Frustrations are running deep among international law enforcement agencies and regional governments over their limited abilities to cope with human trafficking and organized crime rings. These crime rings have revolutionised an industry that turns ordinary citizens into slaves. Trillion-dollar industry Interpol says human trafficking and scam compounds in Southeast Asia are worth more than US$3 Read more
The nature of power and how the abuse of power has been dealt with in the past and present were the focus of an international conference in Rome attended by about a dozen scholars earlier this month. Experts in history, philosophy, sociology, political science, psychology and education came together at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University April Read more
People’s real battles should be spent on fighting poverty, hunger, disease, thirst and slavery, Pope Francis says. They should be spending money on those battles, not on fighting each other, nation against nation. Yet vast sums are spent on armaments for waging war. This is “a scandal” that just drags civilisation backward, Francis told a Read more
The decision by the Rolling Stones to remove their 1971 song Brown Sugar from the set list for their upcoming US tour has drawn both praise and criticism. Read by some as a surrender to the “woke brigade” and by others as a reasonable response to the accusation the lyrics glorify “slavery, rape, torture and Read more
Some of New Zealand’s most popular cosmetic products are linked to severe abuse, sexual assault, and endemic health problems among Malaysian and Indonesian palm oil workers, according to a new investigation by the Associated Press. It’s the follow-up to another investigation in September which revealed that many of the same palm oil plantations made use Read more
As protesters on Friday toppled a statue of Father Junipero Serra in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, leaders of another California city had already announced plans to remove a statue of the Catholic saint near their city hall. And by Saturday afternoon another Serra statue was toppled at Placita Olvera in downtown Los Angeles. “Pull Read more
A worldwide network of 2,000 Catholic religious sisters marked the 10th anniversary of its efforts to combat human trafficking and slavery July 29. Speakers from the Talitha Kum organization headlined a United Nations panel on the eve of the U.N. annual observance of the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. “Human trafficking is one of Read more
A leading expert in cyberpsychology describes a digital culture today in which children and pre-teens have virtually unfiltered access to online pornography, and she predicts that one day parents who fail to monitor their children’s online activity may be found guilty of criminal child abuse. “I can see later down the line that parents or Read more
The Church should act against slavery wherever it can and not just speak against it, says Sydney’s archbishop Anthony Fisher. Making good his statement, Fisher has publicly committed the Archdiocese of Sydney to a pilot programme aimed at ridding the archdiocese’s services, schools and parishes of slavery-tainted goods and services. The pilot program Fisher is Read more
Christian leaders deplore US Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s use of the Bible to justify separating illegal immigrant parents from their children when they arrive at the US border. Sessions is quoting St Paul’s letter to the Romans, Chapter 13, saying it is a “clear and wise command …to obey the laws of the government because Read more