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Well, guess what, there's a lot of shit in this world. Go tell people to stop talking bad about Husni Mubarak, because after all, he's much better than Gaddafi and Saddam.

The fact is, people think Dubai is awesome. It's good journalism to uncover the truth about this supposed awesomeness.

Your only problem is that there are other places that are worse. As if suddenly everybody stopped noticing all the other bad places just because there's an article about Dubai.

The fact is, rich gulf states treat foreigner workers like slaves.

An interesting thing to note is how their youth are practically bullies. The same kind of bullies that PG talked about in his "nerds" essay[0], and his analysis of why people become bullies applies quite well to Dubai's situation. They are spoiled kids, they have no responsibilities, their lives are pretty pointless.

(EDIT: Lest somebody thinks I'm being racist: I'm an Arab myself.)

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

I'm not even sure I'd call it rich. As I understand it, they've borrowed billions from other gulf states to build their boondoggles. They even named their recently completed Burj Khalifa to honor the emir of Abu Dhabi, which bailed them out with billions when the financial house of cards collapsed.

I said rich in reference to the gulf states in general (including Qatar, Bahrain, etc). They're rich because they have oil.

Oh they are really rich. Sadly, not much else

Unrelated to what you said, but I like how you start your references by 0.

Laos isn't making a serious bid to be an international power player. Dubai is. The standards are different. Deal with it.

If you're going to build a civilization that depends on 70% of your population being foreigners, many of them second or third generation residents who have never seen their putative homelands, and you're going to reserve the right to deport them at will or to jail them for farting, then this article makes a very cogent point:

Your checks sure as hell better clear.

Dubai is not going to be fine.

Your checks sure as hell better clear

And they will, as long as Abu Dhabi is willing to pick up the tab. Dubai made a massively leveraged bet, and now Abu has them by the short and curlies, but the UAE is still looking okay.

Dubai is not going to be fine.

In the long run, no probably not, but they (the UAE, not Dubai alone) have a decade, maybe two to get it together. They probably won't, and when it goes to hell it'll make Libya look like a tea party, but if they went to a Singaporean model with the guest workers they could be okay. Given that there are third generation guest workers they're probabably hosed, but something as simple as having a maximum residency of five years for pure labourers and recruiting men from one country for one sector and women for another from a nother country would go a loooong way to preventing people from forming real attachments.

If the South Vietnam/United States/South Korea coalition had beaten the North Vietnam/Soviet Union/Red China/North Korea coalition, it would be a much nicer, safer place to live. Instead, it's a backward wasteland ruled by bandits that's barely - barely - starting to get its shit together.

We must be in two different Vietnams. Sure, there's a lot of poverty here, but I feel a lot safer here than I do almost anywhere in the U.S. Friendly people, fantastic food and the tremendous natural beauty of the country make me happier to be here than anywhere else in the world. I have no idea where exactly I'd find this backward wasteland you describe.

No doubt Vietnam would be further along in its development if the West had just left it alone to develop at its own pace, but I think it's clear where the blame lies for that.

No doubt Vietnam would be further along in its development if the West had just left it alone to develop at its own pace, but I think it's clear where the blame lies for that.

With the French?

IIRC there were some Americans here too.

Agent Orange? I'd guess that it MAY hamper the population and development growth slightly...

Just because other countries have problems doesn't mean that Dubai doesn't also have problems. This article is pretty good: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-har...

Just for people that don't know, Johann Hari is a very, very left-wing radical journalist. When he does his research (as in the dark side of Dubai) and tries to keep his bias out, the story tells itself and he's a good writer. This report is actually very good. But be careful if you read his other stuff, when he can't be bothered researching some of his work is quite hateful.

To take on the Vietnam points: I recommend you read the Pentagon papers (hardly a lefty account) - the distinct sensation you get was that the war was unwinnable, for the simple reason that they did not have the people on their side.

The South was not a cute democracy, it was a brutal, corrupt dictatorship (with whom the US themselves had huge issues). Remember those monks setting themselves on fire? They were protesting the Southern dictatorship - not Ho Chi Minh.

It seems to me the "it would have been better if ..." is a bit moot as it was probably never going to happen. It is also based on an analogy which strikes me as a little simplistic (outcomes for Western backed 3rd World countries have been highly variable, especially in the absence of a communist threat).

One thing that is for sure: Given the outcome, it would have been much better for everyone had the country to have been left to it's own devices from the outset, not starting their post-colonial era with the bitterness and destruction of decades of war.

Finally, Vietnam was aligned with the USSR, not China, with whom they were at war in the late 70's.

The thing that makes critiques of Dubai interesting is that they have chosen to so closely parallel aspects of our own society.

If you're questioning the social value of their building projects or the hidden human misery propping up their facades, you're not really just having a conversation about just Dubai any more, but actually having a conversation about huge aspects of Western culture & society with Dubai filling in the role of cautionary tale.

Nice to live in if you're on top, but not so nice if you're part of the majority of laborers. Just because other places in the world are worse doesn't mean the problems of Dubai should be considered insignificant or ignored.

True, compared to the rest of the middle east it looks great (which isn't saying much) but with closer analysis it becomes clear that it's a husk of a city that owes much of its "success" to oil rather than social progress and ingenuity. Is it better than many other places? Sure. Does it serve as a model or inspire other countries in the region to improve themselves? It doesn't seem like it.

Dubai is emblematic of excesses that have led major developed countries into a major recession. It's about terrible investments in land and energy. That ski park the article mentions? It consumes the energy equivalent of 3,500 barrels of oil per day. Over a barrel of oil for each visitor.

1 barrel of oil produces about 20 gallons of gasoline.

and?

I think the point is, "most Americans use several barrels of oil a week, for driving their cars and powering their HDTVs". We all use a lot of energy these days, so it seems unfair to single out Dubai.

Dubai's oil reserves have diminished significantly and are expected to be exhausted in 20 years.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080705161411/http://www.uae.gov...

The reason they are building skyscrapers, race-tracks etc is that once the oil run out, Dubai shouldn't see an exodus. They want to become the financial capital of Asia and keep the money flowing in.

Abu Dhabi, though, is in a similar monetary situation and yet it has prospered. While it has its blemishes and extravagance, it has turned its primarily-oil GDP into a well structure economy. It has diversified significantly. Instead of spending $2b on a race track, Abu Dhabi spent $700m on a solar plant.

I would liken the current status of the West as more aligned with Abu Dhabi. Dubai is something that could happen if our eyes get bigger than our stomachs.

Unfortunately, I don't think that an article about Vietnam would generate as much traffic or eyeballs for Vanity Fair. I agree with you - there are much bigger issues going on in the world than Dubai's lack of culture, but it sounds like you should be reading The Economist instead of Vanity Fair.

Reading about Dubai is interesting to some people; I don't see the point in bashing it. At the end of the day, Vanity Fair is a business and they're trying to make something people want.

I'm in Vietnam right now. If the South Vietnam/United States/South Korea coalition had beaten the North Vietnam/Soviet Union/Red China/North Korea coalition, it would be a much nicer, safer place to live.

For that matter, why were they in such a hurry to gain independence from France? I mean, who do they think they are?

the fact that Vietnam is more like North Korea than South Korea since the Southern side lost to the North in that war - and it's ruined the country.

This assumes both an idyllic pre-war state, and a uniform teleology of socioeconomic development, neither of which are grounded in reality. A key difference between Vietnam and Dubai is that Vietnam hasn't been pitching itself as heaven on earth or the ultimate playground for adult children, and you seem to resent its failure to do so.

are you worried that the internet will run dry of ink to write articles?

No, I'm worried about ignorance - where one of the more liberal and prosperous places in a misgoverned region gets negative press and lots of places deserving of negative press do not. This creates skewed views of the world for people who don't travel.

Liberal ? Asians in most Gulf countries including Dubai are treated like dirt and the labourers are almost modern day slaves. A lot of them have their passports taken away by the employer forcing them to stay in dubai.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/08/middleeast.const...

Edit: Excerpt: "Once they arrive in the United Arab Emirates, migrant workers are treated little better than cattle, with no access to healthcare and many other basic rights. The company that sponsors them holds on to their passports - and often a month or two of their wages to make sure that they keep working. And for this some will earn just 400 dirhams (£62) a month."

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4249223.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6171909.stm

> Liberal ?

Relative to the rest of the Middle East, yes, absolutely, by leaps and bounds.

> Asians in most Gulf countries including Dubai are treated like dirt and the labourers are almost modern day slaves.

This is also true in their native countries. The poorest Indian laborers live bad lives at home or in Dubai. They go to there because, in theory, you get paid 2-3 times as much for similarly bad conditions as back home.

> A lot of them have their passports taken away by the employer forcing them to stay in dubai.

This shouldn't happen, and it's criminal when it does happen. Hopefully they crack down on it and throw people in jail that do that.

That all said - yes, it's still one of the most liberal places in the Middle East.

> This is also true in their native countries. The poorest Indian laborers live bad lives at home or in Dubai. They go to there because, in theory, you get paid 2-3 times as much for similarly bad conditions as back home.

Not true. A lot of them were cheated. Dubai government turns a blind eye to these practices.

--------------------------

From the guardian article:

"All of these men are part of a huge scam that is helping the construction boom in the Gulf. Like hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, they each paid more than £1,000 to employment agents in India and Pakistan. They were promised double the wages they are actually getting, plus plane tickets to visit their families once a year, but none of the men in the room had actually read their contract. Only two of them knew how to read.

"They lied to us," a worker with a long beard says. "They told us lies to bring us here. Some of us sold their land; others took big loans to come and work here."

----------------------------

From the independent article

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-har...

Since the recession hit, they say, the electricity has been cut off in dozens of the camps, and the men have not been paid for months. Their companies have disappeared with their passports and their pay. "We have been robbed of everything. Even if somehow we get back to Bangladesh, the loan sharks will demand we repay our loans immediately, and when we can't, we'll be sent to prison."

This is all supposed to be illegal. Employers are meant to pay on time, never take your passport, give you breaks in the heat – but I met nobody who said it happens. Not one. These men are conned into coming and trapped into staying, with the complicity of the Dubai authorities

>none of the men in the room had actually read their contract. Only two of them knew how to read.

Only two of them knew how to read? Now, whose fault is that, Dubai's government, or India's? If so much of India's population is illiterate, they're screwed wherever they live, be it Dubai or Japan.

Vietnam's literacy rate is over 90%. India can surely do better.

Is this like the time you threw the paralyzed kid into the ocean and then blamed her drowning on her parents for not teaching her better car dodging skills?

i can't fathom how you interpreted the basic statistics presented in the article. do you think the enslaved migrant workers are a representative sample of people from india? do you think only 2 people from india can read??

What I'm saying is, these are India's (and Pakistan's) citizens, not Dubai's. The onus is on India's government to protect them, not Dubai.

Dubai government turns a blind eye to these practices.

This is the real problem. Consider:

none of the men in the room had actually read their contract. Only two of them knew how to read.

This contract would not be enforceable in the United Kingdom (and probably the US, but I don't know how much common law the US applies to contracts) whereas Dubai's legal system doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the people it should be protecting the most (I admit, perhaps it shouldn't be.. I have a rather liberal Western viewpoint).

In making the pro-Dubai argument you seem to consistently do so by letting it clear fairly low hurdles. (paraphrasing) "More liberal - relative to the middle east", "its better governed - then Laos".

Trying to just be better then the absolute worst is a rapid path to mediocrity. Perhaps, considering Dubai's lofty goals, its fair to compare it (as the author does) to something a bit more progressive?

That's a great point.

People always say mean things about the Soviet Union, but in comparison to North Korea, a factory worker in the Stalinist era had a great degree of personal freedom.

from the latest post on your blog:

> "I think the majority of the world is basically hostile to ambition and wealth and achievement."

> "Want more, build more, do more, get more, be more, have more, live more.

> More. And no apologies."

i think your reaction to this article has little to do with concern about ignorance, and much more to do with having critical eyes turned on the profound failings of unbridled "more".

I do find the state of journalism in covering nations to be pretty haphazard and ignorant. I think a lot of people feel that way.

But beyond that, dude, you comment about me a lot, like way more than seems sane and reasonable. And it's always similar - an out of context quote, and a snarky remark or some psychoanalysis like this you just did.

It seems trollish at this point - I can't stop you, but it'd be good if refrained from doing it in every unrelated thread on here. It lowers the discussion level.

In my experience, Dubai hardly ever gets bad press, certainly not a disproportionate amount of bad press compared to other countries. This is just journalists doing their jobs. I don’t see the problem.

The U.K. Papers www.independent.co.uk and www.guardian.co.uk often have quite interesting stories on Dubai, but their stories aren't really from the standard political perspective.

What is the "standard political perspective"?

The Independent and The Guardian are two fine newspapers. They generally run interesting and intelligent articles, often covering stories that you don't find in other newspapers or media outlets.

Exactly. They would be considered by some (or all?) to have a leftwing slant and therefore be tainted somehow. They are considerably to the left of most American papers for example.

Bear in mind the U.S. has two main political parties; the right-wing one, and the even more right-wing one. The U.S. papers simply can't afford to be centrist or leftist.

The U.S. has two main political parties: the left-wing one in perpetual power, and an incompetent left-wing one that still thinks they can get the outcomes they want through elections (they can't; progressive civil servants run the show).

Some introductory reading: "Politics: Comtemporary" in http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/2009/03/collected-writings-o...

http://www.corrupt.org/columns/martin_regnen/condensed_moldb...

To be fair, I didn't need to wear a tinfoil hat when reading _every_ paragraph!

Most of these are well-justified in his essays; obviously a condensed summary will not be very convincing.

Hey, a place where women are dressed in burqas, have to be escorted, have a separate section in the bus and the metro is not considered liberal. Free trade != liberalism

A few women wear the niqab, and quite a few more dress in low-cut tops without drawing a second glance.

There is a women-only 1/2 car on a long metro, ie men are prohibited, but women can use any car they want.

Women don't have to be escorted and can drive alone without a second glance.

Alcohol is widely available in hotel bars and liquor stores, although you have to show a liquor license indicating you're not Muslim in the liquor stores.

So yes, for whatever faults, it is the most socially liberal place in the region.

Sorry man, your contrarianism is a flop here. Every place has problems and they should all be pointed out. To not believe that different places have different culture is to be blind, and Dubai seems to have a weird one which is why people keep talking about it.

Uhm I think the point he's making is that Dubai is run by a bunch of bandits just bandits with a lot more money than the average.

I agree that "lack of culture" is not a good reason to criticize Dubai, but I think the fact that foreigners are damn near kidnapped and treated as slave labor in order to build skyscrapers is certainly worthy of criticism.

I think "lack of culture" is a good reason to criticize if Dubai is advertising itself as "having" culture.

They are criticized for posing and hypocrisy, which to me it seems, is universally considered a universal negative trait.

Is Laos paying large PR firms and selling itself as "having culture"? Is Vietnam? Are they fooling anyone? Not really. Dubai has been selling itself as something it is not and underneath it is pretty much and empty shell, and I think that is what was being pointed out.

Aren't you are doing the very thing you criticize: criticizing when other things more worthy of criticism exist?

Do you live in Vietnam? This is OT, but I'm 80% taking a job there to head up a tech company. My few visits there (three so far), I haven't had the same experience as you. So I'm sort of wondering what I'm potentially getting myself into.

I support your statement.

Read up on the author too. He was voted bigot of the year last year and has a cred. I am not sure why this even got attention in this place.

When i was in dubai last year, we took a tour with a nice (afghan? dont remember) tour guide. We were all europeans in the bus, and he had worked in Germany before, so he could compare. He was telling us how many of the migrant workers work there: Many owe money to the agent who gets them a visa to work there, essentially being indebted from the moment they step foot in uae. Their passports are withheld from their bosses. They cannot buy property there (nobody can) , and the locals keep the rents artificially high (even though there are literally millions of empty apts) so that most migrant workers cannot afford to rent and have to rent in Sharjah, a different emirate. And when their visa ends, they cannot get a new one for 6 months (so they need to get back home)

Money governs dubai, and that is not even close to what you call "reasonably well-governed". Mass atrocities, neglect , decay etc. is everywhere, even in dubai, no matter how well they try to hide it.

UAE citizens enjoy free housing (with pool+ garage) in a specially allocated part of the city, virtually all the businesses are run by foreigners. Locals go to their own native-only exclusive nightclubs where you need an ID card. The locals own lots of money and businesses (mostly trade) and compete with each other over who has the biggest skyscraper (the land is very cheap since it's a desert). Showing off your wealth (by building exorbitantly expensive mansions , skyscrapers, islands etc) is practically their native sport.

And they are right about the culture thing. I was supposed to be visiting an arab country but you never meet arabs - everything is run by foreigners. Tourism isn't just about leisure time. Most everything feels artificial, plastic, empty, from the driverless trains, to the huge but empty skyscraper regions, the pointlessly long roads (who lives at the end of the road? still nobody), to the artificial islands full of beaches where it's always too hot to swim. And then the heat, when you feel your brain will boil if you stay outside a taxi for more than a few seconds. In all, dubai feels like plastic - odorless, cheap, flexible, disposable and eco-unfriendly

That being said, VanityFair would not have written this article back in 2005 when thousands of western engineers were making millions in the world's largest tax-free construction site.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2006/06/dubai-200...

The article has its share of gushing. However lines like "As far as fantastic working environments go, what of the tens of thousands of lowly immigrant laborers who are toiling like slaves under the whip of all-consuming construction?"

give VF some credibility.

VanityFair would not have written this article back in 2005 when thousands of western engineers were making millions in the world's largest tax-free construction site.

excellent point!

I've had the same tour experience as you with pakistani expats there 5 years ago, and they seemed utterly amazed by the whole Dubai thing, as we did.

delta perceived greatness vs perceived suckyness matters.