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At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

theguardian.com

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Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#101

Post by aldous »

cmdkeen wrote: post #90
polymatter wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No religion doesn't have something that Western society doesn't have moral difficulty with. Christianity has a load of crap about stoning people, homophobia and subjugation of women for a start. Also includes God sanctioned rape and murder of non-Christians. Leviticus, Exodus and Deuteronomy is full of that crap.

Except Christianity broadly doesn't believe in the Bible being the literal word of God and thus all of those rules applying now - and no country accepts it as their view of Christianity. Biblical infallibility is a modern, revivalist concept. Even during the good old days of the Mediaeval Church no-one stoned adulterers. No Christian country has laws stoning people on the basis of "it's in the Bible". However it is t…

A valuable point worth noting in relation to this is the fact that Jesus, in the new testament, specifically dismisses such practices as stoning:

John 8:7. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/let_him_who_is_without_sin_cas...

It is one of the central tenets of Christian faith that one should not judge others. Quotes attributed to Jesus explicitly state this many times in the new testament.

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#102

Post by sammyo »

ucha wrote: post #8
enupten wrote: post #6

Yes, this is awful, but what more can you expect from the Middle East? On a more political note, did Al Jazeera, report on this ?

Yes, they did. A quick search turns this: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2012/06/2012... http://www.aljazeera.com/video/middleeast/2012/06/2012612647... http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/02/20132714263...

I do wonder if these stories are distributed to the Arabic editions.

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#103

Post by levosmetalo »

konstruktor wrote: post #65
levosmetalo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there are different flavours of crhistianity as well as different flavours of islam. While christian Americans did indeed support slavery, the eastern (Orthodox) christianity was never involved in such behaviour. I'm pretty sure that not all islamic countries were openly supporting slavery, it's just the desert ones. That being said, I agree that it's more middle east phenomenon that islam phenomenon. The other…

Women not being allowed to vote is actually an inherent flaw of democracy: Those who are allowed to vote decide who else may vote. All democratic countries make this kind of decision for many groups. Voting age, if and when immigrants may vote, whether to let people convicted of a felony or prisoners vote: all of these are cases of the voters deciding on who else will share their privilege. Switzerland was just sligh…

So you want to say that just because it's called democracy, the voters have the right to deprive the other of basic human rights? The same way as in ancient Greek/Athens democracy where we had both free elections by popular vote and slaves.

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#104

Post by bayesianhorse »

vellum wrote: post #76
dm8 wrote: post #3

Lot of Indians also work in these countries due to poverty reasons. I feel privileged to be born in a relatively wealthy and educated family in India. If it was not the case may be I would have one of the migrant workers like them. If these countries have oil money in abundance then why don't they give good working conditions and pay more money. Few million dollars will hardly going to move needle for them. I smell c…

If these countries have oil money in abundance then why don't they give good working conditions and pay more money Racism. There's a certain pecking order in the Gulf: 1.) Locals, 2.) Other Gulf nationals, 3.) Whites (Western), 4.) Non-white professionals (Western) 5.) Other Arabs (professionals), 5.) South Asian professionals, 6.) Working class (busboys/waiters/etc.), 7.) Day laborers (mostly South Asian). If you se…

It's been a tough journey of about 200 years to eliminate most of this thinking in the west.

It's certainly hard to watch this process unfold in other countries. The process is certainly faster than it was in the west but still excruciatingly slow.

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#105

Post by bayesianhorse »

waps wrote: post #21
camus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is legalized slavery. These middle eastern countries are well known for that. That's why they are recruiting the poorest of the poor from rural areas in Asia. Foreign workers have 0 rights there. But hey these guys are US allies,the leader of democracy and the free world... they cant be bad , can they ...

Not the middle eastern countries. This is part of their legal system, which is called "islam", or "sharia" (translation: the right way for a muslim). Slavery (if you define it as forced labour without compensation), in case anyone doesn't know, is part of every religion. It is even part of Christianity, but Canon law specifies that it is a Christian's duty to, firstly, never own slaves themselves (with serious punish…

While this thinking can certainly be found in historic islam, it doesn't seem to be that prevalent in muslim countries...

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#106

Post by bayesianhorse »

ameen wrote: post #4
dm8 wrote: post #3

Lot of Indians also work in these countries due to poverty reasons. I feel privileged to be born in a relatively wealthy and educated family in India. If it was not the case may be I would have one of the migrant workers like them. If these countries have oil money in abundance then why don't they give good working conditions and pay more money. Few million dollars will hardly going to move needle for them. I smell c…

Corruption by the middle-men, the worst part is fellow Indians/Nepalis run such recruitment rackets and fake certificates and stuff. Even if those countries wanted to do better, these middle-men would gobble up the benefits and pass the hardwork to uneducated/naive migrant workers.

Here's a new thought: Enforce the law.

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#107

Post by triplesec »

joonix wrote: post #11

See my post in the other thread about living in Qatar. The exit visa is a system that legally enables indentured servitude. Any country that has this system (pretty much just Islamic mideast countries) should be shunned by the US and the UN (won't happen of course given the US has a couple of bases in Qatar and BP has a huge investment there).

Plz can you link to "that other thread" for those of us not acquainted with it? (just that it's a good practice and experiences with search for such things are not always productive)

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#108

Post by waps »

runehol wrote: post #75
waps wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it would bring uncomfortable questions about the list of states that employ slavery, or effective slavery : Sudan, Mali, Niger, Chad, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Pakistan, Bangladesh. Hmmm I wonder what is driving the advancement of slavery, given that's the places where it's happening. An exploration of slavery would bring the very uncomfortable, but pretty well known, fact to the surface that slavery is pa…

Others have discussed the slavery claims, I'll address the linguistic claims. The three-letter root عبد, transliterated "3abd", or more inaccurately, "Abed", has meanings related to servant and slaves. It does not mean black. This can be seen in this entry of the Hans Wehr dictionary - http://tinyurl.com/pk2alcu . You might be familiar with this root from the Arabic male name Abdallah or 3abdallah - this literally me…

Your reply is technically correct, and yet also entirely false. It's of course true that the color is aswad. I was not talking about the color black being abd. It's just that in English people use the same word for black (the color) and black (the skin).

If it makes things more clear, abed means n-gger. Literally and figuratively.

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#109

Post by waps »

gjm11 wrote: post #95
waps wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it would bring uncomfortable questions about the list of states that employ slavery, or effective slavery : Sudan, Mali, Niger, Chad, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Pakistan, Bangladesh. Hmmm I wonder what is driving the advancement of slavery, given that's the places where it's happening. An exploration of slavery would bring the very uncomfortable, but pretty well known, fact to the surface that slavery is pa…

Most of your other claims here have already been refuted, but here's one more. If "black gold" ever mostly meant slaves rather than oil, then the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary would like to hear from you. (They say: "colloq. (orig. N. Amer.) petroleum; mineral oil" and their earliest citation is from 1910.) I just did a Google book search for "black gold" on 19th-century books, and checked the first 100 re…

Let me google that for you : http://library.thinkquest.org/10320/Tour.htm

The English colonist in the New World imported white indentured workers at first, but found there weren't enough of them. The Indians in the Americas refused to work or proved to be poorly fitted for long hours of hard labor. The Europeans found it easier and cheaper to import Africans as slaves. By the seventeenth century, the African slave trade was booming in the Americas. The slave dealers made so much money from their human cargoes that soon Africans came to be known as "black gold".

http://www.economist.com/node/21556890 http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Slaves_were_called_black_gold._why... http://www.unesco.org/bpi/eng/unescopress/2001/01-91e.shtml http://www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/free-lesson-plans... ...

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#110

Post by waps »

flumbaps wrote: post #92
waps wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. What exactly are you saying is not true : 1) islam is a system of laws 2) those laws include slavery 3) people who are fighting to introduce those laws to society are reintroducing legal slavery 4) the muslim world is the major hotbet of slavery Copious evidence for all claims is easy to come by. Start with : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_slavery And if you want to hear it from an…

Islam isn't a system of laws, it's a religion. Like all organised religions, what's written in its holy books is of far less practical importance than what is preached by its leaders. Adherents don't read and figure out for themselves, they follow what they are told the books say. Like most religious leaders, the Islamic holy men tend to preach what is convenient to them. The fact that the religion is Islam isn't of…

"Islam isn't a system of laws"

Really ? Have you ever -even once- asked a muslim this ? Seriously ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia

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