Markets Are the Problem (Not the Solution)
Wednesday, 16 April 2014 10:01
By Michael D. Yates, Truthout | Op-Ed
A recent op-ed in The New York Times described the construction of "the
mother of all luxury property developments" on Saadiyat Island in Abu
Dhabi, complete with branches of famous museums and a university. We
learn that:
Saadiyat's extraordinary offer to the buyers of its opulent villas
is that they will be able to stroll to the Guggenheim Museum, the Louvre
and a new national museum partnered with the British Museum. A clutch of
lustrous architects - Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid, Rafael
Viñoly and Norman Foster - have been lured with princely sums to design
these buildings. New York University ... will join the museums when its
satellite campus opens later this year.(1)
As might be expected, underlying this monument to excess is an army of
laborers from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. These
desperate souls arrive heavily indebted to recruiters and those who pay
their passage, only to be brutally exploited by sponsoring employers,
who confiscate their passports. It is a system of semi-slave labor;
workers are not free to leave, even if they have not been paid.
full:
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/23118-markets-are-the-problem-not-the-solution
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