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Sometime this fall, a group of the most influential black lawyers in the country -- including Harvard's Charles Ogletree and O.J. Simpson's attorney Johnnie Cochran -- are expected to walk into a federal courthouse and file suit against the people of the United States. The Hartford Advocate's Alistair Highet looks at the arguments for and against reparations. "What the lawsuit will say is a matter of conjecture, but it is expected to go like this: From 1619 until 1865, the white people of this country enslaved more than four million people of African descent who were bought and sold in this continent like farm animals. The white people of the country made a lot of money from them. Now the descendants of these Africans want some of that money back," he writes.

The Boston Phoenix reports on a flourishing trade in human flesh. Andrew Bushell reports that Afghan refugees in Pakistan are sold into prostitution, while indentured servitude flourishes. Bushell goes inside a opulent Eastern Pakistan home where "untouched" virgins, meaning they have not had anal sex, are sold for thousands of dollars.