Humans on display in Paris

PARIS -- It's a queasy experience, viewing chained tribal dancers do a white man's bidding, or African women stripped and photographed to feed European curiosity.

Until just a few generations ago, this is how most white people learned about those with skin of a different shade. A new Paris exhibit examines how for centuries, colonizers plucked villagers from Africa, the Americas or the South Pacific and put them on display half a world away. The demeaning tradition shaped racist attitudes that linger today.

Curator Lilian Thuram, a former soccer star and now anti-racism advocate, hopes the exhibit at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris makes people question deep-held beliefs about the "other."

Read more:http://picturebugs.blogspot.com/2011/11/museum-puts-humans-on-display.html

Listen to a story:http://www.blogtalkradio.com/centralvalley/2011/11/27/black-slaveson-being-a-jockey

BARCELONA - One of Europe's largest brothels has opened in northeastern Spain, employing up to 150 prostitutes, the Spanish press said Friday.
The Paradise brothel opened Thursday night in La Jonquera with 80 rooms and two showrooms, catering for up to 150 prostitutes each paying 70 euros (100 dollars) a day for room and meals.

Owner Jose Moreno (is this the drug guy?) was quoted by the El Pais daily as saying it aimed to draw many clients from just across the French border, each paying an average 60 euros for half an hour with a prostitute.

Moreno has reportedly been charged but not detained for allegedly being part of a gang trafficking men and women from Brazil who were forced into prostitution. The girls are said to perform 2,000 jobs a night. The outside of the building has men posted and the inside has long halls, darkened. (I am guessing there are torture chambers, dungeons and dead bodies in there somewhere.) I assume boys are kept in there also, but no information was found to answer this. Of course, sexual slavery, child abuse and abductions are going to be issues that need to be investigated.

The brothel says it is the biggest in Europe but there are others, in Germany and Scandinavia for example, that claim to have more rooms.