't having 'fun'.

Re: BlueAmerol: What was the point of that letter? To promote a cartoon?

This topic is so horrible. I hope that's why people are not commenting, because they are stunned by the article, and not because they don't care. I really hope they care. I don't know if other forms of slavery are common in my country (Norway), but I do know there are sex slaves from Africa and Eastern Europe here, and people mostly treat them as prostitutes. I don't understand why the politicians here don't do more to eradicate the problem and help the women (and men?) who are not here voluntarily. And the same goes for other rich democracies where people are shipped in from other countries to work against their will. I just don't understand.

I've lived in Ukraine for the last 6.5 years and I certainly have learned a lot about the global sex slave trade, a good portion of which begins here: the poverty, law enforcement agencies and officials that are either in on the trade or afraid of turning in their political masters who are behind it; human life as a commodity during the Soviet Union was part of the daily experience; the general view of society that only bad, weak parents or weak people are stupid or depraved enough to accept the lure of the would-be cons and slave masters.

All of this chillingly hit home about five years ago in downtown Kyiv: I was walking to a downtown nightclub when I came to the aid of a man set upon by a group of young thugs. To thank me, he offered to buy me a drink in the club and then proceeded to tell me that he could get me any girl, any age - or a boy if that was my thing - anytime I wanted. He said the economic situation of the country was golden given that parents here are willing to sell their children for next to nothing. Years of poverty and Soviet inhumanity have clearly had a horrific effect on people. I was stunned: I had thought myself a good Samaritan having saved this guy from a beating only to find out he was a pedophile and abettor to child molestation and sexual slavery!

Is there any justice in this world? If there is, it will only come, as Skinner says, when the would-be slaves have the economic freedom to pull themselves up by the bootstraps rather than receiving some kind of a handout. Slavery is a systemic, globabl problem inextricably linked to poverty. Fighting slavery is to fight poverty and vice versa - there are no two ways about it.

If the labor movements in these countries were strong, they would be able to give people an alternative re poverty. And they would be able to intimidate the 'governments' who are really behind slavery.

Just expecting the U.N. to do it, without local organizing, is inadequate.

Slavery, after all, is just unpaid labor. And no working person wants that kind of 'competition'... which is one reason northern workers opposed it during the Civil War.

Where's Glenn and the legalize prostitution choir now? Sex slaves shipped to Amsterdam for servitude? They say it ain't so! Legal prostitution stops this sort of thing and promotes human freedom, according to Glenn and the choir.

The world needs more Benjamin Skinners. Thank you for your dangerous and difficult work. You do more good than you even know.

But look...most of them talk about sex slavery. Dear lord, did you read the article? I know its literally the "sexy" face of slavery (especially since a lot of them are white or Asian) but it's not all about fucking!

I remember several years ago, I was watching a news segment, and the correspondent was in an African country (which one I don't remember.) He spoke to a man who was looking for his family. The man said, through an interpreter, that he had been a slave, but that he escaped from the diamond mines or coal factory where he'd been working. What I remember the most about the segment was how the reporter made sure to say that man could be lying about being a slave or that he could be exaggerating. He even said that it might be a mistranslation! I mean, c'mon. Africa has a long history of slavery; I don't think the translator would be confused by a common word like that.

But the reporter, like me, couldn't wrap his head around the fact that there are actual slaves (NOT! sex slaves) out there forced to work by their government for large multinational corporations. Maybe we can't do anything about the governments or the soldiers, but we can certainly do something about corporations who employ slave labor. And I call bullshit on any company who says it doesn't know what is happening.

Part of the problem is that there is a demand for the goods and services derived from slavery. We can speak out against slavery through our dollars, by buying fair-trade items wherever possible. (I wish there were more fair-trade things to buy, it seems like it's mostly just coffee and chocolate where I live. Maybe diamonds too, but it's not like you buy diamonds all the time.)

Fair trade certification programs are far from perfect, but it's something.