Jesshosy's Notes

I recently got this book from one of the warehouse sales around. I would say it is one of the best and most realistic book that I’ve ever came across. Definitely worth a read. Most importantly it has opened-up my mind on many perspectives on various global slavery issues we thought could not have happenned in the 21st century, but unfortunately it still EXIST. The stories actually gets your heart pounding- imagining the severity of the victims’ situations, especially when the survivors tell shares their stories of non-stop tortures, rapes, close-to-death experiences, escapes, and finally FREEDOM.

Authored by David Batstone (a professor of ethics at the University of San Francisco), the book shared a few real life stories about survivors of slavery including:

• How girls at young age ended up in sex parlours and brothels in Cambodia and Thailand?
• How South Asians ended up being a bonded labourer for generations?
• How children at young age were abducted and trained to kill as a child soldier in Uganda?
• How Eastern European women were transported by the European sex syndicates from one country to another and end up in US, Middle East or Asia Pacific?
• How Peruvian children ended up in the sex market and controlled by pimps?
• How slavery take place in the modern-day America?

More info:

“Not For Sale is a campaign of students, entrepreneurs, artists, people of faith, athletes, law enforcement officers, politicians, social workers, skilled professionals, and all justice seekers, united to fight the global slave trade,” find out more about this campaign at http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/

You can also read more on global slavery updates from the Not for Sale website, i.e: Human Trafficking by US military subcontractor in Baghdad, UK Unveils Plan for Sex Trade Crackdown,FBI: Local child-prostitution roundup snares more than 100 in Bay Area, Project Censored: Not For Sale Featured in Top 25 Censored Stories of 2009,How China has created a new slave empire in Africa,Uganda: Churches, bars cited in human trafficking, and many more.

In line with the fight against global warming, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has called on Malaysians to switch off all non-used lights for an hour, from 8.30pm-9.30pm on March 28 (Earth Hour).

This campaign was initiated in 2007, Australia. In 2008, many countries including 35 official flagship cities and also 400 supporting cities have participated in this campaign.

As for Malaysia, I believe it would be the first to be held in big scale. As off today, many iconic landmarks such as KLTower, Angkasapuri, Sunway Pyramid, MidValley Megamall, etc., in Malaysia have pledged their commitments for the ‘Earth Hour’ campaign.

The benefits of this campaign is obvious – energy saving -> reduces CO2 released -> reduces global warming. The amount of energy saved just in 1 hour by switching the lights and non-used electricity off, is quite alarming. Here are some figures from various countries which have participated in this campaign before:

• “Toronto saved 900 megawatt-hours of electricity. 8.7% was saved if measured against a typical March.”
• “Ireland, as a whole, had a reduction in electricity use of about 1.5% for the evening.In the three-hour period between 18:30 and 21:30, there was a reduction of 50 megawatts, saving 150 megawatt-hours, or approximately 6 tonnes of carbon dioxide.”
• “In Dubai, where external lighting on several major city landmarks was turned off and street lighting in selected areas was dimmed by 50%, the Electricity and Water Authority reported savings of 100 megawatt-hours of electricity.”
• “The best result was from Christchurch, New Zealand. The city reported a drop of 13% in electricity demand.”
• “Melbourne, Australia saved 10.1% of electricity. Sydney, being the city that participated both 2007 and 2008 Earth Hour, cut 8.4% electricity consumption.”

So friends, what are you waiting for, let’s switch off our lights too.

For more info about Earth Hour:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Hour
http://www.earthhour.org/
http://thestar.com.my/