According to this story, the last country to abolish slavery was Mauritania in 1981: http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/03/world/mauritania.slav...
EDIT: again, heavily downvoted for merely inquiring why slavery in the middle east persisted
It seems it’s only acceptable to discuss the moral failings of the US, or attacks on Westerners, while peoples and nations in the middle east are “below” criticism or comment eh? “We” are too englightened and talking about “them” is diverting the conversation from what really matters?
"Activists are arrested for fighting the practice."
Everyone is always quick these days (at least, here in the US) to decry "Social Justice Warriors" as if they are a bad thing ... but for many across the world and across history, they were the saving grace; someone who dared ask, "why are we doing this?"
More accurately, as if they are not obviously noble, since you conflated everyone to have been called SJW with someone brave and insightful. But yeah I do think those things are intrinsically wrong.
You’re absolutely allowed to criticize other countries (Mauritania is pretty far from the Middle East BTW), but when you suddenly bring them up in a conversation that’s specifically about the US and a prominent figure in the American abolitionist movement, it looks like you’re trying to deflect. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but it looks like the downvoters got it right.
Mauritania is considered to be a constituent part of the "Maghreb" region, which, while it isn't the Middle East, it is certainly a part of the "Arab World".
Furthermore, Mauritania has a crescent and star on their flag, and their state religion is Islam.
When Paris was attacked, and Beirut on same day, only France was being remembered. Somehow we haven't yet learned to care about people being hurt in other places in the world if we're not living there, if it's not part of "us". We need to start thinking of people as equal regardless of where they live.
Anyway, when I saw that Facebook only let you put up the French flag I made https://customizeyourpic.com
And you can hear what I really think in the video there.
I am talking about slavery of Black people that continued to happen and, by the way, is happening today.
And instead of discussing the actual issue, it’s considered hijacking?
I have seen Hacker News comments of all types on an article, some heavily upvoted, that are on a tangential topic. Very often they were even political or opinions on other tech platforms or the landscape of tech in the FIELD of the article.
It happens so often on HN that I am truly bewildered as to how this is not just special pleading / double standard invoked specifically because what I am doing is currently politically incorrect: talking about issue X happening more recently and in the rest of the world, which takes away from talking about the history of the country where most HNers live.
Just step away for a second and think about it. Is it really a healthy response when I say Black people have continued to be enslaved long after the Emancipation proclamation in the USA, that for millions of Negroes in other parts of the world this continued, to say it is “hijacking to talk about my pet issues”?