The article you pointed to in national geographic plays into the white washing of chattel slavery. Take the title of the article for example:
"There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade."
The problem is the article makes no conceptual or analytical distinction between chattel slavery, debt bondage, peonage, indentured servitude etc. Why does this matter you may ask?
Because to do so would demonstrate the fallacy embedded in the title. The Atlantic slave trade, the form of chattel slavery and the plantation system that accompanied it was sui generis. All those other forms I listed above existed prior to, during and after the Atlantic slave trade and the plantation system. By definition then it is impossible that these forms of slavery today out number those of the Atlantic slave trade.
Indeed, because of the failure to conceptually distinguish between these different forms of slavery, that is because of the equivocation of all these forms, simple deductive logic tells us that the total amount of slavery during those 4 centuries would be much higher once, debt bondage, peonage, indentured servitude etc were added to the total number of chattel slaves.
Then there is the question about the legal status of contemporary forms of slavery. Unlike the Atlantic slave trade and the plantation system none of the forms discussed in the article enjoy Legal sanction by all or any of the major powers today.
What we have is apples and oranges. Each its own kind of fruit with its own logic.
Travis
> Yup, that slavery sure has been overcome.
> http://www.american-pictures.com/gallery/usa/pages/usa-00058.htm
> http://www.american-pictures.com/gallery/usa/index_2.htm
>
> --
> Michael Pugliese
>
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