Are the Persian Gulf city-states slave societies?
aeon.co
aeon.co
You could argue that a less organized de facto system of slavery exists for migrant workers in many other countries including the USA. Migrants roam in and work but really have no rights as they are undocumented. People can intimidate them or worse largely with impunity because who would bother investigating? Sure technically it’s illegal to abuse migrants but nobody’s watching.
Migrant work is something that really demands a coordinated international effort to reform.
Then you have Uyghur forced labor in China.
Slavery has not been abolished in anything but name.
:(
[0]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/11/u-s-private...
[1]https://corpaccountabilitylab.org/calblog/2020/8/5/private-c...
> “Extending 2-for-1 credits to all minimum custody inmates at this time would severely impact fire camp participation — a dangerous outcome while California is in the middle of a difficult fire season and severe drought,” lawyers from Harris’s office wrote in a filing.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/kamala-harris-of...
Similarly the middle class benefits from the lower working class wages that come from exploitation of illegal immigrants.
Prison slavery existed before chattel slavery was rerouted through the prison system.
Everyone who is benefiting lobbies far stricter laws and harsher sentences not for societies benefit but so their labor force can grow.
This slave labor is disproportionately taken from minorities and the poor who it is more acceptable to enslave. Mostly by patrolling areas which have lots of minorities and shaking them down in hopes of finding drugs. See the fact that black and white people do drugs at the same rate but white people are far less likely to be prosecuted.
In one case they actually caught 2 judges taking bribes from private detention to hand juvenile offenders maximum sentences. Effectively selling other people's kids.
Banning private prisons only removes a fraction of the incentive.
When the prisoners make the prison owners (public or private) more money than they cost, there is pressure to imprison more people and for longer. That can lead to pressure on the enforcers to look harder for infractions… but they might turn a blind eye to infractions by their friends and bosses[0]. Pretty soon, you get feudalism.
[0] Seven of the candidates in the last Tory leadership contest (including the winner) admitted to using drugs. The government has no plans to decriminalise recreational use of any of those substances: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/09/high-tories...
Do you see anything wrong with blacks and latinos being overrepresented?
Do you see anything wrong with being such a backwater that you still have the death penalty, not to mention BS like "three strikes" laws?
Do you see anything wrong with forced prison labor undercutting regular businesses in the same areas?
Kept well supplied with labour thanks to Kamala Harris and her draconian persecution of marijuana related “crimes”.
You would take out a loan or lose a costly war and there were whole shopping districts like Keramikos (pottery shops area) in Athens where the slaves had shops and tried to earn their way out of slavery. Any similarities with present societal structures purely circumstancial ofcourse.
This could be run like a regular factory with bookkeeping techniques where labor cost was certainly not zero even though laborers were not getting paid nor free to do anything else but go back to picking cotton.
Labor cost could be reduced to a single line on a spreadsheet like any other business.
After the war with slaves now being paid and free to work elsewhere if they could manage it, this would be offset by the workers paying their own upkeep after the slaveowner had become the employer.
There would have been pressure to keep labor cost from escalating at all if possible.
So things could go forward with as little change in financial risk as could be.
A lot of companies today still have the same type structure as these places had after the war, which can be not much different than the structure they had before the war, and Wall Street is still in the same place it was before the war . . .
A big part of that was the increased productivity of freed laborers being compensated by an increased cost of reproduction.
It is not dissimilar from undischargible debt. In fact, the historians and anthropologists writing about these societies have made the link themselves.
Having said that, equating all slavery to chattel slavery and thus denying that other slavery-like arrangements have existed and continue to exist today is not only a misleadingly US-centric perspective, it also removes the ability to criticize and try to reform social arrangements that severely restrict freedom in subtler and more nuanced ways.
You can do whatever you want while you pay back loans today as long as you keep your contact information current. Just try and move without informing your lenders. That can be treated as a default. And if you can do whatever you want while maintaining a suitable income to make these sort of loan repayments, your experience is an outlier for all but a very small portion of Americans.
Taking away someone Visa is a crime too.. and preventing them from leaving is a felony. And we prosecute people all the time for that.. human traffickers, for example.
EDIT: wasn't picking on the US, just saying it's only part of their journey, and once they're in the US, lots of stuff goes unreported.
Additionally:
- In some cities ("sanctuary cities"), reporting a crime does not lead to deportation.
- They can also apply for amnesty if the conditions in their home country are that bad.
- Agencies accept anonymous reports. The immigrant doesnt even need to be working at the place at the time of the report.
So depending on the circumstances of the abuse, there may be no consequences to the illegal immigrant for reporting.
Solve the problem of employers hiring illegal immigrants, and the issue of these employers abusing the inherent power imbalance disappears as well.
When they say they want to punish immigration they mean punish immigrants.
To give a deliberately extreme example, Wikipedia says this about the Constitution of North Korea:
"""Citizens have the right to elect and be elected (Article 66), freedom of speech, the press, assembly, demonstration and association (Article 67), freedom of religious belief (Article 68), right to submit complaints and petitions (Article 69), right to work (Article 70), right to relaxation (Article 71), right to free medical care (Article 72), right to education (Article 73), freedom in scientific, literary and artistic pursuits (Article 74), freedom of residence and travel (Article 75) and inviolability of the person and home and privacy of correspondence (Article 79).""" - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_North_Korea#...
This means they will have to weight-in the deportation cost to them. So they have half-rights compared to someone who doesn't have to be concerned with that...
For example, if the asylum seekers during Trump had been able to take advantage of their rights, they would not have had their children stolen from them.
a.) your German friend would likely have not been in the kafala system since that is for the labour force.
b.) the kafala system has been banned in the UAE since 2005, with a pretty punitive fine regime, although that hasn't done enough to eliminate it (Govt. lenient treatment for its cronies vs independent contractors, both who follow the practice). It's still in force in other countries in the region.
c.) Your friend will likely have been staying at a township for workers, which is often the common pattern for mining towns in most countries in Asia. Conditions usually tend to be luxuriant, and nowhere near the labour camps (which are actual camps).
I had a project in Dubai a couple of years ago, and all the people I was inc contact with were foreigners, on all levels. GM of logistics companies, warehouse workers, manaement, everyone was a foreigner. At the higher levels of management that changes, so.
In my town, all the immigrants worked at those places, and they lived 15 to a small house. Not surprisingly, no Canadian was willing to do those jobs.
While obviously not nearly as bad as the conditions in the article, it's certainly in a similar vein.
Foreigners do all the actual hard work (unless they can't like security/immigration work).
I am not surprised, after many stories how badly folks from ie Nepal are treated there. I don't see even a slight international pressure from big players like US or EU. Maybe similar reasons like with China - don't mess with important players, in this case oil providers?
Man, I sure do miss traveling...
Many foreigners do very well over there as well, but a much larger percent (Africans, Indians, and southeast Asians) do not. Also the number of women imported on tourist visas for prostitution is staggering.
It’s kind of horrifying to see the effect of that same propaganda here in the US recently.
Why is it surprising? It's not complicated. Gulf states - not Israel - pay the bills in Bangladesh. It also throws in religious fundamentalist indoctrination schools for free, schools that preach hatred of Israel.
> It’s kind of horrifying to see the effect of that same propaganda here in the US recently.
The majority of the US supports both Israel's and the Palestinians' right to exist without oppression and fear of attack. People are largely opposed to either party violating that principle.
Perhaps you missed the outrage in the US at the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, or the bipartisan condemnation of the Saudis' war against Yemen while the previous president and his family courted them, or the US renewable energy industry that is trying to decouple us from Gulf petroleum dependency.
The US public has deeply soured on the Gulf States across the political spectrum. The only people who are still warm to them, as ever, are those who seek access to their immense capital or are enamored with their theocratic and authoritarian system of government.
Furthermore, the previous President addressed his killing in the mildest possible terms, claiming (laughably) that the Saudi ruler had no involvement.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Acosta/status/1064939271113637890...
But the apartheid situation in Israel is perhaps a more blatant example of ongoing human rights abuse, and thus easier to understand compared to the more subtle racism as class subjection in the US.
Sure, but what they choose to be outraged about can be telling. You see so many people talking about “apartheid” in Israel, but almost no one complaining about modern day slavery in the Gulf States. Your typical American has no reason to be more “outraged” about one than the other. The fact that one is vastly more prominent in the public consciousness speaks volumes.
So not sure what "blatant example" you are talking about.
> thus easier to understand
There are few situations harder to understand than Israel and Palestine. If you think it's an "easy to understand" situation it's a pretty clear sign you are utterly ignorant on the matter, and should not be posting comments about it.
How would you respond to South African apartheid survivor and Nobel Peace laureate, Desmond Tutu, who said:
"I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces," he said in a statement.
"Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government."
That is exactly how these terrorist organizations are structured.
Historically we have actually benefited greatly from being a top destination for immigrants and aquired a lot of talent and may wish ultimately that someone else hadn't skimmed the cream while we make it hard.
I think that the primary requirements ought to be not being a criminal where you come from. People who go to school here ought to be offered citizenship at graduation others ought to wait a year. Even the folks that sneak over to work here illegally commit fewer crimes than natives as it stands.
Our birth rate is less than replacement and our density is a fraction of Europes.
In many other countries, like Australia and (I think?) Canada, for example, one can become a citizen after 4 years living and working in the country.
The US is kinda hypocritical in that on one hand there is a tacit desire to lord it over non-citizens, and in the other hand there is a vocal concern about exacerbating the glut of labor.
Well, an individual American can't have it both ways: you're either a net worker or net owner.
Also, it gets complex when discussing illegal immigration. What if an immigrant is laying low for an extended time? Is it different if the host country looks the other way and doesn't really enforce the laws, because some sectors benefit from the cheaper labor?
The responder is right but glib - his observation should not be a spur to silence and insensitivity to other people's living conditions make societies at all scales more unstable.
I'm skeptical that it is the majority of cases since migrants send a huge amount of remittances to their home countries and a lot of people depend on this labor. In the article it was mentioned that a builder gets paid $28k per year which is still great for the majority of the world.
This is one article on the dependence of some areas of India to remittances from the Gulf states: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/forex-and-remittanc...
But trying to rectify them under an Islamic pretense will prove fruitless because the countries involved are not Islamic territories.
This is clearly made up.
So if you want to believe they are slave states you have to ask why do they need fake statements like this.
Also why are they slave states just because the workers are next door. There's no moral difference for us using their oil or buying shoes or seafood from Asia.
One of their largest multinationals, Nestlé, successfully fought a policy proposal last year that would require Swiss corporations to follow environmental and human rights regulations across their entire supply chain (the Konzernverantwortungsinitiative [1]).
Weeks after this initiative barely failed to pass, Nestlé won a decision in the US Supreme Court meaning the country could not be sued by former child slaves in US court [2].
1. https://www.srf.ch/news/abstimmung-29-november-2020/konzernv... (German) 2. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-slavery-idUSKBN...
Migrant workers generally benefitted from it, which is why it never ran short of volunteers.
Slavery does not benefit workers, which is why it requires physical capture and subjugation.
No, because they care about preserving their political system and way of life- a bit like Japan
We may disagree, but it's their country. And people who don't like it can always leave (yes, I have heard the stories about passports being taken, I'd call that enforcing the contract for the initial term period, and it's not like consulates don't exist)
They are not Persian countries. They are Arab countries that lie on the southwest shore of the Persian Gulf. There are huge cultural and linguistic differences between the two, to say nothing of the political differences, both historically and down to current moment.
Furthermore, those Arab countries have been trying to change the international standard name of the body of water to "Arabian Gulf" to counter their adversary Iran.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf_naming_dispute#:~...
> Can anyone at all become a citizen
No, unless you are ancestrally connected to the country or it's co-ethnic neighbors, or are a foreign woman who marries an Arab UAE citizen.
Some selected naturalization requirements from the UAE's website (https://u.ae/en/information-and-services/passports-and-trave...):
- An Arab individual from Omani, Qatari or Bahraini origin
- Arab individual who enjoys full legal capacity, has continuously and lawfully resided in the member emirates for at least seven years
- Any person, other than those mentioned above, who enjoys full legal capacity if he has continuously and legally resided in the member emirates for a period of no less than 30 years
- A foreign woman married to a UAE National may be granted nationality by citizenship after the lapse of seven years
As out of touch as this might seem with modernity, remember that the United States had anti-miscegenation laws on the books until 1967, and only opened immigration from non-white countries in 1965.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws_in_the...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac...
Putting minimum standards you can't opt out of is the only way to maintain basic right in the face of inevitably growing asymmetry that is the inevitable outcome of even a small amount of initial inequality. Having a slightly higher share of current resources makes it possible to tilt the board to obtain a larger share of future resources until an increasingly small portion owns more and more.
Ultimately slavery would be the alternative for starvation.
> They often end up in the Persian Gulf after responding to deceptive and misleading advertising in their home countries, causing them to either pay large sums or to borrow such sums from employment agents to secure employment in the Gulf and to pay for their transportation, housing and food. When they arrive, they learn that, based on the value of their wage in real terms, it will be nearly impossible to pay off any debt they have incurred or replenish the sums they have expended. This encourages their employers to withhold, delay or simply not pay wages, coercing the workers to remain on the job, sometimes for a lifetime.
They did not say that.
> We may disagree, but it's their country. And people who don't like it can always leave
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_Convention_on_th...
And, preemptively, this is not 'whataboutism'. As I said, our own consumption patterns are in our hands to change (arguably this includes enabling these gulf states with our tourism dollars but that's another point). But we hear a lot of whining about this 'slavery', however accurate that may be, but hardly any discussion about the outsourced manufacturing processes that we wholly depend on, which almost certainly fit the bill as much as anything.