Twenty-First-Century Slaves

About the Book

Nico and his sister, Maria, are orphaned in the fighting when a vicious new regime takes over their government. The siblings soon find themselves kidnapped, separated, and put under the power of evil traffickers. Nico and Maria are now two of thirty million slaves who are invisible in this corrupt world. About half are sex slaves, and about half are menial workers. The rise in refugee numbers plays in to the hands of the people-trafficking gangs. This oversupply of young flesh makes life cheap, and slaves are discarded like any commodity in surplus. Nico and his sister are separated, and the greatest fear is that they will never see each other again. They are powerless in this cruel organisation. Their predicament and pain are real, as it is for all these thirty million individuals. It is not merely a bad dream for them. Every day and night are the same hopeless grind. The only answer is for us, if we believe in Yahweh, to make room for our brothers and sisters by pressurising retailers into proving that they pay for improved working conditions and access to healthcare and education. Tax laws should make everyone properly account for their wealth with no loopholes.

About the Author

Ernie Hasler started working as an apprentice engineer with the Ministry of Defence at Royal Ordnance in Bishopton, Scotland, at the age of sixteen. He retired as a health and safety advisor after more than a half century of work on some big jobs, also becoming the first advisor in Scotland to gain the specialist NEBOSH diploma in environmental management. Hasler became active in the trade union early in his career and saw many improvements in health and safety during his time. These improvements stemmed from the Health and Safety at Work Act in 1974, which led to slow but significant improvement in worker welfare. In his spare time, he ran a small charity, Plant Tree Save Planet, starting women’s tree nurseries in poor countries, mostly funded by him and his two sisters. However, he closed it when, because of poor health and age, he could not effectively check out recipients. He continues to fund tree planting through Trees for the Future, and in 2016 he funded the planting of 20,400 seedlings, as he continues to do year after year. He has been a voluntary trustee with Emmaus Glasgow for twenty-one years, helping take it from an aspirational concept to a functioning community of up to twenty-seven previously homeless people. Emmaus Glasgow now also matches his tree planting funding. Seventy-five years of experience has taught Ernie Hasler that supporting people with needs on positive pathways is much more productive than punitive sanctions. The photo is of Hasler steering some friends’ boat past the lair of the nuclear monster’s base on the river Clyde. He is opposed to nuclear weapons and the concept of MAD (mutually assured destruction), which he sees as a denial of Yahweh, our Creator Elohim, and our intellectual progress. A far better policy would be to dig strong defensive positions all over the Highlands and make Scotland hard to invade.