Slavery's last stronghold

Note that I read this article: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/17/world/africa/mauritania-sl...

That part that really gets me is that the slave can't seem to even comprehend his own existence. Free him, and he'll remain a slave, since it's his mind that is enslaved, not his body.

I hope that that at least alleviates the suffering that someone with a different mindset would experience - but it makes it much harder for the people viewing it from the outside. And it also adds a huge risk of people making it worse for him physically, in the name of making things better mentally.

If it were me I would not start by freeing the slaves (they have no skills for the outside world), I would start by requiring masters to educate them (at least minimally - basic math, and reading, but not fact based education). The next step would be requiring a government mandated fixed salary per slave (let them build up some savings before having to subsist on their own). Only after that would I actually free them.

No, the people in Duabi are not wage slaves, they are indentured servants.

People really need to stop using the term wage slave. Combining those two words causes a contradiction that is rarely accurate.

A semi-slavery, in a smaller isolated situation, still exists these days in some of the Arab countries and Malaysia where households will recruit servants (maid of the house) from a country such as Indonesia and pretty much did the usual drill:

- Ask the maid to work inhumanly

- Giving no vacation or "day out with friends"

- Held hostage the passport

- Occasionally raped or violent beating (sometime by using a very hot iron...)

Given the situation that the maids are just imported "resources", the law/judge didn't seem to give much thought or care until recently where there were several of the cases became high-profiled due to international news covering them.

These maids are typically treated like a slave.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11795356

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13860097

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13601362

No, don't believe this. The world is a very complex place, and what makes for a good story is often very different from what reality is.

When American journalists write about the world, they write as if the world is America. Stories are broken down into us vs them, people become black and white, some people are assigned the label 'good' and some the label 'bad'. Everything gets americanised, even the american obsession with skin colour or racial differences works itself into every conflict that is reported on.

Whatever the real story in mauritania is, it's made of centuries and centuries of history, a land caught between the arabs and the africans, a culture that has lasted hundreds of year.

This cannot be captured in a short article on CNN that reduces it all to the archetypal american "black people enslaved by people who are not us". After reading this article, you still know nothing about Mauritania. You have no understand of the complexities of their society. All you have is this single story, this opinion piece by a single author.

Your knowledge is second hand and it's second rate. You do yourself, Mauritania and history a great disservice if you read the article and believe it. A single story should only ever be something that invites you to discover the real history of a place and people (http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_...)

When you read an article like this about Mauritania, don't read it. Realise that it's like overhearing a conversation between two strangers. You lack context, you lack understanding.

That's why you should not believe this story. It's a single story about a place you know nothing about.

Ok, that's fine if you're talking about the opinions in the article, but if want to refute the items presented as facts in the story, you need to back it up with facts yourself. Otherwise I would just as easily not believe you.