generalspeaking

Dressing up Qatar

"We are modest. We want people to come and see [Qatar, hosting 2022 World Cup soccer event]."
"Yes, you could be a modest person, you could be a conservative country and still be a fun-loving country, and you could still play football and you could still host a World Cup."
Nasser al-Khater, assistant secretary general, Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy Tree Nursery

The artists' impressions of Qatar stadia are sexy, but the issues seem to no longer be

Israel pioneered the advent of making the desert bloom, and it did so for agricultural purposes, to make itself self-sufficient in the basics of whole food availability in fruits and vegetables grown on Kibbutzim, collective agricultural farms. This was a country that started with hard labour -- hard labour of its own, with its young men and women committing themselves to becoming farmers, agricultural workers, ensuring that the new nation was capable of feeding itself.

Qatar is a country whose discovery of natural gas resources made it enormously wealthy. It too is engaged in transforming the desert from grey to green, a verdant Paradise where this nation of two-point-six million people can anticipate rainfall of five centimeters annually. And where temperatures in its capital Doha are in the mid-30s Celsius summer-long, with an oppressively hot desert sun baking the atmosphere.

Qatar’s population is 2.6 million, of whom nearly 90 per cent are migrant workers Getty

Qatar is confident that it will give the visiting world a first-class show in November of 2022, and preparations are apace to ensure this can be accomplished. The desert on which it sits will by then host eight stadiums where competition at the elite level will take place of the most popular sport in the world. Qatar will manage to 'air condition' those stadiums through clever, expensive engineering. But in Qatar money is no object for it is plentiful.

Vast tents have been erected as plant nurseries with ten thousand trees being nurtured to semi-maturity before being planted eventually. Those tender saplings require the tented shade and when they eventually are planted they will be an anomaly in a region with sparse-to-nil rainfall and vegetation-broiling heat. And nor will there be a shortage of green, green grass, now being cultivated in huge rolled sheets to ensure the desert will not appear barren.

After all, an anticipated million-and-a-half visitors are expected to travel to Qatar for this world event to help Qatar celebrate its uniqueness. Of course there is already millions of foreigners present there. They represent the labour that will build the infrastructure, roll out the carpets of grass, plant the trees and any other hard work that must be done for this splendid occasion. The International Labour Organization, a UN agency, is satisfied Qatar is cooperating in recognition of workers' rights.

Calton (right) left his native Kenya to work in building structures for the World Cup in Qatar.  Credit:Image courtesy of “The Workers Cup LLC”

"Amongst the most frequently reported problems facing migrant workers are: deceptive recruitment practices which see migrant workers promised more favourable conditions of work by recruiters in their home country than they are given on arrival in Qatar; employers compelling workers to live in squalid conditions; employers confiscating workers’ passports and denying them the exit visa they need to leave Qatar; late or non-payment of wages; and employers not giving workers proper identity documents, which leaves them exposed to arrest. In extreme, but not exceptional, cases migrants are subjected to forced labour."
Amnesty International

Close to two million foreign workers from what was once called 'third-world countries' and are now euphemistically referred to as 'developing countries', are working in Qatar to prepare the sites for a world celebration of the beautiful game. They are very busy, making Doha beautiful. Al Jazeera will have much to crow about on behalf of its paymaster. It certainly will not point out that some of the workers slave away for over 72 hours weekly, nor that one contractor worked for over 124 consecutive days.

Qatar is looking for greater name recognition, to be more celebrated for its place in the world. The World Cup is a splendid opportunity, and its own news organ with tentacles world-wide represents a great asset to ensure it crows long and hard.

Al Bawaba Khalifa International Stadium

Labels: Al Jazeera, Qatar, Soccer, Sport, World Cup

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Dame Fortune Frowned

"We request priority to proceed to the runway, we request priority to proceed to the locator."
"We have fuel problems."
"Now we have a total electric failure, we have a total electric failure."
"Help -- we need vectors to approach the runway."
LaMia flight crew

"The research now being carried out by national and international aviation experts, based on the aircraft’s black boxes, as well as technical examinations, will seek in the shortest possible time the results that will allow us to establish the causes of this unfortunate tragedy."
"[A lack of fuel was] most probably what caused this tragedy [but nothing had been confirmed]."
Alfredo Bocanegra, director of Aerocivil

"Many passengers got up from their seats and started yelling."
"I put the bag between my legs and went into the foetal position as recommended."
Erwin Tumiri, Bolivian flight technician, crash survivor

Rescue teams work in the recovery the bodies of victims of the LAMIA airlines charter that crashed in the mountains of Cerro Gordo, municipality of La Union, Colombia, on November 29, 2016     Raul Arboled / AFP / Getty Images

Another stunning tragedy, with yet another Latin American sport team losing their lives in a flight to a game. An ill-conceived decision to fly with an airliner using short-distance planes capable of going so far and no further. The time allotted from departure to arrival would have worked, with sufficient fuel for the trip as long as the flight encountered no problems, there would be no need to deviate from the direct route contemplated, and that, in gambling parlance is taking a chance that fate would not intervene.

It did, predictably enough, when bad weather set in, delaying the flight and causing it to run out of fuel.

A short-haul plane operated by a charter airline was not the wisest course. But the team had flown previously with the same LaMia charter and thought highly of its services. On that previous occasion they had scored an important game victory, and hoped for similar results this time around on the Brazilian soccer team's Chapecoense plan to play in the Copa Sudamerica final in Medellin against Atletico Nacional.

Of the 77 souls aboard the ill-fated flight, 71 died in the crash, with six survivors left to detail what they had experienced. Just moments before the flight crew of the doomed plane contacted traffic control to advise of their plight, another aircraft had experienced cabin problems and had arranged with air traffic control at the Jose Maria Cordova International airport for an emergency landing.

The Viva Colombia flight was already in descent mode when the LaMia plane made their plea and was refused.

Labels: Brazil, Colombia, Flight Catastrophe, Soccer

posted by Pieface @ Friday, December 02, 2016