‘We Need Slaves to Build Monuments’
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Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, The Guardian (Manchester), October 8, 2008
The sun is setting and its dying rays cast triangles of light on to the bodies of the Indian workers. Two are washing themselves, scooping water from tubs in a small yard next to the labour camp’s toilets. Others queue for their turn. One man stands stamping his feet in a bucket, turned into a human washing machine. The heat is suffocating and the sandy wind whips our faces. The sprinkles of water from men drying their clothes fall like welcome summer rain.
All around, a city of labour camps stretches out in the middle of the Arabian desert, a jumble of low, concrete barracks, corrugated iron, chicken-mesh walls, barbed wire, scrap metal, empty paint cans, rusted machinery and thousands of men with tired and gloomy faces.
I have left Dubai’s spiralling towers, man-made islands and mega-malls behind and driven through the desert to the outskirts of the neighbouring city of Abu Dhabi. Turn right before the Zaha Hadid bridge, and a few hundred metres takes you to the heart of Mousafah, a ghetto-like neighbourhood of camps hidden away from the eyes of tourists. It is just one of many areas around the Gulf set aside for an army of labourers building the icons of architecture that are mushrooming all over the region.
Behind the showers, in a yard paved with metal sheets, a line of men stands silently in front of grease-blackened pans, preparing their dinner. Sweat rolls down their heads and necks, their soaked shirts stuck to their backs. A heavy smell of spices and body odour fills the air.
Next to a heap of rubbish, a man holds a plate containing his meal: a few chillies, an onion and three tomatoes, to be fried with spices and eaten with a piece of bread.
In a neighbouring camp, a group of Pakistani workers from north and south Waziristan sit exhaustedly sipping tea while one of them cooks outside. In the middle of the cramped room in which 10 men sleep, one worker in a filthy robe sits on the floor grinding garlic and onions with a mortar and pestle while staring into the void.
Hamidullah, a thin Afghan from Maydan, a village on the outskirts of Kabul, tells me: “I spent five years in Iran and one year here, and one year here feels like 10 years. When I left Afghanistan I thought I would be back in a few months, but now I don’t know when I will be back.” Another worker on a bunk bed next to him adds: “He called his home yesterday and they told him that three people from his village were killed in fighting. This is why we are here.”
Hamidullah earns around 450 dirhams (£70) a month as a construction worker.
How is life, I ask.
“What life? We have no life here. We are prisoners. We wake up at five, arrive to work at seven and are back at the camp at nine in the evening, day in and day out.”
Outside in the yard, another man sits on a chair made of salvaged wood, in front of a broken mirror, a plastic sheet wrapped around his neck, while the camp barber trims his thick beard. Despite the air of misery, tonight is a night of celebration. One of the men is back from a two-week break in his home village in Pakistan, bringing with him a big sack of rice, and is cooking pilau rice with meat. Rice is affordable at weekends only: already wretched incomes have been eroded by the weak dollar and rising food prices. “Life is worse now,” one worker told me. “Before, we could get by on 140 dirhams [£22] a month; now we need 320 to 350.”
The dozen or so men sit on newspapers advertising luxury watches, mobile phones and high-rise towers. When three plastic trays arrive, filled with yellowish rice and tiny cubes of meat, each offers the rare shreds of meat to his neighbours.
All of these men are part of a huge scam that is helping the construction boom in the Gulf. Like hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, they each paid more than £1,000 to employment agents in India and Pakistan. They were promised double the wages they are actually getting, plus plane tickets to visit their families once a year, but none of the men in the room had actually read their contract. Only two of them knew how to read.
“They lied to us,” a worker with a long beard says. “They told us lies to bring us here. Some of us sold their land; others took big loans to come and work here.”
Once they arrive in the United Arab Emirates, migrant workers are treated little better than cattle, with no access to healthcare and many other basic rights. The company that sponsors them holds on to their passports—and often a month or two of their wages to make sure that they keep working. And for this some will earn just 400 dirhams (£62) a month.
A group of construction engineers told me, with no apparent shame, that if a worker becomes too ill to work he will be sent home after a few days. “They are the cheapest commodity here. Steel, concrete, everything is up, but workers are the same.”
As they eat, the men talk more about their lives. “My shift is eight hours and two overtime, but in reality we work 18 hours,” one says. “The supervisors treat us like animals. I don’t know if the owners [of the company] know.”
“There is no war, and the police treat us well,” another chips in, “but the salary is not good.”
“That man hasn’t been home for four years,” says Ahmad, the chef for the night, pointing at a well-built young man. “He has no money to pay for the flight.”
A steel worker says he doesn’t know who is supposed to pay for his ticket back home. At the recruiting agency they told him it would be the construction company—but he didn’t get anything in writing.
One experienced worker with spectacles and a prayer cap on his head tells me that things are much better than they used to be. Five years ago, when he first came, the company gave him nothing. There was no air conditioning in the room and sometimes no electricity. “Now, they give AC to each room and a mattress for each worker.”
Immigrant workers have no right to form unions, but that didn’t stop strikes and riots spreading across the region recently—something unheard of few years ago. Elsewhere in Mousafah, I encounter one of the very few illegal unions, where workers have established a form of underground insurance scheme, based on the tribal structure back home. “When we come here,” one member of the scheme tells me, “we register with our tribal elders, and when one of us is injured and is sent home, or dies, the elders collect 30 dirhams from each of us and send the money home to his family.”
In a way, the men at Mousafah are the lucky ones. Down in the Diera quarter of old Dubai, where many of the city’s illegal workers live, 20 men are often crammed into one small room.
UN agencies estimate that there are up to 300,000 illegal workers in the emirates.
On another hot evening, hundreds of men congregate in filthy alleyways at the end of a day’s work, sipping tea and sitting on broken chairs. One man rests his back on the handles of his pushcart, silently eating his dinner next to a huge pile of garbage.
In one of the houses, a man is hanging his laundry over the kitchen sink, a reeking smell coming from a nearby toilet. Next door, men lie on the floor. They tell me they are all illegal and they are scared and that I have to leave.
Outside, a fistfight breaks out between Pakistani workers and Sri Lankans.
The alleyways are dotted with sweatshops, where Indian men stay until late at night, bending over small tables sewing on beads.
A couple of miles away, the slave market becomes more ugly. Outside a glitzy hotel, with a marble and glass facade, dozens of prostitutes congregate according to their ethnic groups: Asians to the right, next to them Africans, and, on the left, blondes from the former Soviet Union. There are some Arab women. Iranians, I am told, are in great demand. They charge much higher prices and are found only in luxury hotels.
Like the rest of the Gulf region, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are being built by expat workers. They are strictly segregated, and a hierarchy worthy of previous centuries prevails.
At the top, floating around in their black or white robes, are the locals with their oil money. Immaculate and pampered, they own everything. Outside the “free zones”, where the rules are looser, no one can start a business in the UAE without a partner from the emirates, who often does nothing apart from lending his name. No one can get a work permit without a local sponsor.
Under the locals come the western foreigners, the experts and advisers, making double the salaries they make back home, all tax free. Beneath them are the Arabs—Lebanese and Palestinians, Egyptians and Syrians. What unites these groups is a mixture of pretension and racism.
“Unrealistic things happen to your mind when you come here,” a Lebanese woman who frequently visits Dubai tells me as she drives her new black SUV. “Suddenly, you can make $5,000 [£2,800] a month. You can get credit so easy, you buy the car of your dreams, you shop and you think it’s a great bargain; when you go to dinner, you go to a hotel . . . nowhere else can you live like this.”
Down at the base of the pyramid are the labourers, waiters, hotel employees and unskilled workers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, the Philippines and beyond. They move deferentially around the huge malls, cafes, bars and restaurants, bowing down and calling people sir and madam. In the middle of the day, during the hottest hours, you can see them sleeping in public gardens under trees, or on the marble floors of the Dubai Mosque, on benches or pieces of cardboard on side streets. These are the victims of the racism that is not only flourishing in the UAE but is increasingly being exported to the rest of the Middle East. Sometimes it reminds you of the American south in the 1930s.
One evening in Abu Dhabi, I have dinner with my friend Ali, a charming Iraqi engineer whom I have known for two decades. After the meal, as his wife serves saffron-flavoured tea, he pushes back his chair and lights a cigar. We talk about stock markets, investment and the Middle East, and then the issue of race comes up.
“We will never use the new metro if it’s not segregated,” he tells me, referring to the state-of-the-art underground system being built in neighbouring Dubai. “We will never sit next to Indians and Pakistanis with their smell,” his wife explains.
Not for the first time, I am told that while the immigrant workers are living in appalling conditions, they would be even worse off back home—as if poverty in one place can justify exploitation in the other.
“We need slaves,” my friend says. “We need slaves to build monuments. Look who built the pyramids—they were slaves.”
Sharla Musabih, a human rights campaigner who runs the City of Hope shelter for abused women, is familiar with such sentiments. “Once you get rich on the back of the poor,” she says, “it’s not easy to let go of that lifestyle. They are devaluing human beings,” she says. “The workers might eat once a day back home, but they have their family around them, they have respect. They are not asking for a room in a hotel—all they are asking for is respect for their humanity.”
Towards the end of another day, on a fabulous sandy beach near the Dubai marina, the waves wash calmly over the beautiful sand. A couple are paragliding over the blue sea; on the new islands, gigantic concrete structures stand like spaceships. As tourists laze on the beach, Filipino, Indian and Pakistani workers, stand silently watching from a dune, cut off from the holidaymakers by an invisible wall.
Behind them rise more brand-new towers.
“It’s a Green Zone mentality,” a young Arab working in IT tells me. “People come to make money. They live in bubbles. They all want to make as much money as possible and leave.”
Back at the Mousafah camps, a Pakistani worker walks me through his neighbourhood. On both sides of the dusty lane stand concrete barracks and the familiar detritus: raw sewage, garbage, scrap metal. A man washes his car, and in a cage chickens flutter up and down.
We enter one of the rooms, flip-flops piled by the door.
Inside, a steelworker gets a pile of papers from a plastic envelope and shoves them into my lap. He is suing the company that employed him for unpaid wages. “I’ve been going to court for three months, and every time I go they tell me to come in two weeks.” His friends nod their heads. “Last time the [company] lawyer told me, ‘I am in the law here — you will not get anything.”
Economically, Dubai has progressed a lot in the past 10 years, but socially it has stayed behind,” says Musabih. “Labour conditions are like America in the 19th century—but that’s not acceptable in the 21st century.”
(Posted on October 9, 2008)
Comments
“It’s a Green Zone mentality,” a young Arab working in IT tells me. “People come to make money. They live in bubbles. They all want to make as much money as possible and leave.”Greed punishes itself sometimes. A westerner, even a highly paid one, who goes to go to a place like this is taking taking a chance on his life.
Posted by at 5:44 PM on October 9
I’m really impressed. The writer is not blaming everything on the evil European white working class, but the Arab citizens of Dubai. Who’d a thunk it?
Posted by at 5:53 PM on October 9
Being of Bengali descent (though of the smartish GNXP crowd type) and BORN and raised in Dubai for 20 years - let me tell you, every single thing in this article is true.
Posted by Mensarefugee at 6:51 PM on October 9
What’s this about comparing everything that is evil to some time in America… “Sometimes it reminds you of the American south in the 1930s.”
I’m sure that would be news to ex president Jimmy Carter. A biography on his life aired recently on PBS. Living on the Carter property were 3 or 4 black share-cropper families. How old is this reporter, anyway? Ah, I see his name is ‘Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’ that gives him a license on facts, on being right, in places like the UK. It was well written, actually.
Posted by at 7:48 PM on October 9
Eventually, the Hindus, who have invested their resources in developing their work force, will seize whatever they want from the Arabs. Arab influence in the world rests upon the oil they hold legal title to, not what they can actually do. They can’t even maintain their own plumbing. They are both effete and uneducated, as helpless as children.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 7:55 PM on October 9
If the natives of UAE ever do grant equal rights to migrant workers then they’d better get rid of most of them first. Otherwise those natives will be naught but a small minority in their own country and it is they who will be oppressed.
Posted by jewamongyou at 8:00 PM on October 9
Sweat rolls down their heads and necks, their soaked shirts stuck to their backs. A heavy smell of spices and body odour fills the air…a mixture of pretension and racism…We will never sit next to Indians and Pakistanis with their smell,” his wife explains.
When the reporter describes the foul body odor of the laborers, he’s reporting facts. When the Iraqi engineer’s wife says the workers smell bad, she’s a racist!
——-
“The workers might eat once a day back home, but they have their family around them, they have respect.”…The company that sponsors them holds on to their passports—and often a month or two of their wages to make sure that they keep working…One of the men is back from a two-week break in his home village in Pakistan
Huh? Please explain the contradictions. Apparently this laborer was able to get his passport to travel back and forth. He could afford to travel and to take 2 weeks off work. Plus, he chose to return rather than staying in Pakistan! Obviously the “human rights campaigner”/Marxist is incorrect in saying the laborers would rather starve back home.
And that, in a nut shell, is the European genre of “exploited workers” stories. They treat the 3rd world poor like they are kicked puppies rather than real people making real choices.
I’ve been to China and seen dank crowded sweatshops; those women wanted to work there because toiling on a 3rd world farm was worse than weaving rugs. The 3rd world is a very rough place for uneducated unskilled laborers, as was the entire planet prior to a few centuries ago. Poverty was the original status of man - sad, but true.
Posted by Jill at 9:08 PM on October 9
If this is how they treat their fello Moslems, I hate to see how they treat infedels. Don’t worry, we will find out soon.
These are not like the labor condictions in 19th century America. These are labor condictionslike 8th century Arabia. Notice how they blame everything on the US.
Posted by flyingtiger at 9:47 PM on October 9
This is a great article explaining exactly why libertarianism is evil. There is no way for workers to get ahead in a society like this. There’s an oversupply of labor and thus wages can be kept infinitely low. As the article said, they would just be poorer elsewhere so they have NO CHOICE but to accept these terms. The fetching blonde russian prostitutes are another perk of a libertarian paradise, where women are degraded and sold as economic units, and we all can celebrate our freedom as we drive by them.
What’s even more outrageous is slaves didn’t build the pyramids! They were high-class hired workers, native egyptians! Utter historic ignorance! Everywhere we turn!
Finally I’d like to point out that our elites are hoping to remake UAE in the USA. This is exactly their dream. Open borders, infinite low wage workers (recall the constant harping by republicans on how we need to abolish the minimum wage so people can work for 2 cents an hour which is all they ‘merit’), utopian towers and beaches for the rich elites, and grinding poverty for everyone else, the 99% servant class of the future. They don’t intend to lose anything via multiculturalism, it’s all pure profit to them. It is the working and middle class whites who will be reduced to slavery and extinction—-THEY will always be just fine, sunbathing and skiing their lives away.
Posted by at 10:16 PM on October 9
“I see his name is ‘Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’ that gives him a license on facts, on being right, in places like the UK.”
The name Ghaith Abdul-Ahad makes him untouchable in the UK.
Posted by at 10:17 PM on October 9
AS can be read from my innumerable posts here, I’m dead set against 3rd world immigration into the western nations.
I’m not convinced that such a thing as a ‘labor shortage’ actually exists or ever existed (as every schoolboy knows a ‘shortage’ of anything in a free-market is impossible).
However, if it was ever found that a dire need for 3rd world immigrants did exist, then I humbly suggest that the western nations should treat them in *exactly* the same way as the good people of the UAE do.
Posted by Kenelm Digby at 7:48 AM on October 10
Slavery is an inescapable construct. The Bible condoned it in the OT, and continued it in the NT. The Canons of the Church acknowledged it as a necessary evil, and yet!
Abolitionists and other Utopian types think they are far wiser, more benevolent than YWHW God Almighty, and foster the lie that ‘all men are created [ontologically] equal.’ Which is a crock. A quick overview of the people that eat in ANY good restaurant, vs. the class that eat in your local White Castle or McD’s makes that clear. This is as true in India, with her caste system, as it is in Indianapolis.
‘The poor you will always have with you,’ Christ said. Compassion is a family affair; remember ‘Love your NEIGHBOR’? Sigh….
I find it duplicitous that an Arabic named reporter can survey all this (and even ‘blend in’) and yet think nothing of HIS living in a Western, (formerly proud) Anglo-Saxon country such as England, to ‘report’ this stuff, comparing it to (yet again!) the American South, or the 1930’s. IF you ‘feel compassion’ so much, go live there and set up unions, representations for YOUR people, etc. and leave the West alone with HER indigenous people- Whites!
What is also not mentioned is the idiotic ignorance that the West NEVER should have sold its’ patrimony (law, Education, technology) to a bedouin-like people in the FIRST place, (but then, a sodomized T.H. Lawrence could indulge his fancies over there, where he could not do so in Britain) to even ALLOW them to achieve Parity with Christendom.
But then, in Multiculti EU, the greatest ‘sin’ is to be Christian and Caucasian….or aware of the ‘great gulf fixed’ between us and them.
Posted by Fr. John at 9:03 AM on October 10
“Eventually, the Hindus, who have invested their resources in developing their work force, will seize whatever they want from the Arabs. Arab influence in the world rests upon the oil they hold legal title to, not what they can actually do. They can’t even maintain their own plumbing. They are both effete and uneducated, as helpless as children.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 7:55 PM on October 9”
Schoolteacher, then Dubai is in trouble at some point because there oil is about to run out. This is one of the reasons behind their massive infrastructure push.. they need tourism to replace oil production which is about to dry up in that area in a few years.
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 11:24 AM on October 10
Jesus said the poor you will always have with you. Thats all fine but did you ever notice before he preached to people he would feed them or heal them and take care of their needs. If we are to act like christians i think we should of emulated him not exploit people for our own greed. He tells us not to compare ourselves to others as there will always be lesser and greater. To whom much is given much is expected. When it is said all men are created equal, it means equal rights not equal outcome. What is wrong with all this is everybody isn,t given an equal chance to succeed. The person that posted about the elites at 10:16 has it dead on. All the wealth is concentrating into the hands of the few and human nature takes its course. maranantha
Posted by at 11:56 AM on October 10
“Outside the “free zones”, where the rules are looser, no one can start a business in the UAE without a partner from the emirates, who often does nothing apart from lending his name.”
Saudi Arabia has a similar scam. If you as a Westerner want to start a business there you have to hire a certain amount of locals. If you interview one and tell him that he is to drive a truck, he will tell you that he will only accept a position as a manager. Of course, he is completely unqualified to do this. ALL of the people you interview will say this. They know the scam very well. Eventually you end up putting some people on the books, pay them a manager’s salary and tell them to not bother showing up for work. Even with this dead weight, there is a lot of money to be made in the Middle East so Westerners put up with it.
Read “The Arabs” by David Lamb. It was a fascinating book. One point he made was that Arab culture looks down on any one performing manual labor. It is a great shame to have to work with your hands. Arabs will turn down high paying construction jobs to work for minimum wage in an office. Without their oil the Arabs would be nothing but penniless nomads fighting over patches of sand.
Posted by john at 12:04 PM on October 10
“’m sure that would be news to ex president Jimmy Carter. A biography on his life aired recently on PBS. Living on the Carter property were 3 or 4 black share-cropper families.”
I read one of Carter’s autobiographies years ago. He mentioned that the Carter’s had a radio, but none of the sharecroppers had radios. So every night when weather permitted the Carter’s put the radio on the porch and sharecroppers and the Carter’s gathered round a listened to the radio together.
The writer probably means the defacto segregation in Dubai. The
living conditions sound horrendous. The indentured servant arrangements are standard for the middle east. They are lucky they are not outright slaves. I assume the indentured servant arrangements are cheaper.
Posted by at 12:16 PM on October 10
All of the conditions described exist in all of the Arab muslim countries, Kuwait, Saudi and the U.A.E.
Posted by Skip at 6:30 PM on October 10
“Slavery is an inescapable construct. The Bible condoned it in the OT, and continued it in the NT. The Canons of the Church acknowledged it as a necessary evil, and yet!”
Well I don’t believe in slavery and do feel it to be morally wrong. A writer in the Bible condoned it because during his time period, it was perfectly accepatable and so he thought nothing wrong with it. HOWEVER, even though slavery is wrong and not necessary, I do believe in leaving people in their own nations,cultures and societies to live freely and mold their own nations based on their abilities and choices. Of course this means that some nations will do far better than other nations but that is the outcome of abilities. I don’t believe in importing slave labor from other nations to do the dirty work of a country.
Posted by at 12:22 AM on October 11
To the poster of 10:16,
I am nont a libertarian, but you have got it wrong.Firstly the foreign laborers in Dubai have made the deliberate and conscious decision to move there (a nation which, by the way, owes them nothing)in order to take advantages of wages which are many times higher than anything on offer at home - otherwise they simply wouldn’t be there.As in every free society on Earth wage rates are purely a matter of supply and demand.
Secondly, prostitution has existed as long as humans have existed - and always will exist.This has nothing to do with ‘capitalist exploitation’ or anything other than the male libido in fact.In fact prostitutes are very often ‘free-lance capitalists’ themselves making very big earnings from their chosen profession.
Posted by Kenelm Digby at 8:49 AM on October 11
It’s amazing that this reporter with the Arabic name views such treatment and amazingly somehow manages to compare it with 1930’s USA. A fairer and much better comparison would be how much well immigrant workers from Pakistan do in present-day USA & UK compared to this Arab hellhole. And the icing on the cake is these geniuses and their leaders can’t wait to turn Western countries into Islamic hellholes like these. It seems that some Muslims (Arabs) are better than other Muslims (Pakistanis, Bangladeshis etc.) Can’t these Pakistani Muslims complain about Arab racism. Oh I forgot, under the hegemony of our neo-Marxist masters only whites can be racist.
Posted by dr dees brainwashing elixir at 10:02 AM on October 12
Most workers are nothing more than wage slaves no matter where they live in the world. (including america and uk) In my opinion. If you listen to that man who wrote rich dad poor dad books, you get nowhere working for wages. I watch that show how its made on tv, and they have mostly robots and programmed computers making things now. How about taxing the robots. The formula could be to tax them according to the amount of tax paying people they replace minus cost and maintenance upkeep. If they insist on replacing people with robots why not have them contribute to all of society, not the wealthy few. In the coal mines they put in those longwall miners and replace a whole crew of miners and have a few workers(biological workers) doesn,t robot mean worker. I like how some people say you can,t regulate pay for the ceo,s but they have minimum wage laws that regulate wages for low paid workers. Then they say they have to pay a lot to get the best people but you have high paid executives for lehman brothers but they go bankrupt but the regular workers lose everything. It is all messed up and the American experiment has failed and its not getting any better because the leaders don,t change their wrong headed ideas.
Posted by at 6:10 PM on October 12
“Secondly, prostitution has existed as long as humans have existed - and always will exist.This has nothing to do with ‘capitalist exploitation’”
I agree that is has nothing to do with capitalism and yes prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. However, you do have women and girls around the world who have been forced to go into prostitution(white slavery) or forced to stay in it. Some have been lured to Arab and other countries with the promise of legitimate work only to have their passports and money confiscated and such.
Posted by at 7:56 AM on October 13
When the Iraqi engineer’s wife says the workers smell bad, she’s a racist!
——
That’s a good point.
But actually, there’s nothing abour “race” here. What race? Any “prejudice” here (if such it really is) is ethnic or national, but not racial.
And it’s probably not “prejudice” either — if it’s strictly a matter of describing facts.
If they DO smell bad, then to recognize that and want to avoid it is not prejudice.
Posted by at 12:19 PM on October 13
Huh? Please explain the contradictions. Apparently this laborer was able to get his passport to travel back and forth. He could afford to travel and to take 2 weeks off work. Plus, he chose to return rather than staying in Pakistan! Obviously the “human rights campaigner”/Marxist is incorrect in saying the laborers would rather starve back home.
“That man hasn’t been home for four years,” says Ahmad, the chef for the night, pointing at a well-built young man.”
There’s another apparent contradiction. If they’re subsiting on a wretched diet of rice (which we’re told they can barely afford!) and an occasional onion or vegetable, they would not be “well built”. They’d be listless and half-starved. Evidently, this young man is eating well, at the least.
Also, any company — however exploitative — knows that malnourished workers are not going to be efficient workers. It would be in the company’s interest to operate an employee cafeteria, or at least see that they have enough to eat somehow. That would not only give their workers some energy to do better work, but it would also reduce sick time and injuries. Just good business.
The 3rd world is a very rough place for uneducated unskilled laborers, AS WAS THE ENTIRE PLANET prior to a few centuries ago.
Poverty was the original status of man — sad, but true.
Posted by Jill
Excellent, excellent observation, Jill! Too often it’s forgotten that this is the condition that our European ancestors emerged from too — and most of them not that long ago, only a few generations. Unlike what blacks and others think, we were not coddled in the lap of luxury, nothing was given to us, and we lived on our own labor, not theirs.
White Westerners BUILT and INVENTED whatever we have, and we did it all the hard way…. against harsh climate, wars, disease, religious superstition, ignorance, and many natural obstacles. We didn’t “steal” it or borrow it from anyone, and it certainly wasn’t “given” to us by kindly strangers. Primeval Europe (and then America too) was a cold, forest-covered continent, inhabited by bears and wolves, and not very hospitable to human development. We had to blunder and fumble and climb our way upward, like a blind man climbing out of a hole./pit. Nonetheless, we developed science and navigation and medicine and arts and industry. We were the first ones to go where no one else had gone. There was no beaten path for us to follow. We learned by the harsh process of trial and error. We got no technological aid, or foreign investment, or government advisors from abroad. There were no scholarships at foreign universities, no foreign textbooks to follow, no foreign doctors or engineers to assist us, no factories built by foreign companies with foreign capital. We pulled ourselves up the hard way and built our civilization and economies from scratch. The prosperity and comfort that our western societies enjoy today came on the backs of many generations of ancestors who suffered, toiled, and built what we have now.
Posted by ghw at 1:17 PM on October 13
What’s this about comparing everything that is evil to some time in America… “Sometimes it reminds you of the American south in the 1930s.”
Posted by at 7:48 PM on October 9
………………………………………
Yes, I noticed that too. Strange. And what would this reporter be likely to know about the American South in the 1930’s?
He writes, “Labor conditions are like America in the 19th century—but that’s not acceptable in the 21st century.”
This strikes me as really bizarre … that a writer from England, presumably (and from MANCHESTER, at that!!!) — would find need to refer to American labour conditions in the 19th century. I thought that England, during the early Industrial Revolution, had some of the most dreadful working conditions anywhere. Why does he need to reach out to America for terrible examples?
Evidently, this reveals whatever he’s been taught in school, since I’m sure that unless this follow is at least in his 80’s he wouldn’t personally know anything about the Bad Old South back in the 1930s.
Posted by ghw at 1:23 PM on October 13
I like how some people say you can,t regulate pay for the CEO’s, but they have minimum wage laws that regulate wages for low paid workers. Then they say they have to pay a lot to get the best people; but you have high-paid executives for Lehman Brothers but they go bankrupt [anyway] and the regular workers lose everything.
Posted by at 6:10 PM
………………………………….
When you have hobnobbed with those people, you discover something —- they are generally no different than anybody else. (But that’s their big secret. Shhh.) In any country or society, the nobility likes to pretend that it’s a special breed. The fact is, given human nature, that people who rise to the top of the corporate heap, due to whatever flukes or coincidence or sponsorship, like to claim credit due to their superior personal characteristics. They would never admit that it’s mostly a game of musical chairs and they were just lucky. Not all of it is, but a good part.
Posted by ghw at 2:01 PM on October 13
anonymous at 7:56 AM wrote: “However, you do have women and girls around the world who have been forced to go into prostitution(white slavery) or forced to stay in it.”
So what? Are you saying that just because some women have been forced into prostitution, all prostitution is wrong? Then you must also hold that since some people have been forced to work, all work is wrong. You complain about prostitution in UAE while, in the U.S. those same women would be forced underground where they would be subject to greater danger of abuse. Then they are arrested and charged with crimes - hence ruining their lives. Is this a better situation in your eyes?
On your earlier post, you seem to be under the impression that UAE is some kind of libertarian utopia. Don’t you realize that all the sordid deeds going on there are under the auspices of a government? Not only that but much of it (if not most of it) is enabled by government and with their blessing. The passports that are seized are government passports. The money they are paid is government money. The airfare they can’t afford is inflated by government regulations. The citizenship they are denied is government citizenship. Their “illegal” status (that makes them vulnerable) is a government imposition. The rule that they cannot open their own business without native partnership is a government rule.
Posted by jewamongyou at 4:24 PM on October 13
“It’s amazing that this reporter with the Arabic name views such treatment and amazingly somehow manages to compare it with 1930’s USA. A fairer and much better comparison would be how much well immigrant workers from Pakistan do in present-day USA & UK compared to this Arab hellhole”
Exactly. Anyway, what does this reporter know about “the South” in the 30’s? Answer, nothing. Sharecroppers in the South in the 30’s did make very low wages but they were not treated anywhere as close to as badly as these modern day workers are treated. 1930’s southern sharecroppers didn’t work 16-hour shifts and such.
Posted by at 8:55 PM on October 13
“What does this reporter know about “the South” in the 30’s? Answer, nothing! Sharecroppers in the South in the 30’s did make very low wages, but they were not treated anywhere so badly as these modern-day workers are treated. 1930’s Southern sharecroppers didn’t work 16-hour shifts and such.”
Posted by at 8:55 PM
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I wonder if in this reporter’s mind it was assumed (even though not stated) that there was a racial component in this comparison. In other words, was he implying that those dreadfully abused workers in the Old South were black? Otherwise, why couldn’t he use Britain as an example closer to home? We know, of course, that blacks did all the work in the South and that America was built by blacks. We’ve all heard that many times. Evidently, that’s what he was told in school too!
Posted by browser at 2:38 PM on October 14
proverbs says the borrower is the slave to the lender. But there were usuary laws which they mostly got rid of. (anything over 10% is usuary.) Google usuary if you have time. Now they have credit cards which charge 29.9% so they can keep you enslaved all your life with no hope of getting out. The country and the world has become of the super rich by the super rich for the super rich. Ghandi said there is enough for everyones needs enough but not enough for everyones needs. The reason jesus said the poor will always be among you is because he knew human nature would never change. The buddha was raised on his familys estate and never knew about poverty nutill he went outside his walled compound and saw people in poverty and started a religion. If you read about mohammed he saw the wealth being concentrated in the hands of the few and started a religion. Islam doesn,t believe in usuary and is calling the west a failed system because of this financial mess we are in. I saw in iraq their stock market is doing good because iraqis own their own houses. Probably don,t have a crushing interest rate. In this country you never really OWN your house because if you don,t pay your taxes the govt. puts liens on it and takes it off you. So the govt. really owns all the houses and you are just renting from them. It probably doesn,t matter who gets elected because you have the same puppetmasters pulling the strings in my opinion. Oh well a bunch of other peoples thoughts and ideas thrown together with my comments on the complete mess America has become. Its a failed system because representatives are not representing everybody which is what they are supposed to do but don,t. I read once the native American chiefs would not sit down to eat till they made sure everybody in the tribe was fed first.
Posted by at 9:30 AM on October 17
Whoops have to make a correction to the ghandi quote. He said there is enough for everybody,s needs but not enough for everybody,s GREED. GREED is not good as opposed to what Michael douglas,s line was in wall street(the movie). What i like to observe on this site is how some stories get a lot of comments while other stories get few comments. Someone suggested that AMREN put up the stories of the top 10 that have gotten tne most comments. You could put up the the stories with the least comments also. People don,t seem to interested in this story. I have become a suscriber to the AMREN newsletter but i thought it would have more stories about AMREN,S activitys and progress but it is interesting and i would reccomend it to anybody.
Posted by at 10:56 AM on October 18