The Dubai Debt Trap
economist.com
economist.com
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Guru Meditation:
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Varnish cache serverFor most modern Web publishing, this is mostly a matter of finding and extracting the <article> block, as well as metadata (title, byline, dateline).
html-xml-tools is quite useful for this.
I'd created a WaPo extractor that reduced pagesize by about 95%, stripped the nags and paywalls, etc. Endpoint was HTML, but that could just as easily have generated PDF or ePub if I'd wanted.
I am much lazier, but I use "reader mode" to similar effect.
https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean
That's not even going into their de facto slavery with foreign construction workers, environmental damage, and sexism.
I'm 6 ft 6 and I have a blonde wife who's just a bit smaller. Even though we behaved very polite and dressed like locals it was like we had a big target on our backs and were looked upon with resentment everywhere we went.
I will not mention the countries we visited but it was pretty much the same everywhere.
This is much more common than you think in cities.
Source: 7'
I get really bored hearing someone talking about us like this. While your knowledge about Arab countries comes from an all-inclusive trip to Tunisia or something.
The west always plays a big role in keeping dictators all over the place, who don't care about education or anything other than their chair. People are ignorant and if you look fancy or different, even if you are native, they will look at you like that. Not entirely your fault, but your politicians love it, and use their super powers to keep it as it is.
Nothing in the parent comment warrants what you said. What happens in practice is that being white in poorer countries makes you stand out and sometimes this comes with negative feelings of being unwanted there.
This is just a fact being told and it doesn’t justify a “you guys and your politics” comment. It’s just to point out, perhaps, that some places are more welcoming of foreigners than others.
I've travelled back and forth from Dubai for business and other emirates and countries and never had that experience.
When you say "fact being told", you actually mean "anecdote being shared".
Nothing from my experience indicates an automatic feeling of hatred towards me and my wife when going to these countries. In fact, the opposite.
And don't get me wrong. I have my issues with these countries and their governments, just like I have my issues with many other countries, but that doesn't mean you dismiss the entire population.
Maybe it's time you engaged with the cultures. I'm sure it'll be "No thanks". Surprise me.
I’ll surprise you: English is not my first language, I haven’t been in my home country since 2015, I speak 3 languages fluently, I’m currently living in Indonesia and can already speak my fourth language (although not well). I lived 3-15 months each in more than 10 countries.
You got the wrong person. I know what I’m talking about because I’ve lived it.
> I lived 3-15 months each in more than 10 countries.
Is that supposed to mean that you know those countries more than natives?
You’re completely out of context. I’m just replying to the parent suggesting I don’t engage with the cultures.
All I need to tell you is that I’ve been stared at, followed, called names, harassed in a number of countries, and many of them were Arab. Go figure.
Maybe it's time you up the standard of your associates. Those standards are high and low in all countries. It's your choice to associate or tolerate them or find those that have a higher standard.
As said, my experiences have been different.
Good luck,
Your comment reflects your lack of knowledge about us.
I don't hate western people for being western or white. I respect a lot of them and would love to learn from them.
Some places are more welcoming because people have more knowledge about dealing with foreigners and know more about their culture. So it comes back to education and being open to other cultures as I said, which dictators will never care about. They take money and weapons from you, then tell the people a lot of nonsense about you. People don't really know you. Then when someone tries to tell you this, you say your comment is full of assumptions and hatred.
Also, your media plays a big role in making people see us like animals, watch "bad reel arabs" and it should tell you more about that.
I’m talking out of my own experience in Africa, Asia and South America. I don’t go flashing out money around and I know exactly how I’m seen and how I’m treated in every place I’ve lived in. And no, I‘ve never been in a resort and I live in local housing trying to learn the language. So kindly go f yourself.
I am not sure who is full of hatered here, telling me to go f myself while I am trying to say my understanding about a place I know more than you do.
“Are you western?” is not an acceptable start. How would you like it if I started my comment with: “Are you black?” — regardless of whether you are, which is my point.
I asked that, because we always get that from most western people. Western media which is being watched all over the world shape us in a certain way, while they play a role in keeping our countries as it is. You just want to bully and cancel an Arab my friend because you hate us, that's all.
I hope to visit more Arab countries soon and make more friends there.
There are issues with women rights in many country. Blaming the west is a way to ignore them.
I will say it in a different way, WE ARE NOT YOUR ENEMY, but you are too blind not to realize that by yourself.
The enemies are roughly Salafia and Ikhwan. They are the ones with the hateful retoric. And they have a huge following.
Does this automatically make what I said incorrect?
This bad situation also predates western imperialism or Pax Americana.
We loved it. I'm learning arabic on Duolingo now because I got curious about the script.
Of course, YMMV.
We bought tickets for the Petra by night show, and while it was good, we felt it was a bit expensive for what it was.
The martian landscapes of Wadi Rum were equally as good.
We had two full days there and it was such an extraordinary site to look around.
And I'm pretty sure there were about 5 "Best view in the world" :) Although all of them could make a pretty good claim to the title, it's a stunning area.
I know it's not a perfect country, but to us it felt safe, in the way that some other nations don't, and we weren't confining ourselves to the usual tourist spots of Amman, Petra, and Wadi Rum, but also wandering further afield besides. Yet I've felt more at risk in parts of Europe, Russia, and China.
I just checked some global indexes and was not surprised to find that Jordan ranks #1 for literacy and medicine in the region, despite being one of the nations without oil revenue. In my experience it carried itself with the patina of both storied history and modern education.
The last time I visited Dahab (a very simple yet beautiful place in Sinai, not sure if you know it or not), I saw an Arab man, from his accent it was clear he is not an Egyptian, maybe he is a Saudi or Kuwaiti, he was having a discussion with the Hotel's reception about being charged more just because he is not an Egyptian. This is just something stupid they do to get more money. I am sorry that you had to pay more for the same service.
I didn't mind the overcharging too much when it was obvious. Like it was funny to me and the taxi driver that he was charging too much, and we had a laugh about it. Coming from the USA, the flight cost far dominated any expenses from when I was in Egypt. The one time it did feel bad was when the tour guide I hired, who seemed to be on my side, let me be overcharged by someone he had a prior arrangement with. But alas he was so knowledgable.
I realize all this is only a small part of Egypt and it's not fair to judge a whole country by a few bad apples.
One of my new Egyptian friends wanted me to try so many types of food that he sent me home with two extra bags of stuff. That's excessive hospitality :)
They might have been lucky, though. A moroccan women who also hitchhiked a lot just stated, the closer to mauretania, the more rape attempts.
Happened to my pops because he, a German-born Canadian of Turkish and German descent, refused to pay bribes. I was actually conceived while he was out there in Saudi Arabia with my mom and they came back to Canada to have me but not before a giant RCMP investigation kicked off that ended up in Canadian parliament because courts didn't have jurisdiction at that time.
The only reason he didn't go to jail was ONE GUY, a young Lebanese dude with a family and a nascent green card to America had the balls to go against everyone else in the conspiracy. He freely testified that he was the one that actually carried the cash between the parties involved—implicating himself and risking his family's future—and he knew just who was guilty and who wasn't and the one guy who wasn't in on it was my father.
Later, he met with some American officials and they said something along the lines of "don't worry about your green card, we want more Americans like you" to the Lebanese dude.
Later my parents made him and his wife my godparents and we talk on the phone even to this day.
But think about it. Dozens of well-off people conspired to pin prison time on some random person from Canada who wouldn't hurt a soul.
Fuck. That.
They're working on it. The situation has improved. There's a long way to go, but there's progress. Give it a 100 more years.
> dressed like locals
Please don't do that. It just looks weird when foreigners do it. Just wear what you would normally wear in your western country. (Although, a bikini is probably not a good idea).
> were looked upon with resentment everywhere we went.
I've lived in USA for a while. Although people were generally very friendly, I have definitely been looked at with resentment from America for no good reason.
Then the sand will consume it.
I predict it will be a fascinating ghost city, almost like a bizarro-pyramids/sphinx/etc.
So they've diversified into other businesses. It's now a hub of business activities that have nothing to do with oil.
Global warming — yes that's a problem, but Dubai won't be the only place affected by it.
War — what makes you think there'll be a war? Whatever it is, it's just speculation at this point. As long as a certain war-o-phile country doesn't decide to flatten it.
decay — huh?! What decay?!
> Then the sand will consume it.
Sandman!
Dubai is so recently and explosively settled, you may not understand what I mean by decay. Cities evolve, change, decay, and hopefully renew. Dubai is a product of aggressive investment/subsidy by the royalty, directly or not. Parts of the city will decline. Aspects of the city will decline. Decay is inevitable, it's entropy. Cities are like life: they must actively renew themselves or they fade.
Dubai also is basically a modern slave labor state. How long will that persist? It seems untenable in the long term. Either the slave labor will leave or dry up, or rebel.
Dubai is attached to the oil age. It's excesses, abuses, etc are forgiven by the world elite because of the flow of oil money. That is going to end. Demand is going to PLUMMET worldwide as EVs displace first consumer transport, then local goods delivery, then long haul ground transport. Somewhere in the middle of "consumer transport" and "local goods delivery" the demand will drop by such a large and extended amount that the price won't really be profitable anymore.
Diversification is obviously the aim, and while this isn't authoritative, I've seen this in action with the bizarre satellite/branch universities Saudi Arabia paid various western universities to set up. Just because you throw money at it doesn't mean it sticks. Those universities couldn't find the people that would do the work of academia beyond the usual bullshit of rubber stamp diplomas that universities currently make sausage with.
The sand will consume it. Dubai has to actively keep sand dunes away. If that stops, and what if a section of a city decays and isn't work keeping the dunes away? Yes, the sand will "consume" it.
The oil kings are attempting the "pivot". They are fat, lazy, and unmotivated.
In San Francisco if someone walks into your shop and steals less than $950 worth of goods there's pretty much nothing you can do about it; is that rule of law?
Rule of law basically means laws apply to everyone the same.
Your rights can be infringed by any person on Earth at any time they please. But then, laws can be invoked to make said person stop and to apply the appropriate punishment/reparations.
+
Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia. (R.S. § 1979; Pub. L. 96–170, § 1, Dec. 29, 1979, 93 Stat. 1284; Pub. L. 104–317, title III, § 309(c), Oct. 19, 1996, 110 Stat. 3853.)
In other places you have no such thing and, trust me, things are much worse.
They are not prosecuted in San Francisco because the DA chooses not to do so.
I'd argue that I'd rather let someone steal than let them rot in jail for such a long time, for such a low monetary value, be it from debt or from theft. I understand you may disagree, that's why we do politics.
Additionally, which country has the best "rule of law", comparatively? Talking in absolutes in that regard is moot in my opinion.
There is a middle ground between these two extremes. Also, if you want to compare costs, you have to factor in the deterrence effect of the latter, which will translate to much less lost in theft, and in additional store security.
Eh, lots of people are in jail in the US primarily due to their inability to pay court fees. Many because they couldn't pay the public defender fees.[1] Lots of cases where the accumulation of court fees dwarfs the financial costs of their original crime, and are punished much more for not being able to pay for fees than for their original crime.
Oh, and in some states they suspend your driver's license for nonpayment of these fees. This makes it even harder to work and earn money.
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/government_public/publica...
[1] Many wrongly assume that "the courts will provide one for you" means they're free. They often aren't.
In all honesty you can basically apologize out of a lot of crimes and police generally don’t bother with anything else unless there’s video evidence, they catch you in the act, or you’re a high profile person involved in a high profile act.
Just never get caught with drugs in your possession, and if you get caught with personal amounts, apologize and cry. Not kidding.
(The inverse is also true: Japan is rather lax about CSAM possession, about to the same degree as America is lax about weed possession. It's technically a crime but most people caught will be let off with a fine and a warning.)
Quite the opposite, in fact. CSAM is a pillar of the manga industry. Enjo kosai (compensated dating) is a cultural norm.
http://fileserver.idpc.net/library/The-history-current-state...
In the US, unless they have a solid case and offer a plea bargain, you’re better off not talking to cops and staying silent until they give up. In Japan, once you know they have somewhat of a case, you’re better off making it easy for the police and immediately apologizing. They mostly just drag people who don’t comply and haven’t really learned their lesson (it’s assumed you won’t be dumb enough to make the same mistake twice).
Most first time drug cases end with an apology, crying, and being let go. Americans make the mistake of thinking not talking will help, so police hold them until they do. It can help in bigger crimes, though, since if the evidence is hard to prove, they’ll just hold you for a while and hope you’ll confess, but if not, often let you go instead of risk losing at a trial.
My wife had a homicide trial where prosecutors had a complete video tape record of the accused shooting the victim and driving back to his house. The trial was just cutting from one CCTV feed to the next as the accused drove around town. The jury found him guilty—because of course they did.
This article is not about someone's innocence, it's about the system and processes, some of which are considered illegal by the UAE's own constitution.
The hook in the article is the following claim: "foreigners doing business in Dubai are often unaware that local politicians and businessmen – elite figures are often both – may use the courts to pursue vendettas, settle scores or raid assets they covet. Even the smallest debt can lead to years in jail. Cornelius is just one of thousands of expats who are either imprisoned in Dubai after falling foul of the emirate’s draconian legal system."
So they are presenting Cornelius as an innocent, almost random person with a small debt, who is merely an example of what could happen to anyone doing business in Dubai. That's a lot of people and thus a topic of general interest.
Later on we learn that in fact Cornelius was even by his own admission a massive fraudster, operating in the hundreds of millions range. Yes, Dubai's court system sounds like a joke. Not a good look for them. But this guy is hardly a source of generalizable lessons that might interest other people especially as it becomes clear later in the article that he appears to have been specifically targeted by the Sheikh himself.
I'm actually quite appalled at how far the Economist has fallen. I haven't read it for years and didn't expect such a manipulatively written article from them.
Oh man, the trifecta - Alchohol, Ramadan+Beach + With a woman not a member of your family. In the three+ months I was in Dubai in 2015, I was nervous even shaking hands in a business meeting with a woman (and obviously would never do so with a local woman, couldn't even be in an elevator alone with one) - was instructed very strictly about appropriate behavior during Ramadan (don't expose your knees on the beach).
Counter Intuitively, I've never been in any city in the world where the hotel lounges were so aggressive in serving alcohol. I ended up drinking more alcohol in Dubai in a month than I would the rest of the year in other cities around the world.
Many western people think they can just go anywhere and expect laws to work the same as they do at home. I would not go to a country with such insanity but if you do, observe the local laws and customs. They don’t put up 100s of scary posters at the Thai border for nothing for instance, tourists seem to blatantly break these religious rules and they will face consequences. Same with a lot of Middle East, African and Asian countries. Just do your research or simply do not go; it is not like Europe or the US, although of course for most people it feels like it because they don’t get caught (by pure luck; I doubt most holidaying for a week in Dubai know about this) when they kiss on Ramadan.
One of my additional takeaways here though is the failure of the British Foreign Office. Part of the service I expect my embassy to provide is assistance if I were to get caught up in a foreign legal system, even if this is only to connect me with a local lawyer. I also expect them to exert diplomatic pressure if the local courts or prosecutors are applying a double standard to foreigners.
> The Economist used to be a decent publication with great journalism, unfortunately that is not the case anymore.
How come? Are you saying that they left something out or twisted the facts?
It's best to have a handler. We had a guy that was a fixer. He worked for my family's employer technically and was available to all the expat employees in Dubai, but he was like the well connected guy you have on speed dial and call immediately if anything occurs. He'd swoop in and money would change hands and/or a phone call would be made and everything would magically be solved. I think in the 15 years they ended up calling him about 10 times and they're all insane stories over beers. Luckily, the few weeks I was there things were pretty quiet.
He was probably technically a contractor so the company had separation from the bribes that took place. Probably not practical to find someone like that for a short vacation but if you’re an expat or spending an extended time there you could find someone like this. It’s not cheap. Sounds horrible, but At the very least, hire a guide to be with you and take the fall for anything that happens. Mostly this means Hire a driver and don’t operate a vehicle. Other things are pretty low risk if you’re just engaging in typical tourist stuff in typical tourist areas.
That's more true of Saudi Arabia, than UAE. The first thing you are told to tell your female relatives is to never ever travel alone outside in SA, anywhere, as the police can and do use that as an excuse to arrest them and molest or rape them. The reverse also happens - some rich womenfolk often seduce their male servants / drivers to have sex with them. If the guy wants to stop, some of the women blackmail them with threat to report them for attempted rape. (Source: one of my distant relative who worked as a driver in a Saudi household).
It was in UEA.
from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10538379/Female-Wor...:
A female World Cup official is facing a sentence of 100 lashes and seven years in jail for 'extramarital sex' after she reported being raped while working in Qatar.
Paola Schietekat, 28, from Mexico, was working for the World Cup organising committee when she complained that she was raped by an associate who broke into her apartment and threatened to kill her.
She reported the June 6, 2021 attack to the Qatari authorities, who responded by accusing her of having an affair and charged her with 'extramarital sex', which is illegal in the Gulf state.
Schietekat was told by lawyers that one way of avoiding conviction was to marry her attacker but instead decided to flee the country, leaving behind what she called her 'dream job'.
What they do experience is earning lots of tax-free money, and a vibrant city life. Obviously those negatives are all present but less of a threat than one might think from the outside.
Perhaps that seems like too much of a risk to some people. But to others, who aren’t living in “heaven-on-earth” first world countries it’s an easy gamble to make.
(Culturally hyper-conservative is especially hilarious for anyone who has been to a Dubai brunch.)
I doubt anybody who lived in the gulf for at least a year never been a witnness to extremely harsh treatment of debtors firsthand.
I myself knew a person who went to a debtor prison over a parking ticket.
This comes as a surprise to a lot of people who never been to UAE.
The percentage of uber-rich natives is grossly overestated by the popular image of the country. Nor there are that many really rich expats, unless with businesses outside of UAE, and who only come there to spend.
UAE is not a good place to make money in, but it's often a first choice for MNCs to setup in the region, as anywhere else in the region is even worse.
Only 10%-15% of the UAE population is somewhat close to American middle income standards.
Sorry, but that is just not true. You're always one mistake away from losing all your rights and going through a miserable experience. This could happen to anyone who is basically not royalty or extremely high ranks, I've experienced it first-hand.
Everyone knows this, so people are quite afraid to mess up, at any level. Ask any foreigner who has lived there (not just visited) for a while.
Poor South Asian migrant workers are also treated better in Dubai. In Singapore they have a separate class of work visa with very limited rights, and during covid they were locked down in their worker dormitories for over a year, unable to interact with the rest of society.
But, for sure, there's plenty of places in the world who operate in a similar way.
I thought they were quite long suffering with "Briton arrested for not wearing a facemask in Singapore' because he said he didn't believe in them and wouldn't do it. I think he was jailed a couple of weeks and kicked out https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9864365/Briton-arre...
They can be a bit harsh with asking foreigners to leave if they have a work permit and lose their job. I think you get 30 days to go which is a bit of an upheaval if you are fired.
Hmm..
Singapore's police force and public prosecutor also practise a fair amount of prosecutorial discretion when it comes to charges [2], depending on how people plead their case before it goes to trial.
[1] https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=Sc2-#Sc2-
[2] https://singaporelegaladvice.com/law-articles/prosecutorial-...
It's common knowledge that the Singapore government has ownership stakes in most successful companies operating here via our sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings, but I've never heard of private organisations being considered governmental bodies (like DIB in the article).
Our prisons aren't pleasant either [1], but I'm quite certain inmates get healthcare when necessary.
All in, I don't think anyone here would experience a lack of due process, or the same helplessness obtaining legal representation, like what I felt reading the article.
This is clearly visible at eg Riyadh immigration, where there are three unposted but universally observed lines: Gulf Arabs in white thobes, professionals of all sorts, and manual laborers.
> less of a threat than one might think from the outside.
Until they're not. It's not like the "silly" laws in your country/state where you can duel on sundays and kill a man, these are applied grossly and unfairly to many people.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/10/woman-held-in-...
A few of my school friends moved out there (and Abu Dhabi), they see it as a sort of dream land where they can live a luxurious life they believe they thoroughly deserve and earned. They're a mixture of disbelieving there's some gross stuff going on and dismissive of its severity. An argument I've seen by one was that there are no countries that can escape criticism, which is true in a way but it just feels a bit more cruel and deliberate in the Gulf.
So that explains a little bit of the indifference to the defacto slavery, however these sort of stories where the person suffering is white may give them pause for thought...
I am not saying the things you mentioned do not happen, but they're not as overly apparent as they are in some other parts of the Middle East, or China.
The heat though, yeah, that's a thing. When you have air conditioned bus stops, it's a different level.
Living there, as in being born there and having family and friendly connections, also presents a different set of moral and personal challenges vs. deciding to open a branch of my business there or taking a vacation there. In an abstract moral sense I'd like to divest myself of the US for a decade now, but that would be both materially dangerous until an alternative citizenship is effectively secured, and unfair to my family members who still live there.
And whataboutism is also whataboutism, if I understand Wikipedia correctly. If I can call you out, you think being waited on by slaves is bad but give it a few thousand miles, then there's no mental gymnastics going on? Yeah we in the West^W capitalist world can pull the mental gymnastics and say "Well, it's the evil capitalist system, what can we do", oh hey, welcome to the class!
> Some commentators have defended the usage of whataboutism and tu quoque in certain contexts. Whataboutism can provide necessary context into whether or not a particular line of critique is relevant or fair. In international relations, behavior that may be imperfect by international standards may be quite good for a given geopolitical neighborhood, and deserves to be recognized as such.[12]
> Christian Christensen, Professor of Journalism in Stockholm, argues that the accusation of whataboutism is itself a form of the tu quoque fallacy, as it dismisses criticisms of one's own behavior to focus instead on the actions of another, thus creating a double standard. Those who use whataboutism are not necessarily engaging in an empty or cynical deflection of responsibility: whataboutism can be a useful tool to expose contradictions, double standards, and hypocrisy.[82][83]
Members of all classes in the west benefit (in some ways) from from this arrangement, but only members of the capitalist classes are capable of changing it without revolutionary action. So, I know what I can do, but the first step involves rekindling class consciousness in the west which is rather a large order.
In the meantime while I do that, I can also not hit up a party in Dubai, and I think that's good too.
Or will you make the argument that confiscating laborers' passports is "quite good" for that geopolitical neighborhood?
Dubai sells this luxury destination dream literally built by slaves.
Take this "slavery" nonsense for example. There is literally no difference between migration regime of a low-skilled worker and a highly-paid "expat". Rules are the same and they are way softer than, for example, H1B.
Millions used to be spent on smearing Dubai, so we will be hearing echoes of those "horror stories" for many years.
Other horror stories, which are not propaganda, are coming from cultural deafness. A Brit gets drunk, engages in sex on a public beach and then cries about "savage laws" when gets arrested. When in Rome, do like Romans, but some people think their view is better than anyone else's. I've seen Brits who think British laws should apply to them wherever they go.
You can’t be serious.
Nobody is withholding an expat’s passport while they live in boxes with 16 other people and working for months on end.
You’re making ridiculous comparisons and it makes me dubious of your intent here.
Even if they let you keep your passport, you still need an exit visa to leave. I've known wealthy upper class people to get stuck in the country for a bit because they had a dispute with their employer and the latter then refused to sign the paperwork so he could get an exit visa.
Putting 16 people in the same "box" is also illegal and, frankly, I've never seen laborers being treated like that. I think you are making this up or referring to an outlier case.
Laborers have two options: take care of their own housing or live in a employer-provided accommodation. Bankers, obviously, choose the former, taxi drivers choose the latter. There is no law that says taxi drivers should be treated differently than bankers.
It helps if one imagines Dubai as a cruise ship: expats are treated as a typical cruise ship crew. Some sleep in bunks next to the engines, some pay to live in better rooms on higher decks, but the approach in general is the same. Each member of the crew is there temporarily and they know it. They are expected to do their job and leave once its over.
I've never been to this country but I've been to Vegas once and I somehow expect the whole experience to be very similar and to attract the same kind of people
Sorry to hear about your experience. Mine was wildly different, and I came away with entirely opposite impressions of their service industry.
> no public transport to speak of
How did you manage to miss all the huge flashy light rail stations? It was really convenient to use for travel throughout the city. Especially as a tourist -- just about all tourist destinations are close to a station.
Here's what you can hear about the USA.
1)Endless suburban sprawl, resulting in massive environmental destruction. Illegal immigrants heavily involved in the construction industry, leading to mass exploitation
2)Structural racism
3)Human rights on a sliding scale, with rich white rapists getting no jail sentences, and poor black people and immigrants going to jail for minor offenses.
4)Rich consumers pushing environmental and human rights issues to poor countries where people are exploited to build your $1000 phone and $250 shoe.
5)Lots of places where if you go and say "I'm an Atheist, Jesus is not God" will likely result in violence against you
6)Corrupt legal system, heavily favoring corporations and rich people
7)Absurdly hot in parts of it, Absurdly cold in other parts of it.
>I can't believe anyone would voluntarily go there, seems like hell on earth.
Lots of people probably feel that way about the USA based on the news.
UAE (Dubai, Abu Dhabi), and other countries in that region, have a lot of issues. I'll be the first to admit it having had second class status there. But I can't help but feel that a lot of Western news outlets love to bash that part of the world because it plays into how a lot of people like to feel like the rest of the world is a shithole.
I'm not making any assumptions about you in this post, but just making a comment.
I think the challenge here is that "welcoming" is relative to who you are, including your financial status and skin color.
There are countries people talk about on HN and Reddit which are super welcoming, everybody is friendly, great for remote work, taking an inexpensive vacation, etc.
I once traveled to one of those countries with a white friend. It was comical to see how differently we'd be treated even though we'd be walking next to each other on the road or sitting together at a restaurant. We're clearly friends and hanging out. He'd get his ass kissed and I'd be treated like a non-entity. Our English, human interaction skills, and financial status were pretty much the same. It's not like anybody could tell his passport or mine by looking at us.
Again, UAE and other countries in that region have lots of problems. So this isn't negating what you are saying.
Otherwise that's all fairly accurate. But Disney world is pretty damn great.
Some things seem to be universal.
Given that, I don't think I have ever read anything good about the UAE, either editorial or comments from expats. Maybe from insta influencers who wanted to pad their hollow "luxury life" existance.
There are 10 million people living in the UAE, 90% of which are expats. Lots of them live comfortable lives in the sense that they do what most people do - get jobs, have kids, do their daily routine, meet their friends, and all that regular stuff. They live normal regular lives and find fulfillment in those things.
It's no different than anywhere else in the world. If you live in UAE you'll find plenty of positive stories.
One thing I always laugh about is that my parents (who live outside of the USA) will text me asking about housing prices in my area, bad weather (that happened in a different state), some protest downtown (that I didn't even hear about), riots from police brutality and if it affects me, etc. But nobody seems to know that my neighborhood had a pot-luck where all the kids were having fun and the parents got a chance to meet each other and get to know the new people in the community.
It's no different living outside of UAE and hearing about UAE.
If 10 percent of the country's population is native, they are surely benefiting from subsidized education, housing, preferential (read: racist) employment, free land, and so on.
It's VERY different from most places in the world, except for other sister nations that depend on oil wealth and have the same luxuries in immigrant exploitation.
Given that all the Indians I know think positively of Dubai, I'm inclined to think that it's very few of them, because surely they'd hear about slave conditions from people who went there before anyone else.
If you've ever been to Dubai, you'd know it's full of people from the subcontinent. Why would it be so full of them if a substantial fraction of them are kept as slaves? It just doesn't make sense. It's mostly the Western white crowd, as opposed to non-white immigrant populations, who think these sorts of things about Dubai.
edit: example of what I mean: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30387801
Dismissing all those people looking for a better life as "slave labor" just doesn't make sense.
Is 1% acceptable in your book vs. the majority of the workforce being in slave-labor-like conditions?
It's not ideal, but yeah. I definitely wouldn't look down on an entire city for not being able to root out that last 1% of corrupt employers.
I've lived in the Middle East. I know plenty of people who live there, or lived there, and love it. Even those who were forced to leave. I know plenty of others who work very hard to get a good white collar job there, and most who succeed did not regret it.
And this is with full acknowledgment of all the bad things people talk about.
Let it just be a signal that there's more to it than you see. Even more, people don't seem to understand how crappy much of the rest of the world is that Dubai is such a desirable place to live. I know lots of people who would have been stuck in extremely low social mobility situations in their home countries, and who only managed to go up in social class by moving to one of these Middle Eastern countries, and earning good money and by doing honest work - the last of which wasn't an option in their own countries.
Honestly, I think this is a really difficult topic to discuss on the internet. It's too easy to misinterpret any "Their situation is awful, but was even worse before" as some sort of a justification, rather than seeing it as just being a statement of how things really are for a lot of people on this planet.
Due to where my family is originally from, I know people in the labor class in UAE who basically scarified their lives and bodies so their children could get an education and a white collar job. It was an terrible choice they had to make. Many people are forced to make the same choices in Western countries, but it's not in the news to the same degree. It's hard to have a rational discourse about life when the choices people have are starvation or suicide in their own country, or a lifetime of manual labor in a foreign country for wages that do nothing for them, but a lot for their families back home.
It's hard to get a visa to move to the US and teach at an elementary school. Yet you can do that in the Middle East.
It wasn't even two decades ago that even professions like doctors, dentists, IT did better economically in the Middle East for many people in comparison to their home countries. Engineers making good money in India/China and not working for a consulting company is a pretty recent thing. A lot of that is changing now as other Asian countries are developing economically, but it's easy to forget how things were even a decade ago.
>It's hard to get a visa to move to the US and teach at an elementary school.
Plus, at least the visa situation in the Middle East is clear. It's not that difficult to get a work visa if you have a job offer and you can work as long as you have a job or until you retire. The visa situation in the US is...no comment :)
This is not the case in the Arab world, for example. I grew up there and have seen horrors of which there is no documented evidence.
You are correct - despite all its flaws, the USA remains a magnet for talent from around the world.
I, for one, am glad we aren't going back to racist gating of citizenship privileges...behind literacy tests, or economic means
I, for one, am glad I live on a continent where mass shootings are a rare occurrence. One-off shootings too, and people accidentally hurting themselves with the things, for that matter.
1) Arrest you without telling you why? 2) Give you no access to a lawyer? 3) Give you no access to translation? 4) Have a debt system in prison, forcing to pay with money you don't have? 5) Retroactively apply laws? 6) Extend imprisonment indefinitely on made-up charges? 7) Ruled by a monarchy?
All the things you list boil down to pointing out the US system is imperfect, not that the system is bad by its very nature and design. UAE cannot be fixed without changing its ruling and legal system. The US can be fixed by improving its existing systems to make them more fair.
Also, the reason you point the failing of the US systems is because media is reporting on those failures. Not foreign media, local ones.
Most of the places people visit and live aren't absurdly hot. The largest cities in the middle east BY FAR are Ciaro, Tehran, Istanbul, and Baghdad.
Cairo is hot most of the year - but one of these places are hotter than Phoenix - which is currently one of the places people are moving to in droves in the US
Tehran & Istanbul, for example, aren't even much hotter than Los Angeles: https://weatherspark.com/y/105125/Average-Weather-in-Tehran-...
If you think Los Angeles has bad weather - you're just out of touch with almost everyone else in the world.
Riyadh and Dubai are VERY HOT. KSA is its own strange destination from a Western perspective. It's mostly religious. But Dubai is similar to Las Vegas and Miami in many ways - in the crowd it attracts and what people do there. It's still much hotter - I agree, don't know how people do it there.
This is an extremely privileged way to think, and I am guessing, you are from a western country. You have had good access to food, and education while growing up. Just a guess... Families, who are on the borderline, or are deep in poverty, in countries such as Pakistan, India, or Bangladesh, go over there for opportunity. They will drive taxis, or work in construction, to send money back, and the remittance is massive. In the billions. It has helped people I know personally get out of poverty, and the children are now being educated in UK universities. These are people who grew up in South Asian villages without much hope.
I grew up in a country next to UAE, and it gave me excellent education in one of the best private schools around, exposure to many cultures, and I am now living in the US based on my life there.
But then again, I do hear from Africans in Southern Africa, why any minority would step foot into the US based on what they see in the news, and yet we have many risking their lives to cross a hostile desert region.
You forgot one: world's premier shopping mall destination.
Dubai is literally one of the biggest prostitution hub on the planet for western prostitutes. Google "yatching".
"server human rights abuse" is an understatement, it's straight out slavery practiced there, legal slavery.
It does not matter if you are a Pakistani prostitute, or a silicon valley programmer, an Indian construction worker, or a British engineer, they will pay you a salary three to seven times higher after taxes than what you make at home.
Further, if you dont have the merits for some well paid job, but they need someone to do it right now, they will pretend you do. So junior programmer with a half finished degree and half a year of experience as a web dev, but they need a senior engineer. Please welcome our senior engineer, and yeah the salary is 3-5x a senior engineer position. The downside is that when they call, you say yes today, dont ask about anything other than salary and start on monday, no matter where you happen to live at the moment or if you are still employed etc.
Oh and if you work there and are white, you write Christian on everything. That way, if you get thrown in prison, you can convert and ask to be released. Its not easy, but it is one of the few ways to get out if it really goes to shit. If you work there and are arab or look arab, you are muslim, and the right kind. If you are black... dont, just dont...
His treatment is unacceptable, the sentence is outrageous (and counterproductive), but fundamentally this is why you don't get into business with and especially don't defraud petty dictators in unstable regions of the world. If this had been in his place of birth, he would have been murdered rather than imprisoned, and I imagine he should be well aware of this given his upbringing and career history.
"he would have been murdered rather than imprisoned" is also not especially comforting considering just how badly one can be scarred by imprisonment, interrogation, etc.
It's clear that debtor's prison, en total, is unethical. It's also illegal in most of the Western world. And for cases where someone is imprisoned for any crime, the sentence should match the crime, and the treatment within prison should be humane.
My latter commentary is about the risk factors that this person knowingly took on doing business in that region. I personally, having traveled extensively, would never engage in business in the Middle East because I understand the nebulous way debt is treated in the region. Usury is illegal under Islamic law, and generally speaking debt is only acceptable in the context of direct personal relationships, which means any dispute about it is taken as a personal insult. Taking on a debt from the finance minister and member of the royal family of a theocratic dictatorship is not a good life decision.
The UK must be addicted to despot money because these things keep on happening and the diplomatic reactions seem non existent.
I don't want to get across that this country is good or bad, but that it's _complex_ (just like most countries). I do personally believe that the leadership of the country is trying to make a positive impact, though it's usually in ways that aren't reported in the media and... that's all I want put out there, just to bring some nuance to the conversation.
Having said all that, going back to the long-form article, I will say only one thing, debt is something that's really scary to have here since AFAIK, it's illegal in Islam, so the credit card system tends to be strangely designed and if I was ever in debt to this country or any of these Arab countries, I'd stay far away from here.
Why would any intelligent person ever set foot there? I'd lose over half of my current rights as it stands.
I won't defend the UAE, but the level of freedom you have in actual daily life is surprisingly disconnected from what's written in a constitution or what the government is doing.
Nonsense argument. Lacks details and specifics.
> I left the west for somewhere where I have a lot fewer rights on paper, but I feel so much freer now, no longer constantly worrying about what the mob thinks of everything I say.
That's where you fucked up: Caring about what [random] people think about you. Also I would love to know what country you feel more free in. For some reason I suspect this will not be answered.
> I won't defend the UAE, but the level of freedom you have in actual daily life is surprisingly disconnected from what's written in a constitution or what the government is doing.
More blah blah blah nonsense. Examples, give them. I have numerous freedoms I exercise daily (speech, worship, association, ownership of war weapons).
Does this really not match your experience of how things have been going lately? Freedom of speech and association but that doesn't prevent you from being fired for what you say or who you associate with. Free to protest unless there's a risk your protest might have an effect, then a state of emergency will be declared and the police will explain how they can legally kidnap your dog.
> That's where you fucked up: Caring about what [random] people think about you. Also I would love to know what country you feel more free in.
Japan, FWIW. I could be deported if I took part in political activities, there are significant restrictions on my speech (strict libel laws). But I have a supportive local community and strong employment protection, both things that count for a lot.
Also you mentioned little fact, mostly emotion, but i stated things like the Year of Tolerance, the religious temples being built, etc. but I’d hope others can also investigate on their own. We are so quick to paint countries as evil without understanding the full situation.
I’ve met several intelligent people here from everywhere in the world and many here are trying to have a positive impact on the country.
You are correct. Let me help rectify my transgression by providing a very consolidated list of things I can do in America that you can not do in the UAE:
1. Hold elections.
2. Form political parties.
3. Criticize my government and officials.
4. Have extra-martial or casual sex.
5. Consume alcohol.
6. Consume cannabis.
7. Be homosexual.
8. Kiss my partner in public.
9. Eat, drink, and smoke between sunrise and sunset during Ramadan.
10. Swear - both IRL and online.
Is that enough or do you need more concrete examples? The list is quite long.
Are you sure this is a good thing? It opens the country to foreign economic exploitation. There's a reason China required it for so long.
I'm sure once they come to Dubai they'll be horrified how the streets aren't covered in human shit and used needles.
I’m not infatuated by anything, I’m simply raising a nuanced opinion about a country that has many faults, but has some successes which are never acknowledged. And that’s fine.
Just thought it might be interesting to hear a viewpoint from someone who actually lives here rather than blindly reads the news and maybe has visited a few times. Labeling me and calling me names doesn’t help or bring anything useful to the conversation. If you can’t name a single positive thing the UAE has done, then to me, maybe it’s worth it to do some further investigation on the topic.
There was so much media coverage about human rights violations and slavery you'd have to put in a lot of effort to not see it.
As I’ve mentioned now several times, I’m not blind to it. The UAE has engaged in many poorly made decisions, however I was simply trying to engage in some conversation about something the western media doesn’t often talk about - the positive things the UAE does. If your response to that is, “the UAE is entirely negative, why engage in anything positive”, then I’d suggest seeking information on the positive things the country has done for others. Maybe it’ll broaden your horizon and bring some nuance. I’d state more positives here, but I keep getting called names, so I won’t list any more positives.
Sure, Dubai may not reach the level Western democracies have, but they also didn’t start at the same point as well. That doesn’t excuse the shortcomings, but maybe explains them.
Western democracies in Europe and North America didn’t spring up overnight. You’re looking at 800+ years of developing a broadly accepted set of human rights.
Honestly can't imagine anyone would be this forgiving of it's bigotry if it wasn't so rich.
I'd also spend a lot of time explaining to friends how "It's complicated" and "You know, they also do a lot of good things". But the reality I wouldn't admit to myself was much simpler: they were doing awful things, but I was willing to work for them as long as they paid me enough and made my life comfortable enough.
It's very uncomfortable to admit to yourself that your ethics and morals have a price. I hope yours was high enough.
I’ll add something else, as someone who has faced racism growing up in the Bay Area very very often, I’m sensitive to it and it’s something I push back on every time I’m faced with it here.
Debt is debt, that’s it, you’re supposed to pay it back.
Not a reason to criminalize a debt the way the UAE does it.
Islam has nothing to do with this.
Other things you mentioned are NOT complex:
Slavery, exploitation, lack of rule of law, lack of human rights, lack of women rights etc
Let’s not give the UAE a pass here.
People go to the UAE to make money. They re not there from some “intellectually difficult to explain” reason. Pure $$$.
Your argument is a logical fallacy. Yes I'm sure the UAE is improving, but that doesn't mean we should stop vilifying it for the terribly evil laws it has and things it does. It's not "complex", there's just no motivation to make actual, sweeping change, only token change to appeal to the West, whom the UAE relies on to do business with. Dubai should not exist, it's an artificial Oasis in the desert in a world where global warming is becoming a serious threat. Dubai was built on slave labour.
That said, with NoScript on I can just read the economist article, no banners or anything.
The funny thing about these incidents is that, all these countries want to have startup hubs, all the while forgetting that the very definition of a startup means risk taking where 9 out 10 companies go bankrupt.
One of the reasons I still think the west (UK, EU, US) are still some of the best countries to have a thriving business environment. You can be assured (at least a vast majority of the time) that no crazy laws like these would be enacted that would encroach on fundamental rights of a citizen over a civil issue.
[1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-natio...
Corruption at its finest.
> I'm not fond of the continually extended jail time
This is kind of the point, because the bank (and I'm guessing ministry, politicians, etc.) seized assets, ignored or outright altered the terms of contracts, and participates in other shady business, the jail time seems like a convenient (and effective) means of suppressing push-back.
The spoils end up in private hands, those that were in charge of the banks, ministries, courts, etc. It is not only Dubai, you can see similar behaviour all over the world. But hey, if you want to play with the big dogs, you might get bit.
Their rights are non-existent. The laws are draconian and arbitrary. And if you're a woman, you're effectively a 2nd class citizen. And good luck if you're raped as a woman (shocker! sex out of wedlock, so youre a criminal).
Sure, that can be construed as anti-Arab. I don't particularly care. The laws (or lack thereof), the slavery, treatment of women - all of these tell me what I need to know. And this is what passes as "Islamic" countries. Shitholes indeed.
1. Almost all of the labour comes from India and Pakistan. The native population is very small. So Dubai is an international city really, and it can't stop being one. The upkeep of everything they built is extremely labour intensive. If the immigrants went away the city would disintegrate back into sand within a few years.
2. The amount of wealth concentrated in such a tiny spot, with no military to protect it, is probably not sustainable. Just judging by the amount of effort that went into protecting castles in Europe. This place will get raided eventually.
3. Only the wealthiest of the wealthy can afford a home with a backyard in Dubai. So if you have one, appreciate it.
Isn't most of the wealth in stuff like real estate and finance? Those are pretty hard to raid with an army.
This reminded me:
Siege of Tyre 332 BC - Alexander the Great
I.e. those workers wouldn't be slaving away there if western countries had more liberal immigration policies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sampson_(author)#Arres...
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-har...
> Cornelius undoubtedly committed fraud. ... He did, however, admit that he used money for riskier endeavours than those for which it was lent. The bank provided credit for short-term needs, but it was instead used to fund unauthorised longer-term projects such as the Pakistan refinery and investments relating to the Plantation.
I am sorry, but play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
1) "Three plain-clothes policemen arrested Cornelius as he left the airport."
So, if he hadn't left the airport, he would have been safe?
2) "The bank convinced an English court to hand over all three of Cornelius’s properties in London"
Given his denial of a lawyer etc I'm surprised that an English court agreed to carry on without him. Where are the requests to allow him to participate?
Now all the down-voted ones are supposedly by: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=_hhkg
@dang, care to explain what transpired here? Are you protecting someone's account from down-votes?
We try not to delete posts that got replies, because doing so would be unfair to the other commenters in the thread. At the same time, we don't want anyone to get in trouble from anything they posted to HN, so we help people who ask for help. We just try to do it with more precise tools than wholesale deletion.
This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
Is the situation in Dubai getting worse over time, or is it getting better?
(btw, I'm just talking about Dubai and UAE in general. For other countries in the region all bets are off; I have no idea what goes on in places like Yemen, for instance).
I guess your perspective on UAE would depend on where you come from.
If you're from developed countries like, for example, Norway, Finland, and perhaps even USA, Dubai is going to look worse off.
But plenty of people in Dubai are from countries even worse. So for them, Dubai is definitely an upgrade.
Why should I care if a spoiled white colonialist from Africa, already obscenely wealthy, spends his life in jail for defrauding a bank for $350M? Imho, this was actually justice served to a white collar criminal, for once.
Stoning, hanging and imprisoning people like me is a surefire way to not get my tourism dollars. Unfortunately, not many people feel the same way.
LOL. I just did eight years at two facilities in the USA, neither of which allowed pillows. Try going to sleep tonight without a pillow. It sucks.
> The temperature in the cells is kept low.
This is par for the course in most jails and prisons. They make an excuse that it "keeps down germs".
> The air conditioning runs noisily and ceaselessly
Same
> Strip lights are left on 24 hours a day.
I had five years in cells with 24/7 lighting
> Hanging up anything to dim the brightness is treated as a punishable offence
Same in every jail and prison
> Taps drip.
Is there a prison well-maintain enough anywhere in the world where all the mechanicals actually work?!
> There is no toilet paper, so prisoners have to use a hose.
It is common in the Middle-East to wash your undercarriage with a showerhead.
> Occasionally, they are allowed to exercise for 45 minutes in a small, concrete yard.
Better than I had in the USA. I never saw the sun for eight years.
> In Dubai, inmates have to buy everything, including soap and detergent for cleaning the cells, as well as newspapers and phone calls.
They were allowed newspapers.. this is better than any place I was at which had total news blackouts.
> A small range of food items can be bought from outside the prison, by placing an order through the police kitchen. Cornelius buys a hamburger twice a week and pizza on Thursdays.
Nice! Most jails don't have hot food ordering, but it is becoming more common as there is good money to be made.
> Martin Lonergan, who spent nine months in the cell next to Cornelius’s in 2019-20 after getting caught up in a separate business dispute, carried out an informal survey among the prisoners. He reckons inmates lucky enough to have money on their cards spend an average of around 150 dirhams a week, or $40.
Cheap! The jails I was in.. if you didn't max out the $100 a week limit you were considered a loser. The goal for most people was to find one of these "losers" and buy his remaining credit off him (for say, a 25% surcharge) so you could buy $200-300 of commissary a week.
> Prisoners report that they rarely see the jailers. Every night at 9pm cells are locked and the phone line to the guards is switched off. If an inmate has a problem, there’s no way to get assistance. Sometimes prisoners can be heard screaming for help.
Same in the Cook County Jail in Illinois. If you have a heart attack at night, good luck! They'll find your body the next day.
> Medical care is almost non-existent: a single doctor covers all the inmates. Under the rota system prisoners may be given an appointment six months down the line.
This seems quick for jail medical care.
> That didn’t stop covid from running rampant through the overcrowded prison. His block is reportedly being used as a dumping ground for anyone who might be infected.
LOL. When I was in the CCJ, the NYT declared it to be the epicenter of the entire COVID pandemic.
> A person close to Cornelius says he accepts that he “made mistakes”, but that he’d been assured by cch that he could borrow money to invest if he submitted “certain invoices in a certain way”. Though Cornelius never dealt directly with dib, he has said he was led to understand that the bank was “supportive” of this chicanery.
Yeah, if you don't have it in writing, you're on the hook. My personal manager at PayPal was very supportive of me running a private TV torrent tracker, but if I'd had to subpoena him to court I'm sure he would have told a very different story :D
> In most Western countries, debt is considered a civil matter. Charles Dickens’s father was sent to a debtors’ prison and Dickens’s depictions of these prisons’ horrific conditions in his novels bolstered a campaign that led to their eventual abolition in Britain in 1869. The uae, by contrast, still treats debt as a crime.
It is still a crime in the USA. I met many people in jail incarcerated for debt. Legally you can't be incarcerated for debt, but there is a way around it that courts in the USA use. If the judge orders you to repay a sum of money and you fail to do it on time, then you have disobeyed the judge and committed contempt of court and are jailed for that, not the debt. Easy!
Never do business in/with the Middle East.
Also, it was such a traumatic experience that I was truly relieved when me and my family were back at home and safe, I wanted to just forget about it and rebuild my life at the moment.
Now I'm in a much better place so I'm looking to, at least, share my story; particularly with young students, like I was at the time, so I could prevent them from going to these places where abuse is common and rampant.
I wish I could be of more help.
I don't know the answers, but I can imagine such an arrangement where saying "I can pay X amount of money owed on my credit card at Y date" and then failing to do so for any variety of reasons could be seen as fraudulent.
I think the real LPT is to be darn sure you know the law and the language in strict places, and if you can't, be unreasonably careful.