Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Concerning Labour

No No, this isn’t another MJ alimony post – luckily those have been scarce as of late (cross fingers) but rather about how the migrant workers in the gulf region are being screwed over. The Gulf region,or as I prefer to call it – the ‘Yaa Ayoohal Arab region’ (woe to the Arab region) is currently seeing an exponential growth in investment. Because of the oil, there is tons of money being pumped in, so now we have ski resorts in Dubai, Waterworlds in Sharjah, brothels in Syria (a guy can dream cant he) I’ve got no problem with the stupid Arabs building all this shit – I mean, its their land and money after all (Ive got a problem with the development in the hijaaz though, but that’s a post on its own – would the prophet (pbuh) stay at Zam Zam Towers?)

Marx spoke at length about the extraction of labour in modern society, and while he was sloshed most of the time, he still remains a really influential chap (Gandhi done right). What he meant by ‘extraction of labour’ was that when you buy a commodity like a jersey or a vibrator or whatever, we admire the product but fail to see the work that’s been put into it. Now imagine all that work … times a thousand! Over ten million Asian (read Indians) migrants are in the gulf region right now, working in the most squalid conditions, and all for what? Five U.S Dollars a day. As I said before, build your skyscrapers in the desert and all that, ship a bunch of coolies in to build them for you if you like, but give them a decent wage at least. Many of the workers aren't even paid for months on end, and there's nothing they can do as their passports are taken from them, and they have no money to return home. We're supposed to be the best example for mankind - someone give me something to be optimistic about.
Pay the worker his wage before his sweat dries - Narrated in Ibn Majah, #2443
MJ

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is so true -aljazeer english did an expose'on this not long ago -scary stuff. another interesting and vaguely relevant point is that jus across the med in europe , muslims make up the a large part of the poor labour class and also face discrimination. interesting post

My dartboard said...

and places like saudi have an unemployment rate of like 40%. the emirates has something like 30%. yet saudi has the honour of being the US's biggest arms customer. point is that the arabs are dubious on the best of days. and when the oil runs out, then what?

Nooj said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
SingleGuy said...

Hey guys, howya all doing? I haven't had the pleasure of travelling in the Middle East yet so all I know about the region is "Second-hand" knowledge. But so far nothing has illustrated so well for me as the movie "Syriana". If you guys haven't seen it, I highly recommend it, I recommend that the Arabs watch it too, because it doesn't lay blame on any one group, but it highlights the security, money, terrorism and oil issues from various angles including that of the migrant pakistani/indian labour force. Highly informative....one might call it infotainment.