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Comment by speeq | Hacker News Reader

For anyone wondering, this is what I saw when I tried to visit my own site in Dubai: http://imgur.com/2UKFXhd

At least they didn't block your website worldwide like the US does when it doesn't like something on your website:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120202/12374117639/ice-se...

You should not be surprised, those people are stuck in the 12th century. I wish the rest of the world stopped buying oil from those idiots.

Funny you should say that, last I checked, oil exports as % of UAE GDP was a surprisingly small number.

UAE wealth and influence comes from oil, there is no fudging around that fact. And they do live in the 12th century in some respects, they're just doing it within the comfort of their 21st century homes, with their 21st century cars, weapons, and infrastructure. The UAE is a dictatorship with strong extremist religious convictions and a medieval social values system that can only be described as appalling.

These things don't go away simply because they're our "allies" or because criticizing extremist religious practices is frowned upon in the West.

You are probably mixing up UAE and Dubai. The UAE consists of 7 emirates, including the capital Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The GDP of Dubai is dependent on services, trade and a bit of industry, and they have little oil. Abu Dhabi is oil-rich. A big chunk of its GDP, and the net GDP of the UAE in general, is oil.

a) this comment is annoyingly simple minded and pretty plainly racist. ("Those people"? Really?) b) with all the talk of un-warranted wiretaps, and the state of surveillance building up in the US/Europe, it's probably a bad time to throw stones c) it's worth spending some time to investigate how "those" countries have had democracy deliberately crippled for decades by western powers needing puppet dictators to guarantee their flow of oil (try a YouTube search for "secrets of the seven sisters")

(try a YouTube search for "secrets of the seven sisters")

Better to grab the article from aljazeera:

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2013/04/20...

But I object to your using of the term 'racist' to describe GP's remark. S/He made no mention of race, only culture.

> a) this comment is annoyingly simple minded and pretty plainly racist. ("Those people"? Really?)

Referring to people as a group makes you racist now?

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