The World’s Spotlight

Posted on November 18, 2013 by Muller

The shocking details of Amnesty International’s [AI] new report The Dark Side of Migration: Spotlight on Qatar’s construction sector ahead of the World Cup in 2022 will hopefully not only shine on Qatar but also Kuwait, the Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia as well where an Asian workforce is exploited by nothing else than modern day slavery to make these, well, sick societies running. The report is based on numerous interviews with migrant workers, employers and government officials and “documents a range of abuses against migrant workers. These include non-payment of wages, harsh and dangerous working conditions, and shocking standards of accommodation. Researchers [at AI] also met dozens of construction workers who were prevented from leaving the country for many months by their employers – leaving them trapped in Qatar with no way out.”

“The world’s spotlight will continue to shine on Qatar in the run-up to the 2022 World Cup offering the government a unique chance to demonstrate on a global stage that they are serious about their commitment to human rights and can act as a role model to the rest of the region,” said Salil Shetty, Secretary General of AI. FIFA, the association which organized the World Cup, its fig leave ethical committee and in particular its highly corrupt completely discredited and disingenuous president Sepp Blatter all still do not see a possibility of revocation.

Already in 2011 AI had documented “abusive practices by Nepalese recruitment agencies in its report False Promises: Exploitation and forced labour of Nepalese migrant workers. The report found that agencies were using deceptive practices to traffic migrant workers for exploitation and forced labour in the Gulf States and Malaysia, and called on the Nepalese government to improve protection of its migrant workers.”

18 November 2013 @ 8:35 am.

Last modified November 18, 2013.

Posted in Middle East | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What it Means to Miss a Chance

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Muller

When IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano flew yesterday to Tehran to negotiate a deal with Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, he might have had the hope that his inspectors would get access to the military site at Parchin where clandestine experiments with high explosives might have been done a decade ago (indicating that Iran’s nuclear program once in fact had a “military dimension”) and which had been effectively sanitized in recent years. That turned out to be an illusion. A road map was agreed upon, according to which the IAEA might get access to the uranium mine Gchine near the southern city of Bandar Abbas and the Arak heavy-water reactor (which, after further negotiations with P5+1 next week in Geneva might never go online). Depending, of course, upon P5+1 and Iran talks. Salehi has cultivated a special enmity with Amano who had visited Tehran last year, also in vain as regards Parchin.

The Iranians are once again smart enough to snub Amano after the torpedoed, by French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, historic deal over its nuclear program, which can be sold at home as Ashura moment and clearly indicates once more that the West does not play fair with Iran. The deal with P5+1 will be done later. The presence of so many foreign ministers in Geneva including John Kerry, and Benjamin Netanhahu’s wrath must have been a great satisfaction for Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, one could see it in his face.

11 November 2013 @ 6:27 pm.

Last modified November 15, 2013.

Posted in IAEA, Iran, P5+1 | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Good At Killing Normal People

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Muller

It is said that WikiLeak’s (Chelsea Manning’s) leaked Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs and Diplomatic Cables have embarrassed President Obama who has the unpleasant task to end wars which he has not begun. But the Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 2009 has escalated another war in recent years which carries his signature now and forever, and which Noam Chomsky has named a global assassination campaign. It is nothing but terrorism, as Robert Greenwald in his movie “Unmanned – America’s Drone Wars” probably rightly suggests. President Obama’s kill list and his “next generation kill list”, the Disposition Matrix (an indeed Orwellian term) is just another embarrassment for the President of Words.

Voices calling for revoking the Peace Prize have been ignored in Oslo’s Nobel Prize Committee so far. “According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, § 10, it cannot be revoked.”

9 November 2013 @ 5:31 pm.

Last modified November 11, 2013.

Posted in Pakistan, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Good At Killing People

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Muller

The 2009 Peace Nobel Prize laureate, Barack Obama, is said to have told aides, after U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki had been killed in Yemen in an American drone attack, “Turns out I’m really good at killing people,” and “Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.” The quote can be read in a new book by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, Double Down: Game Change 2012. As the Huffington Post knows, the context of the quote is,

“Obama didn’t need to run through this preamble. Everyone knew the litany of his achievements. Foremost on that day, with the fresh news about al-Awlaki, it seemed the president was pondering the drone program that he had expanded so dramatically and with such lethal results, as well as the death of Bin Laden, which was still resonating worldwide months later. ‘Turns out I’m really good at killing people,’ Obama said quietly, ‘Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.'”

After Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud had been killed last Friday in an American drone strike in Waziristan, Pakistan, it is feared that proposed peace talks between the Pakistani government and Pakistan Taliban are getting more difficult. Since 2004, CIA had conducted 378 drone strikes in Pakistan (a strong ally of the U.S.), 326 of which were “Obama strikes”. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, between 2,528 and 3,648 people were killed in the strikes. Between 416 and 948 were civilians and among those 168-200 children. Another 1,125-1,1545 were injured.

5 November 2013 @ 7:40 am.

Last modified November 7, 2013.

Posted in Pakistan, USA | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Edward Snowden’s Enigmatic Letter “To Whom it May Concern”

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Muller

Germany’s Green Party member of parliament Hans-Christian-Ströbele returned from Moskow yesterday with a letter by Edward Snowden [pdf]. The purpose of his letter (co-signed by Ströbele as “witness”) is completely unclear. Ströbele allegedly visited Snowden to ask him whether he would testify in an parliamentary inquiry board on the circumstances under which German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone had been tapped for a decade by the NSA. Addressing it “to whom it may concern” is confusing since Ströbele had suggested that he would write to Angela Merkel. Bloomberg characterized the letter as combination of “naiveté, victimhood, and Assange-like narcissism.”

“I hope that when the difficulties of this humanitarian situation have been resolved, I will be able to cooperate in the responsible finding of fact regarding reports in the media, particularly in regard to the truth and authenticity of documents, as appropriate and in the accordance with the law.

I look forward to speaking with you in your country when the situation is resolved, and thank you for your efforts in upholding the international laws that protect us all.”

Well, the humanitarian situation won’t be resolved. The German government could possibly grant Snowden safe conduct to Germany where he could then testify. This would lead to a serious diplomatic crisis in the more and more tensed relationship between Germany and the U.S. One should also remember that his plea for political asylum had been turned down by Germany’s Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich right away in summer when it was more opportune of the German government to side with NSA.

2 November 2013 @ 4:21 pm.

Last modified November 2, 2013.

Posted in Germany, surveillance | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment