The Dark Side of Dubai

[Hemi-Cuda]

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion...i-1664368.html

ugly, ugly truth behind that place. the only good thing that may come out of this depression is hopefully expunging the planet of that shining turd

[T@T]

That article reads like a novel, maybe someone can break down the "darkside" in a 1000 words or less. I don't have the time nor energy to read it.

[Singe]

Awesome to see satan's kingdom falling like this.
I wonder what tricky dick cheney thinks about it all.

[FlamesAddiction]

No link or anything, but I knew a girl in university from Dubai and she told me that they have a really high rate of male-on-male rape. I don't know if that is true or whatever, but I found it strange.

[wittynickname]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion...i-1664368.html

ugly, ugly truth behind that place. the only good thing that may come out of this depression is hopefully expunging the planet of that shining turd

Rarely do I sit and read an entire article like that, but I just couldn't stop. Horrifying stuff.

I don't even have a real response for this, it's kind of stupefying what a range of extremes you find in such a small place.

[CrusaderPi]

There is nothing that could happen in the mid east that would surprise me. Well maybe there is, but you'd have to try a lot harder then this.

[St Loomis]

Wow I have to say that is shocking! My image of Dubai was obviously the typical western one, a middle eastern disneyland, my how naive...assuming the article is accurate (I have no reason to believe it isn't).

I always thought it'd be kind of neat to see that place, maybe not anymore.

I can't imagine westerners going and enjoying the fact that they can openly take advantage of other people. Take your maids passport, dont pay them, work them for 16 hours a day...absolutely disgusting, these people should be ashamed of themselves.

The environmental stuff was also interesting, not much of a surprise about the water issues however I wasn't aware that desalinisation used so much energy.

Thanks for the link to the article...good read

[DementedReality]

sad report ... even if the author has exagerrated to make a point. im not saying he hasnt reported some true outrage, i just cant trust journalists either.

[starseed]

"We are alive. We can meet. That is more than most Arab gays." It is illegal to be gay in Dubai, and punishable by 10 years in prison. But the locations of the latest unofficial gay clubs circulate online, and men flock there, seemingly unafraid of the police. "They might bust the club, but they will just disperse us," one of them says. "The police have other things to do."
In every large city, gay people find a way to find each other – but Dubai has become the clearing-house for the region's homosexuals, a place where they can live in relative safety. Saleh, a lean private in the Saudi Arabian army, has come here for the Coldplay concert, and tells me Dubai is "great" for gays: "In Saudi, it's hard to be straight when you're young. The women are shut away so everyone has gay sex. But they only want to have sex with boys – 15- to 21-year-olds. I'm 27, so I'm too old now. I need to find real gays, so this is the best place. All Arab gays want to live in Dubai."

I am so incredibly lucky to have been born in Canada. People may think it is trivial and stupid to be proud of one's country, but after seeing these things, I proudly say that I am a very patriotic Canadian.

[WesternCanadaKing]

Wow, I had absolutely no idea Dubai was like this. All I ever heard was how it was the "Hong Kong of the Middle East" or a "Jewel in the Desert" and things of the like. The fact that its actually a superficial hellhole built on slave labour and credit makes far more sense.

Now one of the few places I have absolutely no interest in visiting. Hope it dries up and gets washed to the sea... which after reading this article doesn't seem like its too far off.

[Potty]

Perhaps Dubai disturbed me so much, I am thinking, because here, the entire global supply chain is condensed. Many of my goods are made by semi-enslaved populations desperate for a chance 2,000 miles away; is the only difference that here, they are merely two miles away, and you sometimes get to glimpse their faces? Dubai is Market Fundamentalist Globalisation in One City.

Interesting article, thanks for posting.

[Thor]

I'll have to find a few documentaries on it for you guys, this has been a problem for a long time.

[bcb]

What I don't understand is how, if Dubai only has limited oil revenue, people can pay no tax and receive free medical care and complimentary phD-level education.

It's not like the government is selling military technology to Iran, Right?

[Tyler]

Originally Posted by bcb

What I don't understand is how, if Dubai only has limited oil revenue, people can pay no tax and receive free medical care and complimentary phD-level education.

It's not like the government is selling military technology to Iran, Right?

This is only for native UAE (ians)?

The actual country's population is relatively small

[The Yen Man]

I've always wondered how much of energy is used to sustain all the extravagant nonsense that Dubai offers. The one that took the cake was the indoor skiing hill. I mean, they're essentially building a massive freezer in the middle of the desert. How can that NOT be a massive waste of energy?

The desalinization part was a bit of a surprise to me. I guess making ocean water drinkable is not yet a viable long term solution if it means using that much energy to take out the salt.

[666DanceParty]

Really interesting read!
Thank you for posting.

[Sylvanfan]

I was here for months before I realised – everything in Dubai is fake.

A phoney city, built with phoney money, living on remanufactured basic resources and leaving a monstrous carbon footprint. Now being backed by a petrodictatorship. It is pretty much an extreme version of everything that Freidman talks about in his book hot flat and crowded with an added touch of human rights abuse. Yikes.

Thanks for posting that link.

[Daradon]

Excellent read with some horrifying extremes and examples, but it's pretty much exactly what I thought the place would be like. One big facade.

I knew family members who wanted to go, and I always tried to talk them out and tell them to go somewhere else. The whole story of it's rise made absolutely no sense. You can't build a functioning city or nation state over night, never mind a vacationers paradise or global economic power. All that work, all the progress has to come from somewhere. My boss who went was telling me about all the green lawns there and I wondered 'how expensive is it to keep manicured lawns in the middle of the desert?' And I knew in my head, there was no way that cost was going to be passed on to the people who actually OWNED the lawns. It would be crazy, it would be too much. No one except the very richest would decide it's even worth it. An average or even above average paid person cannot own grass in the desert, just like the average person does not have a list of servents.

Yet all the people had things they couldn't get at home, and all these wonders of the world were appearing over night. And in one of the weirdest places possible if you think of political climate. Something was not right.

The system was obviously flawed. Shortcuts were being taken in some places, and people were being exploited in others. It just had to be. You think about it logically without even going there and you can see it.

And now the sources are more obvious than ever and the demise is appearing to be more real than ever.

Interesting to think of it as the way we treat each other and other nations all wrapped up in the example of one city. Course I've been talking about stuff like that for years on this board now. It's all going to catch up to us. Dubai is like the petri dish that's proof for our own larger system.

[moon]

Its never nice to hear about people losing all their money or living in the streets but in the first part about all the "poor" expats I found it very hard to feel that sorry for them.

Perhaps it is because I have lived overseas and know a lot of people that live in Dubai and other "worse" places, but it really seems like naive people that were very greedy and wanted to get rich quick.

Some of the things the lady in the story says are just ######ed, i.e. thought it would be like Canada because big corporations did business there. I mean is she really that dumb?

I've been to Dubai numerous times and there is no way that I could see how anyone could think that it was anything other than what it is.

Good story but for people who have spent any time there it really is just what they likely should already know about the place.

For those that haven't been there and are surprised by the article it just illustrates the one thing that Dubai has done better than anything else is sell itself.

[moon]

Originally Posted by bcb

What I don't understand is how, if Dubai only has limited oil revenue, people can pay no tax and receive free medical care and complimentary phD-level education.

It's not like the government is selling military technology to Iran, Right?

Well it is that they didn't have any oil but just not nearly as much as others. They took that money that they got and re-invested it into the country.

There are a few factors that contribute:

1. There are very few Emerati's and it is tough to prove that you are one to qualify for the freebies. I think the number is something like 250,000 people that get the perks.

2. Dubai still makes a ton of money from other revenues than oil

3. As the article states "Dubai owes 107% of its GDP." It has a lot of money from creditors to spend on its people