2017 Trafficking In Persons Report by the United States; Department of State: Review, Highlight and Summery (work in progress

Today in this post I'm to analyze and summarize the United States, Department of State Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report. Just like I did last year focusing on the movement of States in the Tier classification, those who moved up and those who moved down, and those who are stuck in Tier 3. I will organize the info in a particular way to make it simple to understand and easy to summarize: With the Good, which would be the positive steps the State has taken over the past year. The Bad, the negative things that have happened or the State has neglected to do over the past, year relative to human trafficking. And finally, the Ugly, particular issues that affected the specific country that make the human trafficking their worse relative to other countries.

Before I commence with the individual countries, I  must note how these reports always tries not to totally shit on a country, no matter how bad the situations is in that State, it patronizing as hell. For example, the report would mention for example that they found two victims or that one possible trafficker has been accused.

Algeria: Tier 2 Watch List,  from Tier 3.

The Good	The Bad	The Ugly
·         + Investigation & Prosecution. ·         Identification of 65 potential victims. ·         Gov. provides housing, medical assistance, and migrant transit services. ·         More budget and governments institutions to fight Trafficking.	·         Victims are criminalized as Illegal Immigrants. ·         Lack of proper cooperation with NGOs.	·         Trafficking corridors are still an issue in this country.

Bangladesh: Tier 2 Watch List   from Tier 2.

The Good	The Bad	The Ugly
	·         General lack of effort by the government. ·         No formal mechanism to refer victims to protective services. ·         No rehabilitation Programs.	·         Systematic Corruption and Complicity by government officials. ·         Due to the lack of protection many victims are re-trafficked. ·         Travel Agencies with high service Fee, promise fake jobs and the person arrive they subjected to forced labor.

Observation:

•  For human trafficking to prevail there must be a certain level of corruption and complicity by government officials or the lack of the presence of the State, so obviously, this isn't exclusive to Bangladesh. 
• Has an association called BIARA (Bangladesh Association of  International Recruiting Agencies), which groups together more than 700 work agencies, but there have been issues with the high recruitment fees and contract switching among some of its member agencies.

Belarus Tier 3

The Good	The Bad	The Ugly
·         Government repealed a 2012 decree that prevented State Worker in the lumber industry from leaving their jobs without employers approval.		·         Government sponsored forced labor; literally it is illegal to be unemployed. ·         Four years in a row with no conviction to any Traffickers. ·          Forced labor on alcoholics and drug addicts in special medical labor centers, for periods that go from 12 month to 18.

Belize Tier 3:

The Good	The Bad	The Ugly
·         Country has identified two trafficking victims. ·         Investigating 10 cases.	·         No investigation has been opened against any public official. ·         Lack of proper procedures to identify trafficker or victims.	·         Families sell the children into the sex trade.

Burkina Faso Tier 2 Watch List   from Tier 2

The Good	The Bad	The Ugly
·         20 child miners have been freed. ·         Government working on procedures to combat this crime.	·         General lack of effort to fight Trafficking in general. ·         Lack of funding for victim protection programs and shelters.	·         Have not addressed the problem of the Marabouts and Quranic schools that exploit their students forcing their students  to work and beg.

Burundi Tier 3

The Good	The Bad	The Ugly
	·         General lack of effort to fight trafficking in general. ·         Government unwilling to fight internal corruption.	·         It Calculated that 60.000 Internally Displaced People (IDP) are in the country, 60% are minors that are at high risk in being trafficked.

Central African Republic Tier 3:

The Good	The Bad	The Ugly
	·         No Report of any prosecution or conviction of any traffickers. ·         No protection for victims. ·         No anti-trafficking campaigns by the government.	·         No actions in stopping the recruitment of child soldiers. ·         The Ba'aka (Pygmy) people are vulnerable to traffickers. ·         402.000 IDP

Chad Tier 2 Watch List   from Tier 2:

The Good	The Bad	The Ugly
·         Country was able to able to Identify 2 trafficking victims. ·         Step to stop recruiting child soldier like asking for a ID.	·         - investigation, prosecutions and convictions. ·         No specialized services for victims	·         Children sent t live with other family members or other intermediaries, to get a education or be a apprentice, but end up totally subjugated into forced labor.

China Tier 3   from Tier 2 Watch List:

The Good	The Bad	The Ugly
·	·         China's legal definition of Human Trafficking defers from the  internationally accepted definition. ·         Not clear if some their prosecution and conviction s can be defined as human trafficking. ·         Some forms of Trafficking are not deemed illegal in China. ·         - Convictions of traffickers in general.	·         Cases of Government forced labor programs for drug addicts, poeple of the Uighur ethnic group and North Koreans. ·         In the case of North Koreans when not needed any more they are forcibly repatriated. ·         Common practice that employer with hold personal documents or property from employs. ·         Work Study programs take advantage of students and subject them to forced labor.

Observation: It isn't the first time that China has been in this category in the past 6 years, it had been Tier 3 in 2013.

Comoros Tier 3:

The Good	The Bad	The Ugly
	·         The State did not investigate, prosecute or obtain any convictions.	·         Women trafficked to the Middle East. ·         Poor families abandon their children that end up being exploited. ·         Children in Quranic schools are forced to work.

Congo, Democratic Republic of the Tier 3  from Tier 2 watch list:

The Good	The Bad	The Ugly
	·         Lack of cooperation with NGOs. ·         Lack of anti-trafficking legal framework. ·         Lack of funding and widespread corruption.	·         Child Soldiers. ·         Government arrests victims. ·         Execution of unarmed child soldiers of rebel groups. ·         Children forced to steal or loot for their captors. ·         Children that escape from being soldier have no institution to go to for protection and are at risk at being re-trafficked.

Republic of Congo Tier 3   from a Tier 2 Watch List:

The Good	The Bad	The Ugly
	·         Did not take any steps to fight trafficking. ·         Never has convicted a trafficker.	·         Polices do not allow  people to publicly  protest against human trafficking.

Political Mash-up Analyses of World War Hulk/Trump

So after a long time I sat down and revisited  "World War Hulk" a Marvel crossover from 2007, that was sort of mixed bag. The story had some interesting aspects, especial the Hulk having a clobber fest but it didn't have much of story or plot, you can finish the Trade Paper Back in less than a half of an hour. Now the thing was when I revisited this comic a couple of weeks ago, I actually found a ton of parallelisms to Donald Trump's rise to political power and how he completely hijacked of United States of America's political system.

 Now to start off I'll give you guys a brief summary of this crossover so you can understand what the hell I'm talking about later. To start off, Hulk has returned to Earth, and he's pist off. But what happened? Where was he? Why is he crazy mad? Well a group of superheroes, that form an elite within the Marvel community, called the Illuminati (Iron Man, Reed Richards, Doctor Strange, and Blackbolt) shot Hulk into out space. ¿Why? well because he had become too much of a problem, every time he flipped out there was a danger of him leveling a city. So Hulk landed on the planet Sakaar and the whole "Planet Hulk"  took place, but seemingly the Illuminati screwed Hulk again blowing up the world that he made his home (or scorching a good part of it) and killing his new wife, Caiera.

At the start of the crossover, the  Hulk and his new buddies the War Bound have arrived on Earth with one thing on their mind, to take vengeance on the Illuminati, to make them pay. Hulk clobbers just about every hero and fights Sentry to a standstill when Hulk discovers that the explosion on Sakaar wasn't the Illuminati's fault but Mek's, one of the Warbound who had his own agenda in manipulating Hulk into his clobber fest.

So now let's start off with the nitty and the gritty, what does the comic have to do with the Trump political phenomena. Well to start off Hulk returns from exile, he had been operating outside of the regular Marvel universe, and when he arrives, he stops everything in its tracks. Now Trump was not in any political exile, but basically, he came out of nowhere redefining American politics and literally rewriting rules to the political game. It felt like the gloves were off when he started to battle it out in the Republican primaries, political correctness was Trump first casualty in his race to the White House, in the same way that Hulk wanted to punish the Illuminati. He entered totally out of the traditional political system and structure, and his arrival much like the Hulk's  establishes a before and after, both becoming the absolute center of everything. Even Trumps brash style of politics, the centers around confrontation, bravado and oversimplifying the problem at hand, much in the same way Hulk basically sets out to resolve his problems punching everything in sight.   

The Illuminati from my point of view play the role of the traditional political establishment and the way they freak out on the arrival of the Hulk is priceless, just in the same way Republicans and Democrats spaz out in how to digest the coming of Trump in the political theater. Hulk is called the World Breaker, Trump from my point of view  Party Breaker, he has left the US political system in shambles.We can only imagine the amount of damage control there was in both parties after trumps victory in last years election.

In the climax of the story, Hulk is about to give retribution to the Illuminati, he has ordinary people they explain that they have the grievances with the superhero community, to explain why they feel that superheroes fail them. They tell the captured that every time they save the day the collateral damage for normal people is terrible, while the heroes fly off to the next crisis, not really caring for ordinary people. So regular people favor Hulk because he's going to put the heroes back in their place, they will not be collateral anymore. Now here is where Trump's genius is found,  his opportunism border on a superhuman level, he understood how the political establishment had failed for large parts of American society and just fanned the flames like no other, he's like a used car salesman from hell. His election is a validation of the discourse to drain the swamp but also a slap on the wrist to traditional political parties.  Even the way the that Hulk supporters in the comic, fit the setreotype of a typical Trumpettir.

Hulk introduced the Warbound as a new elite of heroes, which have little to no experience in this field and their personal agendas start to get in the way, like what happens with the Brood Queen or with Mek. The same thing has happened with most of Trump's administration he  mostly has chosen people with no experience in public administration, with questionable personal interests. Even Hiroim one of Hulk closest allies in his endeavors reminds me of poor Jared Kushner, Mek could be Steve Bannon and the Brood Queen Queen Ivanka Trump. 

In the story Hulk has to go toe to toe against the Sentry, the ultimate superhero, he's Marvel equivalent to Superman, but the character has a ton of issues that he keeps hidden that make him a liability, in many ways just like Hillary Clinton. Democrats couldn't have presented a more fallible candidate to run against Trump, she had a legion of Voids (the evil part of Sentry) in her closet/basement. 

Just like in the story where even though the people favor the Hulk he's actually destroying the city that they live in, but they are all caught up in the spectacle of Hulks vengeance, actually using Madison Square Garden to put on a show. Trump has pretty much the same, he's has created a spectacle out of his political style and his cult of personality, no matter how bad he's screwed over his followers they will stay be his side. His capacity to polarize and divide will keep him running strong,  I lived through something similar here in Argentina. Populism from the both sides of the political spectrum that depend so much on the cult of personality share many of the same of tools, so America gets ready for a bumpy ride.