Whatever the article mentions is more or less accurate. Also it's the same anywhere else in the Middle East. I've a friend (Indian origin) who grew up in the Middle East. He has lived in Dubai and Muscat (Oman). His father worked as a finance manager for an American cola company (hint: it's not Coca-Cola).<p>Roughly this is how the society is organized:<p>1) Arabs - first-class citizens - dumb, don't like to work, but often hold 'mudira'/'manager' positions in companies. They don't have college degrees but they hold senior-level positions in companies and are uber-slackers :)<p>2) Western expats - they get paid huge expat salaries and in general live in a world of their own (read: huge gated communities where typical restrictions in a Muslim country don't apply - alcohol, women, etc). There's very minimal interaction between them and the Arabs, or the Indians, or the Filipinos.<p>3) Educated immigrants from poorer countries (mostly from Indian sub-continent) - They do most of the work which their Arab bosses are not interested in doing or incapable of doing.<p>4) Construction workers/other physical labour - mostly immigrant workers from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and other poor countries.<p>The western world seems to acknowledge this problem finally when their people are starting to suffer due to the economic crisis. This is how Middle East works and it has been like this for a long long time.<p>Middle-east is one place I won't move to even if Google offered me a job there.
Quick thoughts...<p>Much of this (debtors prisons [and people fleeing Dubai immediately upon losing jobs and leaving behind luxury cars/apartments to avoid it], modern day enslavement, under-classes [predominantly based on ethnicity] and lack of civil-rights and liberty for most classes) has been publicised for a long time among the ethnic communities.<p>However, it seems when times were good it was easy for western people to turn a blind eye and what most people saw in the mainstream western media were positive articles about how great Dubai was/would be (due to vested interests?), even ignoring obvious issues regarding Arab law and culture and environment.<p>Now that the worldwide financial crisis is catching up with Dubai it is good to see these issues being brought out into the mainstream and exposed more openly, but I cannot help but think it is predominately because Westerners themselves are now being affected. Where was the outcry for the Fillipinos/Bangladeshis/etc. in mainstream Western media before?
>> Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history.<p>Just out of curiosity, is that the same globalized world that the author used to fly there while speaking only English the whole time? Anti-globo self-righteousness, direct to you from the Dubai airport. Nice.<p>Also, having read the article, I'm missing the "neo-liberal" part. "Medieval dictatorship" (as he himself put it)? Check. No rule of law? Check. No concern for individual rights? Check. No constitution to hinder government expansion of powers? Check.
Man, what a mess, it's hard to even find something to say about most of it, but I found this interesting:<p>"In Saudi, it's hard to be straight when you're young. The women are shut away so everyone has gay sex ... I need to find real gays, so this is the best place. All Arab gays want to live in Dubai."<p>I'd never really thought about the fact that Arab teens would "go gay" in response to their natural libidos being locked away, but it makes sense.
I have an old associate from uni who was arrested and detained in Dubai on a tourist visit, for carrying Melatonin, an over-the-counter sleep aid. He was locked up for a month in a filthy prison, strip searched, forced to give urine samples and sign documents he did not understand, and was finally only released after intense media pressure. His name's Cat "Diz" Le-Huy, if you want to look up the story.<p>I'm never going to Dubai. And I don't have much sympathy for the expats there either - ignoring basic dignity of others, spitting on their whole inheritance of liberal democracy and hard-won human rights just to make a quick buck. The whole place can disappear back into the sand as far as I'm concerned.<p>Before that happens though, after reading that article I sure wish I could drop a few planeloads of small arms into one of those worker prison camps first, for a very abrupt and entertaining demonstration of reaping what one has sown.
I was in Dubai a couple years ago and could not figure out how it could possibly be growing the way it was. They really do a good job of putting on a face to the world. I was working with a British expat who lives there, and he couldn't stop gushing about how great it was, to the point that I thought it might be an interesting "life opportunity."<p>I'm really glad I didn't take that opportunity. I remember seeing the buses with the blue-coverall-ed construction workers. This article put that trip in another light, that's for sure!
Excellent article and well written. I knew none of this until now! Six months ago I was offered a job in Dubai for a Tech Dir position at a major advertising company; I'm very pleased that I didn't follow-up on that opportunity now.
Back in Moscow, there used to be a lot of Students from UAE and Saudi. They were very rich (free scholarships), always drunk, never went to class and refused to graduate (even if they could) because they didn't want to go back home.
OK, so the guy at the beginning of the article knows that he will go to jail if he doesn't pay his debts. Then he alerts the government that he is in debt, and gets arrested. WTF? Why did he not leave the country <i>before</i> the government was notified that he was in debt? If he is a UK citizen, I doubt he would be extradited for that. Even if he was, I think it would be easier to fight the extradition in a UK court than it would have been to pay off the debt in Dubai.<p>Am I missing something?
This article is coincides with a lot of current UK media attention on Dubai including many programs on UK TV (e.g. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jqgww/Panorama_Slumdogs_and_Millionaires/" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jqgww/Panorama_Slumd...</a>)
Isn't there some international treaty which forbids companies from dealing with other countries/companies which use slave labor?<p>It can't possibly be that companies are left to police themselves... can it?
See if you can get a hold of this book:<p>"Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism" by Mike Davis, Daniel Bertrand Monk. (<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=TQRoAAAACAAJ" rel="nofollow">http://books.google.com/books?id=TQRoAAAACAAJ</a>)<p>The chapter on Dubai is excellent.
what do you mean the dark side? it's all dark. fake money, wild overspending, draconian laws against drugs and sex. next up: a provocative look at the dark side of killing babies and eating them! you thought it was just a harmless hobby, but oh no. oh no. turns out those babies are high in cholesterol! <i>gasp</i>!
this is the sort of thing that always happens when someone sufficiently unprincipled realizes just how superficial the majority of people are, and decides to exploit it.<p>dubai is windows vista.
Dubai has its problems, but it is far better than many other countries where the natural resources are exploited for the benefit of a select few and the masses are left in extreme poverty. They are smart enough to have figured out a way to shrink a 100 year development cycle to 30 years without massive oil resources. I am sure they will figure out a way out of their current challenges as well.