Finansminister Sanner visste at saken kom på hans bord.
Så sent som på torsdag kunne han IKKE gripe inn ... et advokatfirma han hyret inn sa så: "Men fram til torsdag var Sanner krystallklar på at han ikke kunne gripe
inn i det som er Norges Banks ansvar uansett hvor mye
stortingspolitikerne skulle ønske det." (NRK 21. august 2020).
Det graverende er at dette firmaet allerede hadde rådgitt Tangen ... og derfor ikke var uhildet.
Så klokka 5 på tolv ber Sanner Lovavdelingen i Justisdep. vurdere saken.
De bruker ikke lang tid:
NRK 21. august 2010 "Sanner kan instruere Norges Bank: – En knusende dom Finansminister Jan Tore Sanner (H) kan generelt instruere Norges Bank i Tangen-saken. Det har lovavdelingen i Justisdepartementet konkludert med."
ABCnyheter 21. august 2020
Finansminister Jan Tore Sanner (H) har antakelig mulighet til å gi Norges Bank «generelle instrukser», ifølge lovavdelingen i Justisdepartementet.
Tidligere baserte Sanner seg på dette:
e24 18.august 2020: "Sanner hyret inn samme advokatfirma som bisto Nicolai Tangen i mai"." "Advokatfirmaet som mener Jan Tore Sanner ikke kan instruere Norges Bank, bisto Nicolai Tangen med detaljer knyttet til arbeidsavtalen med Norges Bank i mai."
......................................................................
Hva skal man si?
Kan vi ha en finansminister som er så bakpå som han har vært i Tangen-saken?
Og kan finansministerensvare på hva det kostet å kjøpe rådgivning fra advokatfirmaet som ikke var uhildet?
Det har lenge vært klart at IDF misbruker de lover som gjelder for krig og okkupasjon til å opprette skyteområder på Vestbredden ... slik at man kan pressse ut de palestinere som bor der.
Dette er nå dokumentert ved funn i israelske arkiv av opplegget Ariel Sharon sto for i Hebron-området. Der skrives det i klartekst hva formålet med skyteområdet nr 918 omkring landsbyen Yatta var for:
"40-year-old Document Reveals Ariel Sharon's Plan to Evict 1,000 Palestinians From Their Homes".
"Minutes of an 1981 ministerial meeting indicate that Sharon, who would later become Israel's prime minister, proposed allocating West Bank land to the Israeli army for the sole purpose of forcing Palestinians out of their homes."
(Haaretz 9.8.2020)
Egentlig skal lovene som gjelder her beskytte de okkuperte ... og ikke så å si å beskyte dem.
Det er graverende slik metodisk å misbruke internasjonal lov som IDF gjør.
Utkastelsen av palestinerne prøves fortsatt for israelske domstoler.
Israels Høyesterett har hatt denne saken oppe til avgjørelse siden år 2000.
Men har latt tiden gå uten å ta noen endelig beslutning.
Det er egentlig den største skandalen.
Norge har et spesielt ansvar i denne konflikten.
Derfor må UD markere det norske synspunkt tydelig når misbruk dokumenteres som her.
Gulfstatene må nå ta korona-ansvar for sine fremmedarbeidere ... de kan ikke sendes tilbake til hjemlandene.
En grundig artikkel av Sebastian Castelier viser hvordan fremmedarbeiderne sviktes.
Sterk melding: "Coronavirus Exposes the Epic Moral Failure of Gulf States".
Gulfstatene har pengene ... men de mangler moralen som skal til.
Coronavirus Exposes the Epic Moral Failure of Gulf States
Sebastian CastelierJuly 30, 2020
Exacerbated
by crowded living conditions and poor healthcare access (here, a Dubai
labor camp), migrant workers account for the majority of over 500,000
coronavirus cases reported in the GulfREUTERS
Forced to beg for food and to fend for themselves, humiliated by
xenophobic local news reports, victim of wage theft and at risk of
contracting the virus in overcrowded labor camps, migrant workers are
the COVID-19 victims the Arab Gulf region does not want the world to
see.
"I don't know what to do," lamented Rakesh, an Indian electrician
trapped in Kuwait’s Jleeb al-Shuyoukh for weeks during a strict lockdown
imposed on the area. Like him, thousands of migrant workers struggled to access food, lacking assistance from local authorities.
"The pandemic exposed decades of systemic racial discrimination
and a deep suffering that migrant workers have long faced under the
Gulf states’ various labor governance systems," Hiba Zayadin, Gulf
researcher for the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, told me.
Beyond the legitimate query of who should bear the responsibility of
sheltering migrant workers during the COVID-19 crisis lurks a moral
question. Wasn't the pandemic a chance for wealthy Gulf countries to
show compassion they could afford, and gratitude that they owe, towards
migrant workers who build the region? From this moral standpoint, Gulf
states have largely failed.
Economic measures aiming at sheltering Gulf economies from the
downturn mostly share a similar pattern: citizen first. For example,
Omani nationals cannot be fired, but migrant workers can. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain help pay subsidize private sector wages, but for their respective citizens only.
A
truck driver works on the cab of his vehicle as other trucks stand idle
during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dubai, UAE. April 16, 2020.Jon
Gambrell,AP
Conveniently labeled 'guest workers,' migrant workforces are, above
all, disposable, transient and the first pliant variable for adjusting
economic contractions. And although the coronavirus has intensified
their distress, migrant workers in the Gulf have faced oppressive work
conditions for decades. According to human rights group Amnesty
International, Gulf countries are "notorious for the systematic abuse and exploitation of the migrant workers who contribute so much to their economies." Indispensable, but neglected
The proportion of non-nationals in Gulf labor markets is among the highest in the world. In Dubai, a commercial hub for both the Middle East and Asia, less than 10 percent of the population is Emirati; the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest skyscraper, was built by migrant worker hands.
"The industry still heavily relies on foreigners from all background
for their know-how and productivity," acknowledged a source at a leading
Middle East construction group.
Migrant workers also sustain Gulf cities, from driving cabs,
operating restaurants, cleaning houses, treating COVID-19 patients and
working for consultancy firms. Without the roughly 30 million
foreign nationals, who mainly originate from India, Egypt, Pakistan,
the Philippines, Bangladesh and Nepal, Gulf economies would come to a
complete standstill.
In Qatar, migrant workers account for about 89 percent of the population while in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, only about one fifth of private sector employees are nationals.
Vox
Cinema employee Jackline Nansamba of Uganda stocks shelves at a
Carrefour supermarket in Dubai, UAE. April 19, 2020.Jon Gambrell,AP
"Migrant workers should be offered the same level of social
protections that were made available to nationals," Amnesty
International’s Gulf Researcher May Romanos told me.
Following a visit to Qatar, the UN’s special rapporteur for racism
characterized the racial discrimination against non-nationals which
structures Gulf economies as a "de facto caste system
based on national origin," which enables discriminatory pay scales and
an "firm societal association between certain types of work and specific
nationalities." Low-income South Asian workers are often collectively
nicknamed "Bangali," irrespective of their national origins.
According to human rights organizations and observers, systematic abuse and racism are rooted in the kafala,
a sponsorship system enforced by Gulf states which objectify migrant
workers by tying them to their employers, who sometimes confiscate their
passports. Rights defenders have long likened kafala to modern slavery.
Despite changes - Bahrain announced repeal in 2009 but nothing much
has actually changed, Qatar announced in October 2019 it will partially dismantle the kafala - Gulf countries "continue to operate" versions of the system, Amnesty International reported.
Amid the pandemic, 1000 employees (hailing primarily from the
Philippines, Sri Lanka, Egypt, India, and Pakistan) of the world's
leading security group, G4S, half of them women, reportedly rely on food donations
in the UAE. Employers feel empowered by government policies pushing the
privatization of labor management, and this can easily lead to further
exploitation.
Gulf business partners, including unscrupulous Indian businessmen, have been accused of delaying the wages of workers in distress, leaving them isolated, with no access to healthcare, and broke.
Hungry,
out of work, sick and isolated: Migrant workers in the Gulf (here, in a
Saudi labor camp) were victims of exploitative business practices
before COVID-19, but now their plight has intensifiedבלומברג
Talking to Haaretz, Isobel Archer, Gulf Project Officer at Business
& Human Rights Resource Centre, a UK-based researcher centre leading
in the field of documenting worker's rights violations committed by
private companies, said allegations of the abuse of migrant workers in
the Gulf quadrupled since last year. "Businesses are currently focused
on economic survival, which means workers are often the last
consideration," she said. "Gulf states washed their hands"
But the twin hits of the COVID-19 crisis and low oil prices mean
there is likely to be a dramatic shake-up in how Gulf economies will
operate and, unsurprisingly, migrant workers will again bear the brunt
of the change. Gulf economies are expected to shrink by 7.6 percent this year, causing a wave of sackings, which, Oxford Economics estimates, could result in more than 3.5 million migrant workers being forced to leave the region.
Indeed, the ‘flexibility’ provided by the kafala system to
labor markets has long allowed Gulf states to weather economic
contractions: they simply export their unemployment ‘problem’ back to
their home states.
But COVID-19 derailed that well-oiled system: by late March, labor exporting countries closed their borders and refused to accept their own returning nationals, leaving Gulf states wholly responsible for their care and shelter.
"They are in Dubai, Dubai is responsible," said Irudaya Rajan, an
Indian researcher on labor migrations who is a member of the Kerala
state COVID-19 advisory body.
The Gulf states were outraged by the insistence that they had to care
for the migrant workers who only weeks earlier had fueled their entire
economies. They retaliated.
The UAE, home to about six million South Asians, and where nearly 90 percent of the 10 million-strong population are foreign workers, pointedly threatened
"non-co-operative countries" that they would reconsider their migrant
labor requirements, well aware that remittances from migrant workers are
a crucial lifeline for millions of South Asian households. In Nepal
alone, those remittances account for over a quarter of its GDP.
Indian
nationals returning on a special flight from Sharjah (UAE) on a bus
taking them to a quarantine facility amid concerns over their carrying
the coronavirus. Amritsar, India, July 15, 2020.AFP
Seeing their desperation, and giving up on Gulf states’ good faith, India began a mission to repatriate
its stranded citizens on May 7th. "Gulf states washed their hands of
the responsibility that they bear towards migrant workers," Zayadin
commented.
According to a Pakistani official interviewed by Reuters in May,
around 12 percent of those who returned from the United Arab Emirates
were infected with COVID-19.
Indeed, exacerbated by crowded living conditions and poor healthcare
access, migrant workers account for the majority of the over 500,000
coronavirus cases reported in the Gulf.
Mirroring the segregation that has been enforced across the region
for decades, areas inhabited by low-income migrant workers, and
suffering high rates of COVID-19, were sealed to protect nationals.
Responding to the high infection rate claimed by Pakistan for
returning workers, an official at the UAE’s foreign ministry rejected
that "version of events." Reforms ahead?
Belatedly recognizing they needed to defuse the crisis, Gulf
governments announced a raft of measures including, among others, access
for migrant workers to free healthcare, visa extensions, and forcing
private companies to provide accomodation.
In Qatar, the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and
Social Affairs actually included migrant workers in a $824 million
scheme that subsidized private sector wages. But that kind of move is an exception. No other countries made similar announcements.
Filling the void left by governments, community-based initiatives
stepped in. In Kuwait, an Indian welfare association distributed food
kits to distressed migrant workers. "Some Kuwaiti people are also
calling us to give money," noted a representative of the association in
surprise.
"We hope this pandemic will serve as a wake-up call for Gulf
countries, so they start reforming their discriminatory systems,"
Amnesty International’s Romanos said.
Graffiti
showing Che Guevara, a hammer and sickle and a portrait of Dubai ruler
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in the Al Quoz neighborhood of
Dubai, United Arab Emirates, April 15, 2020.Jon Gambrell,AP
Significant structural changes are unlikely, however. Gulf states
have long favored cosmetic changes over addressing the crux of the
problem. "Unless the [kefala] system as a whole is abolished,
you won’t see any real improvement in the lived experiences of migrant
workers in the Gulf," Human Rights Watch's Zayadin said.
Any path to reform will raise the hackles of the more
backward-looking elements of the Gulf business community. When Oman
declared it could allow migrant workers to change jobs freely, upsetting
a core tenet of the kefala system, businesses opposed the move, arguing it could "slow down productivity rates."
Economic realities also play against any real integration of migrant workers into Gulf societies. Since the 2014 oil crash,
the rentier model of development, with its reliance on foreign
multinationals to develop the Gulf’s petrochemicals industry, is
crumbling, fostering a big push for more nationals to replace migrant
workers, playing against a migrant workers-driven modus operandi.
Kuwait’s Prime Minister recently called to reduce the migrant workers
population by more than half, saying the emirate faces a "big"
demographic imbalance that needs to be "redressed."
During the pandemic, Kuwait has stood out for its xenophobic rhetoric
against migrant workers, accusing them of spreading the virus, stealing
jobs and overcrowding medical facilities.
Migrant workers - non-Muslim, non-Arabic speaking and from very
different ethnic backgrounds - will always be the "other," never
integrated into Gulf states' national identities or granted citizenship,
no matter how many decades they have resided there, and are thus easy
targets of xenophobia, especially in times of crisis.
Yet the aspiration for Gulf workforces to consist entirely of locals
remains an illusion. According to the Middle East construction group
source I interviewed, unskilled and semi-skilled labor are "unavailable"
among Gulf nationals and the going wage for construction jobs are
viewed by nationals as "lower than acceptable."
Over 85 percent of unemployed Qatari citizens are "not willing"
to work in the private sector, the country’s Labor Force Survey
revealed, because public sector jobs offer far more benefits and tenure.
There’s a similar situation in Kuwait where more than half of
unemployed nationals refuse to work in the private sector, preferring government jobs.
"When the dust settles, they [Gulf countries] will take a few knocks
and bring in plane-loads of workers from ever more desperate countries,"
writes Vani Saraswathi from the advocacy organization Migrant-Rights.
Despite amply demonstrating their necessity to the states that host
them, migrant workers still don’t have any collective bargaining power,
their cause has only limited allies and resonance locally, and their
home states are too anxious about losing revenues and offending their
hosts to use whatever leverage they could muster.
More than ever before, the COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the
disposable nature of the Gulf’s transient workforces, and the
diminishing chances they have to win more humane working conditions. Sebastian Castelier is a journalist who covers Gulf Arab states
and labour migration. His work has appeared in several Middle Eastern
and international media outlets. Twitter: @SCastelier
Flere i USA analyserer Trump og det republikanske parti.
To sentrale kommentatorer påpeker
- Trump har egentlig eksponert det et republikansk parti allerede hadde utviklet seg til:
"We Lost the Battle for the Republican Party’s Soul Long Ago".
Stuart Stevens, NY Times 29. juli 2020.
"The Cult of Selfishness Is Killing America"
"The right has made irresponsible behavior a key principle"
Paul Krugman, NY Times 27. juli 2020.
Spesielt analysen fra Stuart Stevens er viktig,
Fordi han selv er republikaner og har drevet valgkamp for tidligere republikanske presidentkandidater.
Nå er han klokkeklar i sin analyse av hva det republikanske partiet er blitt.
Og hvordan det har havnet der.
Likeså med Paul Krugman, bl.a. prisvinner i 2008 av Nobels minnepris i økonomi.
Han beskriver republikanerne med ord som .... "En kult av egoisme".
En ting er overskriftene Stevens og Krugman bruker.
Viktigere er analysene.
De graver dypt i ... ikke bare politikk ... men i politikkens basis:
- Moral ... og
- Samfunnsansvar.
23. juli arresterte israelsk politi ledende personer innen det palestinske kultur- og musikkliv.
Og deres arkiver og datamaskiner ble konfiskert.
Anklagene er .... finansiering av terror:
Det virker som et levende palestinsk kulturliv anses som farlig og må politisk undertrykkes.
I 2017 tok israelske entusiaster denne vinklingen helt ut og publiserte:
"A History of the Palestinian People" ... en bok med bare blanke sider.
Den israelske Likud-politiker Tzipi Hotovely skrek og viftet med denne "boken" fra Knesset-talerstolen under en debatt der: "In 2017 she screamed at Palestinian lawmakers in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, that they had no history, waving an empty-paged book with the titleA History of the Palestinian People on its cover." (Electronic Intifada 12. juni 2020) Tzipi Hotovely er en israelsk høyre-ekstrem nasjonalist som av Netanyahu nylig ble utnevnt til fungerende utenriksminister og nå i juni videre til israelsk ambassadør i UK. Hun står for "Eretz Israel" og ingenting til palestinerne. Med utnevnelsen av Hotovely som vifter med tomme bøker ... og med arrestasjon av palestinske kulturledere og konfiskering av deres arkiver ... så tyder det på at Israel nå intensiverer angrepene på palestinernes kultur og historie. Det kan være opptakten til den planlagte annekteringen av Vestbredden ...
Vårt UD må følge nøye med på behandlingen av palestinske kulturledere. Og være forberedt hvis en politiker ala Tzipi Hotovely skulle utnevnes som israelsk ambassadør til Norge.
Det har lenge vært klart at fornyelse av vår eksisterende vannkraftproduksjon har vært hemmet av offentlige skattebestemmelser.
Samfunnsmessig lønnsomme oppgraderinger og fornyelser av EKSISTERENDE vannkraftproduksjon blir satt på vent fordi den er ULØNNSOM for utbyggerne/eierne.
Dette skyldes skattesystemet for vannkraft ... som av samfunnet skattlegges med såkalt grunnrente til et nivå som hindrer fornyelse.
Dette har vært kjent lenge.
Men når regjeringen setter med et utredningsutvalg innen området ... Sanderudutvalget i 2018 ... går det helt galt.
Utvalget leverer sin innstilling i 2019 ... men fokuserer på sentralisering av beskatning ... og avsporer fra hovedsaken ... grunnrenteproblemet.
Jeg har vært opptatt av dette i flere kommentarer:
Blogginnlegg fra 24. mars 2019:
"Norge må vente med mer vindkraft på land ... og konsentrere seg om og forsterke arbeidet med HAVKRAFT.
Utredingsutvalgene BOMMER på hovedoppgaven.
Resultat:
Vannkraft straffes ... vindkraft støttes.
Miljøvennlige og lønnsomme utbygginger straffes og ... og naturødeleggende og subsidierte løsninger favoriseres.
Av en regjering som helt har mistet evnet til å utrede .. og forholde seg til det opplagte.
Slikt er skremmende .
Derfor er det bra der er flertall på Stortinget ... som i en sak som har vært kjent i flere år ... omsider nå i 2020 har markert at nå må man slutte å leke energipolitikk.
I en nylig tale har USAs utenriksminister Mike Pompeo nylig konkludert om hva som er overordnede menneskeretter.
Det er ifølge Pompeo:
- Eiendomsrett
- Religion
Talen er referert i NY Times 16.juli 2020: "Pompeo Says Human Rights Policy Must Prioritize Property Rights and Religion"
Slik taler en farlig demagog.
Satt på spissen ... tror man nok .... så er Pompeo for slaveriet.
Denne mannen er en religions-ekstremist ... en endetids-entusiast .... som har Bibelen oppslått på skrivebordet.
Det skremmende er at han har ytterligere politiske ambisjoner ... bli president i USA.
Søkelyset på hva Pompeo sier og gjør må økes !
Spesielt må kristen-ledere utfordres ... også i Norge.
