Salon.com > Hannah Wallace

Modern slaves

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:00:00 +0000

During the four years that Benjamin Skinner researched modern-day slavery for his new book, "A Crime So Monstrous," he posed as a buyer at illegal brothels on several continents, interviewed convicted human traffickers in a Romanian prison and endured giardia, malaria, dengue and a bad motorcycle accident. But Skinner, an investigative journalist, is most haunted by his experience in a seedy brothel in Bucharest, Romania, where he was offered a young woman with Down syndrome in exchange for a used car.

"There are more slaves today than at any point in human history," writes Skinner, citing a recent estimate that there are currently 27 million worldwide. One hundred and forty-three years after the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1865 and 60 years after the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights banned the slave trade worldwide, slavery -- or, as it is euphemistically called, human trafficking -- is actually thriving. It is, as Hillary Clinton has said, "the dark underbelly of globalization."

The marriage industrial complex

Mon, 21 May 2007 11:33:00 +0000

If you've been to a wedding in the past few years (or have staged one yourself), you won't be surprised to learn that weddings are a booming business. Last year, the average American ceremony cost $27,852; the average dress, $1,025. If such figures don't shock you (and keep in mind, the numbers are far higher in pricey cities such as New York and San Francisco), maybe a few comparisons will: The median household income in the United States is $46,326 and a 5 percent down payment on a $500,000 condominium is $25,000.

Even more disturbing, perhaps, is how quickly and effortlessly the $161 billion wedding industry seems to have insinuated itself into every corner of the culture -- and how impossible it has become to escape its trappings, from diamond rings (which, before the 1930s, were not a de facto wedding accouterment) to wedding planners, bridal registries and glossy magazines that perpetuate weddings as fairy-tale fantasies. In fact, the extravagant, over-the-top gala has become such a fixture of American life that most people don't question it anymore. And why should they? If marriage is supposed to be a sacred undertaking that happens once in a lifetime, why shouldn't you do it wearing Vera Wang?

The udder truth

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 12:55:00 +0000

Thirty-four-year-old Brigitta Jansen, a statuesque brunette with radiant skin, is no stranger to unpasteurized milk. She grew up in a tiny German village, where she and her grandmother, pails in hand, would fetch milk fresh from a neighbor's farm. But over the years, after moving to a bigger town and then, ultimately, to New York City, she unthinkingly switched to pasteurized milk, which was more convenient and easier to find.

Two years ago, however, while pregnant with her first child, the eczema that had always plagued her got a lot worse. "My skin grew so sensitive. I would stand in the shower and scratch my arms and legs," Jansen says. After a lengthy Internet search, she came across the Weston A. Price Foundation, which promotes the nutritional philosophies of a Canadian dentist who advocated eating traditional foods such as grass-fed beef and raw dairy products. Price's 1939 book, "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration," showed -- with photographic evidence of implausibly straight and cavity-free teeth -- how the nutritionally rich diets of so-called primitive cultures were far healthier than the diets of Western industrial nations.