Google tells me that the population of Qatar is 2.881 million. If 90% of that is foreign workers, that's 2.593 million foreign workers.
The timespan for those 4000 deaths in your link is not given. I'd guess it is over several years since the construction projects for the World Cup are taking place over several years, but let's put them all in one year just to make sure we aren't giving Qatar the benefit of the doubt. I'm also going to assume that most of the workers are young but not children.
4000 deaths among 2.593 million people in a year is a death rate of 154 per 100k per year.
For comparison, the death rates in the US [1] for males ages 15-24 is 100 per 100k per year, and for ages 25-34 it is 177 per 100k per year.
Without more to go on, it looks like the 4000 deaths might just be about the normal number of deaths one would expect in a group that large.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/241572/death-rate-by-age...
tl;dr: It could be that the fatality estimates aren't well made; supporting the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, however, supports well-documented abusive work conditions of foreign workers.
I've tried to dig up some sources on the numbers.
The 4000 deaths estimate was originally made in the ITUC Special Report [1] from 2013-2014, based on how many foreign workers from certain countries where numbers were available. This report mentions "These cases documented by our legal team, show the serious abuses of 1.4 million migrant workers in Qatar."
I don't know if they mean that only 1.4 million of 2.6 million migrant workers are abused, or if they assume different base numbers. I also don't know how they reach the number 4000, but on page 15 of the report you can see that they claim that this number is connected to the construction of the one dozen stadiums for the world cup, since they compare the number 4000 to numbers for similar sporting events in the past where fatalities range 0-40. (0 is London in 2012, 40 is Athens in 2004.)
The report does not spend a lot of time justifying the 4000 deaths estimate, but a Washington Post article from 2015 [3] mentions another report from 2015 by Engineers Against Poverty [2] (404s, fetched from archive.org) that reads:
> Overall, a report commissioned by the Qatari government shows 964 deaths of migrants from India, Nepal and Bangladesh in 2012 and 2013.
Subsequently, the number 4000 was controversial and was estimated both as high as 6500 in 2021 [4] (still only for certain countries where numbers were available), and as low as 3 if you ask FIFA.
Interestingly, BBC was thrown in jail for reporting on this. [5] Can't have all those fake news.
Maybe you're right and there isn't an unusual amount of deaths in Qatar. Maybe there is, and the numbers don't add up. Maybe they don't add up because they're super imprecise, and maybe they don't because they didn't account for statistical factors such as average deaths in construction work world-wide.
[1]: https://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/the_case_against_qatar_en_w... [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20151024015052/http://www.engine... [3]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/27/a-bod... [4]: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/23/r... [5]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32775563
'checks notes'
Oh, right, oil.
I wish we would. Possibly the one good thing coming out of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a realization that depending on oil and gas leaves you very vulnerable and that alternative sources of energy must become more common.
There will also always be disagreements on fundamental ethical issues between countries. Even between the states in the US you can see such disagreements.
What we seem to lack is a principle for dealing with such situations. Instead, ad-hoc, inconsistent measures tend to be taken. It seems like if the true principle guiding such decisions were publicly announced, the general public would find it unpalatable. Are we living in willful denial?
Can such a principle then exist, that would both be consistent with our declared values, without compromising our ability to survive and defend ourselves and act according to it?
Applying alternative energy sources where it doesn't make sense to do so ends up throwing billions of dollars on having solar panels where they can never generate the energy they theoretically could (Germany, I'm looking at you)
This will involve a mix of wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and nuclear on grids that span continents with massive battery stores to balance supply with demand. Between climate change and petroleum-fuelled kleptocrats, ditching fossil fuels is a necessity, not a choice. And the long term here is on the order of decades, not centuries, so within most of our our lifetimes.
I guess humanity is still not ready for such projects of enormous cooperation between countries, or, that there are too many things in the way, like said temperature rise at day and fall at night, the vast distance the energy would need to be transported (is that a problem?) and maintenance work somewhere in the desert. One can still hope, that some day we will be able to think globally and solve problems that way.
I sometimes hear that too. The YouTube channel "Real Engineering" did a video about the idea: [1] The TLDR is: the Sahara definitely gets enough sun, but transmitting the power into Europe would be hard.
The sense of entitlement...
North America produces enough petroleum today to meet its own needs[1]. But the rest of the world doesn't, middle east oil is cheap relative to offshore or (especially) fracked petroleum, and at the end of the day fuels are a fungible commodity and our local prices reflect demand in the rest of the world.
The bit about "dependence on foreign oil" you're hearing is largely spin. Supply is not the problem. Pump more and we'll just use more.
[1] Which is not to say we don't import or export any. Markets are markets.
Everything is about cost. Back in the 90's, we couldn't get to our fracked oil because our existing equipment wasn't able to extract it. Then prices spiked and it made sense to build/invent new equipment. Refineries are changing too, to accommodate the state of the market they serve.
The bottom line is that "we" (in the sense the upthread poster meant) have plenty of oil. We pump plenty of oil. People saying we need to pump more oil are ultimately just reflecting the desires of companies who want to pump (and sell!) more oil and not the putative nativist needs of "our" oil consumers.
The bottom line is that no matter what the US does, oil prices are on a steady, inexorable rise[1] as the world exhausts its cheap supplies and needs to transition to difficult sources (again, fracking is the poster child here). Everything else is just crony politics.
[1] Though at this very moment they're experiencing an external shock due mostly to the war in Ukraine.
One thing is that shale oil is expensive to extract and refine. It wasn’t until recently when prices rose again that it became profitable.
Everything the media writes about Quatar I know is going on right here. The outrage is minimal. As long as desperation for money exists someone will exploit it.
I was selected for a project in a Gulf country and we had a preliminary session where I got an eye opener. Basically, no women or gays, no non Islam religious paraphernalia, no atheists, no Jews and if you have Israeli stamp the company would help you get a new passport, no drinking, cover up tattoos. Never noped the fuck outta something as fast as declining that project. No money is worth working for these savage nations.
It’s gross how much these corporations act woke in the west and then basically bend to these kinds of countries. Disgusting, and yet everyone in the west eats up the marketing propaganda.
Men were sent to the country in their stead, and had to pretend they were the ones responsible for building the thing.
The women were told it was for their safety, but the rumor was that a week before we were set to travel, the customer had apparently said, "by the way, we don't do business with women."
As it should be. Corporations should not have many opinions and should operate within the law. If corporate leaders or employees don’t like it then they can spend their free time lobbying or campaigning for politicians that want to change things. Only after the law is changed should the company make a change. Until then, business as usual.
That would almost be ok if corporations weren't allowed to lobby the government, have their employees, owners or board members go work in politics or have other types of influence on politicians.
But they have tremendous influence on the laws that they themselves ostensibly have to follow.
Not to mention that:
- even when they break laws they tend to get just a slap on the wrist
- the corporate execs responsible for the lawbreaking rarely go to jail
- even if they're unlucky enough to go to jail the jails tend to be cushy country clubs
- execs have golden parachutes that let them cash out even if they screw the company, and can easily get jobs elsewhere (not that the people at the top who bear ultimate responsibility for the company even have to work another day in their life)
- corporations manipulate voters' opinions through (perfectly legal) advertising, PR, media ownership/influence, sponsorship, greenwashing, astroturfing, etc
I'm curious where this view comes from. The last time I checked, corporations are composed of people, and people are fraught with opinion.
Corporations should operate within the confines of non-discrimination law. If these business opportunities aren’t open to their Jewish or female employees, they are partaking in discrimination.
Until we start crucifying corporate lobbyists in the public square, mass criticism is the only weapon we have.
Just because one university is very “woke”, and another university forms a partnership with Qatar does not mean that universities in general are hypocritical, or even that any specific university is hypocritical.
If you are going to make such a broad argument as “American universities are hypocritically supporting the Qarar government” as you seem to be, you need to give more examples than just one university forming a partnership with Qatar.
- Northwestern University
- Cornell University
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Georgetown University
- Texas A&M University
- Virginia Commonwealth University
That’s just the ones I know of in Qatar, there’s also a bunch more in other gulf region countries (like the UAE).
> Kipnis was the subject of yet another Northwestern Title IX investigation earlier this year — this time for writing “Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus,” a book about being investigated for saying there are too many Title IX investigations.
https://www.thefire.org/breaking-laura-kipnis-second-title-i...
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/laura-kipniss-endle...
For many institutions, the idea of being green is to dump their crap in other countries. So much that in many cases, it is better for the environment to put plastics in the regular trash to end up in a proper landfill rather than in the oceans by unscrupulous "recyclers" in countries where regulations are conveniently not enforced.
China used to be one of these dumpster countries, but now, they start caring a bit about the environment, which is a good thing, but there are still plenty of poor countries accepting our trash only to dump it in the oceans or in nature.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/23/r...
In fact, if we take them at a face value, they suggest incredibly low death rates among immigrant workers in Qatar.
I don't think it's disputed though that migrant workers are treated inhumanely there. Not that Qatar would be the only community to treat migrant workers as second class people. It seems to be a case of a newspaper resorting to touting some numbers to make a point instead of reporting good information, which is sad.
Talking about companies eschewing ethics to get at the money: newspapers are companies.
The US state department is happy to let governments know that US passports are property of the US government and may only be held under very limited circumstances. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/22/51.7#:~:text=CFR-,%C....
The real issue in gulf is not paying livable wages mainly. Anything else is comparable to farm workers in Europe.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2012/09/30/bahrain-abuse-migrant-wo...
Unfortunately it's not well policed, many hotels and office receptions try to do so when they issue you a badge but I always refuse.
"An emergency travelling document" will allow you to go from anywhere in the world to ONLY your home country and its usually easier to get.
Your home country can't refuse you entry, regardless of identification. Deportees don't get to stay in the US just because they lost their passport.
So, like an H1B?
It’s possible that if they try to obtain a new password from their embassy or consul that they’re told they should retrieve their original one from their “employer”. They may have to prove it was lost or stolen by filling out an official police form – which would likely be a criminal offence if done so knowing that the passport was not lost. This is all conjecture: I’m imagining how there could be rules that appear to be fair on the surface but are actually enforced in such a way as to unfairly restrict the human rights/freedom of the worker.
Isn’t that exactly like how the L1/H1B system in US work? Employer sponsoring and being tied to the employer till the lottery?
Every games for fairly obvious reasons has been shagtastic.
We shouldn't go.
Edit"countless" because you might not need to count just assume everyone single will be arrested. I don't dare look up their laws pertaining to LGBTQ+ folks.
Edit2: add in installed NSO and other deep inspection wares plus terrorist motivations internally against their state (for much the same objections natch) and we're going through'72 again.
This is a silly fabrication, as discussed before in another thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30930117
Not sure why this circlejerk is so popular on HN, the facts do not support it in the slightest.
All of these numbers are supposed to reflect overall mortality among immigrant workers, but they’re actually far too low to be accurate.
Some sources say 400,000 gladiators died in the arenas in ancient Rome. It was during multiple events of course, but that number does not include deaths of constructions workers.
Not trying to make any excuses for Qatar, but "deadlies" seems to be exaggerated.
Qatar has over 2m migrant workers.
In 12 years, 6500 have died. 550/2m/yr .27/1000/yr
In USA the rate for age 20-30 is about 1/1000/yr.
b) 2 things can be objectively bad at the same time. It should be ok to criticize Qatar from within the US without needing to preface your nationality.
The OP submission has nothing to do with slavery in the first place. If your gonna bring up irrelevant moral issues, they should at least be ones that are unique.
"The name of the current [migrant worker employment] system is kafala, a system forcing all migrants to be sponsored and subsequently tied to an employer. The kafala system has been frequently described as modern day slavery due to its exploitative nature. This employer controls housing, wages, travel, and the well being of each employee."
"[...] an estimated 4,000 migrant workers will die, making this event the deadliest in sporting history."
90% of Qatar's population and 94% of its workforce are foreign workers.