Dark Side of Dubai - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Gurkha · #1 05-31-2009, 05:30 AM

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

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.

Never take freedom for granted.

tompaah7503 · #2 05-31-2009, 02:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gurkha

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.

This has been going on for years, every single building in those spectacular cities were built buy these low-wage labor-imports, mainly from Pakistan I think. To put it mildly the arabs aren't being particularly nice to these guest workers.

The subject was briefly touched in the 2005 movie Syriana, if you haven't seen it yet please do so. It is a most excellent movie about the problems in middle east. Oil, power, money, Americans, Europeans..
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365737/

Gurkha · #3 05-31-2009, 02:06 PM

I have seen Syriana with George Clooney, pretty intense movie which delves on some of the reality going on there.

Hatterasguy · #4 05-31-2009, 10:11 PM

That was a good movie, I havn't seen it in a few years maybe I'll watch it again.

Anyway the middle east is pretty messed up.

POS · #5 05-31-2009, 11:12 PM

What they need are unions so they can band together and strangle the hand that feeds them.

Hatterasguy · #6 05-31-2009, 11:49 PM

Fantastic article, just finished reading it.

I remember having a similer line of thought a few years ago when I got into a conversation about real estate in Dubai. I said at the time its fake, its just a place wealthy people go to party, and thats what it is.

Hatterasguy · #7 05-31-2009, 11:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by POS

What they need are unions so they can band together and strangle the hand that feeds them.

Read the article, in this case they really could use some good unions.

R Leo · #8 06-01-2009, 08:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gurkha

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.

Sounds like South Africa during Apartheid...jeez, it sounds like South Africa today.

kip Foss · #9 06-01-2009, 04:40 PM

One of the first stories that I heard when I moved to Dubai in 1980 was about how the workers were trying to form a union for better pay etc. Sheik Mo told everyone to meet in the local soccer stadium on Friday to discuss their demands. As the meeting was starting the military arrived, rounded up the many hundreds of workers, loaded them into busses and took them to the harbor. There they were loaded on a fleet of dhows and sent back to India.

The story goes that the next day the dhows arrived back at port empty. Nothing was ever heard of the workers and there was never again talk of forming a union. How true this story is I don't know but it was well known in Dubai.

OMEGAMAN · #10 06-01-2009, 09:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by POS

What they need are unions so they can band together and strangle the hand that feeds them.

Then take a majority ownership position in that company and really screw it up

cmac2012 · #11 06-01-2009, 11:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by POS

What they need are unions so they can band together and strangle the hand that feeds them.

S'funny, in your mockery you named the correct solution. Greedy exploitation by newly minted capitalists is not really in their best interests either. In Dubai's case, the head guy and his buds had their heads so swollen with their new found economic power that they devoted huge funds to build sadly impractical white elephants a few feet above sea level. Those man-made islands have a housing density that most people who could afford those sorts of luxury homes are not going to be attracted to.

The 60 Minutes piece I saw about the guy and his empire had a scene shot in the streets of one of them (well, only one has houses on it at present, IINM) which is oddly empty of activity. Not many takers. I saw a shot of it in Nat. Geo., a vantage point from a small plane perhaps, and Lord have mercy. High end homes stacked end to end. You can see it on Google Earth to some extent also.

Oh boy. Oh, and you can go skiing in town while it's 120 F outside.

Oh boy.

pj67coll · #12 06-02-2009, 02:15 AM

Seems grim indeed. But how much of that article is truth and how much the ravings of an extreme left winger looking for a new anti-capitalist crusade?

- Peter.

cmac2012 · #13 06-02-2009, 02:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pj67coll

Seems grim indeed. But how much of that article is truth and how much the ravings of an extreme left winger looking for a new anti-capitalist crusade?

- Peter.

Might have to do some research to find the answer to that one.

But yeah, them extreme left wingers are always looking for some bit of nonsense to confuse people with.

Just because some guy or small group of guys had there hands on huge piles of money and "invested" it in stuff does not mean that the capitalism that ensues is well founded. But such is the conservative worship of their canon that such an obvious debacle could be dismissed as merely "the ravings of an extreme left winger looking for a new anti-capitalist crusade."

pj67coll · #14 06-02-2009, 02:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cmac2012

But such is the conservative worship of their canon that such an obvious debacle could be dismissed as merely "the ravings of an extreme left winger looking for a new anti-capitalist crusade."

Wether or not Dubai is in fact an obvious debacle, depends largely, on wether or not the claims in this article have substance. If so I'd agree. The place sounds like crap. However you can easily look at other articles by the same reporter to get an idea of his ideological slant.

- Peter.

cmac2012 · #15 06-03-2009, 06:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pj67coll

Wether or not Dubai is in fact an obvious debacle, depends largely, on wether or not the claims in this article have substance. If so I'd agree. The place sounds like crap. However you can easily look at other articles by the same reporter to get an idea of his ideological slant.

Oh dear. The man has a point of view? Well of course, anything he says is worthless.

I did a search for his other articles and I don't find him too far out there.

Plenty of other stories have come out about Dubai's wreckless "investing" and the army of expats building all of that stuff. This 60 Minutes piece has some interesting stuff:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/12/60minutes/main3361753.shtml

Nat. Geo. has had at least one good article about it complete with scenes and info on the housing for the enslaved South Asians building all those monstrosities.

Dubai is an aberration.