Qatar: Bad Time For Evil Babylon

ILO finds Qatar guilty

Geneva-based United Nations agency the ILO (International Labor Organization) today found Qatar guilty of allowing its state-owned airline, Qatar Airways, to violate international and national agreements and institutionalize discrimination. The case was successfully brought against Qatar by the ITF (International Transport Workers’ Federation) and the ITUC (International Trade Union Confederation) (see http://goo.gl/Ka5inH.)

Qatar Airways (QR) is guilty of systemic workplace sex discrimination, including in its past and current work contracts, which allow it to automatically terminate the employment of women cabin crew who become pregnant, as well as in its prohibition on women being dropped off/picked up at/from company premises by a man other than their father, brother or husband.

The Qatari government has breached its international obligations by turning a blind eye to these offences. By allowing QR to behave in this way Qatar has violated ILO Convention 111 on Discrimination (Employment and Occupation), which Qatar signed in 1976.

The ILO Tripartite Committee also noted that the contractual bar on employees marrying in the first five years of service – after which they could only marry with company permission – has now been removed from the airline’s contracts, and ‘expresses the firm hope that the Government takes the necessary measures without delay to ensure that all cabin crew members are transferred under the new employment contract so as to be able to get married and change their marital status without the company’s permission’.

It also goes on to state that: ‘the Committee considers that particular attention should be given by the Government so as to encourage the company to provide its employees, including foreign employees, with appropriate complaint mechanisms to ensure that they can obtain redress without being exposed to stigmatisation or reprisals, and without the fear of being deported from the country, in cases of harassment or any other discriminatory behaviours based on the grounds set out in the Convention.’

It also noted, ‘the Government’s reply that various dispute settlement mechanisms are in place to handle complaints of migrant workers … the Government did not provide information on how these procedures can be or have been used by cabin crew, in particular women. The Committee observes that access to such procedures and remedies by cabin crew members, who are migrant workers, may be difficult because of the fear of victimization or reprisals, including dismissal and deportation from the country … given the large number of women in cabin crew staff, the appointment of trained women labour inspectors may be a positive measure’.

For two years the ITF has exposed discrimination and repressive practices at QR, including arbitrary dismissal, surveillance and curfews (see http://goo.gl/MzKq0Y) . Meanwhile the ITUC has challenged Qatar over the appalling treatment of migrant workers there.

ITF president Paddy Crumlin commented: “This decision is a game changer. A year ago we put Qatar and Qatar Airways in the dock and today it has been proved that we were right to do so. Everything has to change now. QR can no longer deny and evade. The changes made to the rules for staff failed to fool the ILO. Now the airline must make them for real. It’s time to make QR free from fear.

“Ever since we made those rules public we’ve made clear that they had to go. By revealing them we unleashed a torrent of stories of what it is like to work there. We congratulate all those, including those who bravely and secretly spoke to us from inside the airline, those in trade unions, in the wider aviation industry and in the media, who helped us decry these abuses.”

Sharan Burrow, ITUC general secretary, commented: “The attempts to tinker with the rules on pregnancy and marriage made once we brought this case show that Qatar Airways has been shamed into action – and more must come. We, along with everyone who works for the airline, will not rest until it addresses what many of those workers call the ‘climate of fear’ at QR.”

She continued: “The gaze of world opinion is locked on the behaviour of the Qatari government – over Qatar Airways, over its abhorrent treatment of migrant workers, and over the World Cup. In Geneva today Qatar has been proved wanting. We have shown that money doesn’t buy silence. The nation is on trial. It cannot evade its responsibilities. It has to begin to do the right thing.”

Source

How Qatar Used and Abused Its Al Jazeera Journalists

“Al Jazeera’s managers crossed an ethical red line. By attempting to manipulate Egypt’s domestic politics, they were endangering their employees.”

This week, I am back in court in an effort to prove my innocence at a retrial on charges that I was a member of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, designated a terrorist organization in Egypt since December 2013, and that I sought to harm the country’s reputation and security. I already spent 412 days in detention before my conviction in the first trial was overturned on appeal earlier this year.

The terrorism charges against me and my colleague Baher Mohamed are unfounded and have been widely discredited. The other charges relate to our employment by the Al Jazeera media network, which is owned by the state of Qatar.

Following the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed president, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013, Egypt moved to ban Al Jazeera’s Arabic service in the country, known as Mubasher Misr, because it was perceived as a Qatari-sponsored propaganda mouthpiece for the Brotherhood. I was the bureau chief of the Al Jazeera English service, a separate operation that adhered to higher journalistic standards, which, we assumed, would inoculate us against accusations of bias. We were mistaken.

Now, Baher and I find ourselves once again in the soundproof defendants’ cage, fighting to avoid long prison terms. Our friend and fellow Jazeera journalist, Peter Greste, will not be with us. Thanks to his government’s work to win his release, Peter is home in Australia.

At the retrial, we will argue that we continued to work despite the broadcast ban because we believed the English service was exempt and Al Jazeera failed to obtain legal clarification from the Egyptian authorities. If, as a result, there were violations of licensing laws, which in any case would be merely misdemeanors, it is the network’s executives from Qatar who should pay, not us. A final ruling from the Egyptian court could come later this month.

My 18-month ordeal may be close to an end, yet I find myself increasingly angry at how my life and the lives of my family and loved ones have been turned upside down. My anger, however, is not directed primarily at the prosecutor, the judiciary or the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. It is aimed at my employer, Al Jazeera.

The network knowingly antagonized the Egyptian authorities by defying a court-ordered ban on its Arabic-language service. Behind that, I believe, was the desire of the Qatari royal family to meddle in Egypt’s internal affairs. While Al Jazeera’s Doha executives used the Cairo bureau of Al Jazeera English to give their scheme a veneer of international respectability, they made us unwitting pawns in Qatar’s geopolitical game.

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Al Jazeera America accused of bias against non-Arabs and women

The former head of Al Jazeera America’s documentary unit has sued the news network, claiming it is biased against non-Arabs and women in stories that it produces and in how it treats employees.

Shannon High-Bassalik, fired in February after working through half of a three-year contract, said the network’s recently ousted chief executive, Ehab Al Shihabi, left meetings when women were speaking and admitted that he tried to favor an Arab point of view on the air to please Ajam’s Qatar-based ownership.

The troubled news network, an offshoot of the international Al Jazeera network, has reached few viewers in the United States. Through lawsuits and resignations over the past two months, a picture has emerged of a place that has consistently fallen short in its efforts to give Americans a hard-news, unbiased alternative to CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC.

“As ratings failed to live up to the expectations of management, Al Jazeera openly decided to abandon all pretense of neutrality in favor of putting the Arabic viewpoint front and center, openly demanding that programs be aired that criticized countries such as America, Israel and Egypt,” High-Bassalik’s lawsuit stated.

She said she was told that if abandonment of journalistic integrity led people to regard them as terrorists, “that was an acceptable risk for the company to take”.

High-Bassalik said that Al Shihabi told her that the company should be regarded as Al Jazeera in America, rather than Al Jazeera America.

Al Shihabi was ousted in early May, shortly after another employee sued, alleging he was fired when he complained about a colleague’s antisemitic and sexist behavior. The company’s senior vice-president of newsgathering, head of human resources and communications chief – all non-Arab women – each resigned over a two-week period.

The former documentary chief, who has also worked for CNN, NBC and MSNBC, said she was told that many Arabs believe the September 11 terrorist attacks were staged by the CIA to wage war on Arabs, and that this was a point of view the company should be guided by.

High-Bassalik said that she was told to hire an Arabic woman as a producer even though the person was unqualified and there were several non-Arabs ready for promotion. She claimed that performance ratings for Arabs were systematically upgraded, while non-Arabs saw their ratings go down.

She accused the head of the company’s investigative unit of tweeting that “Israelis are like Hitler”. During coverage of the 2014 conflict in Gaza, she said she was told the mission was to cast Israel as the villain and emphasize the Arab and Muslim point of view.

Source

—The Rise and Fall of Al Jazeera America

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‘BBC’ Darling, Calling Arabs to Fight Against Africans

My Note: Abdel Bari Atwan, who once was on Colonel Gaddafi’s payroll, is urging Arabs to unite behind Egypt to defeat, what he calls, the Afro-Israeli conspirators who are planning to block the river Nile.

This disgraceful editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab daily, “Al Quds al Arabi” — who often appears on the BBC and CNN, has been a big supporter of terror attacks on Israel. His anti-Israel, anti-US and anti-Christian stance is so obvious, yet, the BBC & co give him a prominent platform to spread misinformation and disinformation

He is, of course one of those people who speak differently in Arabic and in English. He once said:

“If you support the Palestinian resistance, you do not consider Bin Laden’s attacks terrorism”Abdul Bari Atwan, a London-based journalist and editor of Al Quds Al Arabi, told Egypt’s ON TV, when asked if Bin Laden was a terrorist, that:“If you support the Palestinian resistance, you do not consider [Bin Laden’s attacks] terrorism. But if you are with America, Europe, and Israel, you do consider it terrorism. It depends on your definition of terrorism … Whoever fights America and its enterprise in the region, and whoever fights Israel and the American occupation, is not considered a terrorist by me.”

How this wicked individual has become a regular contributor to BBC Dateline and writes for The Guardian poses a riddle to me.

This’s what he wrote on the Nile issue:

On Tuesday, Egyptians woke up to news from Ethiopia that it intends to complete the ‘Rennaissance Dam’ on the Blue Nile. The river currently supplies 85 percent of downstream Egypt’s water. Such a step would not only affect Egypt’s water supply but would also impede electricity production at the mega, hydro-powered Aswan Dam.

Several Egyptian newspapers used the story of Ethiopia’s planned and its impact on Egypt’s national security to attack Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. They said he must bear responsibility for Ethiopia’s decision, accusing him of ignoring this critical issue, even though it was not dealt with by the previous regime.

Ethiopia began construction of the dam in 2011, at a cost of $4.7 billion, with support from Israel. The plan is to use hydro-power to generate electricity and turn the Renaissance Dam into a major source of energy in Africa.

The main threat to Egypt, however, does not lie in generating electricity or diverting the river. The main problem is that Ethiopia is also building an industrial lake to store 74 billion cubic metres of water, greatly reducing Egypt’s quota of water.

The initial results of such water shortage would lead to the suspension of turbines that generate electricity in the Aswan Dam, in turn having a significant impact on agricultural land.

Egypt’s previous regime lacked a suitable policy for working with Nile Basin countries. Hosni Mubarak’s government was arrogant in its dealing with Sudan for over ten years, a stance which led Israel to intervene, confronting Egypt and paving the way for this threat to its national security and economy.

Israel’s Foreign Minister at the time, Avigdor Lieberman, who had once threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam, led an Israeli delegation comprising businesspeople and engineering experts across five African countries in 2011. The minister said Israel was ready to support dam-building and the diversion of Nile water. The visit led to the signing of Entebbe agreement between Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Congo. Burundi pledged not to sign the agreement, but soon caved in.

Motivated by political and commercial self-interest, Israel’s interference was not surprising – nor was the subsequent involvement of several Israeli firms in the resulting mega-projects, including an agreement to distribute the energy produced by the new dams.

Hosni Mubarak made disastrous mistakes in dealing with the water issue, Ethiopia’s water projects and Israeli threats to Egypt’s security. The government also exaggerated the issue of Halayeb and Shalateen to wage war against Sudan and the regime of President Omar al-Bashir.

Following a failed assassination attempt on Mubarak in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, the Egyptian government turned on the Sudanese regime, accusing it of being complicit in the incident. Mubarak opened an embassy for the head of the rebel movement, expressing his support for South Sudan.

Another mistake made by the former Egyptian regime was that it failed to strengthen its relations with Horn of Africa states, including Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti. A number of these countries treat Ethiopia as an enemy due to Ethiopia’s historic occupation of their lands.

Aboud El-Zomor, a senior official from Egypt’s Building and Development Party, has claimed the Ethiopian move to build a dam is “a declaration of war.” He has urged President Morsi’s regime to respond firmly, knowing full well that the current economic conditions in Egypt could prevent such a response.

The Nile water dilemma has been one that previous rulers of Egypt have struggled to deal with. History tells us that Muhammad Ali Pasha established a military force to interfere immediately if Ethiopia or any other country threatened Egypt’s water interests.

Often nations – both civilized and uncivilized states – manage to unite when they face a crisis which affects the whole state; throughout history, government and opposition forces have come together and set their differences aside to confront a potential threat to national security. Unfortunately, this is not the case in Egypt today. Instead, we’re seeing a brutal political and media war that threatens to destroy Egypt’s national unity.

Egypt is an easy target. It is surrounded by potential threats on all sides. Sinai is a semi-failed state in the East. Libya is a failed state in the West. Civil wars have destroyed Sudan from the East, West and South. Israel conspires against all of them in the North, while the Egyptian state has internal problems too.

The sad truth is that Egypt’s strongest supporters in the past were Syria and Iraq. Now the Gulf States have turned against these countries and Egypt faces its problems alone.

I support Egypt and its people, and wish they would confront the conspiracies that target its national security. Egypt’s people face Israeli manipulations in Africa, the collapse of its state machinery and starvation. All of the above, plus the collusion of internal elements with foreign powers to destabilise Egypt are red lines that should unite all political forces in the country.

Egypt needs a strong and wise administration to confront the current crises. A government which gives priority to the national interests of the country. I have confidence in the Egyptian people, their leadership and their military institutions that are loyal to Egypt.

Once united, the Arab nation can never be defeated.

Source

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Non-Arabs Don’t Need Al Jazeera

My note: I read the following report:

“Al Jazeera’s English and Arabic websites are reported to have been blocked in Ethiopia”

…and thought that it’s a wonderful thing! They should also do the same thing with the redundant news source of Al Jazeera TV – a biased Islamic propaganda machine, which pushes arab viewpoint, instead of reporting news or airing programs in an objective way. Al Jazeera is blocked even in the United States. Every Ethiopian should remove it from his/her channel listings, and refrain from everything “Al”, like in Al-Jazeera, Al-Gore, Al-Thani, Al-Saud etc. The prefix “Al” in the Ethiopic grammer, like in “Mewuded” “Al’mewuded” is negation, and it always means trouble.  

It’s a shame that the despotic nation of Qatar – which just sentenced its own Poets to Life in Prison for a Verse – is active in promoting its own version of freedom and justice across Africa.

The following articles perfectly give a description of one of the most dangerous medias of our time. Ethiopians should be warned to not tune in to this misleading media organization which was created with the help of some greedy western media makers.

The collapse of Al-Jazeera

The fact that the channel is owned and tightly controlled by the undemocratic and authoritarian Qatari royal family, that jails independent journalists who criticize the regime at home, seems to have gone unnoticed and ignored by many. But since the start of the Arab Spring, that is slowly starting to change.

According to an article that appeared in the German magazine Der Spiegel, many leading journalists and TV anchors have started to leave the channel in recent months. According to one of those that has recently left, the German based Aktham Sulimen, “Before the beginning of the Arab Spring, we were a voice for change…a platform for critics and political activists throughout the region. Now, Al-Jazeera has become a propaganda broadcaster.”

According to another Beirut based correspondent, “Al-Jazeera takes a clear position in every country from which it reports – not based on journalistic priorities, but rather on the interests of the Foreign Ministry of Qatar……In order to maintain my integrity as a reporter, I had to quit.”

In truth, Al-Jazeera was never an independent media outlet and always had a political bias.

I can remember watching its Arabic language coverage of the revolution in Egypt and noticing that it dedicated two hours to a rambling speech by Muslim Brotherhood-allied cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who also happens to be based in Qatar. The speech didn’t even attract a large crowd in Egypt and was largely irrelevant to what was happening on the streets. It was merely propaganda for the Muslim Brotherhood, which did not lead the revolution but is close to the Qatari royal family.

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Al-Jazeera’s “Alternative Viewpoint” in Qatar’s Paradise

Al-Jazeera is not, however, a communications medium in the Western sense; it is a psychological warfare medium. Its cameras are always turned outward; they never criticize Qatar’s tyrannical, dictatorial, corrupt, plutocratic leaders or their exploitation of foreign workers, who have neither the status nor rights of Qatari nationals. Al-Jazeera’s ongoing propaganda campaign against the Arab states in the Middle East is a move chosen by the rulers of Qatar to deflect Arab, Western and effervescent local attention from what is happening in the corrupt Al-Thani family’s dark, closed emirate of wealth.

Although it promises aid to financially needy Islamic countries, it sends just the occasional pittance when t feels a need to bolster its popularity. Meanwhile huge unreported sums go to support Islamist terrorist organizations such as Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Jabhat Alnusra Al Islamiya in Syria. The rest of country’s enormous oil revenues are channeled into the coffers of the rulers and their close associates, and are used to pay for their entertainment or for building enormous towers. The rest of the population — most of which are foreign workers whose labor they exploit and who have no civil or social rights — is not invited to join the party.

Although Al-Jazeera incites Muslim masses around the world to revolt against “repressive regimes,” while calling for “democracy,” “pluralism,” and the ousting of totalitarian rulers, Qatar itself does not hold elections, has no political parties, has no democratic institutions, and its citizens have no political or social rights. What Qatar does have, with the help of Sharia [Islamic religious law], is a strong, family-run system of enforcing internal security and suppressing opposition. Al-Jazeera is the well-oiled and well-funded machine of a family employing armed mercenaries who call themselves “media personnel”: Propaganda warriors who use cameras and microphones as weapons. Qatar therefore has every reason to hide what happens within its borders and look for defects in other places.

Al-Jazeera takes two editorial routes: its English-language programs present a moderate, cultured version of its propaganda, different from what is broadcast by its Arabic-language programs. Nonetheless, its purpose seems to be to spread Islam and undermine secularism.

Al-Jazeera’s reporting is unbalanced in that it gives favorable coverage to Islamic regimes and movements it wants to strengthen, and slanders those it wants to weaken. Its sights are set on changing regimes. Al-Jazeera effectively created the Arab Spring by endlessly rebroadcasting footage of the fruit-seller in Tunisia who set himself on fire to protest his government. Every time there was a small demonstration, Al-Jazeera would cover it and air it time and again until the people of Tunisia were sufficiently whipped up.

Al-Jazeera’s reporting is also unbalanced when it is turns to the religiously-motivated activities of Islamist groups in other countries, where the Arab Spring was turned into an Islamist Winter, and where the good intentions of democratically-minded young Muslims were exploited and perverted as, after the revolutions, Islamists seized power. Al-Jazeera’s bias is also evident in its support for the dictatorship of Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt at the expense of the country’s moderate, secular, democracy-seeking opposition, on whose back the Islamization of the country is taking place.

As a TV channel, Al-Jazeera does not operate under accepted Western norms. It is a fundamentalist terrorist communications base operating under Qatari political cover, with a pretense of pluralism. While in the other Arab countries, to reach the Islamic paradise, people need to kill Jews and be killed in wars, dying as shaheeds [martyrs] in the battles of Islam, according to Al-Jazeera only Qatar is already a genuine paradise on earth. Everything there is perfect, so there is no need to report the news.

Source

When America’s enemies invade America’s media

It would be interesting to get an update on enemy penetration of today’s mainstream media. Such a review won’t happen (at least in public) because HUAC/HISC and its Senate counterpart the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISC) are long gone, thanks to pressure from Communists, fellow-travelers, and embarrassed liberals.

There are government entities today that are supposed to be looking out for us with regard to chinks in our internal security armor. Their ability to do so is questionable at best.

But now, with the Al gore/Al-Jazeera deal, our current enemies have gone way beyond the sneak-around, undercover methodology utilized by Stalin’s secret agents. Here we have in broad daylight an enemy takeover of a telecommunications medium with the capability of reaching millions of homes right here in the USA.

As Cliff Kincaid said at his February 5 news conference, Al-Jazeera is not entitled to the protections of the First Amendment because it is global terrorist entity – a front for Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

A foreign entity desiring to own telecommunications operations in the U.S. is supposed to go through a vetting process by the Department of Justice (DOJ), the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). None of that has taken place, so the Al-Jazeera takeover is a violation of the law right there.

The legal process is known as CFIUS – the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an inter-agency panel of the U.S. Government, chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury and including members from 16 departments and agencies. No legally-required application by Al-Jazeera has been made to this body.

Under the transfer arrangement, the name of the channel under its new ownership is to be Al-Jazeera America. That, in and of itself, is labeled by Kincaid as “a complete and utter fraud,” especially given that Al-Jazeera is fronting for people whose fondest wish is “Death to America.”

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