First of all, anyone remotely related to slavery in the history of the United States would be offended by the comparison. You are assuming several things which are false: 1) That the story in the article is true and that it is the norm. For the overall majority, the improvement in standard of living is not marginal. It is a relatively huge improvement for them and their families. It is equally ridiculous to assume that these people have not heard that their passports will be held when they arrive in order for them to avoid leaving the country. This is, after all, what passports are for - travel. National ID, labor cards, credit cards, everythign else is in their hands. They are also free to take a taxi to their embassy. 2) The 1 trillion fund is Abu Dhabi's. Abu Dhabi does not easily give money to Dubai. In fact, this is why Dubai is so majorly hit by the crisis - because Abu Dhabi has not loosened its fist during the credit crunch. Dubai grows on credit just like the United States. 3) The fact that a country has wealth does not mean that it should dish it out stupidly. It will pay the market rate. Just like my country and your country. Dubai, however, can make the claim that it is improving the lives of these people. It is not enslaving them in sweatshops and factories in 3rd world countries under horrendous conditions with the same paltry pay as anyone else in the poverty-stricken work force. We're all fighting the same war against poverty people. I don't know why you think no improvement is better than marginal improvement but only when visibility increases. To put it bluntly, if you send all these people back, their income and therefore standard of living would drop tremendously. Is that the solution being proposed? Or paying over and above the market rate?
Don't worry about asking for specific numbers. My dad works there as well but as a corporate expat. I go there about twice a year and was looking for some loopholes in talking to local citizens about creative ventures. You missed the point completely. It's not enslavement. Put down your protest signs and take off your tie-dye hippie shirt. It's globalization and like Mathloom put it - "That's why Dubai doesn't care - it's the model for a big economy. Do the dirty work quickly, ignore it, finish up, then when it's all done condemn it." Dubai can afford to do it because they hold leverage over the corporate world, which means they hold leverage over America. That's the beauty of the global economy, you play to your strengths, and you play hard. That has nothing to do with what I was talking about? I was referring to the dramatic but necessary processes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_New_Economic_Policy) these nations took to go from fishing villages to economically thriving nations in a relatively short period of time. To this day the Malaysian government has policies that favor ethnic Malays over other races. Yes, the UAE can AFFORD to pay its laborers better, but why should they? Since when do nations put themselves at a disadvantage, however marginal, because of generosity? Too many logistical errors with what you are trying to say. IMO it's a pretentious show of sympathy when people like insaneman and LScolaDominates are trying to empathize with people they have no clue about. The construction workers DO NOT live in enslavement and make a conscientious decision to take their path. The Dirham translates into a lot of rupees, and the difference between being dirt poor and poor in India is HUGE. Yes, there are certain nightmare cases for female servants in the UAE, but most of these women only commit to this because they are in a dead end situation and their experience is mainly dictated by the humanity of individual employers.
first of all i never used the term slavery in that post. secondly i don't see why slavery has to ONLY be seen thru the US historical paradigm. this is indentured servitude. its human trafficking. people are brought on false promises, their passports are taken, they have to repay their debt before they're able to earn any money. how the hell is that not indentured servitude and trafficking? look up the definitions. would you like citations to international law and treaties on this? [rquoter]“Trafficking in persons” shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs;[/rquoter] Protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime well seizing passports is illegal. so why isn't there any enforcement on this issue? their embassies don't help. because their countries don't care that much and don't want to offend GCC sensibilities. two wrongs dont make a right. im well aware. the point is UAE is the central federation of sorts, and does have power. i can judge their assets collectively. just as abu dhabi bought the first ten billion in bonds, it can require basic minimum labor standards. after all, the next bail out will probably get abu dhabi emirates airline. tell me, is it ethical to start buying kidneys at the market rate from people in villages of kebara or mumbai? western nations have basic standards for labor. e.g. in the US OSHA, minimum wage, workers comp. its not dishing out money 'stupidly'. its the right thing to do as a civilized nation that can afford it. clearly, the GCC, and specifically dubai, just don't care to be civilized people with the benefits of that. they should be relegated as outcasts until they improve their labor standards. you can't send them back. for one, the GCC would collapse without this labor. so these threats are stupid. you think america would have a problem if we sent 10 millon undocumented workers back? what would happen to dubai? what was the biggest reason for labor unrest in the past few years? the pegging of the GCC (outside of kuwait) to the usd and thus inflation. read a bit, instead of being an armchair reactionary apologist. as far as having basic standards, read above. its what civilized people do. and every civilized nation has 'put itself at a disadvantage' according to you. minimum wage? work week/overtime pay? unemployment/disability insurance? hi welcome to the civilized world. as far as malaysia goes (i don't konw why you keep bringing them up since they don't have the issues the gcc does) there is massive unrest, and people like anwar ibrahaim have actually campaigned against the present affirmative action programs to take more into account finances instead of just race. what is your point?
My God, you make so many mistakes it's hard to keep up. 1) It is not the only example which has to be used. I am using it because it is something you would be familiar with. I didn't, however, expect you to belittle well-documented historic U.S. slavery just so that it fits in with your argument here. But just to reassure you, what Dubai laborers are facing is not comparable to the level of mistreatment back then. Not that I'm saying Dubai should follow your model. I'm just saying that Dubai is following the U.S., UK, Western Europe model. So if you want to discuss what's WRONG here, fine. But the moment you begin glorifying what you do as a nation, I will obviously point out that you are a hypocrite. 2) As discussed, it doesn't fall under this definition as broad as it is. Dubai asks for unskilled labor - this is traditionally a labor market which can make few demands yet will maintain its human rights. The labor is uniform in nature - there is virtually no differentiation and the market is oversupplied. The recruitment company says "here you go". Dubai's interaction ends. The recruitment company recruits. The laborers must SIGN UP VOLUNTARILY FOR THIS. THEY ARE AWARE THAT THEIR PASSPORT WILL BE TAKEN. THEY ARE AWARE OF ALL CONDITIONS. THEY SAY YES UNDER NO DURESS FROM DUBAI. 3) No one is seizing passports. They are taken and kept in a safe. This protects them from theft, and it also prevents them from escaping the country. You seem to be a fan of technicalities but the current practice is to enter the names in a database and return the passport. This database will not allow them to leave the country. This should make you happy as you will see it as a huge difference. Yes, there are people who abused the system, but it is the exception rather than the rule. Those people should be prosecuted and are being prosecuted. Do some reading. 3) Ther embassies are responsible and must help. This is also illegal but insignificant to you. Also, it's laughable that you think the Indian, Pakistani or Chinese embassy would be frightened from Dubai. 4) Kidneys can't consent to anything. Also, no one has to die for the laborer to come to Dubai. Your analogy gives me great insight into your level of rationality. 5) Yeah, they want to be uncivilized, you're so right. Plus, they don't care about humans. That's why they all have healthcare and the able to take loans and buy homes back home. It's ridiculous what they do these Arabs. Healthcare for an entire NATION? Incredible. NO HOMELESS PEOPLE? Crazy. 6) No, it wouldn't collapse. Maybe it would be a strain in current market conditions, but doubling their salary is chump change to the GCC. The point here is that it is a fair deal. The reason being, if they were sent back, there would still be hundreds of million willing to come over at the same costand they would make this decision to improve the standard of living of their families. You insist on focusing on the exception and, to me, that is a clear sign that you have just made up your mind and nothing will change it. I really hoppe that you visit Dubai one day. Your opinion would be altered dramatically I think.
good god, you apologists don't get it. you don't have to like international law, but dubai is flagrantly violating it. secondly i'll pass. i don't really care much for crap unoccupied hideous ostentatious architecture with little history/culture built in a desert by an illegal and immoral system. at least abu dhabi is attempting to buy some culture. as far as a few of your points go. yes kidneys can't establish consent, but surprisingly transplantable kidneys don't grow on trees. they are in humans. point is just because there is a huge number of people that are in desperate need willing to do a lot to improve their condition, doesn't mean its ethical, moral or legal to allow them to do many things they may do. secondly, seizing passports, voluntarily or not is illegal. and if you read any accounts of trafficking victims, you'll see that the vast majority, while somewhat knowledgeable about the possibilities, don't think they will be treated like that. and as far as technicalities go, pray tell what the difference between seizing passports and 'taking them' and not allowing laborers to leave is. point is your labor market isn't establishing basic human rights that are required by various norms. yes the market will bear it, but the market also will also have a lot of parents give their children as slaves for prostitution or organs, because of their destitution. its not acceptable. come become civilized. have labor laws that have actual teeth. start enforcing trafficking norms instead of being such horrendous apologists. for people who's raison d'etre is hating on israel, you sure as hell treat the less advantaged hypocritically.
People of a moral persuasion need to boycott Dubai until these labor abuses stop. Let's hear it, conservos. What would Jesus think about this situation?
Once again, there's no point trying to get through to you when you focus on the exception rather than the norm, much like a writer does to sell stories. Thanks for the discussion.
Here's a little snippet a guy wrote in Dubai. Maybe by reading this you will realize what the intention of the main article writer is.. Apparently he'll be writing a series of these, so I'll let you know when the rest come out! Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi: If you think Dubai is bad, just look at your own country I recently figured that if British journalists such as Johann Hari (Tuesday, 7 April) who come to Dubai don't send back something sensationalist it won't get printed and they won't get paid. After all, sleaze sells. I called a British journalist friend of mine and said: "I'm going to write an article about London, the same way your compatriots write about Dubai." By the time I was back at home I had come to my senses, it's not fair to London, a city so dear to my heart, or Londoners to be judged by the actions of a few. It's easy to generalise about a country when figures are manipulated to sensationalise and sell papers. Say for example that I had written an article that states that, in wealthy first world Britain there are 380,000 homeless people, many of them mentally ill, starving and abandoned in sub-zero temperatures to live on the streets. Say then that I wrote an article that states that Britain, the so called "jail capital of Western Europe" sentenced in 2006 alone a staggering additional 12,000 women to prison and that up to seven babies a month are born in jail where they spend their crucial first months. I could have written an article that stated Britain, victor in the Second World War, had given refuge to 400 Nazi war criminals, with all but one of them getting away with it. Or one stating that the number of Indians who died while serving the British Empire, to build your Tube and grow your tea, is so large it is simply unquantifiable by any historian. Or say I write an article about the 2.5 million-strong Indian volunteer army who served Britain during the Second World War, where 87,000 of them died for their occupiers' freedom and yet until recently those who survived continued to be discriminated against in pay and pension. I could have written an article that stated that, in civilised Britain, one in every 23 teenage girls had an abortion and in 2006 more than 17,000 of the 194,000 abortions carried out in England and Wales involved girls below the age of 18. I could have written an article stating that Britain, the human rights champion, not wanting to get its hands dirty, had resorted to secretly outsourcing torture to Third World states under the guise of rendition by allowing up to 170 so called CIA torture flights to use its bases. Or that Britain's MI5 unlawfully shared with the CIA secret material to interrogate suspects and "facilitate interviews" including cases where the suspects were later proven to be innocent. I could have written an article that stated that the Britain of family values is the only country in the EU that recruits child soldiers as young as 16 into its Army and ships them off battlegrounds in Iraq and Afghanistan, putting it in the same league as African dictatorships and Burma. I could have written an article that states that Britain either recently did or has yet to sign the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, the United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict or the UN's International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families . I could have highlighted the fact that liberal Britain is responsible for the physical and racial abuse of hundreds of failed asylum-seekers at the hands of private security guards during their forced removal from the country . I could have written about the countless cases of slave-like working conditions of immigrant labours such as the 23 Chinese workers who lost their lives in 2004 as they harvested cockles in the dangerous rising tides in Morecambe Bay. I could have written about how mortality rates from liver diseases due to alcohol abuse have declined in Europe in recent decades but in Britain the rate trebled in the same period reflecting deep societal failures. I could have written about how in "Big Brother" Britain maltreatment of minors is so serious that one in 10, or an estimated one million children a year, suffer physical, sexual, emotional abuse or neglect. Or that according to Oxfam 13.2 million people in the UK live in poverty – a staggering 20 per cent of the population in the sixth richest nation in the world. I could have written all that, but out of respect for Britain, I decided not to. Because when you stitch together a collection of unconnected facts taken out of context, you end up with a distorted and inaccurate picture: something that Britain's Dubai-bashers would do well to learn. The writer is a journalist based in Dubai
It is a systemic problem, no one is saying Dubai is a laborer's utopia. However, focusing on Dubai alone says more about the person pointing a finger than anything else. If you want to point a finger, point it squarely at globalization and the wealth disparity created (and sustained) by the economic model set forth by Wal-Mart, Nike and other multinationals, and thoroughly supported by U.S. economic policies. Cheap labor is essential for the economies of the world's leading nations, and is sustained by their policies. If you are truly concerned, and not just trying to score some cheap political points to distract from the roots of the problem, a good place to start would be in your own backyard. Just saying
It's strange that you keep responding to criticism of Dubai with entirely unrelated rants about shortcomings of the western world. In fact, almost every one of your responses in this thread is an example of the tu quoque fallacy, quite the childish tactic. BTW, here's the the link to the article you posted: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sultan-sooud-alqassemi/if-you-think-dubai-is-bad_b_185771.html
Nobody's focusing on Dubai alone. There have been many more threads about wealth disparity in the US than ones about Dubai. You're welcome to start another one if you think some issue hasn't received enough coverage.
What I am saying is exploitation of labor is of global scope, it is a policy that is fully accepted, nay, encouraged by both rich and developing nations (what do you think India and China do? They have a vested interest in monopolizing the cheap labor market, their economic growth depends on it). So it is important to address an errant policy at the roots, and in this case it is at the macro level. I am not saying don't get upset with Dubai, I am saying Dubai is nothing more than a drop in the bucket, it is the symptom not the cause.
You missed the point entirely. If this is a global problem, then the article is stupid. It is clearly insinuating that this problem makes Dubai a load of crap, not that it has joined the global community led by your country. It is not citing Dubai as an example, it is appointing Dubai as THE country which underpays laborers because of capitalism. But if you're saying that Dubai is doing something bad which everyone else is doing, then that makes sense. What's "bad" is your opinion. You think it's bad, but there are more people who are saved from poverty by this than the few who are unfortunate. My heart goes out to them. But they decided to enter into a contract and they are responsible for it. But it's really not worth the drama. It's just how things work. Personally, I hate it all. That one person has to be a laborer and another a financial analyst when 100% of people would rather be the latter. I believe morals should determine what you receive not money. But money doesn't do this and capitalism has eroded morals too much.You do what you can in the system which you have been forced into - capitalism. This is the best Dubai can do IMO and it is miles better than what other industrialized countries have done to get what they want in this world. Capitalism will leave some people out, and in the attempt to balance not being left out and maintaining morals, Dubai seems to show the best possible combination over the rest of the industrialized nations. In summary, don't hate the player, hate the game.
ironic coming from such a staunch defender of indentured servitude. and yes pray tell dubai apologists, how come the only defense yall can bring up is hey the west is bad too. and interestingly most people who are objecting to GCC's labor conditions in this thread aren't exactly big supporters of numerous human rights violations and income disparities in the west either. do you want a diatribe on lack of healthcare or treatment of undocumented workers in the US? im more than happy to rant about that too. the difference is, many of us are able to critique policies of places we hold dear. yall aren't.
My feelings exactly. Just wanted to add that this: is laughable and displays just how clueless you are on this subject.
I don't know if you were being sarcastic or not but If Mr. Andrews was in his home country . . . Canada's Universal Health Care . . .. might have taken care of it with minimal expense Rocket River
Hell, I'm more than happy to talk about anything you want. I just think you're wrong and glorifying your own standards (earlier) is a great litmus test of what you think standards should be. It's like me telling you not to smoke cigarettes while I'm smoking a cuban cigar. It doesn't exactly make my/your standards credit-worthy. I don't think that you are ok with slavery. I just think you don't realize that the system you are supporting enslaves everything in sight out of necessity... I don't think you see that your system has enslaved the hopeless Middle Easterners into sacrificing standards. Is it slavery? Absoltuely not. Could it be improved on? Definitely. It's also illogical to compare a country like the United States to a country like Dubai. Dubai was nothing but sand like 5 years ago. It requires huge construction of infrastructure, buildings, homes, etc... The U.S. is looking for people to work in McDonald's. When the United States needed major construction, it found cheap labor. When the UK needed it, they found cheap labor. When Turkey needed it, they found cheap labor. When China needed it, they found cheap labor. So on and so forth. If it's a global problem, then let's discuss it as a global problem. I also am interested to know what your proposed solutions are for this Dubai problem. Keep in mind that there are about 2 to 300,000 nationals in Dubai versus of a total population of around 4 million non-"laborers".
