Scandal du jour

Earlier this month, a Dubai-based magazine confusingly called Al Jazeera reported that Prince Tameem, the Crown Prince (i.e. heir apparent) of Qatar, had been kicked out of a gay bar in London for drunk and disorderly conduct.

The article is no longer on their website (here is where it was), but a cached version is still available through Google: Qatari Crown Prince banned from G.A.Y nightclub. It claims to have gotten the info from islamonline.net (Qaradawi's website), but I can no longer find the story there.

I don't particularly care if Prince Tamim is gay, but I'm intrigued by the fact that the story is no longer on aljazeera.com. I'm guessing they were *ahem* asked to remove it, since they clearly do normally keep old stories online -- I know this because I finally resorted to searching their archives for "gay" and found this truly hilarious story from January about the U.S. building a gay bomb. That, of course, convinced me that the site was not a reputable source for news, but then I realized that the gay bomb story was carried by the BBC and other mainstream media outlets. So who knows?

All in all, that was one of my more entertaining web surfing adventures. It sure took my mind off this *$#^ presentation I have to give in 45 minutes.

w00tness!

The orientation presentations are over. Phew! Everyone always tells me I do well, but I always feel like I'm rushing and stumbling over my words. Anyway, I made the students laugh a few times, and I hope that when they see me in the hallways they'll remember I'm the communication lady. Their brains are so fried from orientation, that's really all I was hoping for.

The real scandal

Earlier today I posted an amusing story about the Crown Prince of Qatar supposedly frequenting a gay bar in London, but here's the truly scandalous story of the day.

Sixty-three Indian construction workers recently went to the Indian embassy to complain that they weren't getting paid. They arrived in Qatar in February, after paying 45,000 rupees to a manpower agency in Mumbai for the privilege. (That's $1000 by a regular conversion rate, but in Orissa -- the state these guys are from -- that's four times the annual per capita GDP.) They've been working in construction here ever since, and they've never been paid.

So these 63 guys went to the Indian embassy to complain, because that seems to be workers' only real recourse when these things happen in Qatar. And here's the kicker: when the construction company found out they went to the embassy, it evicted them from their work camp. And then it offered the men QR1000 ($275) to sign a piece of paper saying that their salary arrears had been paid in full. I think it's a sign of their desperation that almost all of the men signed the paper.

The embassy has blacklisted the construction companies in question and made a complaint to the Human Rights Commission, and is "contemplating moving the labour tribunal against their employers." But, my God! These men paid all the money their entire families could scrape together to come work for a salary I consider a pittance, but which is perhaps five times more than they could earn in Orissa. And now theyr'e both penniless and homeless, waiting for the embassy to find a way to send them back home.

The sad thing is that, as horrific as this story is, it isn't at all unique. The details change, but every few weeks the Peninsula carries a similar story.