Sex Trafficking: Inside the Bussiness of Modern Slavery- Siddharth Kara

I went to the library today to return this book. When I was checking out new books the librarian told me I had a booked still checked out and asked if I wanted to return it. I said, "What book is it?" And he whispered back, "Sex Trafficking." I almost died laughing right there. He was so embarrassed, as if I had some guide to becoming a trafficker myself or something. Silly. Anyway here is the scoop on this book. Siddharth Kara had an MBA from Columbia and was working as an investment banker. He got interested in the sex trade and what made it tick and spent years visiting countries doing interviews and trying to get real numbers on "sexual slavery". There are some personal interviews by victims but they are told in a very straight forward way. The man truly is an economist. He gives you the numbers of trafficking including a 30 plus page appendix with charts and graphs. The real shocker of the story, countries that have legalized prostitution or have very lose laws against it have very high rates of sexual slavery. Lets just say if you come from a poor country and someone offers you a job in Italy, Amsterdam, India, Thailand, Turkey, or the United Emirates, you would probably be better off just saying no, because there is a good chance you are going to end up locked up with no way out. I thought the book was interesting and Kara had some valid points but he lost me in the last few pages of the book. The last chapter basically covers how the United States has very low levels of slavery, especially sexual slavery, but then Kara falls into the trap of blaming the slavery in the world on the US and its aggressive capitalist policies and says that we should spend more trying to fight sexual slavery around the world. Interestingly enough we spend 60 million a year on anti trafficking. Considering how little trafficking we have in this country I thought that was AMAZING! Kara wants to compare that number to how much we have spent on the Iraq war but I'm sorry that is ridiculous. If we didn't have that war going on we'd do something else with that money, like maybe actually pay off some of our medicare/medicaid debt, or improve schools, or roads or something. As for the blame that we are at fault for the poverty that makes trafficking so enticing you have got to be kidding me. The countries that have problems with this have multiple things resulting in the sex trade being so high, and poverty isn't the only thing going on. I happen to be a lover of Cuba. I know if you didn't follow Fidel he was a monster, I'm not excusing that, but the man has done amazing things for his country. We are talking some of the best health and education stats in the world with some of the fewest resources. The United States has purposely tried to disrupt the financial state of that country for 40 plus years, not just some hypothetical disruptions but real honest to goodness we will keep you from prospering so you will overthrow your leader and follow us, and yet while some people are fleeing here in boats Cuba is not a huge area for sexual trafficking. And so when Kara started in on his blame game I pretty much lost it. What I wanted to know is what about the people that are going to these slaves. Where is there culpability for being moral depraved. In Thailand alone 90% of men admit to visiting a prostitute at least once in their lives and 50% say they lost their virginity to one. All I have to say is....clean it up men. As for the US we happen to be one of the few countries that has laws that allow us to convict child molesters who go to other countries to molest. All I have to say is if you ever hear someone saying we should make prostitution legal to make is safer tell them they are out of their minds!