# The Dark Side of Dubai



## CrazyCanuck (Oct 9, 2004)

The dark side of Dubai

Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging. Johann Hari reports

Tuesday, 7 April 2009

Construction workers in their distinctive blue overalls building the upper floors of the new Burj al-Arab hotel

Getty

Construction workers in their distinctive blue overalls building the upper floors of the new Burj al-Arab hotel

* © Photos Click here for more Dubai images

The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed – the absolute ruler of Dubai – beams down on his creation. His image is displayed on every other building, sandwiched between the more familiar corporate rictuses of Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders. This man has sold Dubai to the world as the city of One Thousand and One Arabian Lights, a Shangri-La in the Middle East insulated from the dust-storms blasting across the region. He dominates the Manhattan-manqué skyline, beaming out from row after row of glass pyramids and hotels smelted into the shape of piles of golden coins. And there he stands on the tallest building in the world – a skinny spike, jabbing farther into the sky than any other human construction in history.

But something has flickered in Sheikh Mohammed's smile. The ubiquitous cranes have paused on the skyline, as if stuck in time. There are countless buildings half-finished, seemingly abandoned. In the swankiest new constructions – like the vast Atlantis hotel, a giant pink castle built in 1,000 days for $1.5bn on its own artificial island – where rainwater is leaking from the ceilings and the tiles are falling off the roof. This Neverland was built on the Never-Never – and now the cracks are beginning to show. Suddenly it looks less like Manhattan in the sun than Iceland in the desert.

Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history.
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* The Desert Blogger: Jamie Stewart's dispatches from Dubai

I. An Adult Disneyland

Karen Andrews can't speak. Every time she starts to tell her story, she puts her head down and crumples. She is slim and angular and has the faded radiance of the once-rich, even though her clothes are as creased as her forehead. I find her in the car park of one of Dubai's finest international hotels, where she is living, in her Range Rover. She has been sleeping here for months, thanks to the kindness of the Bangladeshi car park attendants who don't have the heart to move her on. This is not where she thought her Dubai dream would end.

Her story comes out in stutters, over four hours. At times, her old voice – witty and warm – breaks through. Karen came here from Canada when her husband was offered a job in the senior division of a famous multinational. "When he said Dubai, I said – if you want me to wear black and quit booze, baby, you've got the wrong girl. But he asked me to give it a chance. And I loved him."

All her worries melted when she touched down in Dubai in 2005. "It was an adult Disneyland, where Sheikh Mohammed is the mouse," she says. "Life was fantastic. You had these amazing big apartments, you had a whole army of your own staff, you pay no taxes at all. It seemed like everyone was a CEO. We were partying the whole time."

Her husband, Daniel, bought two properties. "We were drunk on Dubai," she says. But for the first time in his life, he was beginning to mismanage their finances. "We're not talking huge sums, but 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.

One doctor told him he had a year to live; another said it was benign and he'd be okay. But the debts were growing. "Before I came here, I didn't know anything about Dubai law. I assumed if all these big companies come here, it must be pretty like Canada's or any other liberal democracy's," she says. Nobody told her there is no concept of bankruptcy. If you get into debt and you can't pay, you go to prison.

"When we realised that, I sat Daniel down and told him: listen, we need to get out of here. He knew he was guaranteed a pay-off when he resigned, so we said – right, let's take the pay-off, clear the debt, and go." So Daniel resigned – but he was given a lower pay-off than his contract suggested. The debt remained. As soon as you quit your job in Dubai, your employer has to inform your bank. If you have any outstanding debts that aren't covered by your savings, then all your accounts are frozen, and you are forbidden to leave the country.

"Suddenly our cards stopped working. We had nothing. We were thrown out of our apartment." Karen can't speak about what happened next for a long time; she is shaking.

Daniel was arrested and taken away on the day of their eviction. It was six days before she could talk to him. "He told me he was put in a cell with another debtor, a Sri Lankan guy who was only 27, who said he couldn't face the shame to his family. Daniel woke up and the boy had swallowed razor-blades. He banged for help, but nobody came, and the boy died in front of him."

Karen managed to beg from her friends for a few weeks, "but it was so humiliating. I've never lived like this. I worked in the fashion industry. I had my own shops. I've never..." She peters out.

Daniel was sentenced to six months' imprisonment at a trial he couldn't understand. It was in Arabic, and there was no translation. "Now I'm here illegally, too," Karen says I've got no money, nothing. I have to last nine months until he's out, somehow." Looking away, almost paralysed with embarrassment, she asks if I could buy her a meal.

She is not alone. All over the city, there are maxed-out expats sleeping secretly in the sand-dunes or the airport or in their cars.

"The thing you have to understand about Dubai is – nothing is what it seems," Karen says at last. "Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job. They lure you in telling you it's one thing – a modern kind of place – but beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship."

II. Tumbleweed

Thirty years ago, almost all of contemporary Dubai was desert, inhabited only by cactuses and tumbleweed and scorpions. But downtown there are traces of the town that once was, buried amidst the metal and glass. In the dusty fort of the Dubai Museum, a sanitised version of this story is told.

In the mid-18th century, a small village was built here, in the lower Persian Gulf, where people would dive for pearls off the coast. It soon began to accumulate a cosmopolitan population washing up from Persia, the Indian subcontinent, and other Arab countries, all hoping to make their fortune. They named it after a local locust, the daba, who consumed everything before it. The town was soon seized by the gunships of the British Empire, who held it by the throat as late as 1971. As they scuttled away, Dubai decided to ally with the six surrounding states and make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The British quit, exhausted, just as oil was being discovered, and the sheikhs who suddenly found themselves in charge faced a remarkable dilemma. They were largely illiterate nomads who spent their lives driving camels through the desert – yet now they had a vast pot of gold. What should they do with it?

Dubai only had a dribble of oil compared to neighbouring Abu Dhabi – so Sheikh Maktoum decided to use the revenues to build something that would last. Israel used to boast it made the desert bloom; Sheikh Maktoum resolved to make the desert boom. He would build a city to be a centre of tourism and financial services, sucking up cash and talent from across the globe. He invited the world to come tax-free – and they came in their millions, swamping the local population, who now make up just 5 per cent of Dubai. A city seemed to fall from the sky in just three decades, whole and complete and swelling. They fast-forwarded from the 18th century to the 21st in a single generation.

If you take the Big Bus Tour of Dubai – the passport to a pre-processed experience of every major city on earth – you are fed the propaganda-vision of how this happened. "Dubai's motto is 'Open doors, open minds'," the tour guide tells you in clipped tones, before depositing you at the souks to buy camel tea-cosies. "Here you are free. To purchase fabrics," he adds. As you pass each new monumental building, he tells you: "The World Trade Centre was built by His Highness..."

But this is a lie. The sheikh did not build this city. It was built by slaves. They are building it now.

III. Hidden in plain view

There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats, like Karen; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city. The Sheikh built the city. Workers? What workers?

Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young men who build Dubai are bussed from their sites to a vast concrete wasteland an hour out of town, where they are quarantined away. Until a few years ago they were shuttled back and forth on cattle trucks, but the expats complained this was unsightly, so now they are shunted on small metal buses that function like greenhouses in the desert heat. They sweat like sponges being slowly wrung out.

Sonapur is a rubble-strewn patchwork of miles and miles of identical concrete buildings. Some 300,000 men live piled up here, in a place whose name in Hindi means "City of Gold". In the first camp I stop at – riven with the smell of sewage and sweat – the men huddle around, eager to tell someone, anyone, what is happening to them.

Sahinal Monir, a slim 24-year-old from the deltas of Bangladesh. "To get you here, they tell you Dubai is heaven. Then you get here and realise it is hell," he says. Four years ago, an employment agent arrived in Sahinal's village in Southern Bangladesh. He told the men of the village that there was a place where they could earn 40,000 takka a month (£400) just for working nine-to-five on construction projects. It was a place where they would be given great accommodation, great food, and treated well. All they had to do was pay an up-front fee of 220,000 takka (£2,300) for the work visa – a fee they'd pay off in the first six months, easy. So Sahinal sold his family land, and took out a loan from the local lender, to head to this paradise.

As soon as he arrived at Dubai airport, his passport was taken from him by his construction company. He has not seen it since. He was told brusquely that from now on he would be working 14-hour days in the desert heat – where western tourists are advised not to stay outside for even five minutes in summer, when it hits 55 degrees – for 500 dirhams a month (£90), less than a quarter of the wage he was promised. If you don't like it, the company told him, go home. "But how can I go home? You have my passport, and I have no money for the ticket," he said. "Well, then you'd better get to work," they replied.

Sahinal was in a panic. His family back home – his son, daughter, wife and parents – were waiting for money, excited that their boy had finally made it. But he was going to have to work for more than two years just to pay for the cost of getting here – and all to earn less than he did in Bangladesh.

He shows me his room. It is a tiny, poky, concrete cell with triple-decker bunk-beds, where he lives with 11 other men. All his belongings are piled onto his bunk: three shirts, a spare pair of trousers, and a cellphone. The room stinks, because the lavatories in the corner of the camp – holes in the ground – are backed up with excrement and clouds of black flies. There is no air conditioning or fans, so the heat is "unbearable. You cannot sleep. All you do is sweat and scratch all night." At the height of summer, people sleep on the floor, on the roof, anywhere where they can pray for a moment of breeze.

The water delivered to the camp in huge white containers isn't properly desalinated: it tastes of salt. "It makes us sick, but we have nothing else to drink," he says.

The work is "the worst in the world," he says. "You have to carry 50kg bricks and blocks of cement in the worst heat imaginable ... This heat – it is like nothing else. You sweat so much you can't pee, not for days or weeks. It's like all the liquid comes out through your skin and you stink. You become dizzy and sick but you aren't allowed to stop, except for an hour in the afternoon. You know if you drop anything or slip, you could die. If you take time off sick, your wages are docked, and you are trapped here even longer."

He is currently working on the 67th floor of a shiny new tower, where he builds upwards, into the sky, into the heat. He doesn't know its name. In his four years here, he has never seen the Dubai of tourist-fame, except as he constructs it floor-by-floor.

Is he angry? He is quiet for a long time. "Here, nobody shows their anger. You can't. You get put in jail for a long time, then deported." Last year, some workers went on strike after they were not given their wages for four months. The Dubai police surrounded their camps with razor-wire and water-cannons and blasted them out and back to work.

The "ringleaders" were imprisoned. I try a different question: does Sohinal regret coming? All the men look down, awkwardly. "How can we think about that? We are trapped. If we start to think about regrets..." He lets the sentence trail off. Eventually, another worker breaks the silence by adding: "I miss my country, my family and my land. We can grow food in Bangladesh. Here, nothing grows. Just oil and buildings."

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

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

Sahinal could well die out here. A British man who used to work on construction projects told me: "There's a huge number of suicides in the camps and on the construction sites, but they're not reported. They're described as 'accidents'." Even then, their families aren't free: they simply inherit the debts. A Human Rights Watch study found there is a "cover-up of the true extent" of deaths from heat exhaustion, overwork and suicide, but the Indian consulate registered 971 deaths of their nationals in 2005 alone. After this figure was leaked, the consulates were told to stop counting.

At night, in the dusk, I sit in the camp with Sohinal and his friends as they scrape together what they have left to buy a cheap bottle of spirits. They down it in one ferocious gulp. "It helps you to feel numb", Sohinal says through a stinging throat. In the distance, the glistening Dubai skyline he built stands, oblivious.

IV. Mauled by the mall

I find myself stumbling in a daze from the camps into the sprawling marble malls that seem to stand on every street in Dubai. It is so hot there is no point building pavements; people gather in these cathedrals of consumerism to bask in the air conditioning. So within a ten minute taxi-ride, I have left Sohinal and I am standing in the middle of Harvey Nichols, being shown a £20,000 taffeta dress by a bored salesgirl. "As you can see, it is cut on the bias..." she says, and I stop writing.

Time doesn't seem to pass in the malls. Days blur with the same electric light, the same shined floors, the same brands I know from home. Here, Dubai is reduced to its component sounds: do-buy. In the most expensive malls I am almost alone, the shops empty and echoing. On the record, everybody tells me business is going fine. Off the record, they look panicky. There is a hat exhibition ahead of the Dubai races, selling elaborate headgear for £1,000 a pop. "Last year, we were packed. Now look," a hat designer tells me. She swoops her arm over a vacant space.

I approach a blonde 17-year-old Dutch girl wandering around in hotpants, oblivious to the swarms of men gaping at her. "I love it here!" she says. "The heat, the malls, the beach!" Does it ever bother you that it's a slave society? She puts her head down, just as Sohinal did. "I try not to see," she says. Even at 17, she has learned not to look, and not to ask; that, she senses, is a transgression too far.

Between the malls, there is nothing but the connecting tissue of asphalt. Every road has at least four lanes; Dubai feels like a motorway punctuated by shopping centres. You only walk anywhere if you are suicidal. The residents of Dubai flit from mall to mall by car or taxis.

How does it feel if this is your country, filled with foreigners? Unlike the expats and the slave class, I can't just approach the native Emiratis to ask questions when I see them wandering around – the men in cool white robes, the women in sweltering black. If you try, the women blank you, and the men look affronted, and tell you brusquely that Dubai is "fine". So I browse through the Emirati blog-scene and found some typical-sounding young Emiratis. We meet – where else? – in the mall.

Ahmed al-Atar is a handsome 23-year-old with a neat, trimmed beard, tailored white robes, and rectangular wire-glasses. He speaks perfect American-English, and quickly shows that he knows London, Los Angeles and Paris better than most westerners. Sitting back in his chair in an identikit Starbucks, he announces: "This is the best place in the world to be young! The government pays for your education up to PhD level. You get given a free house when you get married. You get free healthcare, and if it's not good enough here, they pay for you to go abroad. You don't even have to pay for your phone calls. Almost everyone has a maid, a nanny, and a driver. And we never pay any taxes. Don't you wish you were Emirati?"

I try to raise potential objections to this Panglossian summary, but he leans forward and says: "Look – my grandfather woke up every day and he would have to fight to get to the well first to get water. When the wells ran dry, they had to have water delivered by camel. They were always hungry and thirsty and desperate for jobs. He limped all his life, because he there was no medical treatment available when he broke his leg. Now look at us!"

For Emiratis, this is a Santa Claus state, handing out goodies while it makes its money elsewhere: through renting out land to foreigners, soft taxes on them like business and airport charges, and the remaining dribble of oil. Most Emiratis, like Ahmed, work for the government, so they're cushioned from the credit crunch. "I haven't felt any effect at all, and nor have my friends," he says. "Your employment is secure. You will only be fired if you do something incredibly bad." The laws are currently being tightened, to make it even more impossible to sack an Emirati.

Sure, the flooding-in of expats can sometimes be "an eyesore", Ahmed says. "But we see the expats as the price we had to pay for this development. How else could we do it? Nobody wants to go back to the days of the desert, the days before everyone came. We went from being like an African country to having an average income per head of $120,000 a year. And we're supposed to complain?"

He says the lack of political freedom is fine by him. "You'll find it very hard to find an Emirati who doesn't support Sheikh Mohammed." Because they're scared? "No, because we really all support him. He's a great leader. Just look!" He smiles and says: "I'm sure my life is very much like yours. We hang out, have a coffee, go to the movies. You'll be in a Pizza Hut or Nando's in London, and at the same time I'll be in one in Dubai," he says, ordering another latte.

But do all young Emiratis see it this way? Can it really be so sunny in the political sands? In the sleek Emirates Tower Hotel, I meet Sultan al-Qassemi. He's a 31-year-old Emirati columnist for the Dubai press and private art collector, with a reputation for being a contrarian liberal, advocating gradual reform. He is wearing Western clothes – blue jeans and a Ralph Lauren shirt – and speaks incredibly fast, turning himself into a manic whirr of arguments.

"People here are turning into lazy, overweight babies!" he exclaims. "The nanny state has gone too far. We don't do anything for ourselves! Why don't any of us work for the private sector? Why can't a mother and father look after their own child?" And yet, when I try to bring up the system of slavery that built Dubai, he looks angry. "People should give us credit," he insists. "We are the most tolerant people in the world. Dubai is the only truly international city in the world. Everyone who comes here is treated with respect."

I pause, and think of the vast camps in Sonapur, just a few miles away. Does he even know they exist? He looks irritated. "You know, if there are 30 or 40 cases [of worker abuse] a year, that sounds like a lot but when you think about how many people are here..." Thirty or 40? This abuse is endemic to the system, I say. We're talking about hundreds of thousands.

Sultan is furious. He splutters: "You don't think Mexicans are treated badly in New York City? And how long did it take Britain to treat people well? I could come to London and write about the homeless people on Oxford Street and make your city sound like a terrible place, too! The workers here can leave any time they want! Any Indian can leave, any Asian can leave!"

But they can't, I point out. Their passports are taken away, and their wages are withheld. "Well, I feel bad if that happens, and anybody who does that should be punished. But their embassies should help them." They try. But why do you forbid the workers – with force – from going on strike against lousy employers? "Thank God we don't allow that!" he exclaims. "Strikes are in-convenient! They go on the street – we're not having that. We won't be like France. Imagine a country where they the workers can just stop whenever they want!" So what should the workers do when they are cheated and lied to? "Quit. Leave the country."

I sigh. Sultan is seething now. "People in the West are always complaining about us," he says. Suddenly, he adopts a mock-whiny voice and says, in imitation of these disgusting critics: "Why don't you treat animals better? Why don't you have better shampoo advertising? Why don't you treat labourers better?" It's a revealing order: animals, shampoo, then workers. He becomes more heated, shifting in his seat, jabbing his finger at me. "I gave workers who worked for me safety goggles and special boots, and they didn't want to wear them! It slows them down!"

And then he smiles, coming up with what he sees as his killer argument. "When I see Western journalists criticise us – don't you realise you're shooting yourself in the foot? The Middle East will be far more dangerous if Dubai fails. Our export isn't oil, it's hope. Poor Egyptians or Libyans or Iranians grow up saying – I want to go to Dubai. We're very important to the region. We are showing how to be a modern Muslim country. We don't have any fundamentalists here. Europeans shouldn't gloat at our demise. You should be very worried.... Do you know what will happen if this model fails? Dubai will go down the Iranian path, the Islamist path."

Sultan sits back. My arguments have clearly disturbed him; he says in a softer, conciliatory tone, almost pleading: "Listen. My mother used to go to the well and get a bucket of water every morning. On her wedding day, she was given an orange as a gift because she had never eaten one. Two of my brothers died when they were babies because the healthcare system hadn't developed yet. Don't judge us." He says it again, his eyes filled with intensity: "Don't judge us."

V. The Dunkin' Donuts Dissidents

But there is another face to the Emirati minority – a small huddle of dissidents, trying to shake the Sheikhs out of abusive laws. Next to a Virgin Megastore and a Dunkin' Donuts, with James Blunt's "You're Beautiful" blaring behind me, I meet the Dubai dictatorship's Public Enemy Number One. By way of introduction, Mohammed al-Mansoori says from within his white robes and sinewy face: "Westerners come her and see the malls and the tall buildings and they think that means we are free. But these businesses, these buildings – who are they for? This is a dictatorship. The royal family think they own the country, and the people are their servants. There is no freedom here."

We snuffle out the only Arabic restaurant in this mall, and he says everything you are banned – under threat of prison – from saying in Dubai. Mohammed tells me he was born in Dubai to a fisherman father who taught him one enduring lesson: Never follow the herd. Think for yourself. In the sudden surge of development, Mohammed trained as a lawyer. By the Noughties, he had climbed to the head of the Jurists' Association, an organisation set up to press for Dubai's laws to be consistent with international human rights legislation.

And then – suddenly – Mohammed thwacked into the limits of Sheikh Mohammed's tolerance. Horrified by the "system of slavery" his country was being built on, he spoke out to Human Rights Watch and the BBC. "So I was hauled in by the secret police and told: shut up, or you will lose you job, and your children will be unemployable," he says. "But how could I be silent?"

He was stripped of his lawyer's licence and his passport – becoming yet another person imprisoned in this country. "I have been blacklisted and so have my children. The newspapers are not allowed to write about me."

Why is the state so keen to defend this system of slavery? He offers a prosaic explanation. "Most companies are owned by the government, so they oppose human rights laws because it will reduce their profit margins. It's in their interests that the workers are slaves."

Last time there was a depression, there was a starbust of democracy in Dubai, seized by force from the sheikhs. In the 1930s, the city's merchants banded together against Sheikh Said bin Maktum al-Maktum – the absolute ruler of his day – and insisted they be given control over the state finances. It lasted only a few years, before the Sheikh – with the enthusiastic support of the British – snuffed them out.

And today? Sheikh Mohammed turned Dubai into Creditopolis, a city built entirely on debt. Dubai owes 107 percent of its entire GDP. It would be bust already, if the neighbouring oil-soaked state of Abu Dhabi hadn't pulled out its chequebook. Mohammed says this will constrict freedom even further. "Now Abu Dhabi calls the tunes – and they are much more conservative and restrictive than even Dubai. Freedom here will diminish every day." Already, new media laws have been drafted forbidding the press to report on anything that could "damage" Dubai or "its economy". Is this why the newspapers are giving away glossy supplements talking about "encouraging economic indicators"?

Everybody here waves Islamism as the threat somewhere over the horizon, sure to swell if their advice is not followed. Today, every imam is appointed by the government, and every sermon is tightly controlled to keep it moderate. But Mohammed says anxiously: "We don't have Islamism here now, but I think that if you control people and give them no way to express anger, it could rise. People who are told to shut up all the time can just explode."

Later that day, against another identikit-corporate backdrop, I meet another dissident – Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, Professor of Political Science at Emirates University. His anger focuses not on political reform, but the erosion of Emirati identity. He is famous among the locals, a rare outspoken conductor for their anger. He says somberly: "There has been a rupture here. This is a totally different city to the one I was born in 50 years ago."

He looks around at the shiny floors and Western tourists and says: "What we see now didn't occur in our wildest dreams. We never thought we could be such a success, a trendsetter, a model for other Arab countries. The people of Dubai are mighty proud of their city, and rightly so. And yet..." He shakes his head. "In our hearts, we fear we have built a modern city but we are losing it to all these expats."

Adbulkhaleq says every Emirati of his generation lives with a "psychological trauma." Their hearts are divided – "between pride on one side, and fear on the other." Just after he says this, a smiling waitress approaches, and asks us what we would like to drink. He orders a Coke.

VI. Dubai Pride

There is one group in Dubai for whom the rhetoric of sudden freedom and liberation rings true – but it is the very group the government wanted to liberate least: gays.

Beneath a famous international hotel, I clamber down into possibly the only gay club on the Saudi Arabian peninsula. I find a United Nations of tank-tops and bulging biceps, dancing to Kylie, dropping ecstasy, and partying like it's Soho. "Dubai is the best place in the Muslim world for gays!" a 25-year old Emirati with spiked hair says, his arms wrapped around his 31-year old "husband". "We are alive. We can meet. That is more than most Arab gays."

It is illegal to be gay in Dubai, and punishable by 10 years in prison. But the locations of the latest unofficial gay clubs circulate online, and men flock there, seemingly unafraid of the police. "They might bust the club, but they will just disperse us," one of them says. "The police have other things to do."

In every large city, gay people find a way to find each other – but Dubai has become the clearing-house for the region's homosexuals, a place where they can live in relative safety. Saleh, a lean private in the Saudi Arabian army, has come here for the Coldplay concert, and tells me Dubai is "great" for gays: "In Saudi, it's hard to be straight when you're young. The women are shut away so everyone has gay sex. But they only want to have sex with boys – 15- to 21-year-olds. I'm 27, so I'm too old now. I need to find real gays, so this is the best place. All Arab gays want to live in Dubai."

With that, Saleh dances off across the dancefloor, towards a Dutch guy with big biceps and a big smile.

VII. The Lifestyle

All the guidebooks call Dubai a "melting pot", but as I trawl across the city, I find that every group here huddles together in its own little ethnic enclave – and becomes a caricature of itself. One night – in the heart of this homesick city, tired of the malls and the camps – I go to Double Decker, a hang-out for British expats. At the entrance there is a red telephone box, and London bus-stop signs. Its wooden interior looks like a cross between a colonial clubhouse in the Raj and an Eighties school disco, with blinking coloured lights and cheese blaring out. As I enter, a girl in a short skirt collapses out of the door onto her back. A guy wearing a pirate hat helps her to her feet, dropping his beer bottle with a paralytic laugh.

I start to talk to two sun-dried women in their sixties who have been getting gently sozzled since midday. "You stay here for The Lifestyle," they say, telling me to take a seat and order some more drinks. All the expats talk about The Lifestyle, but when you ask what it is, they become vague. Ann Wark tries to summarise it: "Here, you go out every night. You'd never do that back home. You see people all the time. It's great. You have lots of free time. You have maids and staff so you don't have to do all that stuff. You party!"

They have been in Dubai for 20 years, and they are happy to explain how the city works. "You've got a hierarchy, haven't you?" Ann says. "It's the Emiratis at the top, then I'd say the British and other Westerners. Then I suppose it's the Filipinos, because they've got a bit more brains than the Indians. Then at the bottom you've got the Indians and all them lot."

They admit, however, they have "never" spoken to an Emirati. Never? "No. They keep themselves to themselves." Yet Dubai has disappointed them. Jules Taylor tells me: "If you have an accident here it's a nightmare. There was a British woman we knew who ran over an Indian guy, and she was locked up for four days! If you have a tiny bit of alcohol on your breath they're all over you. These Indians throw themselves in front of cars, because then their family has to be given blood money – you know, compensation. But the police just blame us. That poor woman."

A 24-year-old British woman called Hannah Gamble takes a break from the dancefloor to talk to me. "I love the sun and the beach! It's great out here!" she says. Is there anything bad? "Oh yes!" she says. Ah: one of them has noticed, I think with relief. "The banks! When you want to make a transfer you have to fax them. You can't do it online." Anything else? She thinks hard. "The traffic's not very good."

When I ask the British expats how they feel to not be in a democracy, their reaction is always the same. First, they look bemused. Then they look affronted. "It's the Arab way!" an Essex boy shouts at me in response, as he tries to put a pair of comedy antlers on his head while pouring some beer into the mouth of his friend, who is lying on his back on the floor, gurning.

Later, in a hotel bar, I start chatting to a dyspeptic expat American who works in the cosmetics industry and is desperate to get away from these people. She says: "All the people who couldn't succeed in their own countries end up here, and suddenly they're rich and promoted way above their abilities and bragging about how great they are. I've never met so many incompetent people in such senior positions anywhere in the world." She adds: "It's absolutely racist. I had Filipino girls working for me doing the same job as a European girl, and she's paid a quarter of the wages. The people who do the real work are paid next to nothing, while these incompetent managers pay themselves £40,000 a month."

With the exception of her, one theme unites every expat I speak to: their joy at having staff to do the work that would clog their lives up Back Home. Everyone, it seems, has a maid. The maids used to be predominantly Filipino, but with the recession, Filipinos have been judged to be too expensive, so a nice Ethiopian servant girl is the latest fashionable accessory.

It is an open secret that once you hire a maid, you have absolute power over her. You take her passport – everyone does; you decide when to pay her, and when – if ever – she can take a break; and you decide who she talks to. She speaks no Arabic. She cannot escape.

In a Burger King, a Filipino girl tells me it is "terrifying" for her to wander the malls in Dubai because Filipino maids or nannies always sneak away from the family they are with and beg her for help. "They say – 'Please, I am being held prisoner, they don't let me call home, they make me work every waking hour seven days a week.' At first I would say – my God, I will tell the consulate, where are you staying? But they never know their address, and the consulate isn't interested. I avoid them now. I keep thinking about a woman who told me she hadn't eaten any fruit in four years. They think I have power because I can walk around on my own, but I'm powerless."

The only hostel for women in Dubai – a filthy private villa on the brink of being repossessed – is filled with escaped maids. Mela Matari, a 25-year-old Ethiopian woman with a drooping smile, tells me what happened to her – and thousands like her. She was promised a paradise in the sands by an agency, so she left her four year-old daughter at home and headed here to earn money for a better future. "But they paid me half what they promised. I was put with an Australian family – four children – and Madam made me work from 6am to 1am every day, with no day off. I was exhausted and pleaded for a break, but they just shouted: 'You came here to work, not sleep!' Then one day I just couldn't go on, and Madam beat me. She beat me with her fists and kicked me. My ear still hurts. They wouldn't give me my wages: they said they'd pay me at the end of the two years. What could I do? I didn't know anybody here. I was terrified."

One day, after yet another beating, Mela ran out onto the streets, and asked – in broken English – how to find the Ethiopian consulate. After walking for two days, she found it, but they told her she had to get her passport back from Madam. "Well, how could I?" she asks. She has been in this hostel for six months. She has spoken to her daughter twice. "I lost my country, I lost my daughter, I lost everything," she says.

As she says this, I remember a stray sentence I heard back at Double Decker. I asked a British woman called Hermione Frayling what the best thing about Dubai was. "Oh, the servant class!" she trilled. "You do nothing. They'll do anything!"

VIII. The End of The World

The World is empty. It has been abandoned, its continents unfinished. Through binoculars, I think I can glimpse Britain; this sceptred isle barren in the salt-breeze.

Here, off the coast of Dubai, developers have been rebuilding the world. They have constructed artificial islands in the shape of all planet Earth's land masses, and they plan to sell each continent off to be built on. There were rumours that the Beckhams would bid for Britain. But the people who work at the nearby coast say they haven't seen anybody there for months now. "The World is over," a South African suggests.

All over Dubai, crazy projects that were Under Construction are now Under Collapse. They were building an air-conditioned beach here, with cooling pipes running below the sand, so the super-rich didn't singe their toes on their way from towel to sea.

The projects completed just before the global economy crashed look empty and tattered. The Atlantis Hotel was launched last winter in a $20m fin-de-siecle party attended by Robert De Niro, Lindsay Lohan and Lily Allen. Sitting on its own fake island – shaped, of course, like a palm tree – it looks like an immense upturned tooth in a faintly decaying mouth. It is pink and turreted – the architecture of the pharaohs, as reimagined by Zsa-Zsa Gabor. Its Grand Lobby is a monumental dome covered in glitterballs, held up by eight monumental concrete palm trees. Standing in the middle, there is a giant shining glass structure that looks like the intestines of every guest who has ever stayed at the Atlantis. It is unexpectedly raining; water is leaking from the roof, and tiles are falling off.

A South African PR girl shows me around its most coveted rooms, explaining that this is "the greatest luxury offered in the world". We stroll past shops selling £24m diamond rings around a hotel themed on the lost and sunken continent of, yes, Atlantis. There are huge water tanks filled with sharks, which poke around mock-abandoned castles and dumped submarines. There are more than 1,500 rooms here, each with a sea view. The Neptune suite has three floors, and – I gasp as I see it – it looks out directly on to the vast shark tank. You lie on the bed, and the sharks stare in at you. In Dubai, you can sleep with the fishes, and survive.

But even the luxury – reminiscent of a Bond villain's lair – is also being abandoned. I check myself in for a few nights to the classiest hotel in town, the Park Hyatt. It is the fashionistas' favourite hotel, where Elle Macpherson and Tommy Hilfiger stay, a gorgeous, understated palace. It feels empty. Whenever I eat, I am one of the only people in the restaurant. A staff member tells me in a whisper: "It used to be full here. Now there's hardly anyone." Rattling around, I feel like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, the last man in an abandoned, haunted home.

The most famous hotel in Dubai – the proud icon of the city – is the Burj al Arab hotel, sitting on the shore, shaped like a giant glass sailing boat. In the lobby, I start chatting to a couple from London who work in the City. They have been coming to Dubai for 10 years now, and they say they love it. "You never know what you'll find here," he says. "On our last trip, at the beginning of the holiday, our window looked out on the sea. By the end, they'd built an entire island there."

My patience frayed by all this excess, I find myself snapping: doesn't the omnipresent slave class bother you? I hope they misunderstood me, because the woman replied: "That's what we come for! It's great, you can't do anything for yourself!" Her husband chimes in: "When you go to the toilet, they open the door, they turn on the tap – the only thing they don't do is take it out for you when you have a piss!" And they both fall about laughing.

IX. Taking on the Desert

Dubai is not just a city living beyond its financial means; it is living beyond its ecological means. You stand on a manicured Dubai lawn and watch the sprinklers spray water all around you. You see tourists flocking to swim with dolphins. You wander into a mountain-sized freezer where they have built a ski slope with real snow. And a voice at the back of your head squeaks: this is the desert. This is the most water-stressed place on the planet. How can this be happening? How is it possible?

The very earth is trying to repel Dubai, to dry it up and blow it away. The new Tiger Woods Gold Course needs four million gallons of water to be pumped on to its grounds every day, or it would simply shrivel and disappear on the winds. The city is regularly washed over with dust-storms that fog up the skies and turn the skyline into a blur. When the dust parts, heat burns through. It cooks anything that is not kept constantly, artificially wet.

Dr Mohammed Raouf, the environmental director of the Gulf Research Centre, sounds sombre as he sits in his Dubai office and warns: "This is a desert area, and we are trying to defy its environment. It is very unwise. If you take on the desert, you will lose."

Sheikh Maktoum built his showcase city in a place with no useable water. None. There is no surface water, very little acquifer, and among the lowest rainfall in the world. So Dubai drinks the sea. The Emirates' water is stripped of salt in vast desalination plants around the Gulf – making it the most expensive water on earth. It costs more than petrol to produce, and belches vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it goes. It's the main reason why a resident of Dubai has the biggest average carbon footprint of any human being – more than double that of an American.

If a recession turns into depression, Dr Raouf believes Dubai could run out of water. "At the moment, we have financial reserves that cover bringing so much water to the middle of the desert. But if we had lower revenues – if, say, the world shifts to a source of energy other than oil..." he shakes his head. "We will have a very big problem. Water is the main source of life. It would be a catastrophe. Dubai only has enough water to last us a week. There's almost no storage. We don't know what will happen if our supplies falter. It would be hard to survive."

Global warming, he adds, makes the problem even worse. "We are building all these artificial islands, but if the sea level rises, they will be gone, and we will lose a lot. Developers keep saying it's all fine, they've taken it into consideration, but I'm not so sure."

Is the Dubai government concerned about any of this? "There isn't much interest in these problems," he says sadly. But just to stand still, the average resident of Dubai needs three times more water than the average human. In the looming century of water stresses and a transition away from fossil fuels, Dubai is uniquely vulnerable.

I wanted to understand how the government of Dubai will react, so I decided to look at how it has dealt with an environmental problem that already exists – the pollution of its beaches. One woman – an American, working at one of the big hotels – had written in a lot of online forums arguing that it was bad and getting worse, so I called her to arrange a meeting. "I can't talk to you," she said sternly. Not even if it's off the record? "I can't talk to you." But I don't have to disclose your name... "You're not listening. This phone is bugged. I can't talk to you," she snapped, and hung up.

The next day I turned up at her office. "If you reveal my identity, I'll be sent on the first plane out of this city," she said, before beginning to nervously pace the shore with me. "It started like this. We began to get complaints from people using the beach. The water looked and smelled odd, and they were starting to get sick after going into it. So I wrote to the ministers of health and tourism and expected to hear back immediately – but there was nothing. Silence. I hand-delivered the letters. Still nothing."

The water quality got worse and worse. The guests started to spot raw sewage, condoms, and used sanitary towels floating in the sea. So the hotel ordered its own water analyses from a professional company. "They told us it was full of fecal matter and bacteria 'too numerous to count'. I had to start telling guests not to go in the water, and since they'd come on a beach holiday, as you can imagine, they were pretty pissed off." She began to make angry posts on the expat discussion forums – and people began to figure out what was happening. Dubai had expanded so fast its sewage treatment facilities couldn't keep up. The sewage disposal trucks had to queue for three or four days at the treatment plants – so instead, they were simply drilling open the manholes and dumping the untreated sewage down them, so it flowed straight to the sea.

Suddenly, it was an open secret – and the municipal authorities finally acknowledged the problem. They said they would fine the truckers. But the water quality didn't improve: it became black and stank. "It's got chemicals in it. I don't know what they are. But this stuff is toxic."

She continued to complain – and started to receive anonymous phone calls. "Stop embarassing Dubai, or your visa will be cancelled and you're out," they said. She says: "The expats are terrified to talk about anything. One critical comment in the newspapers and they deport you. So what am I supposed to do? Now the water is worse than ever. People are getting really sick. Eye infections, ear infections, stomach infections, rashes. Look at it!" There is faeces floating on the beach, in the shadow of one of Dubai's most famous hotels.

"What I learnt about Dubai is that the authorities don't give a toss about the environment," she says, standing in the stench. "They're pumping toxins into the sea, their main tourist attraction, for God's sake. If there are environmental problems in the future, I can tell you now how they will deal with them – deny it's happening, cover it up, and carry on until it's a total disaster." As she speaks, a dust-storm blows around us, as the desert tries, slowly, insistently, to take back its land.

X. Fake Plastic Trees

On my final night in the Dubai Disneyland, I stop off on my way to the airport, at a Pizza Hut that sits at the side of one of the city's endless, wide, gaping roads. It is identical to the one near my apartment in London in every respect, even the vomit-coloured decor. My mind is whirring and distracted. 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.

I ask the Filipino girl behind the counter if she likes it here. "It's OK," she says cautiously. Really? I say. I can't stand it. She sighs with relief and says: "This is the most terrible place! I hate it! I was here for months before I realised – everything in Dubai is fake. Everything you see. The trees are fake, the workers' contracts are fake, the islands are fake, the smiles are fake – even the water is fake!" But she is trapped, she says. She got into debt to come here, and she is stuck for three years: an old story now. "I think Dubai is like an oasis. It is an illusion, not real. You think you have seen water in the distance, but you get close and you only get a mouthful of sand."

As she says this, another customer enters. She forces her face into the broad, empty Dubai smile and says: "And how may I help you tonight, sir?"

Some names in this article have been changed.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html


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## WrightTurn (Nov 7, 2008)

Great article...


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## MikaGe (Apr 7, 2006)

Really a mind opener...

Harshly speaking, Dubai does exist just because there were money to built some insane vision. Nobody need it and perhaps never been such demand for it. 
Dubai is indeed a marvel, but it's lacking of identity. Until this moment, I still consider Dubai is theme park for us skyscraper, architecture or engineering enthusiasts but as a city, where we can experience certain urban feeling...nope. There are many less glamour cities attracted me better than Dubai to visit. Not to mention living & working there. 
I think Dubai could develop it if there was proper planning (e.g. marketing-positioning, like Singapore always does) for the city, but I never encounter any rellevant campaign, only overwhelming property ads by far.


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## luv2bebrown (Nov 4, 2004)

the greed of the new generation of Dubai residents is poisoning the city. things used to be a lot better before the city became famous.


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## ssiguy2 (Feb 19, 2005)

This is why I have always had a real distain for Dubai and yes, even it's skyscrapers. Anyone can build Disneyland on slave labour. I don't know what I found more revolting........the government itself or the Westerners who love their slave labour attendents.


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## tmac14wr (Oct 12, 2004)

This just completely changed my view on Dubai. I honestly had no idea anything this horrible of this magnitude was happening.

This is an amazing article.


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## Mollywood (May 23, 2007)

What a depressing article. It's hard to believe that this kind of cruelty can exist in this day and age. Money is the root of all evil.


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## Shapoor (Jan 3, 2009)

Thanks for the great article. Really says what I have in my heart for years and years after seeing everyone around me going to Dubai with cheers and coming back with nothing.



> They were building an air-conditioned beach here, with cooling pipes running below the sand, so the super-rich didn't singe their toes on their way from towel to sea.


Ridiculous. The human race (or at least some part of it) is getting weaker and more pathetic everyday hno:


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## nygirl (Jul 14, 2003)

"Manhattan-manqué skyline" that's harsh.


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## Epi (Jul 21, 2006)

Interesting to see such an article on Dubai. After all of the endless cheerleading that we've heard about Dubai in the past decade (well with some minor exceptions) here's a truly contrary article to the widely held 'truth'. Still I can't help but think that the reporter comes into this article with his own agenda and own biases such that things are a bit over exaggerated if still true.


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## goschio (Dec 2, 2002)

This has been known for years. Seems the greed and money has blinded people.


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## intensivecarebear (Feb 2, 2006)

Dubai was always and is a sham. Anyone who has set foot in Dubai for two minutes would realize that it was all built thanks to modern day slavery. This was not a mystery to anyone. You either chose to ignore it or not. I dont feel one bit of sympathy to any of the ruined expats and emiratis. They never lifted a finger for anything!


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## ZimasterX (Aug 19, 2005)

I love a dystopia when I see one. If only there were a few minor changes (like moving it to a more temperate/vegetative region), I wouldn't mind living there.

But wow, a caste system, a privileged class. If Dubai didn't exist, I'd write a book about it.


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## luv2bebrown (Nov 4, 2004)

ssiguy2 said:


> This is why I have always had a real distain for Dubai and yes, even it's skyscrapers. Anyone can build Disneyland on slave labour. I don't know what I found more revolting........the government itself or the Westerners who love their slave labour attendents.


From the article:
*"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."*


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## liposuctionguide (Apr 8, 2009)

Now a days Dubai is really rocking city.It has really good Real estate market.


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## DarkLite (Dec 31, 2004)

one of the best articles ive ever read in my life, truly one of the most depressing articles i have seen, makes you think that the world has degenerated so much, so soon, that everything is ending...

i cannot believe people really treat the ´´underclass´´ like slaves and not feel any sympathy. and i thought the upper class of latin america was harsh....pfff :|


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## city_thing (May 25, 2006)

Uh-oh. Someone said something true bad about Dubai. Time for Altin to step in and call everyone 'jealous' before blocking the thread.


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## nygirl (Jul 14, 2003)

^^ Well a few things on that.... 

1. A Mod created this thread with the sole purpose of sharing information. 
2. You can't censor a thread just because something negative is written it to represent a city
3. No one is stirring arguments it is pretty civil thus far

4. I can say the same thing about New York City and how it became the World Class Metropolis of today although there are different circumstances and today's unique financial situation did not exist back then.

After reading the entire article on one side I can say not only am I disturbed I am disgusted and feel a sense of pity for Karen and her situation. On the other hand take NY for example...things were not rosey and peaceful for NY in its earlier years--even less than 100 years ago.

The Irish, Jewish, Native American, Italian, African Americans all got it bad..
The Germans even got a short hand in NYC
NYC has had hundreds upon hundreds of riots due to poor treatment of the working class and immigrants that came here for success that they just could not find. Instead they were crammed into tenaments...3 families under the stairwell so the landlord could make a buck. Greedy politicians and political bosses enlisted gang members in the 5 points to fabricate votes during elections. There were religious riots, class riots, and riots just to riot.

Like the sheik, Robber Barons like Carnegie, Gould, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller held the city at their mercy. Children worked in slave like conditions, Militia were called in to control uprisings and riots and shot upon their own countrymen. People Like Bill Tweed created grandiose buildings where two blocks down there were windowless apartments.

This is nothing new and I think everyone should take a look into their city's past and I'm sure you will find brutality and inhumanity laying low under every corner. 

I'm not saying what is being done in Dubai right now in this day and age is right but we all have skeletons in our closets.


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## Mollywood (May 23, 2007)

nygirl said:


> ^^ Well a few things on that....
> 
> 1. A Mod created this thread with the sole purpose of sharing information.
> 2. You can't censor a thread just because something negative is written it to represent a city
> ...


But at least in NYC the immigrants could leave whenever they wanted to. Nobody was forced to stay against their will. People back then seemed to have had more options. I think that makes the big difference.


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## tmac14wr (Oct 12, 2004)

Also, those conditions were relatively common across the world. Those living conditions weren't exclusive just to New York. The conditions of the old mills in towns like Lowell and Lawrence, Massachusetts were hideous as well. Being blacklisted from employment was extremely common for anyone who asked for better pay, more workers rights, etc.


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## Huhu (Jun 5, 2004)

Mollywood said:


> But at least in NYC the immigrants could leave whenever they wanted to. Nobody was forced to stay against their will. People back then seemed to have had more options. I think that makes the big difference.


Like the foreign labourers who built our railroads?


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## pokistic (May 8, 2007)

We can't point to the past so we can dismiss what is happening today. For one thing cities or places that use modern slavery should look at the past about slavery so they don't make these mistakes. Don't they have some history books? Internet? Advisors? I am sure the Government in Dubai is aware of these slavery conditions in the city and they are not doing enough to stop it. It is like they don't give a shit. hno:

I will never go to a disgusting place like that. Even if they pay me a lot. I rather be in a place where they value Human Rights.


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## ckm (Apr 7, 2006)

liposuctionguide said:


> Now a days Dubai is really rocking city*.It has really good Real estate market.*


:crazy: I think you are stuck somewhere in 2007.


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## tmac14wr (Oct 12, 2004)

One thing I noticed about the article is that on two separate occassions, the Emirati tell stories of "My grandfather had to live with ..... blah, blah" as if to justify how horribly they treat these other people. It's a total crock of shit.


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## nygirl (Jul 14, 2003)

Mollywood said:


> But at least in NYC the immigrants could leave whenever they wanted to. Nobody was forced to stay against their will. People back then seemed to have had more options. I think that makes the big difference.


That could be true for some but consider this; most spent their last pennies to make the trip to New York City and ended up in Ellis Island with nothing. They settled the Lower East Side which was packed with tenements and horrible living conditions. They lived like sardines but I guess if they wanted to they could work for pennies for 15 years or double that to make enough to make the voyage back home. The similarities and contrasts are there. I'm drawing a thin line between them.

No nobody was forced to stay here. That is true. The options are a big difference but they mean nothing without the means to execute them. Take into consideration the fact that it was not wealthy people coming to New York and it was hardly "middle class" they have been throughout history poor immigrants making the trip to NY since the days of the Dutch West India Company and their rule over a little tiny trading post called New Amsterdam. The wealthy had very little reason to leave Europe in those days. The poor had every reason. 


I'll say it again, every city has some skeletons in their closet.


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## Looking/Up (Feb 28, 2008)

^^ I agree to a large extent with what you say NYGIRL.

I'd like to add that we must remember that these aren't skeletons in Dubai's closet, these are injustices occurring in the here and now. We can't accept the wrongs that are being committed presently because the same mistakes were once made in cities we live in. That isn't learning from the past, that's allowing evils to propagate.


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## atariboy15 (Sep 11, 2002)

Looking/Up said:


> ^^ I agree to a large extent with what you say NYGIRL.
> 
> I'd like to add that we must remember that these aren't skeletons in Dubai's closet, these are injustices occurring in the here and now. We can't accept the wrongs that are being committed presently because the same mistakes were once made in cities we live in. That isn't learning from the past, that's allowing evils to propagate.


Exactly! Judging by this logic would be like defending modern day slavery as it existed before the emancipation proclamation in the US. 

Foolish


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## Epi (Jul 21, 2006)

nygirl said:


> That could be true for some but consider this; most spent their last pennies to make the trip to New York City and ended up in Ellis Island with nothing. They settled the Lower East Side which was packed with tenements and horrible living conditions. They lived like sardines but I guess if they wanted to they could work for pennies for 15 years or double that to make enough to make the voyage back home. The similarities and contrasts are there. I'm drawing a thin line between them.
> 
> No nobody was forced to stay here. That is true. The options are a big difference but they mean nothing without the means to execute them. Take into consideration the fact that it was not wealthy people coming to New York and it was hardly "middle class" they have been throughout history poor immigrants making the trip to NY since the days of the Dutch West India Company and their rule over a little tiny trading post called New Amsterdam. The wealthy had very little reason to leave Europe in those days. The poor had every reason.
> 
> ...


Unfortunately such arrangements still exist in today's New York City. There were some articles a few months ago in the New York Times, about Chinese immigrants from Fujan province who are smuggled to NY by smugglers who charge exuberant rates, only to find themselves in virtual servitude working endlessly as undocumented illegal immigrants who can't speak English in the various Chinese restaurants and so on around the city. These people can't leave or else their families at home might be assaulted by the smugglers if they don't 'pay back' their debt, which is of course ever increasing.

I also remember reading an article a few months ago, about this couple that had this Filipino nanny which they worked like a slave, never let her out and so on. Finally the nanny managed to escape and report the couple to the authorities and they were sentenced to many years in prison. I think this was in New York as well (it was national news).

Similarly, if you look at the plight of undocumented and illegal Mexican workers all over the USA (millions of them) who do the jobs that Americans don't want to do, and for little money. But they too have no recourse to complain or else they are deported.

Of course I don't mean to pick on NY or America. This kind of things happens in Toronto too, especially with a lot of the women in our sex trade, who are smuggled over here from Eastern Europe to become prostitutes with never ending debt.

Simply enough, 'slavery' or whatever you want to call it, still exists in our modern world. Perhaps it's not as brutal as it was back then (it's not like you have companies trading in people who they just randomly kidnapped from other places right out in the open) but it's still happening using other coercive ways. While Dubai may represent an extreme form of this, we in the west are just as guilty of this ourselves and have much more to do to fix things in our own societies.


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## Xusein (Sep 27, 2005)

ckm said:


> :crazy: I think you are stuck somewhere in 2007.


It's a buyer's market though.


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## ssiguy2 (Feb 19, 2005)

All cities and countries have sceletons in their closets and have terrible things going on right now but they are NOT government sanctioned. In almost all countries you can tell your government or leaders to piss off and its legal. I don't know of any country that won't give a foreigner back their passport except if they have commited a crime. We won't even go into how they treat their women. 

Also remember we are not talking about things that happened hundreds of years ago but a country in the 21st century. Dubai wanted to bring itself into the modern world but thought that just meant building skyscrapers. It is one's respect for people human and civil rights that confirm their entrance into the modern world and Dubai and its leaders have no concept of that which is why it has gone from a backward country to nothing more than a backward country with newer buildings.
Prisoners in Disneyland.


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## nomarandlee (Sep 24, 2005)

^^ Exactly, it seem there is a dire attempt at some sort to put forth some sort approximate equivalency. 



> *Epi -* Unfortunately such arrangements still exist in today's New York City. There were some articles a few months ago in the New York Times, about Chinese immigrants from Fujan province who are smuggled to NY by smugglers who charge exuberant rates, only to find themselves in virtual servitude working endlessly as undocumented illegal immigrants who can't speak English in the various Chinese restaurants and so on around the city. These people can't leave or else their families at home might be assaulted by the smugglers if they don't 'pay back' their debt, which is of course ever increasing.
> 
> I also remember reading an article a few months ago, about this couple that had this Filipino nanny which they worked like a slave, never let her out and so on. Finally the nanny managed to escape and report the couple to the authorities and they were sentenced to many years in prison. I think this was in New York as well (it was national news).
> 
> Similarly, if you look at the plight of undocumented and illegal Mexican workers all over the USA (millions of them) who do the jobs that Americans don't want to do, and for little money. But they too have no recourse to complain or else they are deported................


 You are talking largely about indivual cases or gang/organized crime related offenses. The major difference is in government complicity towards the condition of such workers should be acknowledged. I would say refusing to implement any kind of minimal wage (livable or otherwise), refusing to sign onto international labor rights provisions, outlawing any collective bargaining, unionization, or striking, and let companies (some state owned) basically run rough shot over them. 

If Chicago, Toronto, or NYC had 100,000s of workers who made less then ten dollars per day and were set up in camps of 5-10 to a room in often shantytown conditions then you I could see it as a bit more comparable....... 

As far as the conditions of certain cities 80 or 120 years ago I am not sure what the point is? Most right minded people aren't exactly proud of the conditions of the underclass four or six generations ago. Still, even in the worst conditions I would like to see some proof that construction workers or even railroad workers effectively earned less then 1/10th of the AVERAGE PCI of the time which is what most construction laborers earn in places such as Dubai.


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## bosman (Mar 8, 2007)

There are obviously many examples in the past of numerous other countries taking advantage of this same type of situation that you see in Dubai (using an immigrant slave-labor class to quickly develop). It's a shameful past, and it's a shame to see it currently being used in Dubai.

With every boom comes a bust, and the boom in Dubai for the last decade or so has been extreme. It remains to be seen how severe the bust in Dubai will be. However, during this "pause" in the frenzied construction and transformation of Dubai, I hope the people of Dubai really take stock of what kind of metropolis they really want to have. Do they really want it to be a city of extreme excess and greed? Do they want it to be a city that attracts the very wealthy, spoiled and immature people of the world? Do they want it to have an impoverished, immigrant class with no hopes of citizenship? Do they want a native population that has no concept of hard work and innovation?

I can't see how a city built in this environment could be sustainable, and it certainly doesn't seem like a city that would be attractive to live in, no matter how many shiny skyscrapers and air-conditioned beaches there are. If they truly want to be a modern, cosmopolitan metropolis, then they need to seriously change the direction in which the city is developing and try to focus on the societal transformation of their city versus the infrastructure transformation. In the end, that's what truly will make a city like Dubai great.


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

nygirl said:


> After reading the entire article on one side I can say not only am I disturbed I am disgusted and feel a sense of pity for Karen and her situation. .


Oh please, cry me a river ... after bashing Dubai for they way the underclass is treated, all you can feel pity for is a mindless Canadian upperclass and her hubby who lived way beyond their means (as she clearly says herself) and now are paying for it. 

Speak of consistency... :|


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

BTW, aren't you people tired of the same argument that Dubai is all about skyscrapers, or are you not bright enough to understand that the reason why we here talk about skyscrapers is because that's what this forum is for ... HELLO, take a look at the name on top of the page ... 

I've been living here for 9.5 years and I'm not here because of the skyscrapers and real estate but because of the International Trade opportunities this city offers.


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

Epi said:


> Unfortunately such arrangements still exist in today's New York City. There were some articles a few months ago in the New York Times, about Chinese immigrants from Fujan province who are smuggled to NY by smugglers who charge exuberant rates, only to find themselves in virtual servitude working endlessly as undocumented illegal immigrants who can't speak English in the various Chinese restaurants and so on around the city. These people can't leave or else their families at home might be assaulted by the smugglers if they don't 'pay back' their debt, which is of course ever increasing.
> 
> I also remember reading an article a few months ago, about this couple that had this Filipino nanny which they worked like a slave, never let her out and so on. Finally the nanny managed to escape and report the couple to the authorities and they were sentenced to many years in prison. I think this was in New York as well (it was national news).
> 
> ...


I come from a country that experienced a huge wave of migration since the fall of communism in 1990. It is estimated that around 30 - 35% of the population left (of course many have returned already), and I am well familiar with such stories of deceive and exploitation happening all over Europe and North America.

The hypocrisy in all this is that when it comes to this, always the foreigners are blamed as criminals and traffickers, while their own countries are the beacon of democracy human rights and civilization, but when it comes to Dubai it's all the fault of Dubai itself.


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

city_thing said:


> Uh-oh. Someone said something true bad about Dubai. Time for Altin to step in and call everyone 'jealous' before blocking the thread.


And who the heck are you to even take the liberty to call me by name? :sly:


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## nygirl (Jul 14, 2003)

AltinD said:


> Oh please, cry me a river ... after bashing Dubai for they way the underclass is treated, all you can feel pity for is a mindless Canadian upperclass and her hubby who lived way beyond their means (as she clearly says herself) and now are paying for it.
> 
> Speak of consistency... :|


*Excuse me????? Are you serious? You didn't read the other half of that post or are you just picking me out of the bunch to scrutinize one real feeling that I have? I know you don't like me but if you had read the rest of my post smarty you would see i likened what is taking place in Dubai to my own city. Get over your grudge there, Altin. 

I said nothing that "BASHED" Dubai INFACT I spent very little of my post to condemn what may or may not be taking place and instead with an open mind gave my HIGHLY UNBIASED perspective....read it again if you can. *


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## Looking/Up (Feb 28, 2008)

AltinD said:


> I come from a country that experienced a huge wave of migration since the fall of communism in 1990. It is estimated that around 30 - 35% of the population left (of course many have returned already), and I am well familiar with such stories of deceive and exploitation happening all over Europe and North America.
> 
> The hypocrisy in all this is that when it comes to this, always the foreigners are blamed as criminals and traffickers, while their own countries are the beacon of democracy human rights and civilization, but when it comes to Dubai it's all the fault of Dubai itself.


You still fail to recognize the difference between state sanctioned and organized crime.


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## particlez (May 5, 2008)

a lot of people can correctly cite dubai as embodying the worst excesses of nepotistic, plutocratic, corrupt, speculative capitalism. YET, many of these same people do not see the very real similarities in their own backyards. 

there's no way in hell you can have a salad or enjoy 95% of your new construction in the states (and many other places in the world have similar setups) without being somehow connected to the web of exploited and scapegoated undocumented/illegal labor. i'm saying this as someone who spends a lot of time on worksites, and realizes that a disproportionate amount of the most difficult yet poorly paid jobs are being performed by a similar class of worker. 

NOW, some of you can cite that the laborers in dubai were officially sanctioned, whereas the ones in the states are just illegals. but that's beside the point. it's an open secret in the agricultural/development/hospitality (and other labor intensive) industries that their profit margins are predicated on having a large supply of low cost, docile labor. there are powerful vested interests opposed to any change. instead of citing systemic inequalities and an amoral capitalist system, we just find it easier to cite some far-off place as the embodiment of everything wrong.

companies and their political vassals may say things about labor standards and jobs, and sometimes there may even be a token, made-for-tv crackdown on undocumented workers, or some talk of amnesty. but nothing much ever comes of it, and a system that's heavily dependent on exploited and scapegoated yet 'tolerated' workers continues to operate. you'd be fooling yourselves if you thought otherwise.

some of you may go past the local home depot lot and dismissively see the latino day laborers as a scourge on our great society. but then you'd ironically have the same exploitative, classist, and racist mindsets of your competitors in dubai.


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## pokistic (May 8, 2007)

^^ There is no way you can compare the Ilegals in the States and the laborers in Dubai or the Emirates. Yeah there are some stories of injustices in the States once in a while, but believe me the local government will take action. The States ilegal laborers can go back to their country whenever they want. They are free people and they can also have a path of citizenship in many different ways. What do the laborers in Dubai want? Their passports back so they can go back to their country. Holding them hostage is horrible thing and the Dubai government doesn't seem to care.


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## go_leafs_go02 (Jan 16, 2007)

While fascinating to see the development form pictures, and always having a dream to visit. This article completely threw me off, and I've always thought there was something fishy going on there.

Dubai is the ghost town of the 21st century, wait till the palm islands sink, buildings vacate..etc.


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## backupcoolm4n (Nov 4, 2008)

I didnt know that dubai had a bright side, haha, except for the scorching sun, (spoiler this may offend people so dont keep reading if it will), to me Dubai is one big fake city, no better than the old Las Vegas that relied on themed casinos and strip clubs for its economy, Las vegas has at lease grown from that and is classier now, but Dubai is a sad excuse for a city and an attempt to create a Nirvana in the modern world, however it is quite the opposite, the city puts out billions in tons of CO2 to entertain a few people, the city is only growing because stupid people want get jobs in construction, i hate this city and wouldn't live there if i got all the money in the world.


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

Oh please people, be more creative in your talking out of your behinds please ... it's more entertaining that way. 

Why can't you just be like that SSP guy that as a huge F1 fan (FIA Formula 1 Racing Championship) was very disappointed by last Dubai's GP Race, he hadn't enjoyed it at all. Poor him ... et:


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## backupcoolm4n (Nov 4, 2008)

AltinD said:


> Oh please people, be more creative in your talking out of your behinds please ... it's more entertaining that way.
> 
> Why can't you just be like that SSP guy that as a huge F1 fan (FIA Formula 1 Racing Championship) was very disappointed by last Dubai's GP Race, he hadn't enjoyed it at all. Poor him ... et:


typical brainwashed Dubai groupie, seriously dude grow some balls and think for yourself, how about not being a conformist


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## Xusein (Sep 27, 2005)

pokistic said:


> ^^ There is no way you can compare the Ilegals in the States and the laborers in Dubai or the Emirates. Yeah there are some stories of injustices in the States once in a while, but believe me the local government will take action. The States ilegal laborers can go back to their country whenever they want. They are free people and they can also have a path of citizenship in many different ways. What do the laborers in Dubai want? Their passports back so they can go back to their country. Holding them hostage is horrible thing and the Dubai government doesn't seem to care.


I thought that, if unemployed, an expat has to leave the UAE if he can't find a job. So, if you want to leave, just quit your job.


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## luv2bebrown (Nov 4, 2004)

backupcoolm4n said:


> typical brainwashed Dubai groupie, seriously dude grow some balls and think for yourself, how about not being a conformist


you fit quite perfectly into the Dubai-basher bandwagon. you should educate yourself, become informed and come up with some original opinion. anytime anybody says "oh Dubai is fake" INSTANTLY means the person who said that has the blind mentality of a person with an poorly informed agenda. ive been on SSC for years and have seen the same predictable inverted snobbery of people like yourself who have made such statements over and over and over again. and what is shocking is that have the gall to call others conformists.

you also completely missed the point of AltinD's post. Dubai bashers have an agenda against the city, and will introduce made up stories such as how the Dubai Formula 1 Grand Prix was not any good. (Dubai F1 Grand Prix? What Dubai F1 Grand Prix?)


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

Oh, and that comes from someone saying "dude" in a grown-ups discussion.


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## The other Dude (Jan 30, 2008)

such a fall from paradise must be hard, especially if you wont accept it. the higher you go, the deeper you fall! 
but i can understand people like altin (oh sorry for calling you by name). wonderful stories of mile high buildings and biggest shopping malls, skiing in the desert and other senseless bling bling stuff always has been prefered to sad stories of people working for 10 dollars a day while others spend millions every day just on the other side of the street.


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

^^ What fall from Paradise? Go take a look in your own backyard how people are couping with the financial crisis, job losses, repossessed homes and cars.


BTW, with (optimistically) tens of thousands of homes repossessed in North America, where have all those families ended up?

And no, I will not share a single tear for the Canadian woman sleeping in her Range Rover (mind you). What happened to her was not unfortunate but a consequence of her (and her spouse) actions. None's to blame but them, their greed, stupidity and shortsight.


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## The other Dude (Jan 30, 2008)

hehe

"What happened to her was not unfortunate but a consequence of her (and her spouse) actions. None's to blame but them, their greed, stupidity and shortsight."

change "her (and her spouse)" to dubai and you get what i mean. dubai attracts these people, and then the financial crisis came. ad 1 and 1...

"BTW, with (optimistically) tens of thousands of homes repossessed in North America, where have all those families ended up?" 
i dont care, most of them should have been thinking before buying, credit card doesnt mean neverending money... somewhere i read that the average american household had up to 10'000 dollars debts. and now the state is pumping billions of money into the system, but can anyone tell me where that money comes from? its all speculation again. dubai speculated on a healthy economy, and thats not going to happen soon, so i see the bubble burst if it hadnt yet. but im going to stop arguing now, makes no sense;-)


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## Saigoneseguy (Mar 6, 2005)

If people in the article hate the place so much, best thing to do is leave and never come back, no one 's forcing them to stay there. What I don't get is people who've never been there yet constantly whining.


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## WhiteMagick (May 28, 2006)

An interesting article about Dubai. Good job by the Independent.


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

^^ Yes, they indeed did a great job to make the article interesting :yes:


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## Get Smart (Oct 6, 2008)

> I. An Adult Disneyland
> 
> Karen Andrews can't speak. Every time she starts to tell her story, she puts her head down and crumples. She is slim and angular and has the faded radiance of the once-rich, even though her clothes are as creased as her forehead. I find her in the car park of one of Dubai's finest international hotels, where she is living, in her Range Rover. She has been sleeping here for months, thanks to the kindness of the Bangladeshi car park attendants who don't have the heart to move her on. This is not where she thought her Dubai dream would end.
> 
> ...


^^ this is one stupid women, she needs to sell that Range rover and get something cheap. So when things were good she and her husband did not save up but instead got greedy and fell into debt, that is a personal mistake in the making by choice and if anything the Dubai govt should chase her up in the parking lot, put her in jail, confiscate the range rover and sack the Bangladeshi guard who let her stay for not doing his job, which is to inform the debt police about this squatter. boo hoo, my heart breaks for her situation


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## Get Smart (Oct 6, 2008)

without a doubt Dubai is unfairly attacked by the British press, unfair and ridicolous it is, the problem with the construction workers have been going on for a while, they knew it and did very little about it, and now all of a sudden dubai is unfairly attacked. The same british press have seem to turn a blind eye on chinese and other slave/child labour good coming to UK and making huge profits to britsh companies. Christmas time last year and the year before some of the largest container ships full of chinese made goods arrived in UK, what are the chances that those goods were made by well paid chinese people. Also the article is bullshit when it says that UAE has the highest carbon footprint because of the desalination plants, how about countries like america, japan importing oil in huge tankers not contibute to carbon footprint, just because these tankers are registered else where and travel on intl waters do not mean they do not have carbon footprint for the nations they are supplying oil or good to. Another thing that is ridicolous is the fact that some people say Dubai is fake, well the newly built houses (and old ones) in UK are proper fake, cheap low quality materials and horribly expensive prices, in Dubai
the quality of the building were much better with high quality construction and materials. The roads were smooth and modern too, no potholes and bad surfacing like here in UK.


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## salaverryo (Apr 3, 2008)

No sense defending these Arab... countries? Calling them "medieval" is a compliment. They are not really countries, they're just a bunch of bedouin tribes with so-called national flags.


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## CrazyCanuck (Oct 9, 2004)

Johann Hari: How to spot a lame, lame argument

Saturday, 11 April 2009




There is one particular type of bad argument that has always existed, but it has now spread like tar over the world-wide web, and is seeping into the pubs, coffee shops and opinion columns everywhere. It is known as 'what-aboutery' - and there was a particularly ripe example of it in response to one of my articles last week.
Related articles

* More Opinion Articles

As a rhetorical trick, it is simple. Anyone can do it, and we are all tempted sometimes. When you have lost an argument - when you can't justify your case, and it is crumbling in your hands - you snap back: "But what about x?"

You then raise a totally different subject, and try to get everybody to focus on it - hoping it will distract attention from your own deflated case.

So whenever I report on, say, atrocities committed by Israel, I am bombarded with e-mails saying: "But what about the bad things done by Muslims? Why do you never talk about them?" Whenever I report on the atrocities committed by Islamists, I am bombarded with e-mails saying: "But what about Israel? Why do you never write about the terrible things they do?" And so it goes on, whatever the subject, in an endless international shifting of blame, united in the cry: "What about them! Talk about them instead!"

This argument is almost always disingenuous. How do I know? Because when you write back and explain that, why, I do actually criticize Islamists/Israel/the US/China/whoever-you-have-picked-out-randomly, and here are the articles where I do it, nobody ever writes back and says: fair enough; you consistently condemn human rights abuses, no matter who commits them. No. They scrape around for another "what about." What about Tibet? What about Sri Lanka? What about North Korea? This list never ends, as the other side tries to draw your attention further and further from what you were discussing.

Independent readers have just seen a classic example. Last week I reported from Dubai, pointing out that this glittering city was built on what Human Rights Watch calls "slavery" - bitterly poor people who are conned into going there and forced to stay by a medieval dictatorship. Amongst others, I interviewed an Emirati man called Sultan al-Qassemi who passionately defended this system, saying that it is absolutely right that these workers are blasted with water cannons, arrested, and deported if they try to strike against their slavery-style conditions.

He did not react to my article by responding to the many criticisms I made of Dubai. He can't. He knows they are true. Instead he wrote a piece for the Independent asking: But what about Britain? He listed many things wrong with Britain - homelessness, detention without trial, the abuse of trafficked workers - and cried: talk about them instead!

As it happens, I have criticized all these things about Britain myself, in the British press, and in publications across the world. The difference is - Sultan doesn't oppose the appalling things about his own country. He cheers them on - and all he can do to distract from this shameful fact is to try to change the subject.

The best way to respond to what-aboutery is to state a simple truth. Say it slowly: there can be more than one bad thing in the world. You can oppose American atrocities, and Chinese atrocities. You can be critical of Israel, and of Islamism. You can condemn Dubai's system of slavery, and the fact people are detained without trial in Britain. You can stand independent of governments - including your own - and criticize anyone who chooses to abuse human rights. The world is not divided into a Block of Light, and a Block of Darkness; you don't have to pick a tribe and defend its every action.

So whenever you hear the cry "But what about?!", you can reply: what about we ignore this crude attempt to change the subject, and focus on the subject in hand? 

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio...how-to-spot-a-lame-lame-argument-1667373.html


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

Attention ho' ?


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## nomarandlee (Sep 24, 2005)

Why is that? If he wrote about the U.S. or Israel would he be an attention ho? Or just if someone writes about China or Dubai is that the case for you?

This guy has a point. Some people will bring up say prisons at Gitmo/Abu Ghraib prison and act like it has something to do with 100k's of laborers building Dubais wealth getting treated like snot. Those type of arguments.


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## CrazyCanuck (Oct 9, 2004)

AltinD said:


> Attention ho' ?


Really Altin?

You may not like what you are reading, but its the truth, and sometimes it hurts. Please don't turn this thread into a childish us vs them argument, it's been good so far.


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## krull (Oct 8, 2005)

Borisot said:


> They are not just mistreated laborers, they are treated and use as enslaved laborers. When you can't even leave when you want to, that is slavery by any name. For someone trying to convince the tide of world opinion the only thing you can, and know how to do, is resorting to ad hominem attack.


The things is that I don't know if the people who comment from Dubai are been truthful and can't admit to these injustices. Like the article points out, if they criticize the Government they might loose their jobs. The Government constantly check into blogs like these. Especially this one I am very sure. Maybe that is why they can't really say that these people are treated in slave conditions? :2cents:


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

krull said:


> The things is that I don't know if the people who comment from Dubai are been truthful and can't admit to these injustices. Like the article points out, if they criticize the Government they might loose their jobs. The Government constantly check into blogs like these. Especially this one I am very sure. Maybe that is why they can't really say that these people are treated in slave conditions? :2cents:


Sorry, but I have to do this: :rofl:


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## krull (Oct 8, 2005)

^^ Well of course you have to do that.


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

^^ Yes, sure :|


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## bmkhan (Jan 3, 2005)

That article was really eye opening to the atrocities being commited in Dubai. Dubai must really change its policies and system or else its doomed for failure. In the modern world we must build sustainable communities not environmentally toxic like the way Dubai is going. Dubai Shaikh Mohammad should be dragged to the Hague and put on trial for human rights abuses. This is disgusting behavior makes me sick! Its still not too late I wish they accept this honest criticism and make drastic changes rather than being arrogant emiratis.


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## Cristovão471 (May 9, 2006)

Paneco said:


> one of the best articles ive ever read in my life, truly one of the most depressing articles i have seen, makes you think that the world has degenerated so much, so soon, that everything is ending...
> 
> i cannot believe people really treat the ´´underclass´´ like slaves and not feel any sympathy. and i thought the upper class of latin america was harsh....pfff :|


Totally agree, this was such an eye opener. 
I will make sure I steer clear of such cities in my life.


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## Joy Machine (Aug 13, 2007)

I'm a little shocked at how many have never heard stories of people losing their asses in the markets or underpaid labor...

Here's an article...it happens all the time and everywhere. I could write a novel about the underpaid mexican immigrants washing dishes and doing back breaking labor picking fruits and vegies in CA for next to nothing so can send what little they have back to their families.


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## pokistic (May 8, 2007)

krull said:


> The things is that I don't know if the people who comment from Dubai are been truthful and can't admit to these injustices. Like the article points out, if they criticize the Government they might loose their jobs. The Government constantly check into blogs like these. Especially this one I am very sure. Maybe that is why they can't really say that these people are treated in slave conditions? :2cents:


Exactly I agree with what you just said.


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## Taufiq (Oct 14, 2004)

Published by the same newspaper, this is a DEVASTATING critique and response to the article on the first post

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio...ad-just-look-at-your-own-country-1666748.html

:runaway:


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## Sid_toronto (Oct 21, 2008)

Taufiq said:


> Published by the same newspaper, this is a DEVASTATING critique and response to the article on the first post
> 
> http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio...ad-just-look-at-your-own-country-1666748.html
> 
> :runaway:


Thanks for posting, The UK has been the most atrocious country in human existence and the European Human trafficking and sex slavery is something that must be stopped. Also the way that homeless people have their rights removed from them, and the social injustices that lead to disease and death are horrible, I'm pretty sure I'm never going to visit countries like the UK or spend a single dollar their to support their corruption. 

I wish the whole world comes to its senses about treating others properly.


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## Get Smart (Oct 6, 2008)

Cristovão471 said:


> Totally agree, this was such an eye opener.
> I will make sure I steer clear of such cities in my life.












great, Dubai do not need brain washed people like you either, as if you never bought any product thats made in china with low pay/slave labour...hypocrite. And you are always welome to brick lane east london in the picture above, thats where the journalist johan hari is based


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## antovador (Jun 19, 2007)

jdbarber said:


> Their is no comparison of how NYC and Dubai were built. I can't stand when people find one example of how immigrant labor was abused and try to find similarities based off that. Dubai is a city of foreigners built by poor immigrants for rich foreigners. These foreigners will never become citizens. In New York, these poor immigrants became citizens and were able to benefit later in life or their children benefitted from their hard work. I just don't see this happening in Dubai. There seems to be no chance of upward mobility for immigrant laborers and they will be trapped in perpetual poverty.


You forgot Dubai can evolve like others cities, the rulers know his present policy is unsustainable and can learn to find solutions. 

To begin, it will be better for the Cheikh to not "manage Dubai like a corporation" and to delegate more political powers and autonomy to Dubai municipality. 
Open UAE or Dubai citizenship to all permanent residents.
Manage constructions for people needs not to make money.
Not abuse his purchase power to attract foreign investments.
Social and job policy to reduce disparity...

If no change :
big riots, diplomatic relations cut between UAE and Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, possible clash between Arab world and Indian subcontinent civilisations, possible UAE civil war, possible Dubai revolution could be extend to others countries like Qatar or Koweit...


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## nomarandlee (Sep 24, 2005)

Joy Machine said:


> I'm a little shocked at how many have never heard stories of people losing their asses in the markets or underpaid labor...
> 
> Here's an article...it happens all the time and everywhere. I could write a novel about the underpaid mexican immigrants washing dishes and doing back breaking labor picking fruits and vegies in CA for next to nothing so can send what little they have back to their families.


 You could write a novel about Mexican immigrants getting paid 8 dollars per day and put in squatter camps under the auspices of the federal government? Sorry, but even though they deserve more such migrants be it legal or illegal are entitled to get over fifty dollars per day and if they are not it is prosecutable. Whatever companies or entities do not pay that minimum wage it should be made it easy to report, prosecute, and close such entities as there is no excuse for not paying them such wages. 

If you really are claiming that such problems exist relative to the population of the UAE/US and its migrants then that means many millions of Mexicans make 5-15 dollars per day and have visas routinely taken then I would like to see that evidence. Otherwise it is just another pathetic attempt at false equivalence that some here want to implement in order to poo-poo an issue.


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## pokistic (May 8, 2007)

Yeah people need to stop comparing other countries with the slave-like issues that are happening in Dubai and in similar places. Smart people are not going to buy into that. _'Oh similar things are happening in my country, I better ignore these issues in Dubai.'_ There is no comparison about homelessness or immigrant workers or how the citizens are treated in places like China. Although I REPEAT, these people have Human Rights Issues as well, they are likely to better themselves in the future with proper Human Right Groups and extensive Government assistance that are indeed happening there. In DUBAI is a different story. The Government is not doing shit. These workers are kept hostage and they cannot leave until they had used them till the end. They cant even travel to see their families if they want. There is no money to go back! They get pay miserable, only to pay debt. It is almost like a concentration Camp and they are force to work for years or they will be arrested and put in a prison otherwise. And don't get me started with the known sex slave that is happening there as well. People think before you make these usless comparisons. :| Lets keep to the topic of the article.


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## killerk (Mar 24, 2007)

Sid_toronto said:


> True, every country's problem is it's own, that's why i have issues with Canada for following America's trends. Now don't get me wrong this has nothing to do with the average person like you and me, this is a systematic thing with much more powerful people, corporations and governments as its source.
> Sadly we don't get much say in the matter.


EMIRATES = English Managed Indian Run Arab Takes Easy Salary


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## killerk (Mar 24, 2007)

pokistic said:


> Yeah people need to stop comparing other countries with the slave-like issues that are happening in Dubai and in similar places. Smart people are not going to buy into that. _'Oh similar things are happening in my country, I better ignore these issues in Dubai.'_ There is no comparison about homelessness or immigrant workers or how the citizens are treated in places like China. Although I REPEAT, these people have Human Rights Issues as well, they are likely to better themselves in the future with proper Human Right Groups and extensive Government assistance that are indeed happening there. In DUBAI is a different story. The Government is not doing shit. These workers are kept hostage and they cannot leave until they had used them till the end. They cant even travel to see their families if they want. There is no money to go back! They get pay miserable, only to pay debt. It is almost like a concentration Camp and they are force to work for years or they will be arrested and put in a prison otherwise. And don't get me started with the known sex slave that is happening there as well. People think before you make these usless comparisons. :| Lets keep to the topic of the article.


I agree there are racial issues there, many ppl there think all Indians are "slumdogs" like Rush Limbaugh, but trust me it is not that bad.....remember that mid-level managers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and developing Arab countries are also to be blamed for the issues there...
Those people themselves make a lot of mony at the expense of others from their motherland.....

If these laborers are fooled/duped into slavery it is mostly by the unscrupulous visa agents and job search agencies back in their home countries and their agents in the Middle east who make full use of the fact that many of them are illiterate.....


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

^^ Mid level? How about people from those countries (same as the workers) being the company owners ... oh I forgot, that is impossible because some guys in SSC don't think so.


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

pokistic said:


> ... And don't get me started with the known sex slave that is happening there as well. People think before you make these usless comparisons. :|...


No, no ... let's go there!


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

krull said:


> The things is that I don't know if the people who comment from Dubai are been truthful and can't admit to these injustices. Like the article points out, if they criticize the Government they might loose their jobs. The Government constantly check into blogs like these. Especially this one I am very sure. Maybe that is why they can't really say that these people are treated in slave conditions? :2cents:





pokistic said:


> Exactly I agree with what you just said.


Sorry but I have to do this ... AGAIN!: :hilarious :rofl: 


How the hell would you know that with such a certainty when you have never been close at experiencing them first hand :lol:


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## aaabbbccc (Mar 8, 2009)

I see all the stuff in here but me some day I will visit dubai since I love to travel 
I would love to go to every single nation on earth


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## pokistic (May 8, 2007)

AltinD said:


> Sorry but I have to do this ... AGAIN!: :hilarious :rofl:
> 
> 
> How the hell would you know that with such a certainty when you have never been close at experiencing them first hand :lol:


et: Oh I feel sorry for you for not reallying telling us the real 'Dark Side Of Dubai'. I guess the Government is watching you and you might loose your job.


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

Oh, thank you for your concern ... that's so sweet of you.


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## Cristovão471 (May 9, 2006)

Get Smart said:


> great, Dubai do not need brain washed people like you either, as if you never bought any product thats made in china with low pay/slave labour...hypocrite. And you are always welome to brick lane east london in the picture above, thats where the journalist johan hari is based


Please give an example of how I am brainwashed, try me.


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## TEHR_IR (Mar 1, 2008)

OMG I had tears in my eyes I wished I could help them all to go back to their country and be free
My sister lives in Dubai :s


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## city_thing (May 25, 2006)

The fact that pro-Dubai forumers need to bring up labour laws that haven't existed in the west for hundreds of years in order to make their own laws seem 'not so bad' is an absolute disgrace. The west got over slavery a long time ago, and now Dubai is frolicking in it. Enough said.


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## jdbarber (Jan 5, 2009)

antovador said:


> You forgot Dubai can evolve like others cities, the rulers know his present policy is unsustainable and can learn to find solutions.
> 
> To begin, it will be better for the Cheikh to not "manage Dubai like a corporation" and to delegate more political powers and autonomy to Dubai municipality.
> Open UAE or Dubai citizenship to all permanent residents.
> ...


I agree thats the point I was trying to make. There needs to be a path to citizenship for permanent legal immigrants. Otherwise immigrants will remain as a permanent underclass. 

Dubai can still have a bright future but I believe that it first needs to create a civil society that exists outside government.

Completely unrelated, I just question to have that many people living in the desert, it seems to me to be environmentally unsustainable, but the same could be said about Phoenix,AZ.


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## killerk (Mar 24, 2007)

AltinD said:


> ^^ Mid level? How about people from those countries (same as the workers) being the company owners ... oh I forgot, that is impossible because some guys in SSC don't think so.


They just want the work done on time....mostly it is the mid level managers who are usually from the same part of the world and are diligent workers with immense knowledge but horrible managers aka micromanagers who bring their feudal attitude with them, like calling ur boss "Sir" who make the work a pleasurable/horrible experience (you might know that caste system is still predominant there).... In south asia it is very hard to find a "cool" boss though the situation is steadily changing....They make movies about cool bosses there as they r rare!!


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## aaabbbccc (Mar 8, 2009)

wow this is crazy 
let us try to chill a little here 
I am not going to critize dubai or any other place in the world 
I just love to travel and always look at the bright side 
I even want to visit irak , north korea etc 
I love the world and all its nations of mother earth


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## particlez (May 5, 2008)

> The fact that pro-Dubai forumers need to bring up labour laws that haven't existed in the west for hundreds of years


i'm assuming you've never actually been to modern day sweatshops masquerading as garment factories and agricultural facilities? yet strangely, industry in supposedly enlightened nations employs its share of grey market labor as well. but then it's always easier to sanctimoniously criticize a far off place while conveniently ignoring very similar sins at home.


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## dösanhoro (Jun 24, 2006)

Times have changed people. It isn't 1820 or 1910 anymore. Judging the present by the pasts standards is pointless. The wrongs of yesterday are no justification for the present. They have a point if they have to agree that other people decide what is acceptable for people.

You could have point with the working conditions of illegals working the fields in the Usa. The difference is of course to what extent it is systematic , legal and accepted by the society as a whole.

AltinD you talk about the bad treatment of fellow Albanians and other people in Europe. Well europe is a big place with different conditions. You know really well bad things happen. The difference is it is done by greedy criminal people in the edges of society. You totally ignore the scale of these allegations. The bad things happen mostly underground in Europe. The article is about the people who built Dubai impressive skyline. The whole scale is absolutely different. hno: You conveniently choose to ignore this because you have a problem with the slightest criticism targeting Dubai.


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## Get Smart (Oct 6, 2008)

TEHR_IR said:


> OMG I had tears in my eyes I wished I could help them all to go back to their country and be free
> My sister lives in Dubai :s


even if these people go back to their country, they will never be free due to debt and other financial problems, which is why these people were given promises of a better future by the corrupt dealers in their own country. these very dealers will be chasing these poor people for pay back. tell your sister to give as much money she can to any of the workers she sees, that would be great help   you can talk the talk now walk the walk


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## CrazyCanuck (Oct 9, 2004)

I'm glad I posted this article.


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## Dubai_Boy (May 21, 2003)

Well if posting Biased articles is your thing Canuck, then i think you should be jumping with joy


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## elrusodan (Jan 16, 2008)

Wow! I feel sorry for those workers... That reminds me of the old movie called *Metropolis*

But unfortunately Dubai issue isnt the only one in the world. I am sure that there are many other factories and sweatshops around the world where the workers have to go through similar slave-like conditions for a miserly pay... Yes, even here in USA we got sweatshops full of illegal immigrants who came to America with high hopes only to find themselves working for $8 per hour, if that even... And girls who were promised easy, high-paying jobs at restaurants, hotels, casinos and etc, and were forced into prostitution after coming here...


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## luv2bebrown (Nov 4, 2004)

CrazyCanuck said:


> I'm glad I posted this article.


you do realize articles about the same issue have been posted before right? I don't know why people think this issue is some "big dark secret." if you haven't lived under a rock for the past few years, you'd know about it.


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## OshHisham (Nov 14, 2005)

i don't think talking/bashing other country is something 'ethical' hno:

i wonder why European always trying to be the police/teacher telling people what is wrong, what is correct like they have no problem within themselves....


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

luv2bebrown said:


> you do realize articles about the same issue have been posted before right? I don't know why people think this issue is some "big dark secret." if you haven't lived under a rock for the past few years, you'd know about it.


You know how that song goes: "Mr. Bombastic / You are fantastic ..." :lol:


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## Cristovão471 (May 9, 2006)

OshHisham said:


> *i don't think talking/bashing other country is something 'ethical' hno:
> *
> i wonder why European always trying to be the police/teacher telling people what is wrong, what is correct like they have no problem within themselves....


It's called constructive criticism...


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

Cristovão471 said:


> It's called constructive criticism...


When it is a constructive criticism ... and between half and 2/3 of the posts here are NOT.


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## Skyprince (May 2, 2006)

If am not wrong, the vast majority of foreign menial labours in Dubai are employed under their own compatriots ( mostly shops/business establishments ) or from other Subcontinent origin , and these boses are paying very little salary to them ( though accommodation, transportation and food are mostly provided )

Correct, Altin ?

I think the real "dark side" of UAE should be issues as like relatively poor driving standards and poor public transportation coverage ( where people are too dependent on cars and taxis ).


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## nomarandlee (Sep 24, 2005)

^^ It is hard to believe you think of yourself as religiously pious if you really believe traffic and PT take moral precedent over what is being discussed here. hno: 


........I'm sure there are exceptions and the law is likely convoluted but outside the "free zones" in most cases don't companies set up in the UAE have to have a native partner/sponsorship? I think that signifies a fair amount of the share of the culpability of the native sponser/majority owner.

http://www.dubaitourism.ae/WorkingWithDubai/DubaiMeansBusiness/tabid/84/language/en-US/Default.aspx
_Dubai offers foreign companies a wide choice of business options, including:

Direct trade - selling directly to established dealers and distributors. 
Commercial agency arrangements - appointee must be a UAE national or company; agreement to be registered with Ministry of Economy and Commerce. 
Branch or representative office - 100% foreign ownership permitted; local agent (sponsor) must be appointed; Economic Development Department licence required. 
Limited liability company - foreign ownership restricted to 49%; Economic Development Department licence required. 
Special free zone investment incentives.
._

Do you really think MOST of the biggest developers and conglomerates are from the Sub-continent Skyprince? Perhaps we should do a rundown of the top thirty largest developments and see which ones have Indian/Pakistani owners. I haven't read anywhere that UAE or state run companies are paying out appreciably more then anyone else. If Nakheel or Emaar are paying out +20-25 dollars per day or collective bargaining and the lowly evil Indian developers are ones paying out $8 then it would be the first I have heard of that distinction.


There is a real good way to start correcting lowly wages (if it in fact concerns youSkyprince), implement a real dignified minimum wage and attempt to enforce it. 




> *Get Smart*
> 
> even if these people go back to their country, they will never be free due to debt and other financial problems, which is why these people were given promises of a better future by the corrupt dealers in their own country. these very dealers will be chasing these poor people for pay back.


 After years and years of these issues surfacing has the UAE put any type of black list forbidding contracting with high complaint agencies? If so and still an issue why not make it a law that a UAE recruit agency is required in order to be answerable to UAE laws and stipulations? If supplier nation X says it will not allow foreign based recruitment agencies move find a country that will. There are practical measures that can mitigate the problem by various actors. Or did you want to address and pin the extent of the issue on one entity (South Asians) without talking about practical solutions the UAE could take?


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## CrazyCanuck (Oct 9, 2004)

Dubai_Boy said:


> Well if posting Biased articles is your thing Canuck, then i think you should be jumping with joy


Seeing your location, I think i'm not the one being biased.


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## Dubai_Boy (May 21, 2003)

Are you falsely accusing me of something? are you labeling me ? Moderator Canuck?

I was talking about the article and you made a personal attack. Watch your step and respect the power given to you by skyscrapercity.


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## Skyprince (May 2, 2006)

nomarandlee said:


> ^^ It is hard to believe you think of yourself as religiously pious if you really believe traffic and PT take moral precedent over what is being discussed here. hno:
> 
> 
> ........I'm sure there are exceptions and the law is likely convoluted but outside the "free zones" in most cases don't companies set up in the UAE have to have a native partner/sponsorship? I think that signifies a fair amount of the share of the culpability of the native sponser/majority owner in such scenarios.


Moral what ? *Why are you so passionate about South Asians in the Gulf but don't say anything about hundreds of millions of South Asians who are struggling to find even decent jobs/ living in much horrible condition in their home country ? * Do you know that most underpaid South Asian workers in the UAE, though with meagre salary of 1000 Dirhams a month , are provided free accommodation, food ( mostly ), and other allowances ? 1000 dirhams go directly into their pocket and a substantial amount is usually sent directly to their home countries.


Mods, is there any mechanisms to allow ONLY those who have lived or have been to UAE to post in this thread ?


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## Dubai_Boy (May 21, 2003)

Haha skyprince  people do have the right to express their opinions no matter how troll like and stupid it might sound ^.^


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

CrazyCanuck said:


> Seeing your location, I think i'm not the one being biased.


Oh pleaseeeeeeeeeee ... :|


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## luv2bebrown (Nov 4, 2004)

Skyprince said:


> Moral what ? *Why are you so passionate about South Asians in the Gulf but don't say anything about hundreds of millions of South Asians who are struggling to find even decent jobs/ living in much horrible condition in their home country ? * Do you know that most underpaid South Asian workers in the UAE, though with meagre salary of 1000 Dirhams a month , are provided free accommodation, food ( mostly ), and other allowances ? 1000 dirhams go directly into their pocket and a substantial amount is usually sent directly to their home countries.


A) because countries like India are so dirt poor, the scale of the problem and the sheer amount of corruption mean that the issue cannot be quickly addressed. its not easy to suddenly provide food and housing to 150 million people.

but its pretty easy to clean up a sewage spill in a single labour camp. the UAE has enough money to provide a decent lifestyle for everyone in the country. india simply does not have the money or the infrastructure at this point to do so.

B) as someone who has been to Dubai, you should know that the south asians who are construction workers are in a completely different category to the workers in other industries. not all south asian workers get the kind of treatment you talk about in your post.

all the other lower class indian workers such as cooks, drivers, gardeners, delivery boys, maids, hotel workers, salesmen, repairmen, tailors, shopkeepers etc are doing ok/quite well in this country. but the construction workers for some reason are treated COMPLETELY differently to every other worker even though they are the people who work the hardest in the entire country.

a taxi driver for example... works LONG hard hours, but they take home anywhere from 2000-5000dh a month which is AMAZING for them. an indian maid, will take home 1000dh a month, with free food and good accommodation (considering they live in the same house as the sponsor and are mostly treated like family). when i used to share a villa, the maid we used to hire had her own car and used to drive around to different houses doing her work. we paid her around 550dh/month for about 12 hours of work a week! she was doing really well.

the construction workers on the other hand, live like outcasts.


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## nomarandlee (Sep 24, 2005)

Skyprince said:


> Moral what ? *Why are you so passionate about South Asians in the Gulf but don't say anything about hundreds of millions of South Asians who are struggling to find even decent jobs/ living in much horrible condition in their home country ? * Do you know that most underpaid South Asian workers in the UAE, though with meagre salary of 1000 Dirhams a month , are provided free accommodation, food ( mostly ), and other allowances ? 1000 dirhams go directly into their pocket and a substantial amount is usually sent directly to their home countries.
> 
> 
> Mods, is there any mechanisms to allow ONLY those who have lived or have been to UAE to post in this thread ?


 Do you know who else has gotten free boarding and meals historically? Slaves and prisoners. After all, a dead worker will not get you very far so feeding them slop isn't exactly being magnanimous. In much of the reading the lodging or food doesn't sound something that you or I would want to have to endure years on end.

Why are so dispassionate or relatively dismissive of the plight of some workers in the UAE? Why don't I say anything about the poverty in South Asia? While that question is a distraction my reply is that the problem of poverty is so enormous in such places I am not sure how to necessarily solve it to be frank. Another reason for my critique is that in many ways economically and development the UAE is essential a developed first world nation, it has no excuse not to be critiqued and held to standard as one. However back to the first reason, one can't snap ones fingers and pay 10's/100's of millions a respectable wage from earnings that aren't there. How to grow and distribute an economy to help such people s an old age question economist have quarried over for millennia. However, the rich and greedy developers in the UAE and those that facilitate their businesses do have the money and the UAE has the PCI as such that it is obvious there is a considerable amount of money flowing around the place yet instead of paying migrants wages that reflect the reality of where they live (UAE) they are instead paid on a scale far more in accordance to their own country's (India/Bangladesh etc.). These people should at least get what every native Emirati would want the least of their own (or at least HALF of what they would expect for their own) to receive as compensation for work in their nation no matter how meager or unimportant the job (and most construction jobs I wouldn't classify as meager or or unimportant), and I am guessing most don't think $10 dollars p/d would suffice for even the most meager employed Emirati. 


If one wants to pay Indian or Bangladesh wages perhaps one should go build towers in India or Bangladesh? They work in the UAE, they live on its soil (albeit temporarily), literally build the city that is under peoples feet there, it is fair to pay them in accordance of where they live/employed instead of the excuse ("it is good for where they come from") so we shall pay them according to their homeland. It is as if low wages are the one import that natives (and this goes for almost all migrant receiving nations frankly) want the migrants to bring with them. They welcome adaptation of customs, language, religion etc. but when it comes to wages make sure you keep your low domestic standards while you are here please. It is as if one is doing a great favor giving a pittance of two dollars instead of one they would be receiving back home. Even now some of these story's sound like some laborers would be lucky to receive a 1-1 ratio and break even for their trouble coming there. Being away from family for years, working in +100F heat, living with a half dozen men or more in a room years on end all to break even, sounds like a great gig if you can get it.hno:

Skyprince, staying at the hotels or homes of native Emratis, or talking over lunch with an Indian manager friend doesn't make you privy to exclusively chime in. Did you go by some of the labor camps and and talk in Hindi about their situation? Did you check their living quarters? You have made no mention of it before so I will go with no on that. I will go with some reporters/NGO's who have done so over yourself who has stayed weeks in decent hotels or the homes of a half dozen Emirati's and "seen the sites". That is the ironic thing to me about this argument, "you don't live here and you don't know". All the people yapping here who have visted or lived who feel they are "in the know" must routinely wander about these labor camps and converse with these men or so how they act. If these workers would open up and trust speaking to some strangers is another thing but I don't think we are even to that step are we? Or perhaps even more disturbing is that some here could be privy to have that contact and their attitude is still one of indifference or callousness to the situation.


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## Skyprince (May 2, 2006)

luv2bebrown said:


> A) because countries like India are so dirt poor, the scale of the problem and the sheer amount of corruption mean that the issue cannot be quickly addressed. its not easy to suddenly provide food and housing to 150 million people.
> 
> but its pretty easy to clean up a sewage spill in a single labour camp. the UAE has enough money to provide a decent lifestyle for everyone in the country. india simply does not have the money or the infrastructure at this point to do so.
> 
> ...


That's very useful info. :cheers: Ok, I've been there only for short stays ( 5 times though ) unlike you who actually live there, I know there are some problems in UAE but definitely not as bad as brought up by some members here. 

I think quite awhile back in UAE section I proposed AED 2000 minimal salary for construction workers ( not just for UAE, but also for tons of foreign contruction labours here in Malaysia who are largely underpaid at 550-750 RM/month ) but then how is it viable ?


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## luv2bebrown (Nov 4, 2004)

Skyprince said:


> I think quite awhile back in UAE section I proposed AED 2000 minimal salary for construction workers ( not just for UAE, but also for tons of foreign contruction labours here in Malaysia who are largely underpaid at 550-750 RM/month ) but then how is it viable ?


it is viable, but it just means that property developers will have to incur the wage increases as a cost and decrease their profit margins. to me its not a problem because a properly planned property (tongue twister) can make more than enough money to justify an increase in wages.

also, there will be no net effect on the UAE economy.sure the extra earnings of these workers will be sent out of the UAE as remittances, but that SAME money which would have otherwise gone into the pockets of the developers would have left the UAE anyway to purchase luxury imports. 

to see construction workers earn 2000dh would be a dream. but the millionaire people at the top would just not be willing to take a cut in their paycheques/bonuses to give the workers a fair wage.


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

luv2bebrown said:


> to see construction workers earn 2000dh would be a dream. but the *millionaire people at the top *would just not be willing to take a cut in their paycheques/bonuses to give the workers a fair wage.


Them and also the spin-doctors and/or the just-plain-dumb high-midle level marketing people. :laugh:


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## dösanhoro (Jun 24, 2006)

Skyprince said:


> Moral what ? *Why are you so passionate about South Asians in the Gulf but don't say anything about hundreds of millions of South Asians who are struggling to find even decent jobs/ living in much horrible condition in their home country*


*
Exactly they work in one of the richest countries of the world. Maybe they could have higher working standards.*


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

^^ It's not that simple ... migration policies have allot to do with it. If USA and Europe would open their doors to everyone to come if they could land a job, the salaries for certain jobs would be reduced too for as long as there would be people willing to work for less. Take a look at UK and the Poles working there as an example.

My point: Things are not B/W.


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## Epi (Jul 21, 2006)

Was reading the New York Times, found this interesting comment to a NYTimes blog post about the article we're all talking about in this thread.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/dubais-rebuttal/#comment-434923



> One point that has been covered in this debate, but has not been explored, has been the practice of “taking” passports.
> 
> In Dubai, the law is clear - employers are not allowed to take an employee’s passport. For those who work in a professional capacity, there is never a question about surrendering your passport. I wouldn’t surrender mine, ever, because I know what that entails. But my side is not the only side of this issue.
> 
> ...


While the 'obvious' answer to all of this is, 'well then Dubai should just change their business laws so that people can switch jobs and so that they don't need local sponsors to set up companies' in practice it would probably be much hard to change those rules as there are many vested interests which rely on them I would suspect. In the long term though, I think that's how things will have to be if they want to fix a lot of the problems in Dubai.


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## Metropolitan (Sep 21, 2004)

Population pyramid in the United Arab Emirates










Out of the 4.1 million people living in the UAE, only 800,000 people are citizens.


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## Dubai_Boy (May 21, 2003)

OH MY GOD REALLY !!!! i though i noticed way too many Indians around ...


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## Xusein (Sep 27, 2005)

What a lopsided pyramid, apparently UAE has almost 3 men for every woman in the 15-64 age bracket!

Must be great being a female, lots of choices for them.


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

^^ The "working" girls aren't included on that diagram.


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## Metropolitan (Sep 21, 2004)

Epi said:


> Was reading the New York Times, found this interesting comment to a NYTimes blog post about the article we're all talking about in this thread.
> 
> http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/dubais-rebuttal/#comment-434923
> 
> ...


Taking foreign workers passports has absolutely nothing of a "fair deal". That makes them *the property* of their company. They have no way out and as they cannot prove their foreign citizenship, they aren't even sure they could call for any protection in their consulate or embassy.


Taking passports is what Moldovan pimps do to prostitutes when they send them in Western Europe. In a foreign country without passport, you are nothing.


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

^^ The Moldovian Pimps don't give to their prostitutes Government issued ID Cards, complete with one's all details. Also a passport copy of both first page and residence visa page is also given to the persons so getting protection from their Embassies is never a problem. The South Asian Embassies ever here can even issue passports to their citizens.

And yes, in a way they belong to the company, for as long as the company as their sponsor is held legally responsible for what happens to them or what they do. I don't really agree with holding of the passports but I am not in their position.

As I have said earlier, you can't judge the situation by the comfort of your home thousands of miles away living under a complete set of realities. 


BTW, I need visa to visit your country but a local sponsor/guarantor is needed to get one. I am willing to pay all the expenses and also for your time and effort, adding some extra as well. Can you sponsor me? I will be of no bother to you at all.


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## andrelot (Aug 6, 2008)

The merely idea that a civil debt, contracted for no matter what reason (approved by a willing and usually much more powerful lender), would lead to jail if unpaid is extremely backward and uncivilized.

As humanity, we got past that point long time ago. But "humanity" is somethign average, parts of it are more advanced and, of course, parts are lagging some centuries behind.

It has nothing to do with specif "race" or "ethnic" debate, but with societal systems.


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## mrmocha413 (Apr 18, 2009)

Dubai's aim at being a global city with considerable influence on global trade is eminent, yet sadly it caters to a very pretentious society, and hence the place lacks an identity. Its nice to look at, but what the hell is there else to do besides tons of shopping and going 'oooo' and 'ahhh' at these colossal buildings and developments that have moderate to no occupancy! Dubai should be the place where the next Batman movie is shot, as it would be perfect for shooting the aerials of the future Gotham City.

As for its dark side, its unfortunate the brunt many of its workers endure. Totally sad, and how they're treated is unequivocal. I sometimes do not admire the more than equal ways Sheiks operate.


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## Ervin2 (Nov 7, 2009)

Don't know if this has been posted yet, but here's a good video on dubai from TED: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm2dWbNsnZI&feature=sub



mrmocha413 said:


> Dubai's aim at being a global city with considerable influence on global trade is eminent, yet sadly it caters to a very pretentious society, and hence the place lacks an identity. Its nice to look at, but what the hell is there else to do besides tons of shopping and going 'oooo' and 'ahhh' at these colossal buildings and developments that have moderate to no occupancy! Dubai should be the place where the next Batman movie is shot, as it would be perfect for shooting the aerials of the future Gotham City.
> 
> As for its dark side, its unfortunate the brunt many of its workers endure. Totally sad, and how they're treated is unequivocal. I sometimes do not admire the more than equal ways Sheiks operate.


I guess that's Dubai's image - a symbol of human desire and greed.



AltinD said:


> ^^ Yeah, it will be nice to finally free the tens of thousands Aussie slaves in the Gulf region.
> 
> 
> ... It's nice when people cheer or bash things they have no idea of :laugh:


Does anybody here even care about what this guy says? I read back about 5 pages, and all he had done so far is make few word posts trying to pathetically harass everybody who talks bad about Dubai. If people are actually paying attention to him then:


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## The Rt. Hon. (Aug 22, 2006)

Emirates, be aware that this level of injustice cannot go unpunished by Allah forever. The same Islam you constantly give lip service stands against you.


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## luv2bebrown (Nov 4, 2004)

how come nobody likes to talk about the NORMAL people of dubai who make up the majority of the population?
look at today's abu dhabi banner - do you think its ONLY rich sheikhs and impoverished workers living in those buildings?

i feel voiceless here.


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

Looks kinda scrubby. I guess its the part they don't want people to see.


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## Get Smart (Oct 6, 2008)

andrelot said:


> The merely idea that a civil debt, contracted for no matter what reason (approved by a willing and usually much more powerful lender), would lead to jail if unpaid is extremely backward and uncivilized.
> 
> As humanity, we got past that point long time ago. But "humanity" is somethign average, parts of it are more advanced and, of course, parts are lagging some centuries behind.
> 
> It has nothing to do with specif "race" or "ethnic" debate, but with societal systems.


OOH STFU, these people went there to make quick money, could not do it but had to save face, so relied on credit cards and loan sharks, and now they will pay the price for that greed. Going to jail for unable to pay loans is a good idea not backwards, and these people should have known this before applying for the loan to buy a car and perform shitty driving and causing traffic jams.  so much better when these idiots are in jail, the roads will be clear and the local people who are EXCELLENT drivers can drive 200mph+ without botheration


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## Ervin2 (Nov 7, 2009)

Get Smart said:


> OOH STFU, these people went there to make quick money, could not do it but had to save face, so relied on credit cards and loan sharks, and now they will pay the price for that greed. Going to jail for unable to pay loans is a good idea not backwards, and these people should have known this before applying for the loan to buy a car and perform shitty driving and causing traffic jams.  so much better when these idiots are in jail, the roads will be clear and the local people who are EXCELLENT drivers can drive 200mph+ without botheration


What?


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## nygirl (Jul 14, 2003)

just about to say....uh what? 

P.S. Wasn't this thread locked down long ago?


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## Skyrazer (Sep 9, 2009)

L-O-L at this topic....

Come on, da intarwebz iz bettar thn diss iznt it??? :hammer:


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## city_thing (May 25, 2006)

Get Smart said:


> OOH STFU, these people went there to make quick money, could not do it but had to save face, so relied on credit cards and loan sharks, and now they will pay the price for that greed. Going to jail for unable to pay loans is a good idea not backwards, and these people should have known this before applying for the loan to *buy a car and perform shitty driving and causing traffic jams.  so much better when these idiots are in jail, the roads will be clear and the local people who are EXCELLENT drivers can drive 200mph+ without botheration*


LOL. You are a f*cking ****.


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