Daniel wrote recently about prima facie scandalous behaviours in academics, drawing a parallel with banking cultures pre-Crash. Pointing out that while activities like taking credit for grad students’ work or blatantly gaming independent review mechanisms may in some cases seem rational and even acceptable behaviour within certain academic circles, once these things are exposed to the light of day as, say LIBOR rate-fixing was, they appear rightly scandalous. Heads roll. It’s only a matter of time, therefore, before UK academics join the police, journalists and politicians and find the ‘but everybody does it’ excuse does not wash when you’re on the front page of a newspaper.
One commenter in that long, long thread asked how something can become a scandal when everyone already knows about it. Something everybody already knows about is the very definition of a scandal.
Let me draw your attention to some things that everybody knows or knew about.
Everybody who regularly gets past the front page of a broadsheet British newspaper has known that hundreds if not thousands of refugees have been drowning in the Mediterranean for at least a couple of years now. It became a scandal when one sunk boat pushed the one-off death toll one order of magnitude up and onto page one.
Everyone with even a passing acquaintance with the International Trade Union Congress or half a dozen other independent information sources has known for several years of the quasi-slave conditions and rising death tolls of migrant workers building Qatar’s World Cup arenas. It only became – all too briefly – a scandal when Sep Blatter’s FIFA officials were rounded up. Everybody knew about him, too.
Everyone in Northern Ireland in the 1980s knew about the shoot to kill policy of the RUC and parts of the security services and British Army in relation to known or suspected Republican terrorists – from ambulance crew to coroners to journalists to politicians, all the way to the Manchester policeman, John Stalker, whose report just managed to replace inference with evidence of what everyone knew but no one could prove or admit.
There is nothing new about the bad things that become scandals, just as there is nothing new about scandals.
Here are some iron laws of scandal for anyone thinking of perpetrating one:
A scandal is not new, or new to the public or new to people in power. A scandal is simply a set of well-embedded bad things that the right people have decided is no longer acceptable.
The scandal phase of these heretofore known, accepted and socially, politically and legally embedded bad things is triggered by its facts becoming salient enough to drive, even briefly, a part of the news cycle; enough people die anomalously – at sea, in a maternity unit, from eating something – to make real headlines; enough girls are kidnapped at once, there is a link to another front page story, the victim of the fit-up is unexpectedly white and middle class, a person or group painstakingly documents sufficient evidence despite institutional resistance, a documentary team airs a television programme, a court case is finally won.
Scandals aren’t driven by facts – everyone already has enough of those to surmise what’s really going on – but by triggers. But who is to know that THIS will be the first neglected child whose murder by her mother and step-father will make the social workers criminally culpable? Who could tell that THAT black mother has the strength and drive to not rest until her son’s murder is prosecuted? And who can predict that of all the thousands of brown paper bags passing between greasy hands in mid-afternoon north Dublin pubs, it is this one that will live on in infamy, effect and public tribunal?
Because bad things are everywhere, scandals are hard to predict, making avoidance of blame more worthwhile than prevention.
A scandal has always happened in the past. Managed properly, it’s over by the time we get to the public outpouring. Lessons have been learnt, procedures put in place. It is the institution, not the individuals, that is to blame. It was a different time. Justice is more important than revenge, and besides, she is dead, he has Alzheimers, they left the industry. Life goes on. Never again, at least never again exactly this way and in this place.
Nobody learns from scandals, except maybe which PR firm to hire for ‘crisis management’. Save yourself some money. The professionals will charge through the nose and just tell you to repeat this; no news, old news, lessons have been learnt. No news, old news, lessons have been learnt.
People in the past were crazy. They believed in crazy things, like murdering civil rights activists or sawing open labouring women’s pelvises. We no longer hold these ancient beliefs. Ours are rational, sensible, evidence-based, and necessary. Tough sometimes, sure, but necessary.
Embrace kludge. In place of reckoning, which would be unnecessarily personal and punitive, the fruitless vines of box-ticking, arse-covering and computer-says-no-will extend their paralysing caution across the land, putting it to sleep for a hundred years.
Pre-empt your own scandal by paying it forward. Give amnesty to the torturers, clemency to those who nodded it through. You may need them yourself, one day. Chase the whistle-blowers to the ends of the earth.
Relax. The news cycle moves so fast these days, something else will drive it soon. People spin so quickly through the cycle of ignoring, disbelieving, accepting, being outraged, saying they’re outraged, getting bored, becoming faintly resentful of attention paid to victims, saying they’re only after money, and then moving on, that you can pretty much cover it all in a single tweet.
Relax. Monstering only happens to child-murderers, and only if the child was a stranger to them. (Except, obviously, if that child is Palestinian and likes to play football on the beach during summer. Some bad things are sui generis and can never cause a scandal.)
Seriously, relax. This is real life. In real life there’s no Richard Curtis press conference finale when the brave act of saying the unsayable in public changes everyone and everything.
The sun will go on rising and it will go on setting. Its light disinfects nothing.
{ 93 comments }
David Blake 06.08.15 at 10:38 am
I worked in two industries which had notorious scandals, newspapers and finance. In both cases the scandalous behaviour was widespread, known and accepted. I suspect that there is a more general point here. Many perhaps most activities have conventions which would shock outsiders if they were known about. Few of the MPs caught up in the expenses scandal were doing anything wildly outside the norm. The public just did not know about the norm.
Other cases are obvious. In health care, whenever something goes wrong we learn of a pattern of inappriate behaviour. When a plan crashes a whole series of minor breaches of safety protocol are detected, none of which turns out to be the cause of the crash.
As Bismarck famously said, the less people know about how laws and sausages are made the happier they will be. He was right. But that does mean you get people dying from bad sausages.
The Raven 06.08.15 at 11:30 am
Over to Leonard Cohen. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Maria 06.08.15 at 11:35 am
I may just have been humming that one, Raven.
david 06.08.15 at 11:59 am
the scandal quickly becomes swamped by combatants who are not really invested in the details of the scandal, as Daniel observed. in LIBOR many commentators had trouble correctly describing the facts and responsibilities involved.
this is also vividly demonstrated in all three of the examples picked here – Mediterranean refugees, Qatar, and Northern Ireland, conveniently enough – the glib summary is also a wrong summary (quick! how many of the deaths are WC-related, versus Qatar-wide statistics generally? Is there perhaps a reason why Kerala is so lax about letting its people be enslaved – the scale of remittances in its idyllic domestic economy, perhaps?). Conversely the plausible solutions are not those which are appealing to scandalmongers. so public outrage goes nowhere
even in the case of accused child murderers, public outrage is blunted by due process and rights.
Change is not actualized by outrage, and that’s probably a good thing; we already had one satanic abuse panic and we don’t need another. Rather, change is actualized by a coalescing alternative policy that is brought to the forefront by scandal, election, or both.
Brett Dunbar 06.08.15 at 12:19 pm
The claim that there is an excessive death rate connected to building the stadiums for the world cup in Qatar is actually false.
The ITUC produced this claim in 2013 they got figures for total deaths of migrant workers in Qatar from the Indian and Nepali embassies (India and Nepal account for around 60% of migrant workers) and blamed all the deaths entirely on the world cup. A similar report compiled for the Qatari government added figures for Bangladeshis as well. Around a third of the migrant workers aren’t even working in construction at all and Qatar is undergoing a general building boom so much of the building is not dependent on the world cup.
There are about half a million migrant workers aged 25-30 in Qatar of whom about 250 die each year. In India the death rate for males in that age group is 1,000 per half million. In the UK it is about 300. Those figures are for the general population and migrant workers tend to be in somewhat better health so maybe the ITUC is correct to claim this is a little on the high side but it doesn’t seem to be a clear problem and the death rate for migrant workers in other middle eastern countries is higher.
The BBC world service edition of More or Less discussed this.
http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download/proto/http/vpid/p02t0m88.mp3
Chris Bertram 06.08.15 at 1:13 pm
“The claim that there is an excessive death rate connected to building the stadiums for the world cup in Qatar is actually false.”
That doesn’t seem to be a reasonable summary of what the BBC reported.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33019838
And the claim that the deaths in stadium construction are excessive compared to other comparable projects (the London Olympics) is not false, but true.
MPAVictoria 06.08.15 at 1:37 pm
“Because bad things are everywhere, scandals are hard to predict, making avoidance of blame more worthwhile than prevention.”
This is very good.
MPAVictoria 06.08.15 at 1:42 pm
Ah yes Brett nothing at all untoward is happening in Qatar. Which is why BBC reporters were not arrested when they reported on it…
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32775563
dr ngo 06.08.15 at 1:53 pm
Excellent essay – actually thought-provoking, which one seldom sees on blogs (even good ones like this). Qatar quibbles aside (and what do I know?), well done!
Marshall 06.08.15 at 2:56 pm
End stages of the news cycle, formerly “project management”:
– punishment of the innocent
– awards for non-participants
Nobody we know personally surely, but where do we go from here?
Belle Waring 06.08.15 at 3:04 pm
david: nations and areas that are poor and kept afloat by remittances have every reason to paper over the cracks. Who cares and makes a fuss when a Filipina maid gets raped in Saudi Arabia, or a Bangladeshi construction worker dies of heat stroke, or an Indonesian maid is beaten to death in Malaysia? Surprisingly, the answer is not, ‘the governments of the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Indonesia,’ but rather, ‘families at home and aid groups and such news organizations as can be persuaded to pay attention.’ The fact that Indian men have been convinced that working in Qatar is the best choice they can make, life-wise, doesn’t make that be true. It certainly doesn’t make things just. Employers confiscate passports, and pay you in scrip or not at all, charge you to be housed in a shipping container with holes cut out of it sloppily free-hand with an acetylane torch, beat you if you complain, make sure that the first thing you do is pay off the cost of your transport (since you pay to get the job) and a million other nasty things besides. It’s quite true than men are being shoved into a meat-grinder in Qatari construction in general, but it’s not therefore false that people have died and are dying and will continue to die specifically in the frenetic construction of stadiums and housing for athletes and new hotels, and thus directly as a result of the WC. If construction on all these projects stopped tomorrow because the WC was moved, lives would actually be saved. No amount of Kerala having a shitty economy is going to change that.
David 06.08.15 at 3:38 pm
“Scandal” has historically been an almost entirely subjective concept. Essentially there is something (or a lack of something) that you find “scandalous'”, and when it attracts enough media and political attention it qualifies as a “scandal”. The fact that most of us might agree that something is “scandalous” does not make it so, it merely means there’s a wide measure of agreement in this community on an ethical issue.
When alleged scandals related to individual criminal or unethical behavior (as the LIBOR case does, to some extent) then the term did have some validity (politician caught with hand in till, for example). But most “scandals” aren’t like that. Those who’ve worked for large organizations are wearily familiar with what is at bottom a structured journalistic process to get readers. Stage 1: identify a pattern of some kind which can be made to look suspicious. After a decent interval Stage 2: when “shocking new revelations” are made. And the best is Stage 3: when it’s alleged that “the government” or some other authority “was warned” or “knew all along” that X or Y was happening or not happening. The final stage, when it all turns out to be rubbish, or massively exaggerated, is often not covered, or, if there’s enough protest, a two-line apology will be offered somewhere. So far as I know, for example, none of the “scandals” over the years alleging that western governments were deliberately manipulating figures on immigration, so beloved of right-wing pundits, were ever generally accepted to be the rubbish they actually were.
And who exactly considers British policy in Northern Ireland to be a scandal? Certainly not “everybody in Northern Ireland “, not least since Protestants in general heartily approved of what the RUC and the Army were doing. For my parents’ generation in the 1970s, the”scandal” was that “known terrorists” were allowed to “walk the streets” even though the government “knew” that they were guilty of murders. Few British people today would describe that episode (based on a very small number of documented cases ) as a “scandal”, just as, unfortunately, most Americans seem to regard Snowden’s leaking of official secrets, not the contents, as the real scandal. As you say, scandals aren’t driven by facts. They are mostly driven by political and media imperatives.
parse 06.08.15 at 3:47 pm
One commenter in that long, long thread asked how something can become a scandal when everyone already knows about it. Something everybody already knows about is the very definition of a scandal.
I’m not sure how literal you mean this definition of a scandal to be, or perhaps how specific the knowledge needs. to be. Consider the cases of John Edwards, Larry Craig and Elliot Spitzer. I guess everyone has known for some time that politicians are often sexually unfaithful, that a number of conservative Republican critics of homosexuality are closeted, and that powerful men have sexual liaisons with prostitutes.
I don’t think, however, that before the scandals ensued particularly many people knew that Edwards, Craig and Spitzer were exemplars of them. And the number of people who thought that infidelity and homosexuality were bad things seemed to be decreasing around the time of these scandals, rather than these being previously tolerated behaviors suddenly decided to be beyond the pale.
Your model of scandal does seem useful in analyzing some instances, but there also seem to be scandals that are examples of individuals being revealed to have done things that people had long considered bad, but weren’t particularly aware that the particular individuals in question were practicing. (Jimmy Swaggart, the Keating 5). In this case, it seems like the definition of scandal was that people were identified as exemplars of stereotypical wrongdoing (the hypocritical preacher, the corrupt politician).
None 06.08.15 at 3:50 pm
david@4 – “Conversely the plausible solutions are not those which are appealing to scandalmongers. so public outrage goes nowhere”
So what according to you are the “plausible solutions” ? Let’s hear it.
Bloix 06.08.15 at 3:57 pm
Brett Dunbar’s criticism of the stats seems to me to be accurate.
The BBC report cited at #6 does not refute anything Brett Dunbar said. To the contrary, it sets out the debate and does not take a side. And the answer to the question posed in the headline – “Have 1,200 World Cup workers really died in Qatar?” – can’t fairly be answered “yes” because no ordinary meaning of “World Cup workers’ would include all 1200 deaths in the absence of detailed further explanation. This doesn’t mean the answer is no. It means that the data do not support the assertion.
The BBC reporters arrested, #8, were not reporting on deaths. They were reporting on slave labor working conditions. The two are related but different. The reporters did not claim to have any information on death statistics. (In falsely asserting that Brett Dunbar was arguing that there is “nothing at al untoward” going on in Qatar, MPAVictoria is adopting the style of argument summed up in Dilbert this weekend: http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-07
There are two different points being made here:
conditions for migrant workers in Qatar are scandalous and unacceptable.
– 1200 workers have died while working on World Cup projects.
It is simply bizarre to me that people cannot acknowledge that A does not imply B.
MPAVictoria 06.08.15 at 4:17 pm
Always amazes me how there are people online who are willing to defend anything.
Bloix do you really think that the main point here is whether EXACTLY 1200 people died working on preparing Qatar for the World Cup? And that if EXACTLY 1200 people didn’t die than any complaints about Qatar are without merit?
The scandal is that World Cup stadiums are being built in dangerous conditions by what is essentially slave labour. Whether 1200 people died or whether it was only 800 isn’t really the essential point. People with morals understand that. People without pose as contrarians in internet comment threads. I guess we know which one you are.
Adam Roberts 06.08.15 at 4:19 pm
In some cases that the details of the scandal are almost irrelevant if the focus enables society broadly speaking to Other and scapegoat an identifiable hateworthy group. For example: the UK MPs’ expenses scandal was trumpeted loudly and self-righteously by the UK press, a group well-known for fiddling their own expenses claims. This latter fact in no way intruded upon the way the public received the scandal as reported.
Chris Bertram 06.08.15 at 4:21 pm
Bloix: the claim that Dunbar denied was the claim that death in WC construction for Qatar are “excessive”. “Excessive compared to what?” we should ask. Similar construction projects for big sporting events such as the Olympics and the WC would seem to provide a reasonable comparison class. If the deaths in Qatar are only a tenth of 1200, they would still be excessive compared to deaths during those projects.
Marshall 06.08.15 at 4:38 pm
Quoth David, “the scandal quickly becomes swamped by combatants who are not really invested in the details [or the moral questions raised] of the scandal”
So where do we go from here?
MPAVictoria 06.08.15 at 4:40 pm
“So where do we go from here?”
Recognize that some people are tools/mindless contrarians/amoral assholes and move on without them as and when we can?
Brett Dunbar 06.08.15 at 4:47 pm
The BBC report was the main source I was using. It indicates that the fatality rate is actually only a quarter of that for the general male 25-30 population in India; it’s even a bit lower than the fatality rate for the comparable group in the UK.
There have been various serious allegations about working conditions although it’s hard to tell if this is widespread systematic abuse or limited to specific bad employers. We get problems with occasional bad employers in the UK as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Morecambe_Bay_cockling_disaster for example.
The fatality rate doesn’t seem to be exceptionally high. On More or Less it mentioned that comparable rates for migrant workers in other countries are a bit higher than in Qatar. A lot of migrant workers die in Qatar but that’s mainly because there are a lot of migrant workers in Qatar rather than to Qatar being an unusually dangerous place to work.
Bloix 06.08.15 at 5:07 pm
#18 – “If the deaths in Qatar are only a tenth of 1200, they would still be excessive compared to deaths during those projects.”
I’ll give you that, if you’ll give me good data that the deaths of “World Cup workers” reasonably defined is 120. The data I’ve seen and that is referred to in the links on this thread is not good data.
There’s a rule of statistics, which is that shitty data is not reliable for anything. You can’t use it as a cap, or a floor, or an anchor, or a guide. You can’t discount or augment it by some arbitrarily chosen factor (“even a tenth”) in order to get to a reliable number. It’s shitty data. You have to disregard it.
If you’re a politician or a lobbyist or an activist or a lawyer, using shitty data to move people is an unfortunate part of your stock in trade. But if you’re an academic or a journalist, you’re not supposed to do that.
The treatment and the fate of expat construction workers in Qatar is a matter of genuine concern. Citing shitty data is not a way to express that concern.
Bloix 06.08.15 at 5:08 pm
#16 – “do you really think that the main point here is whether EXACTLY 1200 people died”
Life imitates Art.
“I’m Dick from the Internet … I misinterpret every comment you make as an absurd absolute and then I attack it like you are a moron.”
http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-07
Brett Dunbar 06.08.15 at 5:14 pm
The 1200 mostly weren’t working on the world cup at all. The statistics aren’t comparable as they are about entirely different things. The deaths don’t seem to be excessive compared to what you might expect for 500,000 migrant workers. The number is large but so is the number of workers the rate isn’t especially high.
I’m amazed anyone is prepared to defend the ITUC on this point. They have taken figures for migrant workers in Qatar in any field of employment and then compared it to figures for workers directly involved in building facilities for other sporting events. A much smaller number so you would expect a far lower number of dead even if the conditions were much worse.
The figures simply aren’t comparable.
Brett Dunbar 06.08.15 at 5:40 pm
The ITUC figure aren’t actually bad. DLA Piper were able to add figures for Bangladeshis to the Nepali and Indian figures the ITUC had obtained from the embassies. They are however about different things than the fatality rates for the other sporting events with which the ITUC was comparing them. You can reasonably compare them the data for migrant workers in other countries, but that isn’t what the ITUC did.
DLA Piper’s report commissioned by the Qatari government is available at http://www.engineersagainstpoverty.org/documentdownload.axd?documentresourceid=58
It’s pretty critical, and makes a number of recommendations for significant legal changes. They obviously felt it was their job to tell the Qataris what they needed to know rather than what they wanted to hear.
From skimming it. There are 1.39 million migrant workers in Qatar, that amounts to 85% of the total population. So you would expect quite a lot of deaths from such a large number of people.
MPAVictoria 06.08.15 at 5:42 pm
I guess the difference we have here Bliox is I think YOU are the dick on the internet and you think I am. Well I guess we will just have to differ.
Bloix 06.08.15 at 6:10 pm
#26 – actually, the difference between us is that your mode of argumentation is the one described in the Dilbert cartoon and mine isn’t.
Omega Centauri 06.08.15 at 6:11 pm
I think Maria is only covering one type of csandal. The kind where the scandalous practice is wodespread and well known, but largely tolerated, and then somehow it is possible to make in unacceptable by outing a few poster-boys.
But there really are type-2 scandals, where the activity is not part of some larger groups working-norm, but well outside of it. In this case the perp isn’t just an unlucky guy who got made into an exemplar, but someone who was (he thought secretly) operating far outside of the working norm.
Bloix 06.08.15 at 6:18 pm
#28 – Not sure your type 2 qualifies as scandal. E.g., was Madoff a scandal because he was a crook? Or because the authorities had repeatedly been told he was a crook and were too dense/timid/lazy to do anything about it? I would say that what Madoff did was a crime but only the authorities’ failure to stop him was a scandal.
MPAVictoria 06.08.15 at 6:33 pm
” actually, the difference between us is that your mode of argumentation is the one described in the Dilbert cartoon and mine isn’t.”
Projection all the way down Bloix. We are all heroes in our own mind aren’t we?
And as long as we are sharing comics:
http://www.forlackofabettercomic.com/?id=173
Brett Dunbar 06.08.15 at 7:52 pm
The ITUC in order to make a political point compared the mortality rate for Indian and Nepali migrant workers in Qatar with the mortality rates for those actually working directly on the stadiums for several earlier sporting events. The base population size is so different that this is highly misleading at best. To compare you would have to know the sizes of the population. We know that there are about half a million Indian workers in Qatar so we would need to know how many worked on construction for the various sporting events in order to calculate the mortality rates.
What the ITUC have done is like saying that because more under ones die in China each year than die in Afghanistan that infant mortality in China is much worse. Which is why you compare rates rather than gross figures. Gross figures don’t allow for a comparison without additional data about the size of the base population.
I’m not being contrarian, I’m being pedantic. Bad statistics really annoy me.
emmryss 06.09.15 at 1:29 am
If someone could explain the “Richard Curtis press conference finale” reference, I, for one, would be very appreciative.
Belle Waring 06.09.15 at 3:26 am
Brett, Bloix: I am not committed to there having been 1,200 people die on World Cup projects. It seems that may be an estimate of how many people died in construction generally during the time Qatar’s been building such projects specifically. However, I think we all know that the numbers for “how many people died building for the World Cup” are going to be much higher for Qatar than they would have been were the
World Cup held elsewhere. Safety standards are low, conditions are horrible, and migrant workers have few rights. So when someone is sitting in the stadium eventually (poor bastard) she will have to think, “perhaps one worker might have died if they had built this is the UK; perhaps five if it were in Brazil; but holy fuck a bunch of actual humans perished in this idiotic endeavour.” You might ask, isn’t this true for gleaming condos in Qatar too? Yes, obviously. But that’s a bad thing about the gleaming condos, not a mitigating factor w.r.t. the stadium. Additionally, the World Cup projects are over-ambitious and need to be finished by a short deadline. It stands to reason more people will die building something in Qatar in a big hurry than just the ordinary hurry. Construction on The Ion (huge mall/condo tower here in Singapore with a front of undulating glass and video screens) went 24 hours a day; that’s just always going to be more dangerous.
“There’s a rule of statistics, which is that shitty data is not reliable for anything. You can’t use it as a cap, or a floor, or an anchor, or a guide. You can’t discount or augment it by some arbitrarily chosen factor (“even a tenthâ€) in order to get to a reliable number. It’s shitty data. You have to disregard it.”
This rule was coined by dsquared, as it happens. Also, even if you disagree, MPAV and Bloix, there’s not cause to get that mad at each other about it. I encourage people to be civil, while recognizing I am uncivil a lot of the time.
heckblazer 06.09.15 at 3:53 am
From looking at the DLA Piper and elsewhere (full disclosure: I once worked for DLA Piper US), my general take away is that Brett Dunbar is technically correct that the 1200 deaths figure is worthless, but that’s only because it looks like no one knows shit about what the numbers in Qatar really are. And that seems to be by design. When the Nepali embassy goes along with the claim that a majority of their citizens who die in Qatar do so due to sudden cardiac arrest, I’m not sure they’re terribly interested in finding answers.
I’d add that I find the argument “well, the death rate is the same as in the workers’ home country” to be as defensible here as it would be applied to the United States. Which is not very.
Bloix 06.09.15 at 4:17 am
#33 – “we all know.” That’s just it – we don’t know. We may suspect, but we don’t know. We – I, at least – have seen no data on construction worker deaths. Probably because the Qatari government doesn’t want us to see it. That’s suggestive that the rate is high but it’s not proof of anything.
There’s another saying, which I don’t remember exactly, but the point is that there is a big difference between what must be true and what is true. Your argument, Belle, is that it must be true. Lots of things that must be true turn out not to be true. The universe is filled with luminiferous ether. Unemployment under 5 percent causes inflation. No horse will ever win the Triple Crown again.
Brett Dunbar is arguing that the best statistics show that death rates among expat workers in Qatar are lower than death rates in the same age group in Britain. That doesn’t prove anything – expat construction workers are likely to start out much healthier than the average person – but it’s surprising, isn’t it? And it’s suggestive in the other direction – that what must be true might not be true.
I’m a big believer in ignorance. There’s a huge amount of stuff that I don’t know and I make an effort to admit that I don’t know it. It’s hard to do and often I fail but I try. I think that it’s a virtuous habit and I wish other people would adopt it.
js. 06.09.15 at 4:23 am
Here’s what Maria wrote:
I have yet to see a single comment that attempts to dispute this claim.
Bloix 06.09.15 at 6:36 am
js, I despair.
You quote two claims that Maria makes and call them one claim. They are related but not the same, so it is an error to call them “this claim.” I am not insulting you or being mad at you or evaluating the truth or taking a position on the goodness or badness of Qatar. I am making an a priori point that is not reliant on evidence.
So, now that we see that there are two claims, we can examine each one.
1) “quasi-slave conditions.” No one has attempted to dispute this claim. Brett Dunbar has expressed some skepticism but no more. I have repeatedly acknowledged it. You might do people the courtesy of accurately summarizing what they say instead of snarking at them as if they are morons and you are not.
2) “rising death tolls.” What can this mean? It might simply be rhetorical filler that is has no content and is meant only to engage the emotions. But the readers here, being sympathetic readers of the OP and not hostile readers (unlike some of the commenters) have been trying to give it some content and to evaluate it.
The literal meaning is that the number of deaths is rising. But unless the rate of death is zero this is a trivial assertion, and no one has contended that the rate is zero. It is to be expected that among hundreds of thousands of workers, some will die. So no, the literal claim has not been disputed. But it is trivial.
But perhaps Maria is attempting to make a non-trivial claim. Perhaps she means that the rate of death is has been rising over time? No one has evaluated this possibility but we have seen no time-sequence data.
Or perhaps she intends to make the claim that everyone has assumed she is making, and the only claim that could be supported by her reference to ITUC data: that death rates among World Cup workers in Qatar are many times greater than comparable workers on other big international sports competitions projects. We have been attempting to test this claim against the data that she cites. And the conclusion is that the ITUC data does not support the claim, or any other non-trivial claim.
This is not a condemnation of Maria. It is not advocacy for Qatar. It is a review of the data.
Now you come along and say that all the discussion in the entire up-thread doesn’t exist.
The zombies walk. They cannot be killed.
gianni 06.09.15 at 7:06 am
Speaking of facts/ignorance aside: How many deaths are we willing to accept in civilized society in order to get a shiny new stadium? Seriously – what number should we be aiming for & which nation leads the way?
If someone told me that the U.S. numbers and the Qatar numbers were about equal i would believe them . But I consume US news and hear gory detail of industrial accidents over here (Canada too ).
derrida derider 06.09.15 at 7:18 am
” Lessons have been learnt, procedures put in place. It is the institution, not the individuals, that is to blame. It was a different time. Justice is more important than revenge, and besides, she is dead, he has Alzheimers, they left the industry …”
Friar Barnardine: Thou hast committed …
Barabas: .. fornication. But that was in another country, and besides the wench is dead.
Yep, exculpation is always to hand.
gianni 06.09.15 at 7:30 am
Not for deaths mind you – I am thinking industrial accidents in general. As a better proxy for ‘workers safety’ or whatever you want to call it.
Belle Waring 06.09.15 at 7:54 am
I’m sorry to support off-topicness, but seriously–I’ve talked to many Filipina women who advise their friends and relations NEVER to accept a job in Saudi Arabia because they can be abused without recourse, and this abuse is ubiquitous. I also live in a country with a huge foreign worker component, and the protections workers get from Singapore law is dependent not on Singapore’s overtime or mandatory day off per week or month, but on the home nation’s rules. So, Indonesian maids have fewer rights in Singapore than Filipina maids. (There are basic laws all employers must follow, obviously, but they are a floor.) India and Bangladesh are at the bottom when it comes to enjoining Singapore’s government to mandate equitable treatmemt. This has an evident effect on how they are treated. Qatar and its neighbors are well known as terrible places to work. Given that we know for certain these World Cup-related sites are both ambitious and under serious time constraints, there’s just no way that a large number of people haven’t died and won’t in the future die when we look at these factors–where large is larger by several orders of magnitude as those who died building stadiums in the UK. And it’s by no means unfair to compare Qatar and a first-world-nation in this way, as a) Qatar is rich and b) the World Cup could have been held anywhere and is only going to be in Qatar because FIFA officials were bribed to make it happen. There are often facts that rebut widely held views, sure. But this isn’t one of those times–except that the number may be lower than what we’ve been told. The number isn’t 0 though, and not plausibly less than 100. I see first-hand what living conditions are like for foreign workers in Singapore. A condo went up right across my narrow lane in 2009, and I saw that place in and out. And it was a desireable location for the workers, and Singapore actually gives a shit about whether these dudes die! It still looked horrifying. A substantial number of people will die building these things in Qatar that wouldn’t have if the World Cup were not being held in Qatar. This is obvious.
magistra 06.09.15 at 8:42 am
Bloix@37: It is to be expected that among hundreds of thousands of workers, some will die.
Work-related deaths during the construction of London Olympics venues: zero (http://www.hse.gov.uk/press/2012/hse-olympics-research.htm). It’s possible to cut death rates in large-scale construction considerably if you are careful.
Maria 06.09.15 at 12:27 pm
Bloix, ‘Rising death toll’ = simply that more people are dying. A toll is a number, and it is being added to, hence ‘rising’.
Re. the ITUC numbers, I first came across them while working with their head and comms person – Sharan Burrows and Tim Noonan – on a project on human rights and the Internet about three years ago. The ITUC was and is keen to promote freedom of expression and association – obv – and to join the dots between bad labour conditions around the world. I haven’t seen much reason to doubt the truth of their claim; that migrant workers are dying while living and working in awful conditions in Qatar, and that people should be disturbed by this. Also that it is in plain sight, hence the post.
Maybe the Iron Laws of Scandal should also include that there will always be quibblers and fellow travelers who exert great energies to dispute the facts on the ground, displaying fine sensibilities when it comes to that data’s pedigree (though not the impediments to data gathering and transparency put in place by vested interests, including in this case the migrants’ home countries, to facilitate just this type of obfuscation), yet whose sensibilities and refinements disappear when it comes to the meaning or implications of the information and what if anything can be done about the conditions that give rise to it.
Kind of like how pro-lifers are heroically precise about and protective of embryos and foetuses and have zero interest in actual babies. It’s all just a moral and intellectual exercise and actually has little to do with life as real people are living it. You’re not doing that, exactly, but it is reminiscent. Huge energy and intellectual discernment for the debate, none for the problem itself.
I recognise that you’re not getting at me, per se, but I have a low tolerance of this kind of quibbling because while intellectually it is most likely in good faith, it serves no purpose to help the situation and fundamentally is not intended to do so. You could argue that if only people would be more precise in their data, Something could be done about the problem. But part of how the problem is constructed and maintained is a clear effort to obfuscate the data at source. So quibbling exists in this context, AFAI am concerned.
Tell me this, is your pedantry (and I get and agree with you that pedantry can have its place) the one thing stopping you from taking any action in real life about this issue? Are you chomping at the bit to improve labour conditions in Qatar or maybe closer to home but just cannot force yourself to go against the principle of data purity and condone imperfect comparisons of data-sets or the drawing of what you believe are wrong conclusions from them? Otherwise, all this is is mental masturbation on a blog. (hmm. note to self…)
BTW I don’t concede your contentions about the data, but I am trying to interrogate what purpose they might serve in a world that exists outside of an Internet comment box.
Belle has given some real-life examples of horrible migrant labour working conditions and underlying them all – especially Singapore’s rather horrifying ‘bring your own labour law’ policy – is the assumption that different humans merit better or worse treatment because of where they were born. And that if you are foolish enough to be born somewhere poor, then even going to another country to work isn’t going to improve your life all that much. That is the basis of migration policy and it’s the basis of labour conditions in most of the countries the poorest people migrate to. It’s real life, in plain sight and it’s a scandal.
heckblazer 06.09.15 at 1:01 pm
From the DLA Piper report, the Nepali embassy reported approximately 400,000 Nepali migrant workers in Qatar in 2012 . Counting only deaths from falls, falling objects and sudden deaths of unknown cause (which is most of them) there were 142 Nepali deaths according to Qatar’s Supreme Council of Health , or 29.5 per 100,000 (interestingly, they reported 24 more deaths than the Nepali embassy!). From the same source, the Indian embassy reported 500,000 workers in Qatar, and the Supreme Council of Health reported 119 deaths from falls, falling objects and other sudden deaths or 23.8 deaths per 100,000 workers (this time the embassy reported a mere 15 fewer deaths than the Qatar government).
For comparison, in the US the rate of fatal occupational injuries for construction workers is 12.2 per 100,000. That also happens to be one of the most dangerous industries, with the general workforce rate being 3.3 per 100,000.
MPAVictoria 06.09.15 at 1:26 pm
“Tell me this, is your pedantry”
Not just pedantry but an aggressive assault on those who say there is a problem.
MPAVictoria 06.09.15 at 1:26 pm
Thank you heckblazer. I was trying to find those figures and not getting very far.
Bloix 06.09.15 at 2:45 pm
#43 – , ‘Rising death toll’ = simply that more people are dying. A toll is a number, and it is being added to, hence ‘rising’.”
So you are making the trivial claim: n + 1 > n. It is a true statement. But everyone has assumed that you meant to be saying something about the world, not merely about arithmetic. You are doing what Holbo calls the two-step of terrific triviality.
“I haven’t seen much reason to doubt the truth of their claim.”
It has been explained that the claim is based on a comparison of apples and oranges. You don’t care. This is derp.
“Kind of like how pro-lifers”
WTF? I mean seriously, what the fucking fuck?
“there will always be quibblers and fellow travelers”
This is a personal attack and I really don’t appreciate it. The data is bad. You can’t make it good by name calling.
“the one thing stopping you from taking any action in real life”
This blog’s name is from Kant, not Marx. I would think that there would be respect for reasoned argument regardless of its implications for action.
“it serves no purpose to help the situation”
Its purpose is to sift truth from error. That is an honorable purpose.
“BTW I don’t concede your contentions about the data”
THEN FUCKING REFUTE THE ARGUMENT!! Engage, for Christ’s sake.
heckblazer 06.09.15 at 3:06 pm
Bloix @ 47:
“So you are making the trivial claim: n + 1 > n. It is a true statement. But everyone has assumed that you meant to be saying something about the world, not merely about arithmetic. You are doing what Holbo calls the two-step of terrific triviality.”
If there are a certain number of deaths in year x, and then a larger number of deaths in year x+1, and larger number yet again in year x+2 I would draw the conclusion that there is a trend of increasing deaths. And since those deaths would be the end of human lives that there’s an increasing trend would be pretty damn significant.
MPAVictoria 06.09.15 at 3:14 pm
“And since those deaths would be the end of human lives that there’s an increasing trend would be pretty damn significant.”
Yes but isn’t what is really important here the fact that some of the stats MAY be questionable? I mean if we don’t have exact data of how many people died (data which Qatar is working to hide) how can it be a scandal?
QED
Bloix 06.09.15 at 3:40 pm
#48 – you are describing the second-order claim that I described in #37 (“Perhaps she means that the rate of death is has been rising over time?”) If it were true, it would indeed be something “pretty damned significant.”
There are two issues:
1) Maria has said that this is not her claim. We can call it heckblazer’s claim.
2) There is no evidence for heckblazer’s claim. At least, I have seen none and no one has pointed to any.
So yes, if it were true it would be damned significant!!! And it might even be true!!!!!!
Many things would be significant if they were true. And vice versa. I freely acknowledge the vice part. It would be nice if people would acknowledge the versa part.
#42 – “Work-related deaths during the construction of London Olympics: zero”
But the ITUC data is not about deaths related to construction of the World Cup! You cannot fairly compare data about construction of the London Olympics with all construction in Qatar. Are you claiming that there were no construction-related deaths in all of England during the run-up to the Olympics? Because that claim would be the relevant claim, and it would be inaccurate.
You know, I really don’t want to be viewed as the defender of Qatar here. I think Qatar is a medieval dictatorship. I think it’s a scandal – to use Maria’s word – that the World Cup is being held there and I think it’s been more than sufficiently demonstrated that expat workers are treated like slaves. But I’m trying to make a point about data and I just can’t do it. Not even on a blog that is run by academics. The emotional tug of the underlying facts is just too strong to allow people to reason about the data.
Ronan(rf) 06.09.15 at 3:43 pm
“the protections workers get from Singapore law is dependent not on Singapore’s overtime or mandatory day off per week or month, but on the home nation’s rules”
That’s interesting. How does this work in practice, do you know? I can see how it might work with domestic workers (ie if it’s only a couple of people working in a house etc) but how does it work on large projects such as building sites ? Do they segregate labourers by country of origin (it’d seem a cause of strife in workplaces if you had two large groups of people at the same level doing the same job but under significantly different conditions. Also difficult to enforce I’d imagine ?)
Does it also mean that employers favour (for example) Indonesian workers over those from the Philippines , because the later have greater protections?
Something else I’ve wondered about Singapore , but perhaps drifting a little off topic so sorry if it is; what does the class system look like in Singapore (nit just among the locals, but including everyone) I assume at the top and middle you might have expats from the west , China etc, and locals. Then you have a large working/ underclass made up off immigrant labourers (and locals?), but are any factions from those immigrant groups developing into a lower middle class, or moving up into the middle classes ? I guess this gets quite complicated and I’ve probably muddied the waters a bit (I also realise I’ve asked a lot of questions here , so dont feel obliged to answer it all)
Ronan(rf) 06.09.15 at 3:55 pm
David @12- ‘re British policy in the north, my understanding is there were certainly moments of scandal in the south (although it was a bit before my time) . Certainly in the media, and certainly from people with republican sympathies, but even from the general population who while not sympathetic to the paramilitaries, weren’t exactly sympathetic towards the security forces either (perhaps hypocritically , as British policy had implicit support in a lot of ways from parts of the south’s political class, and irish governments have historically been just as willing (more so really) to use force to counter republican threats to the state)
que_es 06.09.15 at 3:55 pm
This was one of the best blog posts I’ve seen anywhere in a long time. More please.
magistra 06.09.15 at 4:23 pm
In 2013/14, there were 42 fatalities in the construction industry in the UK (http://www.hse.gov.uk/Statistics/industry/construction/index.htm). In 2012 (when the Olympics were held) it was also below 50. The IUTC are estimating rates of 600/year for the whole of the construction industry in Qatar in the last 3 years. If you’re going to say that the death rate specifically for the World Cup are comparable to elsewhere, you’re arguing that the death rate for this specific construction work is somehow 10 times or more safer than normal construction in Qatar. And it seems to me that’s implausible unless you can provide some specific evidence for workers on the stadiums being treated with much more care than other workers.
Maria 06.09.15 at 4:51 pm
” THEN FUCKING REFUTE THE ARGUMENT!! Engage, for Christ’s sake.”
No.
You can cherry-pick one issue in a post that mentions scores of them. You can basically have an entire thread devoted to that one issue, and even try and insist that other people argue with you on your terms about the precise slant on that topic you wish to take, and in the precise mode of reasoning you prefer.
But this argument that you think you are entitled to have? You are not entitled to it. So please stop shouting.
F. Foundling 06.09.15 at 5:20 pm
Should we introduce a new rule that stipulates that international sports events henceforth can only be held in countries which have been proved to meet certain standards of labour safety and which agree to allow the detailed monitoring of construction work to ensure that safety? Yes, that would be great!
Should it be considered acceptable or just a minor blunder when someone, deliberately or due to sloppiness, uses blatantly incorrect data (treating X+Y+Z in a comparison as if it were X only) to support a (broadly) correct message? No. In fact, if the message really is correct, then it ends up being hurt. And it raises suspicions that the real objectives of the statement might not be so noble.
Saying things that aren’t true is bad. (By the way, the same applies to dropping atomic bombs on cities to wipe out their civilian populations.) And tribalism and groupthink make many people “forget” this principle (and most other principles). I do realise that this is a “contrarian” position, though.
Ronan(rf) 06.09.15 at 5:31 pm
” No. In fact, if the message really is correct, then it ends up being hurt. And it raises suspicions that the real objectives of the statement might not be so noble”
Whatever about the rights or wrongs of the data , and whatever about misrepresenting data for political purposes (I’m not saying this is what was done, but assuming the worst), your argument here is quite clearly not the case. The figure has been hugely successful in getting attention to the problem, which, i’d assume, was the primary aim of the ituc. Whatever about the morality of it, it hasn’t undermined the cause, and politics isn’t (at the end of the day) a post grad seminar at Harvard where all ts have to be crossed and I’s dotted.
Z 06.09.15 at 6:06 pm
This was one of the best blog posts I’ve seen anywhere in a long time. More please.
I regularly find it very hard to comment on Maria’s posts. Too many good ideas.
David 06.09.15 at 6:29 pm
“The figure has been hugely successful in getting attention to the problem.”
No, because the problem itself only exists if the figures are correct, or at least respectable. The argument is therefore effectively a circular one.
The BBC report is clear that the deaths reported include many from natural causes, including heart attacks. As any epidemiologist will tell you, a reasonably constant number of people in any cohort will die in any year, often in statistically predictable ways. Do we know that foreign workers in Qatar have a significantly higher death rate, adjusted for age distribution, than those workers would have in their own countries? No, we don’t. Do we know that there has been a “rising death toll” among immigrant workers doing World-Cup related work, as the OP suggested? No we don’t, so any conclusions drawn from that are unsupported by evidence.
For heaven’s sake, there are enough decent sticks to beat Qatar with, without making stuff up, as the ITUC seem to have been doing. I’m fed up with the idea that as long as my heart is in the right place, I’m somehow excused from telling the truth.
heckblazer 06.09.15 at 6:50 pm
David @ 59:
According to the DLA Piper report the Nepali embassy reported 162 deaths in 2012. Of those 107 were reported as due to “cardiac arrest”. Nepalis working in Qatar are primarily in their lower twenties. While we have no direct evidence, I would submit the reports of death by natural causes may not be entirely accurate.
Bloix 06.09.15 at 6:55 pm
#55 – I didn’t cherry pick an argument. You argued with me (#43) in a long screed of derp and insult.
The history here is that a commenter named Brett Dunbar mildly observed that the ITUC data was not reliable (#5) and he was hit with a barrage of ack-ack fire. So I mildly said, you know, Dunbar is right (#15). And then the fucking roof fell in.
The best summary of the comments is Ronan(rf) at 57, who says frankly that what matters is the propaganda and fuck the facts. The activists are on the side of God and the truth can go to hell. Which activists? Well, that’s a matter of identity politics, isn’t it? (I really did know what “pro-life” had to do with it, Maria, I was only joshing when I said I didn’t.)
Which is quite a long way from your original point, Maria, which was about how people are able to ignore truths that are staring them in the face. It appears, in Ronan(rf)’s words, that only truths that serve “political purposes” qualify as truths – as indeed, do falsehoods that serve those purposes.
Not one person advanced the argument until magistra (#54) piped up with a new data point! A fact from outside someone’s head! Christ in His Glory, we move slowly, slowly toward the heavenly reward, but we move.
Ronan(rf) 06.09.15 at 8:37 pm
David – I didn’t mean to imply that because ‘my heart is in the right place’ my arguments shouldn’t be subjected to disagreement. I’m saying F Foundling’s specific argument is wrong, but also I find Bloix and Brett’s claims mostly convincing.
I’ve lived in the region, and known enough people who work in construction in the Gulf (not at labourer level)and have read enough to know that the claim is basically true. I also have no problem with LOBBIES, who push my political preferences (and YES, F Foundling, politics IS tribal), highlighting the problem, even through slightly dodgy statistics. If I bought a book claiming to be the definitive and accurate take on Gulf labour laws that skewed its stats and made up facts, then obviously I’d be more upset. But I’m sorry,expecting a union engaged in raising awareness and lobbying for change to be whiter than white is completly unreasonable.
I’m also aware of the huge and sophisticated Qatari propaganda machine that has sucked in the western left for a decade by selling Qatari benevolence and (accurate, though politically useful ) anti Americanism to hide the blatant self interest behind Qatar’s policy in the region. I’ve as little interest in engaging in this debate over how many people died on WC building sites as I do with arguing on Fox News over how many died in the Iraq war. I’m not saying it’s not useful intellectually (I havent engaged in that side of the debate) I’m saying that the public side of the debate is a different creature than the intellectual one, and riven with propaganda. Why should ‘my side’ be subject to greater expectations of intellectual honesty than the opposition ?
Ive also said nothing about Bloix’s arguments here. Whether it’s on topic or not is between him and others.
Ronan(rf) 06.09.15 at 8:44 pm
Bloix – you’re replying to Maria, or you’re replying to me. Maria speaks for Maria, I speak for I. I dont know if Maria holds my position, it is my own. Nothing more.
This
†No. In fact, if the message really is correct, then it ends up being hurt. And it raises suspicions that the real objectives of the statement might not be so nobleâ€
is what I was replying to. Nothing about the more general argument. You can all debate whether Qatar is an immigrant labourers paradise to your hearts content, for all I care
; )
Ronan(rf) 06.09.15 at 8:51 pm
Just to add, if the OP had been solely about how many were killed on WC related building sites in Qatar, then the pedantry would make more sense (But it wasnt. It was a small part of it. The fact that it has become the main issue of contention says a lot about the aforementioned Qatari propaganda machine)
Matt 06.09.15 at 8:56 pm
I’m also aware of the huge and sophisticated Qatari propaganda machine that has sucked in the western left for a decade by selling Qatari benevolence and (accurate, though politically useful ) anti Americanism to hide the blatant self interest behind Qatar’s policy in the region.
Mother Jones, Amnesty International, The Nation, The Guardian, In These Times: none seem to be very flattering to Qatar. Who are these bedazzled leftists who love Qatar?
Ronan(rf) 06.09.15 at 9:06 pm
Okay Matt, that’s fair enough. I became polemical and overstated my case. Certainly Al Jazeera has pushed the Qatari position for the past decade (but 4 years primarily) , and the Al Thani’s are continually engaged in an extensive campaign of public diplomacy, but claiming a massive pro Qatari lobby among western leftist is wrong, bordering on idiotic.
Brett Dunbar 06.09.15 at 10:10 pm
It might say more about the size of the Anti-Qatari lobby. It appears to be unacceptable to suggest that actually conditions for migrant workers in Qatar aren’t all that dangerous. The lethality of working conditions in Qatar has become something everyone knows. It maybe that it’s one of those things that everyone knows that isn’t so. There are a lot of political arguments that are based on assuming the truth of a proposition that is almost universally believed to be obviously true. It may take a long time before the actual truth of the proposition is tested.
Some examples:
Everyone knows GM crops are risky, therefore ban GM crops.
Everyone knows that homosexuals tend to be paedophiles therefore ban homosexuality.
Everyone knows Monsanto often sues farmers for accidental presences of GMOs therefore get an injunction to stop them.
Basing a political campaign on a false or dubious claim can damage your cause in the longer term as the claim can be attacked leaving you looking dishonest. It might damage your reputation in the future faced by a real problem (boy who cried wolf effect). It might mislead you into focussing your campaign on the wrong thing. e.g. in this case if the safety standards are fairly good but employment standards are poor you might end up focussing your efforts on improving safety standards rather than on making it easier for workers to change employer if they get a better offer. Worker rights are seriously weakened by the lack of a properly functioning market in Qatar as for example they need the permission of their employer to change to a different employer. So employees who find that the working conditions are worse than they expected or their employer is late paying them cannot look for a better offer locally. Employers with a good reputation cannot actively recruit migrant workers already in Qatar, saving themselves the cost of transport.
One might expect fatality rates for builders in Qatar to be higher than that for builders in the first world. They are worse housed for example. British builders tend to be living in their own homes while migrant workers are often living in temporary accommodation.
Ronan(rf) 06.09.15 at 10:23 pm
There’s a good bit of (primarily enthnographic) evidence of what life is like for a low level immigrant in the Gulf. There’s equally a good bit of evidence that says Qatar does value how it is perceived internationally (hence it wanting to host the WC, for example) And there is evidence that international pressure does work (to some degree) in helping change Qatari labour practices for the better. This is basically how transnational political pressure works.
You claim people should focus on liberalising labour markets rather than improving general safety standards ? Perhaps, or perhaps not. But why not start on what this is about, ie having certain standards written in to all WC bids ?
The Temporary Name 06.09.15 at 10:34 pm
A world cup should be in a place where unmarried couples can kiss without being arrested.
js. 06.09.15 at 10:58 pm
Of all the dumb things that have been said on this thread, this one is really spectacular. ‘A and B’ can perfectly well be called a claim. It’s a compound claim made up of constituent claims (‘A’ and ‘B’)—doesn’t mean it’s not well described as a claim. (What next? ‘A or B’ can’t be a statement because it’s got a logical connective? Here’s this thing you might want to read up on.)
Maria’s dealt with your “substantive” objections quite well enough, so luckily I don’t have to.
js. 06.09.15 at 11:03 pm
And I’d like to second que_es @53: this is a wonderful post.
Bloix 06.09.15 at 11:22 pm
js, #70 – suppose someone were to say, “js is an idiot, and besides, s/he’s a jerk.” Just as an example. Whether this is one claim or two, the truth of each part may be related (not independent) but also not determined. Because js could be an idiot without being a jerk, right? Or vice versa. Or neither. Or both. If the evidence shows that js is an idiot, that might increase the likelihood that js is a jerk, but it does not make js’s jerkhood a certainty. We would need more evidence for that.
This is not hard to understand and I believe you do understand it. I believe you are intentionally pretending not to understand it in order to be offensive. I don’t know why you think it is clever to pretend to be stupid, but there it is.
Ronan(rf) 06.09.15 at 11:38 pm
Just to add, to Brett
“Qatar must change. FIFA can make a difference by abolishing the kafala system and respecting international rights as a condition of Qatar hosting the World Cup in 2022.â€
Okay. They’re asking exactly what you wanted them to ask.
Ronan(rf) 06.09.15 at 11:43 pm
sorry, from the link
https://www.tuc.org.uk/international-issues/countries/qatar/labour-standards/ituc-report-exposes-squalid-conditions-qatar%E2%80%99s
(anyway, Im off. Goodluck)
js. 06.10.15 at 12:15 am
Bloix @37:
Bloix @72:
Good to see you concede the point.
(Wait, do you not understand how one can dispute a claim of the form ‘A and B’? Is this the problem you’re having? If so, let me know; I can show you how.)
MPAVictoria 06.10.15 at 1:05 am
Just going to chime in and agree with js and que, this is an excellent post on the nature of scandals and how exactly something becomes one.
/I feel bad for my part in taking this thread off topic. My apologies Maria.
Belle Waring 06.10.15 at 3:05 am
Maria: sorry that your post got dragged off in this direction; it’s really excellent and as someone said above, the kind of thing you read and enjoy digesting rather than a thing you have a snappy response to, leading maybe to fewer comments than reflect the interest of readers.
Ronan(rf): the domestic workers are paid differently and therefore varyingly preferred based on home country. Indonesians are cheaper to employ than Filipinas, and only get one day off a month (which is a change from the previous “no days off a month” policy) while you are expected to give Filipina helpers one day off a week. Muslim employers of any social class prefer Indonesians because they are fellow Muslims and will be preparing food and praying in the house (they would be praying as Christians were they so, which some people don’t like). There are fewer (waaay) Indians and Bangladeshi women who are employed IME by people who speak the same language at home. And if you’re an Indian vegetarian then they know how to cook for you (probably, sort of). So the stereotype is than money-conscious Chinese Singaporeans will go for Indonesian maids to save $$$ but then struggle with them not speaking English well, whereas expats and many other Chinese Singaporeans who are not…um…so
legendarily cheapsavings conscious will hire Filipinas. You would think there would be a ton of mainland Chinese people who speak Teochew or something, but there are not that many.There aren’t actually different safety policies for construction workers based on national origin (this lift can bear the weight of 10 Chinese people, or 14 Nepalis!). The pay is different and the days off are different. These workers either live on-site at the construction (way better as they can go out at night, though they can hardly sleep in the day if they are sick) or in huge…I want to call them ‘barracoons’ but am concerned this word (meaning slave quarters) is just a contraction of ‘barracks’ and ‘coons,’ in which case it loses its sheen word-wise. Whatever. No one sees these, but one sees the buses carrying the workers to the sites, or the small pick-up trucks transporting workers in the back without seating or safety belts.
The universal HEPA filter of the Singaporean worker is a T-shirt, so arranged as to let the upper part of the face show through the neck-hole while the rest of the fabric swathes the man’s head. I see more dodgy, ‘that poor fucker is poisoning himself’ situations than I see obvious other safety violations (barring lack of gear like goggles or masks, which I see all the time.) The construction company will be penalized by Singapore for killing workers, so they have an interest in not doing so. Singapore prints the safety rules up huge, in all the languages, at the front of the site, and gives them “X days without an accident” signs.
For men who work as labourers the difference is less pronounced, and there is not intentional segregation, but I think that at the big sites where a lot of men are housed in barracks in the middle of nowhere there must be some self-selection to congregate with other Chinese speakers or Urdu speakers. Filipino men are hired almost only for managerial jobs; I used to know someone who was an oil rig manager.
The conditions on the Arabian Peninsula are just legendarily bad. If a family in the Philippines can live either on the returning wages of their daughter as a maid in Singapore or their son as a construction worker in Dubai, they will choose the former.
F. Foundling 06.10.15 at 12:16 pm
@Ronan(rf) 06.09.15 at 5:31 pm and Ronan(rf) 06.09.15 at 8:37 pm
>Whatever about the morality of it, it hasn’t undermined the cause
Not in this case perhaps, but it certainly has risked undermining it. If by “cause” you mean pushing for labour reform in Qatar, then I’d argue that whatever success is achieved (and I’m happy to read that they’ve promised *some* sort of reform) is due to the other, accurate accusations (the slavery-like situation of the kafala system etc.) and not to the false “1200 victims” figure. Had there been more such inaccuracies (and no, that wasn’t not just “slightly” dodgy), it would have been easy for Qatar’s PR people to laugh the whole thing off. And for some time, any data from the ITUC cited in public debates as an authoritative witness for the left-wing side can be easily dismissed by right-wing side if it has done its homework. In general, humanist and progressive objectives are achieved by making people informed and enlightened, not by relying on and hoping for their not being so; if they aren’t, you will lose anyway. Deviltry is best left to the Devil – he’s much better at it than you.
As for attitudes towards the Qatar regime – why, I’m so far from supporting it that I’m even opposed to its waging a Sunni jihad in Syria on behalf of the United States, which any good liberal either supports or just stays silent about.
F. Foundling 06.10.15 at 12:18 pm
@Ronan(rf) 06.09.15 at 8:37 pm
> and YES, F Foundling, politics IS tribal
Stupid and harmful politics is. Harmful to humanity, that is, as opposed to individual primates trying to manoeuvre themselves to a higher position in their social group. In several threads already, I witness conversations going essentially like this:
A: 2+2=4
B: I’m a more loyal liberal than you are! I’m such a loyal liberal that I will say that 2+2=5, provided that it somehow looks like a stupid person’s idea of a more typically liberal thing to say!
A: But we should be better than this!
B: I’m a more loyal liberal than you are! I’m such a loyal liberal that to me, we are always good enough!
A: But that discredits us and hurts the cause!
B: I’m a more loyal liberal than you are! I’m such a loyal liberal that I can’t even see how that, or anything else, could discredit us or hurt the cause!
A: But liberal principles are all about (–insert liberal principle–)!
B: I’m a more loyal liberal than you are! I’m such a loyal liberal that I don’t give a damn about what liberal principles are, I’m just always on *our* side! I’m not some unreliable smartass who follows liberal *principles*, I just do anything that people in my *crowd* commonly referred to as “liberals” are doing at any given movement! Except I do even more of it! Oh I’m such a typical member of my crowd! I’m so typical it’s even untypical! I’m the most liberal-y, liberalitious liberal that was ever born! Love me!
When the Bs win, liberalism (and socialism, and any other idea and cause worth taking about) goes down the drain. Except for reactionary conservatism, which wins, I dare say. All the way back to Australopithecus, as it were.
Ronan(rf) 06.10.15 at 12:49 pm
F Foundling – Who said anything about the ’cause’ being liberalism ? The cause is specifically labour rights in Qatar. When utilising my analytical skills, Im certainly not a liberal. Liberalism explains less than 10% of political phenomena. My belief system is enlightened tribalism,(moderate republican nationalism+ anarchism), the slow expansion of your in group towards Utopia. Certainly, when Im not in a reactionary rage, I favour a live and let live attitude towards life, but that’s more an inheritance from my parents and a before the fact excuse for my own bad behaviour than a coherent political philosophy.
I’ve been around the block enough times, F Foundling, to know that even the most sophisticated humanist is just regurgitating the norms of their in group, it just happens their in group is above average in the enlightened stakes. Let us not imagine there is some non tribal politics out there where data munching cyborgs doubling as humans resolve every issue through logic, reasoning and the most sophisticated of data analytical techniques.
Give me a break. What world are you from ; )
I’ll leave it there on this topic, and apologise for my part in this situation.
Belle – thanks for the response, very interesting.
F. Foundling 06.10.15 at 9:29 pm
@Ronan(rf) 06.10.15 at 12:49 pm
>Who said anything about the ’cause’ being liberalism
I was using “liberal” in the somewhat idiosyncratic US sense, because I get the impression that even most of the non-Americans here are essentially US-style “libs” (in their attitudes towards and relative degree of interest in subjects such as the welfare state, the labour movement, identity politics and Western foreign policy). (Centre-)left, progressive, whatever you want to call it.
>Let us not imagine there is some non tribal politics out there
>even the most sophisticated humanist is just regurgitating the norms of their in group
OK, I’ve already learnt that telling untruths is fine, and now I learn that being a mindless conformist is also fine… I wonder if you really want all of your posts to be interpreted in light of these solemn declarations of faith. More seriously, groups are composed of individuals. Individuals who are capable of thinking and of choosing what to adopt from their surroundings and what to reject, which groups to join and to what extent to join them (since one can be a member of more than one group), and how to shape and influence the groups they are members of. Whoever refuses to use these abilities and “just regurgitates”, as you put it, betrays his humanity.
>”Enlightened tribalism”
OK, at this point I should probably ask you what you mean by “tribalism” and then try to establish to what extent it coincides with what I have been referring to as “tribalism” above. However, I don’t feel like having such a prolonged discussion right now, and it’s hardly on-topic in any case. If I try to summarise what I have been trying to say, it’s that conformism, collective narcissism and collective egoism are harmful, whether it’s in the ethnic, religious, political, or social spheres, and, alas, there’s plenty in each of them.
Ronan(rf) 06.11.15 at 4:09 pm
F Foundling – I was being a little facetious, in the spirit of lightening the mood, but since the thread is all but dead I’ll be more serious.
I agree in principle, with you that
“groups are composed of individuals. Individuals who are capable of thinking and of choosing what to adopt from their surroundings and what to reject, which groups to join and to what extent to join them (since one can be a member of more than one group), and how to shape and influence the groups they are members of. Whoever refuses to use these abilities and “just regurgitatesâ€, as you put it, betrays his humanity.”
But I dont think, descriptively, that what has made us human historically (or now) or what we value, or how we form opinions and allegiances, is based on our propensity to reason and argue logically, but instead on how we build, maintain and imagine relationships. The basic purpose of our humanity comes from our relationship building functions, which are driven more by emotion and path dependance and honour than logic and reasoning. As such, ‘thinking and ….choosing what to adopt from their surroundings and what to reject, which groups to join and to what extent to join them’, is more a consequence of ideological and tribal preferences (built in early) than an example of our ability to think and argue non ideologically. Our arguments are constructed around the value system we inherit in our youth, and used to support our normative priors, rather than discover the truth.
So, I can imagine that in grad school people engage in some shadow of the argumentative ideal, where a hypothesis is developed and tested and a person conducts the most careful and close scrutiny of their ideas. But this is a purposely unnatural and controlled setting, and really doesnt describe how conversation or argument takes place in any other setting, even by those learned fellows and gals of the academy when they enter the public sphere.
They almost always argue primarily for their normative preferences, normally baked in at an early point in their life, and generally not subject to the scrutiny that the argumentative ideal would claim. I really don’t see any evidence, anywhere, ever for the idea that people argue from a neutral and evidence based, non idelogical position. People may ask, demand, data and empirical evidence for a claim, but it’s usually only when they find one that disputes their priors.
So those on the thread bemoaning ideology and tribalism are missing the point, we are all subject to both and the vast majority of our time is just spent arguing forcefully to convince others of our normative priors.
Put it this way. The OP was a collection of thoughts and speculations, it was more a conversation starter than a hypothesis that needed testing. Out of all the thoughts and ideas in the OP, the one that developed into the most contentious was the relatively (to the OP as a whole) unimportant matter of how many have died on Qatar WC building sites.
I’ll come back to the question of the data and the ITUC later, but at this stage it’s sufficient to say that the issues over the reliability of the data was hardly a revelation Why then did the conversation become centred around this relatively (in the context of the OP) minor point ? Could it not be suggested that to select this one issue amongst the many in the OP implies as much about the individuals ideological and tribal preferences, as it does their commitment to ideals of data driven empirical argument ?
So my initial response was mainly to the rhetoric of exasperation with ‘identity politics and ideology’, as if these are factors that dont drive the perspective of the person expressing such exasperation.
On terminology:
I use tribal meaning alliegance to an in-group; it can be identity based (class, gender, race, nationality etc), politics based (Republican, Democrat etc); profession based; blood kin based; social network based (village, book club, specific alliances in a particualar context)
I use ideology as the ideas and modes of agument utilised to win an argument. These are generally incoherent and fuzzy as a whole, and primarily express the values that you have developed at point X in your life. This can vary depending on person, but generally only around the edges.
Your ideo-tribal belief system is dynamic, but restricted. Your value system will do most of the work in deciding what ideas and groups you identify with at the macro level, at the micro level your ideas and argumentative strategies will be contingent mainly on mood, gut feeling and whatever alliances you have formed in that specific context.
NB: In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll admit that this is a pretty minimally thought out theory that might make little sense or be supportable in any meaningful way, so as always feel free to disagree (if you please)
(To be continued)
Ronan(rf) 06.11.15 at 6:23 pm
F foundling – or for a more coherent view from an argument I butchered
http://aotcpress.com/articles/reasons-reason/
run_wabbit_run 06.11.15 at 10:29 pm
Guys, I don’t comment very much, but can I just point out that Bloix has been checkmated by magistra@42, and can we all agree to ignore Bloix for the rest of this thread and let him live out his “I am the only man smart enough to understand stats” STEMlord fantasy in peace?
Thanks.
Brett Dunbar 06.12.15 at 1:49 am
@ 84
Umm, no. That wasn’t a checkmate. It doesn’t prove anything much, beyond you not understanding statistics.
If you have a sufficiently small workforce then you might manage to have no deaths simply by chance. As is there weren’t any death amongst the fairly small number actually working directly on Olympic projects often for fairly short periods (46,000 worked on the games at some point, the peak workforce was 14,500). They worked a total of 77 million man-hours between them.
http://enr.construction.com/business_management/safety_health/2012/0730-london-olympics-construction-is-safest-in-recent-times.asp
The ITUC figures for Qatar refer to a vastly larger population. All migrant workers from India and Nepal. DLA Piper added all the workers from Bangladesh to that. It wasn’t limited to those actually working on the World Cup.
MPAVictoria 06.12.15 at 3:02 am
“NB: In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll admit that this is a pretty minimally thought out theory that might make little sense or be supportable in any meaningful way, so as always feel free to disagree (if you please)”
I thought it was interesting. I have long suspected that these differences all come down to what Jeeves call the “psychology of the individual”. Either you think it is wrong for workers to be mistreated or you don’t. You either believe all citizens have a right to health care or you don’t. The actual facts and figures don’t really matter. You will naturally tend to believe the ones that support your viewpoint and discount the ones that don’t.
This is why social conservatives continue to support abstinence only education and why people who are right wing economically continue to doubt climate change. Facts don’t matter, psychology matters. People who claim to care about the data are almost always just posturing. Their psychology demands that they play the contrarian “last sane man”.
The Raven 06.12.15 at 11:33 am
Maria@3 :-)
I think the nature of scandal has changed. The scandals that brought us food and banking regulation were responses to genuine public shock. Modern scandals are more like market panics, where everyone knows but doubts creep in, and belief becomes insupportable, and prices collapse. But the machine keeps running and the bubble soon inflates again.
Thinking it over, I would point to three reasons. (1) The “Ooh, shiny” factor: we are so glutted with information, that there is always the next distraction. (2) The failure of democracy: public outrage very seldom translates into legislation any more. (3) (here I start sounding like a conservative) A failure of values: time was American elites, at least, could be shamed with cruelty and wastefulness. Not everyone, no, and some of the reactions went off in odd directions. But we’ve had a fall from, for instance, the time when the big accounting firms were rigorously honest, to the present, when the remaining firms provide cover for dishonest practices as a paid-for service.
Personally, I am more interested in figuring out how to restore or establish law (and, no, most conservative solutions don’t work) than arguing over the fine points of the failure.
Brett Dunbar 06.13.15 at 11:50 pm
@ 86
It can also be that you either believe it’s wrong to lie or you don’t. I don’t think that making an argument with dodgy stats is helpful.
Due to this site’s left wing bias bad stats that support a left wing argument are a lot more likely to go unchallenged while bad right wing arguments are far less likely to be made and a lot more likely to be challenged.
MPAVictoria 06.14.15 at 1:24 am
Frankly Brett my position on the issue doesn’t rest on whether exactly 1200 workers died. If any died unnecessarily that is enough for me to be in the right. Are you going to claim that not a single worker in Qatar died due to unsafe conditions?
Either way none of this is key to the point of the post.
Tom Slee 06.14.15 at 12:03 pm
The practice of “Carding” (police stopping people-who-happen-to-be-black and demanding ID) is a Toronto scandal hiding in plain site, and the way change happened is chronicled in the Globe and Mail here.
The short version is that the practice was well-known, widely understood, and had been raised very publicly when the new police chief (who is black) took office. But an article in upscale magazine Toronto Life (this one), more usually concerned with interior decorating (not that there’s anything wrong with that) changed the discussion, and the mayor has now called for the practice to cease. The Globe and Mail article describing how change happened makes fascinating reading: the information was not new, but the positioning of it made the difference.
Tom Slee 06.14.15 at 12:04 pm
Globe and Mail story, second attempt.
Brett Dunbar 06.14.15 at 7:37 pm
Building work isn’t the safest occupation anyway and a certain number of fatalities are expected, along with the background rate of fatalities for unrelated causes in any large population. The death rate in Indian migrant workers in Qatar is roughly a quarter that of 25-30 year old men in India, it’s even slightly lower than the mortality rate in that group in the UK. So it isn’t clear that working in Qatar is dangerous, it’s just that there are a lot of migrant workers there. Around 85% of Qatar residents are migrant workers. While some deaths probably are from unsafe working practices you get occasional examples of that anywhere.
For Qatar we don’t have good statistics for the actual cause of death and whether it was work related (the stats have huge reporting biases and are wholly unreliable). We don’t have good statistics about what field of employment they were engaged in or who they were working for. Survey evidence indicates about two thirds work in construction.
MPAVictoria 06.15.15 at 12:01 pm
Brett you are dodging my questions and being obtuse. But since this isn’t the prime thrust of the blog post I am going to drop it.
Cheers.
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