8 ms·

The dark side of Dubai

174 points by fiaz 18y ago

dawson 18y ago
Excellent article and well written. I knew none of this until now! Six months ago I was offered a job in Dubai for a Tech Dir position at a major advertising company; I'm very pleased that I didn't follow-up on that opportunity now.
miked 18y ago
>> Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history. Just out of curiosity, is that the same globalized world that the author used to fly there while speaking only English the whole time? Anti-globo self-righteousness, direct to you from the Dubai airport. Nice. Also, having read the article, I'm missing the "neo-liberal" part. "Medieval dictatorship" (as he himself put it)? Check. No rule of law? Check. No concern for individual rights? Check. No constitution to hinder government expansion of powers? Check.
- rw 18y ago
  > Also, having read the article, I'm missing the "neo-liberal" part. "Medieval dictatorship" (as he himself put it)? Check. No rule of law? Check. No concern for individual rights? Check. No constitution to hinder government expansion of powers? Check. That tends to be the dominating antagonistic definition of "neoliberalism". It may not be that far off.
  - biohacker42 18y ago
    Sort of like jumbo can be used to describe shrimp.
- AndrewHampton 18y ago
  "neo-liberal" could also be referring to Dubia being socially liberal compared to other Islamic nations.
  - turkishrevenge 18y ago
    No, "neo-liberal" has a very specific meaning and is used almost exclusively when speaking of markets. Just by reading the article, you can see that there is nothing socially liberal about Dubai--I mean, come on, you can inherit debt. That doesn't sound like anything approaching a social democracy.
    - AndrewHampton 18y ago
      Ah, I didn't realize "neo-liberal" was an economic term. Thanks for the correction. To clarify what I said though, relative to any western society, Dubia's laws are obviously more strict. However, when compared to other Islamic nations, Dubia is more liberal. As the article discussed, the fact that gays in the region migrate to Dubia is an indication of this.
      - turkishrevenge 18y ago
        No problem. I could see the confusion that could arise if you were unfamiliar with the term. Yes, by Islamic standards, Dubai and the UAE in general are more "tolerant", depending on how you define tolerance. I suspect--and especially after reading the article--that it's a veneer to lure westerners under the guise that Dubai is a modern, center-left, run-by-a-benevolent-dictator-type of society that wants it's citizens to flourish. Underneath the polished marble and 10-lane highways though, it's a repressive, feudal regime. Of course, when money is involved though, the arms and wallets open, and suddenly what was impermissible before is fine, or at least tacitly accepted.
        AndrewHampton 18y ago
        I totally agree.
- AndrewHampton 18y ago
  The author acknowledges this in the third paragraph from the bottom: "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."
  - gaius 18y ago
    But Libertarians and even Anarcho-Capitalists don't differentiate between a market for labour and a market for good and services.
- biohacker42 18y ago
  You see, people at the political extremes, both right and left, desire control in a deep and profound way. They hate anything which wrestles control away from their philosophy. And so they use any crazy/authoritarian/doomed/etc scheme as a straw man to attack liberalism/libertarianism. Because in their minds, only their control of society will lead to peace and prosperity. Any loosening of their control must lead to doom. Therefore if it's a disaster it MUST be because it veered off from their philosophy. But the irony is that both far and left and far right are untied by their desire to control society. And that's why they can never attack the control elements. They can never blame the disaster on them, they WANT something like that. They use the failure to attack everything else and just call it an obscure word for too much freedom!
  - Retric 18y ago
    All forms of Government = Control Modern Liberalism is based in large part on the idea that being rich does not make the air cleaner. There are limits on the value of personal wealth and there is little difference once you cross the threshold into extreme levels of personal comfort. The Right holds dear the idea that rich people can take care of them selves and the goal should be to maximize personal wealth. Taken to an extreme each of these ideas break down, but IMO the left wing is closer to reality. Granted in the real world we need huge helpings of corruption, stupidity, and hypocrisy, but that's going to infect any form of government over time. Then there are all the lies such as the republican leadership hating the idea of ever banning abortion etc. And all the liberal "think of the children" reteric that sounds great but is a pointless power grab.
    - biohacker42 18y ago
      I agree with you that in general the Right and the Left are philosophic ideals. Philosophic ideals which taken to their ultimate end in practice could be disastrous. But I've always looked at liberalism as more of a practical economic not philosophical approach to problems. And yes economics always ends up deep inside both politics and philosophy but deep underneath all of that ideological baggage there's still a kernel of practicality. This kernel of practicality aims for the most efficient use of resources. To achieve that goal, there are many real world practical strategies: 1. Rule of law - free of both government and private coercion. (No cartels like the RIAA, OPEC, DeBeers, but also no labor unions or government cartels like what used to ma bell AT&T) 2. Free competition. 3. Free information. (Not to be confused with perfect information in perfect markets). The above imply that active fraud and monopolistic practices are against the law. But I, like many other libertarians would take it even further. By that I mean that in practice there are many things for which the free market does nothing. Health is one example. The demand for insulin is the econ 101 example of things for which normal supply and demand doesn't work. So for me liberalism is not a fanatical extreme of no government ever, but a practical optimization. Seeking the most effective market and government which implies a very small government but acknowledges that things like market failures exist and some government is essential. That government is preferably small, local and a direct democracy like Switzerland.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- miked 18y ago
  Just to clarify on my comment (and the journalist's writing): "neo-liberal" is here meant (clearly by both of us) in the European sense. I.e., as in Classical Liberalism. Pro-free markets and individual liberty and individual rights. Rather different (in many cases, not always) from Modern Liberalism.
adamhowell 18y ago
Man, what a mess, it's hard to even find something to say about most of it, but I found this interesting: "In Saudi, it's hard to be straight when you're young. The women are shut away so everyone has gay sex ... I need to find real gays, so this is the best place. All Arab gays want to live in Dubai." I'd never really thought about the fact that Arab teens would "go gay" in response to their natural libidos being locked away, but it makes sense.
- raheemm 18y ago
  This is one of the strangest contradictions in some Muslim countries. And a fundamental reason it exists is because people are too uncomfortable to talk/think about it. It does not help either that their are not too many mediums for those interested to discuss, except for maybe on the internet.
  - gaius 18y ago
    In the West we think of the gender roles as male and female but in the Middle East (and in Ancient Greece in our own cultural heritage) the gender roles are "penetrator" and "penetrated". An adult (or older) male penetrator is not considered homosexual in this culture, nor is an adolescent (or younger) male penetrated. They would say that a homosexual is an adult male penetrated, and only that is taboo.
- yardie 18y ago
  I guess that explains a lot. My wife is Moroccan and she was telling me about gangs of boys preying on other boys sexually. I was thinking man that's fucked up. Who would ever do that but the most twisted, devious minds. Apparently this is common knowledge but unspoken of. Being openly gay is frowned upon. If you ever see the movie "The Kite Runner" they have a scene where one of the two boys is chased down by the gang of teenagers. Later on his son is also being molested by the same guys, now adults.
- sbt 18y ago
  I heard about this phenomenon from nato troops in Afgahnistan too. Apparently a woman has to be safely transported abroad if she is seen with a man. A friend who was stationed in Meymaneh told me that he had seen men having gay sex in dark alleys after night, apparently out of desperation. He described it as a not too uncommon phenomenon, although he had only observed it once.
babul 18y ago
This article is coincides with a lot of current UK media attention on Dubai including many programs on UK TV (e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jqgww/Panorama_Slumdogs_and_Millionaires/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jqgww/Panorama_Slumd...)
babul 18y ago
Quick thoughts... Much of this (debtors prisons [and people fleeing Dubai immediately upon losing jobs and leaving behind luxury cars/apartments to avoid it], modern day enslavement, under-classes [predominantly based on ethnicity] and lack of civil-rights and liberty for most classes) has been publicised for a long time among the ethnic communities. However, it seems when times were good it was easy for western people to turn a blind eye and what most people saw in the mainstream western media were positive articles about how great Dubai was/would be (due to vested interests?), even ignoring obvious issues regarding Arab law and culture and environment. Now that the worldwide financial crisis is catching up with Dubai it is good to see these issues being brought out into the mainstream and exposed more openly, but I cannot help but think it is predominately because Westerners themselves are now being affected. Where was the outcry for the Fillipinos/Bangladeshis/etc. in mainstream Western media before?
- damienkatz 18y ago
  You must be a blast at parties.
- Tangurena 18y ago
  You're right: we didn't care about the Filipinos and Bangaladeshis being mistreated in Dubai - until westerners started getting mistreated. Yet this very same mistreatment occurs in Saudi Arabia (one of the places I've lived in), and we continue to ignore it. My suspicion is that we need their oil far more than we need justice. A recent HN thread on Dubai: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=547553 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=547553 And here is an article by some folks in Dubai that they need to diversify away from oil: http://www.business24-7.ae/articles/2009/4/pages/05042009/04062009_f8951cf17f6f4fd1a889dc63801792c6.aspx http://www.business24-7.ae/articles/2009/4/pages/05042009/04...
- jonas_b 18y ago
  I don't mean to condone the modern slavery in Dubai in any way, but isn't it telling about the conditions in Bangladesh and the Philippines that people volontary leave them to go to the UAE and be treated like dirt.
raheemm 18y ago
Dubai has its problems, but it is far better than many other countries where the natural resources are exploited for the benefit of a select few and the masses are left in extreme poverty. They are smart enough to have figured out a way to shrink a 100 year development cycle to 30 years without massive oil resources. I am sure they will figure out a way out of their current challenges as well.
- StrawberryFrog 18y ago
  I am sure they will figure out a way out of their current challenges as well What makes you sure of that?
- dschobel 18y ago
  Debt at 106% of GDP. Wealth entirely based on combination of oil and slave labor. Unsustainable water supply situation. I don't see much cause for optimism.
  - ygcfububyuf 18y ago
    Sounds like Texas!
- Dilpil 18y ago
  Was that sarcasm?
mallipeddi 18y ago
Whatever the article mentions is more or less accurate. Also it's the same anywhere else in the Middle East. I've a friend (Indian origin) who grew up in the Middle East. He has lived in Dubai and Muscat (Oman). His father worked as a finance manager for an American cola company (hint: it's not Coca-Cola). Roughly this is how the society is organized: 1) Arabs - first-class citizens - dumb, don't like to work, but often hold 'mudira'/'manager' positions in companies. They don't have college degrees but they hold senior-level positions in companies and are uber-slackers :) 2) Western expats - they get paid huge expat salaries and in general live in a world of their own (read: huge gated communities where typical restrictions in a Muslim country don't apply - alcohol, women, etc). There's very minimal interaction between them and the Arabs, or the Indians, or the Filipinos. 3) Educated immigrants from poorer countries (mostly from Indian sub-continent) - They do most of the work which their Arab bosses are not interested in doing or incapable of doing. 4) Construction workers/other physical labour - mostly immigrant workers from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and other poor countries. The western world seems to acknowledge this problem finally when their people are starting to suffer due to the economic crisis. This is how Middle East works and it has been like this for a long long time. Middle-east is one place I won't move to even if Google offered me a job there.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- plinkplonk 18y ago
  "Middle-east is one place I won't move to even if Google offered me a job there." I won't move there for any amount of money. Life isn't worth living the way one has to live in the ME (I am Indian, I hear many horror stories). I'd rather go be a Somalian pirate or something like that.
  - kirubakaran 18y ago
    I'd rather go be a Somalian pirate You say it like it is a bad thing! Many people would love to be a bad-ass Somalian pirate.
  - g__g 18y ago
asciilifeform 18y ago
See if you can get a hold of this book: "Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism‎" by Mike Davis, Daniel Bertrand Monk. (http://books.google.com/books?id=TQRoAAAACAAJ http://books.google.com/books?id=TQRoAAAACAAJ) The chapter on Dubai is excellent.
TJensen 18y ago
I was in Dubai a couple years ago and could not figure out how it could possibly be growing the way it was. They really do a good job of putting on a face to the world. I was working with a British expat who lives there, and he couldn't stop gushing about how great it was, to the point that I thought it might be an interesting "life opportunity." I'm really glad I didn't take that opportunity. I remember seeing the buses with the blue-coverall-ed construction workers. This article put that trip in another light, that's for sure!
- sbt 18y ago
  It's possible to grow quite quickly if you put ethical scruples aside and take advantage of a large pool of what is effectively slave labor. A middle eastern friend explained the situation: "we just stepped off the camel and into the mercedes." It took Europe quite a long time to reach the level of civilization it sports today, but there's no reason to repeat the mistakes and not learn.
jrockway 18y ago
OK, so the guy at the beginning of the article knows that he will go to jail if he doesn't pay his debts. Then he alerts the government that he is in debt, and gets arrested. WTF? Why did he not leave the country before the government was notified that he was in debt? If he is a UK citizen, I doubt he would be extradited for that. Even if he was, I think it would be easier to fight the extradition in a UK court than it would have been to pay off the debt in Dubai. Am I missing something?
- gaius 18y ago
  Am I missing something? he was getting confused. It was so unlike Daniel, I was surprised. We got into a little bit of debt." After a year, she found out why: Daniel was diagnosed with a brain tumour.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
- menloparkbum 18y ago
  I read it as he thought he was getting a bonus which would cover the debt, but it didn't cover it. The government was notified automatically about him leaving his job.
  - jrockway 18y ago
    But couldn't he have asked before quitting, or have quit from somewhere "safe"?
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
binarycheese 18y ago
Back in Moscow, there used to be a lot of Students from UAE and Saudi. They were very rich (free scholarships), always drunk, never went to class and refused to graduate (even if they could) because they didn't want to go back home.
dschobel 18y ago
Isn't there some international treaty which forbids companies from dealing with other countries/companies which use slave labor? It can't possibly be that companies are left to police themselves... can it?
- TJensen 18y ago
  I don't think this would fall under a treaty definition of slavery. The people are not owned, they are not bartered as property, they just have zero rights.
gilesgoatboy 18y ago
what do you mean the dark side? it's all dark. fake money, wild overspending, draconian laws against drugs and sex. next up: a provocative look at the dark side of killing babies and eating them! you thought it was just a harmless hobby, but oh no. oh no. turns out those babies are high in cholesterol! gasp!
- christofd 18y ago
  nice.
sho 18y ago
I have an old associate from uni who was arrested and detained in Dubai on a tourist visit, for carrying Melatonin, an over-the-counter sleep aid. He was locked up for a month in a filthy prison, strip searched, forced to give urine samples and sign documents he did not understand, and was finally only released after intense media pressure. His name's Cat "Diz" Le-Huy, if you want to look up the story. I'm never going to Dubai. And I don't have much sympathy for the expats there either - ignoring basic dignity of others, spitting on their whole inheritance of liberal democracy and hard-won human rights just to make a quick buck. The whole place can disappear back into the sand as far as I'm concerned. Before that happens though, after reading that article I sure wish I could drop a few planeloads of small arms into one of those worker prison camps first, for a very abrupt and entertaining demonstration of reaping what one has sown.
wenbert 18y ago
I think it is worth mentioning that most Filipinos who go to Dubai are college graduates.
hc 18y ago
this is the sort of thing that always happens when someone sufficiently unprincipled realizes just how superficial the majority of people are, and decides to exploit it. dubai is windows vista.

174 points by fiaz 18y ago

Excellent article and well written. I knew none of this until now! Six months ago I was offered a job in Dubai for a Tech Dir position at a major advertising company; I'm very pleased that I didn't follow-up on that opportunity now.

miked 18y ago

>> Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history. Just out of curiosity, is that the same globalized world that the author used to fly there while speaking only English the whole time? Anti-globo self-righteousness, direct to you from the Dubai airport. Nice. Also, having read the article, I'm missing the "neo-liberal" part. "Medieval dictatorship" (as he himself put it)? Check. No rule of law? Check. No concern for individual rights? Check. No constitution to hinder government expansion of powers? Check.

rw 18y ago
> Also, having read the article, I'm missing the "neo-liberal" part. "Medieval dictatorship" (as he himself put it)? Check. No rule of law? Check. No concern for individual rights? Check. No constitution to hinder government expansion of powers? Check. That tends to be the dominating antagonistic definition of "neoliberalism". It may not be that far off.
- biohacker42 18y ago
  Sort of like jumbo can be used to describe shrimp.
AndrewHampton 18y ago
"neo-liberal" could also be referring to Dubia being socially liberal compared to other Islamic nations.
- turkishrevenge 18y ago
  No, "neo-liberal" has a very specific meaning and is used almost exclusively when speaking of markets. Just by reading the article, you can see that there is nothing socially liberal about Dubai--I mean, come on, you can inherit debt. That doesn't sound like anything approaching a social democracy.
  - AndrewHampton 18y ago
    Ah, I didn't realize "neo-liberal" was an economic term. Thanks for the correction. To clarify what I said though, relative to any western society, Dubia's laws are obviously more strict. However, when compared to other Islamic nations, Dubia is more liberal. As the article discussed, the fact that gays in the region migrate to Dubia is an indication of this.
    - turkishrevenge 18y ago
      No problem. I could see the confusion that could arise if you were unfamiliar with the term. Yes, by Islamic standards, Dubai and the UAE in general are more "tolerant", depending on how you define tolerance. I suspect--and especially after reading the article--that it's a veneer to lure westerners under the guise that Dubai is a modern, center-left, run-by-a-benevolent-dictator-type of society that wants it's citizens to flourish. Underneath the polished marble and 10-lane highways though, it's a repressive, feudal regime. Of course, when money is involved though, the arms and wallets open, and suddenly what was impermissible before is fine, or at least tacitly accepted.
      - AndrewHampton 18y ago
        I totally agree.
AndrewHampton 18y ago
The author acknowledges this in the third paragraph from the bottom: "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."
- gaius 18y ago
  But Libertarians and even Anarcho-Capitalists don't differentiate between a market for labour and a market for good and services.
biohacker42 18y ago
You see, people at the political extremes, both right and left, desire control in a deep and profound way. They hate anything which wrestles control away from their philosophy. And so they use any crazy/authoritarian/doomed/etc scheme as a straw man to attack liberalism/libertarianism. Because in their minds, only their control of society will lead to peace and prosperity. Any loosening of their control must lead to doom. Therefore if it's a disaster it MUST be because it veered off from their philosophy. But the irony is that both far and left and far right are untied by their desire to control society. And that's why they can never attack the control elements. They can never blame the disaster on them, they WANT something like that. They use the failure to attack everything else and just call it an obscure word for too much freedom!
- Retric 18y ago
  All forms of Government = Control Modern Liberalism is based in large part on the idea that being rich does not make the air cleaner. There are limits on the value of personal wealth and there is little difference once you cross the threshold into extreme levels of personal comfort. The Right holds dear the idea that rich people can take care of them selves and the goal should be to maximize personal wealth. Taken to an extreme each of these ideas break down, but IMO the left wing is closer to reality. Granted in the real world we need huge helpings of corruption, stupidity, and hypocrisy, but that's going to infect any form of government over time. Then there are all the lies such as the republican leadership hating the idea of ever banning abortion etc. And all the liberal "think of the children" reteric that sounds great but is a pointless power grab.
  - biohacker42 18y ago
    I agree with you that in general the Right and the Left are philosophic ideals. Philosophic ideals which taken to their ultimate end in practice could be disastrous. But I've always looked at liberalism as more of a practical economic not philosophical approach to problems. And yes economics always ends up deep inside both politics and philosophy but deep underneath all of that ideological baggage there's still a kernel of practicality. This kernel of practicality aims for the most efficient use of resources. To achieve that goal, there are many real world practical strategies: 1. Rule of law - free of both government and private coercion. (No cartels like the RIAA, OPEC, DeBeers, but also no labor unions or government cartels like what used to ma bell AT&T) 2. Free competition. 3. Free information. (Not to be confused with perfect information in perfect markets). The above imply that active fraud and monopolistic practices are against the law. But I, like many other libertarians would take it even further. By that I mean that in practice there are many things for which the free market does nothing. Health is one example. The demand for insulin is the econ 101 example of things for which normal supply and demand doesn't work. So for me liberalism is not a fanatical extreme of no government ever, but a practical optimization. Seeking the most effective market and government which implies a very small government but acknowledges that things like market failures exist and some government is essential. That government is preferably small, local and a direct democracy like Switzerland.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
miked 18y ago
Just to clarify on my comment (and the journalist's writing): "neo-liberal" is here meant (clearly by both of us) in the European sense. I.e., as in Classical Liberalism. Pro-free markets and individual liberty and individual rights. Rather different (in many cases, not always) from Modern Liberalism.

adamhowell 18y ago

Man, what a mess, it's hard to even find something to say about most of it, but I found this interesting: "In Saudi, it's hard to be straight when you're young. The women are shut away so everyone has gay sex ... I need to find real gays, so this is the best place. All Arab gays want to live in Dubai." I'd never really thought about the fact that Arab teens would "go gay" in response to their natural libidos being locked away, but it makes sense.

raheemm 18y ago
This is one of the strangest contradictions in some Muslim countries. And a fundamental reason it exists is because people are too uncomfortable to talk/think about it. It does not help either that their are not too many mediums for those interested to discuss, except for maybe on the internet.
- gaius 18y ago
  In the West we think of the gender roles as male and female but in the Middle East (and in Ancient Greece in our own cultural heritage) the gender roles are "penetrator" and "penetrated". An adult (or older) male penetrator is not considered homosexual in this culture, nor is an adolescent (or younger) male penetrated. They would say that a homosexual is an adult male penetrated, and only that is taboo.
yardie 18y ago
I guess that explains a lot. My wife is Moroccan and she was telling me about gangs of boys preying on other boys sexually. I was thinking man that's fucked up. Who would ever do that but the most twisted, devious minds. Apparently this is common knowledge but unspoken of. Being openly gay is frowned upon. If you ever see the movie "The Kite Runner" they have a scene where one of the two boys is chased down by the gang of teenagers. Later on his son is also being molested by the same guys, now adults.
sbt 18y ago
I heard about this phenomenon from nato troops in Afgahnistan too. Apparently a woman has to be safely transported abroad if she is seen with a man. A friend who was stationed in Meymaneh told me that he had seen men having gay sex in dark alleys after night, apparently out of desperation. He described it as a not too uncommon phenomenon, although he had only observed it once.

babul 18y ago

This article is coincides with a lot of current UK media attention on Dubai including many programs on UK TV (e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jqgww/Panorama_Slumdogs_and_Millionaires/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jqgww/Panorama_Slumd...)

babul 18y ago

Quick thoughts... Much of this (debtors prisons [and people fleeing Dubai immediately upon losing jobs and leaving behind luxury cars/apartments to avoid it], modern day enslavement, under-classes [predominantly based on ethnicity] and lack of civil-rights and liberty for most classes) has been publicised for a long time among the ethnic communities. However, it seems when times were good it was easy for western people to turn a blind eye and what most people saw in the mainstream western media were positive articles about how great Dubai was/would be (due to vested interests?), even ignoring obvious issues regarding Arab law and culture and environment. Now that the worldwide financial crisis is catching up with Dubai it is good to see these issues being brought out into the mainstream and exposed more openly, but I cannot help but think it is predominately because Westerners themselves are now being affected. Where was the outcry for the Fillipinos/Bangladeshis/etc. in mainstream Western media before?

damienkatz 18y ago
You must be a blast at parties.
Tangurena 18y ago
You're right: we didn't care about the Filipinos and Bangaladeshis being mistreated in Dubai - until westerners started getting mistreated. Yet this very same mistreatment occurs in Saudi Arabia (one of the places I've lived in), and we continue to ignore it. My suspicion is that we need their oil far more than we need justice. A recent HN thread on Dubai: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=547553 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=547553 And here is an article by some folks in Dubai that they need to diversify away from oil: http://www.business24-7.ae/articles/2009/4/pages/05042009/04062009_f8951cf17f6f4fd1a889dc63801792c6.aspx http://www.business24-7.ae/articles/2009/4/pages/05042009/04...
jonas_b 18y ago
I don't mean to condone the modern slavery in Dubai in any way, but isn't it telling about the conditions in Bangladesh and the Philippines that people volontary leave them to go to the UAE and be treated like dirt.

raheemm 18y ago

Dubai has its problems, but it is far better than many other countries where the natural resources are exploited for the benefit of a select few and the masses are left in extreme poverty. They are smart enough to have figured out a way to shrink a 100 year development cycle to 30 years without massive oil resources. I am sure they will figure out a way out of their current challenges as well.

StrawberryFrog 18y ago
I am sure they will figure out a way out of their current challenges as well What makes you sure of that?
dschobel 18y ago
Debt at 106% of GDP. Wealth entirely based on combination of oil and slave labor. Unsustainable water supply situation. I don't see much cause for optimism.
- ygcfububyuf 18y ago
  Sounds like Texas!
Dilpil 18y ago
Was that sarcasm?

mallipeddi 18y ago

Whatever the article mentions is more or less accurate. Also it's the same anywhere else in the Middle East. I've a friend (Indian origin) who grew up in the Middle East. He has lived in Dubai and Muscat (Oman). His father worked as a finance manager for an American cola company (hint: it's not Coca-Cola). Roughly this is how the society is organized: 1) Arabs - first-class citizens - dumb, don't like to work, but often hold 'mudira'/'manager' positions in companies. They don't have college degrees but they hold senior-level positions in companies and are uber-slackers :) 2) Western expats - they get paid huge expat salaries and in general live in a world of their own (read: huge gated communities where typical restrictions in a Muslim country don't apply - alcohol, women, etc). There's very minimal interaction between them and the Arabs, or the Indians, or the Filipinos. 3) Educated immigrants from poorer countries (mostly from Indian sub-continent) - They do most of the work which their Arab bosses are not interested in doing or incapable of doing. 4) Construction workers/other physical labour - mostly immigrant workers from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and other poor countries. The western world seems to acknowledge this problem finally when their people are starting to suffer due to the economic crisis. This is how Middle East works and it has been like this for a long long time. Middle-east is one place I won't move to even if Google offered me a job there.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
plinkplonk 18y ago
"Middle-east is one place I won't move to even if Google offered me a job there." I won't move there for any amount of money. Life isn't worth living the way one has to live in the ME (I am Indian, I hear many horror stories). I'd rather go be a Somalian pirate or something like that.
- kirubakaran 18y ago
  I'd rather go be a Somalian pirate You say it like it is a bad thing! Many people would love to be a bad-ass Somalian pirate.
- g__g 18y ago

asciilifeform 18y ago

See if you can get a hold of this book: "Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism‎" by Mike Davis, Daniel Bertrand Monk. (http://books.google.com/books?id=TQRoAAAACAAJ http://books.google.com/books?id=TQRoAAAACAAJ) The chapter on Dubai is excellent.

TJensen 18y ago

I was in Dubai a couple years ago and could not figure out how it could possibly be growing the way it was. They really do a good job of putting on a face to the world. I was working with a British expat who lives there, and he couldn't stop gushing about how great it was, to the point that I thought it might be an interesting "life opportunity." I'm really glad I didn't take that opportunity. I remember seeing the buses with the blue-coverall-ed construction workers. This article put that trip in another light, that's for sure!

sbt 18y ago
It's possible to grow quite quickly if you put ethical scruples aside and take advantage of a large pool of what is effectively slave labor. A middle eastern friend explained the situation: "we just stepped off the camel and into the mercedes." It took Europe quite a long time to reach the level of civilization it sports today, but there's no reason to repeat the mistakes and not learn.

jrockway 18y ago

OK, so the guy at the beginning of the article knows that he will go to jail if he doesn't pay his debts. Then he alerts the government that he is in debt, and gets arrested. WTF? Why did he not leave the country before the government was notified that he was in debt? If he is a UK citizen, I doubt he would be extradited for that. Even if he was, I think it would be easier to fight the extradition in a UK court than it would have been to pay off the debt in Dubai. Am I missing something?

gaius 18y ago
Am I missing something? he was getting confused. It was so unlike Daniel, I was surprised. We got into a little bit of debt." After a year, she found out why: Daniel was diagnosed with a brain tumour.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
menloparkbum 18y ago
I read it as he thought he was getting a bonus which would cover the debt, but it didn't cover it. The government was notified automatically about him leaving his job.
- jrockway 18y ago
  But couldn't he have asked before quitting, or have quit from somewhere "safe"?
deleted 18y ago
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binarycheese 18y ago

Back in Moscow, there used to be a lot of Students from UAE and Saudi. They were very rich (free scholarships), always drunk, never went to class and refused to graduate (even if they could) because they didn't want to go back home.

dschobel 18y ago

Isn't there some international treaty which forbids companies from dealing with other countries/companies which use slave labor? It can't possibly be that companies are left to police themselves... can it?

TJensen 18y ago
I don't think this would fall under a treaty definition of slavery. The people are not owned, they are not bartered as property, they just have zero rights.

gilesgoatboy 18y ago

what do you mean the dark side? it's all dark. fake money, wild overspending, draconian laws against drugs and sex. next up: a provocative look at the dark side of killing babies and eating them! you thought it was just a harmless hobby, but oh no. oh no. turns out those babies are high in cholesterol! gasp!

christofd 18y ago
nice.

sho 18y ago

I have an old associate from uni who was arrested and detained in Dubai on a tourist visit, for carrying Melatonin, an over-the-counter sleep aid. He was locked up for a month in a filthy prison, strip searched, forced to give urine samples and sign documents he did not understand, and was finally only released after intense media pressure. His name's Cat "Diz" Le-Huy, if you want to look up the story. I'm never going to Dubai. And I don't have much sympathy for the expats there either - ignoring basic dignity of others, spitting on their whole inheritance of liberal democracy and hard-won human rights just to make a quick buck. The whole place can disappear back into the sand as far as I'm concerned. Before that happens though, after reading that article I sure wish I could drop a few planeloads of small arms into one of those worker prison camps first, for a very abrupt and entertaining demonstration of reaping what one has sown.

wenbert 18y ago

I think it is worth mentioning that most Filipinos who go to Dubai are college graduates.

hc 18y ago

this is the sort of thing that always happens when someone sufficiently unprincipled realizes just how superficial the majority of people are, and decides to exploit it. dubai is windows vista.