What the hell is going on in dubai?

yeah good luck with being 52 ft above sea level. Have fun wasting all that money after they fall in the ocean. lol

Did anyone know that Dubai is 42% Indian and only 6% of its economy is based on Oil and Natural Gas.

Im sure Dubai has everything for the ELITE....like any drug, young hookers etc....they just wont let the normal people who the police watch do those things.

reply to post by Psychopump



Eric Jon Phelps believes Dubai is the new Babylon and will ultimately destroyed.







da bear

Well, I've always had this "iffy" feeling about Dubai, just something seems off when I read/think about it.

But this is nuts for real, that is some crazy plans for construction

First underwater hotel :O wtf! hahaha

Dubai is a cess-pit of islamic money laundering via ill-gotten arabic/OPEC means and social repression of everything that the rest of the free world is against. Women are arrested by clerics if they have coffee with co-workers at a Starbucks because it is against islamic law for women to associate with men in ANY setting outside of their marriage, homosexuals are beaten and thrown in jail; women caught in extra-marital affiars are stoned to death, there is no freedom of association or speech, and the list of human atrocities carried out in the name of a religion, that is hardly even worthy of being relagated to that auspicious title and concept of "religion", is the eptiome of all that the New World Order is NOT and everything that is WRONG with the world.

Yeah I know ... it's a rant but I'm totally upset. Eff islam and the NWO.

-Euclid

[edit on 22-7-2008 by euclid]

What's Really Going On in Dubai

I know Dubai well. The best description of it comes from a man who probably hasn't even been there: Martin Amis. He called it a 'Middle Eastern Mammon'.

I don't believe in international power-elite conspiracies, though if there was one Dubai would certainly be involved. Everyone in the country has a conspiracy theory. Autocracies breed them, because no-one really knows what's going on except the rulers. And Dubai, despite a few token efforts under Sheikh Mohammed to make government more consultative, is an autocracy par excellence.

It is, however, a benign autocracy, headed by an unusually enlightened ruling family. Yes, the place is built and maintained by indentured labour working under the direction of expatriate managers for the benefit of a ruling class who are essentially nothing but rentiers. But you could say just the same of Periclean Athens, or Rome at any time up to the Antonines -- these are the models of statehood and government on which Western civilization is founded. The difference is that in Greece and Rome the indentured labourers were actually slaves, and the expat managers were helots, with far fewer rights than management-level expats enjoy in modern Dubai.

The worst thing about Dubai, really, is that although it is one of the world's most cosmopolitan cities (75% of the population was expat in 2000 and the proportion is probably even higher now), it is also one of the most racist. There is a strict hierarchy of race, going something like this:

• Members of the local ruling families
  
• Other Gulf Arabs
  
• Britons and Americans
  
• Other Europeans, old-mony Iranians and Lebanese Christians
  
• Wealthy, established Indian families with connections to the local elite
  
• Jordanians, Palestinians and other ethnic Arabs
  
• Egyptians
  
• Saudis
  
• Indians in general (roughly 70% of the expat population)
  
• Filipinos, Pakistanis (mainly tribal types from Peshawar), Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans
  

I'm not exactly sure where to place the hookers, who are of all races. So many are from Eastern Europe, China or the former USSR that any Oriental or Slavic-looking woman is automatically assumed to be a prostitute.

This racism isn't enforced; it's natural.

Sleuth said

Dubai is the place to go if you want fresh young meat or other things that are illegal pretty much everywhere else - young boys, young girls, drugs, whatever.

and Curious_Agnostic replied

I think you're thinking of Bangkok. I'm pretty sure that's where all the pervs go. Also, Dubai recently got upset about people having sex on their beach, and are cracking down on topless sunbathers.

Slueth is right. I know Bangkok and I know Dubai. Bangkok may conceivably have more prostitutes per square mile (crowded Asian city, y'know; higher population density) but Dubai wins hands down for sleaze. That's something to do with the fact that the official prohibitions on prostitution, drugs and other amusements of that kind are ostensibly so rigid; when you criminalize something, everyone who indulges becomes a criminal. So vice in Dubai, however glamorously it is dressed up (and it can be very glamorous indeed), is of necessity sordid, degrading and exploitatory. In Bangkok, everything is matter-of-fact and businesslike, pretty much out in the open. Dubai isn't like that, although it is rife with prostitution. As for drugs, I never met anyone who had a problem getting what they needed. What I sampled myself was of excellent quality, and not terribly expensive.

Being a Muslim country surrounded by other Muslim countries, Dubai has no choice but to play it this way. Its rulers would almost certainly like to be more liberal than they are, but their geographical and cultural situation won't allow it.

So I'm afraid super70 is fantasizing when he writes

Where else can you stand outside of a 7 star hotel and watch a public stoning?

I don't know where else, but you can't do it in Dubai. They don't go in for stonings, either public or private, there. Sharia law only applies to Muslims, and its interpretation is, by Islamic standards, extrememly liberal. There are no judicial beheadings, amputations, stonings or floggings (though the lash is popular in less liberal UAE states like Fujeirah and Ras al Kaimah).

Only the very wicked and very poor have much to complain of from Dubai's police and judiciary. I have a relative and a couple of acquaintances who spent time in gaol there. The acquaintances were in for drug dealing - coc aine, ecstasy and hash. The relative was doing a favour for a Muslim friend - specifically, buying him a case of Scotch (Muslims aren't allowed to purchase or be seen drinking alcohol in Dubai, though many do both).

The gaol was, as such things go, pretty civilized. My relative got three months and was then deported. The druggies had connections -- the father of one of them piloted a private jet belonging to one of the leading families -- and got out in a couple of weeks. They, too, were deported. Apart from never being allowed to return to the UAE again, that was the extent of the penalty they suffered.

On the subject of booze, yes, it's true that you need a permit from the CID (and permission from your employer) to buy it... legally. I never had a permit. I had a bootlegger, an Indian named Sharji who drove a pickup round Dubai with several hundred gallons of spirits stashed in the back under a tarpaulin. He brought the stuff in from Ajman, a nearby emirate where it is freely available. Many expats do the weekend 'Ajman run' in their cars, returning with a week's supply of booze in the boot. I found Sharji more convenient - call him, and he'd be at your door in under an hour. He'd been deported half a dozen times, returning each time under a different passport to continue where he'd left off. He never sold to Muslims, though -- he knew his trade too well to make a mistake like that.

Originally posted by Toadmund
I saw a documentary on TV about Dubai. Apparently it's all built with 3rd world labour at very low wages. Some of them don't even see their pay.

Sadly, this is correct. In fact, I spent some time and money helping out a compatriot who'd got suckered into a deal like that. She was a rather naive young woman who'd worked for one of my friends back home and had emigrated (against her employer's advice) to Dubai. There she ended up working 12 hours a day behind the counter in a megamall out on the Sheikh Zayed Road (that's the one you see in the OP's link) and living in an all-female dormitory out in the desert that was essentially a prison as far as she was concerned - she wasn't making enough money to be able to afford the 30km taxi ride into town, and there was no bus service. I gave her some money to help her get herself out of there, but the last I heard of her, she had moved into a squalid walkup in Diyafah, sharing with a 'girl from Ukraine' (read hooker). I hope she didn't take up the same trade...

Dubai is an interesting place, though not a nice one. Hanslune has it right:

Dubai was a good place - 12 years ago. Unfortunately I was there and watched it built itself into a tourism haven.

I was there just seven years ago, and it was still a good place -- for making money, shopping and partying. Culturally, though, it was and remains a desert far more lifeless than the real desert that surrounds it.

Hanslune's post is one of the most informed and accurate on this thread, but so is this one:

Originally posted by hal4511
The Top 20 Reasons Not to Move to Dubai (in no particular order!)
By Tia O’Neill...

...Taxi drivers are dangerous and smelly...

(...whine, whinge, sneer....)

Reading this brought back to me some powerful memories of Dubai - specifically, of sitting in some well-stocked hotel bar or British expat's luxury home in Jumeirah and hearing people - people who were having a wonderful time, making scads of money and living lives they couldn't come close to affording back home - bitching about how awful Dubai and the Arabs and the Indians and everyone else was. They have a name for people like Tia O'Neill in Dubai; they're called Jumeirah Janes. And they are, frankly, the pits. Agent_T is right when he says

Nice place overall but the 'Brit ex-pat' attitude spoils it.

Finally, getting back to the conspiracy angle...

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
The only "conspiracy" is that they're relatively unharmed by terrorist attacks. That's because it's a business platform for Westerners and people from the East as well, why would they wanna bomb their own income source?

This is true, and in my view highly creditable. It shows how switched-on the Maktoum, the ruling family of Dubai, are. Many people have talked on this thread about 'when the oil runs out'. The fact is, it already has run out, as the Maktoum always knew it would. Sheikh Rashid, the present ruler's father, used to say 'My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land-Rover, his son will drive a Land-Rover, but his son's son will ride a camel.' Today, the oil industry accounts for less than 6% of Dubai's GNP.

As for this...

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
I beleive the saudis are one of the strongest bloodlines that are connected to the ancient sumerians.

Well, actually, the Maktoum are members of the Bani Yas tribe, who fought wars against the Saudi. You can find a rather sanitized version of their history on Sheikh Mo's web site. Happy reading!

[edit on 22-7-2008 by Astyanax]

Dubai is booming because they have 0% income tax. They understand "small government" from an economic standpoint with their low tax rates. America used to be like Dubai. That was before the government grew to astronomical proportions. If we cut the fat out of the government - which is 2/3 to 3/4 of the government - that is, cut out Medicare, Welfare, Social Security, the FHA, FEMA and all the countless other useless economic drains on our society that cause us to work long weeks to pay for all these deficit-ridden government programs, we'd be booming too and much happier. We'd be working fewer hours, making more money, have more individual freedoms and we'd be enjoying a higher standard of living all around.

Just remember, Obama supporters - you support the OPPOSITE of this. You support a much lower standard of living through increased government size, higher taxes, lower incomes, higher unemployment and fewer individual rights.

Kinda puts it all into perspective, doesn't it?

[edit on 22-7-2008 by ChocoTaco369]

They can do all of this now.

Just wait a 100 years and they will be sucking sand again.

---

Anyway, i am going to visit there within the year... i hope its nice...

[edit on 7/22/2008 by TKainZero]

Dubais economy is not about oil.

Oil only accounts for 3% of the total economy of Dubai.

Two points I'd like to raise:

- It is believed by many, and subtley documented that earth crust displacement occurs at times of cyclical global cataclysm. If this were to occur in the relatively near future, Dubai could find itself in cooler climes, and equally, the Arctic Deed Vault could find itself in much warmer climes. If Dubai's development is related to its important as a post-cataclysmal haven, this becomes an important point.

- If the World's elite truly do want to make Dubai their paradise, perhaps this would explain why they're allowing droves of Muslims to enter their own countries. It could either be some kind of arrangement between the Arabic/Muslim elite and the Western elite whereby Muslims are permitted to colonise Western countries whilst the elite are provided a new paradise. Or, perhaps the whole of the region surrounding Dubai is set to become a new Western colony, requiring the displacement of the indigenous people.

Just some thoughts.

you will find some beautiful pictures dipicting the rapid change in dubai from 2003 and its beautiful! www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by euclid

Women are arrested by clerics if they have coffee with co-workers at a Starbucks

Untrue. If you want to see a 'cleric' in Dubai you'll have to go into a mosque; they're kept under pretty strict control. Women and men associate freely in Dubai, in just about every conceivable social setting.

homosexuals are beaten and thrown in jail

Tell that to my friend Carlo, who used to go cruising late at night on Jumeirah beach with his money in his shoes because 'darling, that's the only article of my clothing I know will stay on...'

women caught in extra-marital affiars are stoned to death

Nobody has ever been stoned to death in Dubai.

the list of human atrocities carried out in the name of a religion, that is hardly even worthy of being relagated to that auspicious title

Perhaps you mean Iran, or Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan under the Taliban? If you imagine any of this is true of Dubai, you really have no idea what goes on there.

Might be a good idea get out of that bunker more often...

I love what they are doing over there, completely stretching the imagination and making a city worthy of the future, we seem to have lost the will to create great things they can still be made along with helping humanity the sheikh maktoum gives billions to charitable causes. The pictures and visions that place has for the future its gonna be the centre of the world.

reply to post by ChocoTaco369

They understand "small government" from an economic standpoint with their low tax rates. America used to be like Dubai. That was before the government grew to astronomical proportions. If we cut the fat out of the government - which is 2/3 to 3/4 of the government - that is, cut out Medicare, Welfare, Social Security, the FHA, FEMA and all the countless other useless economic drains on our society that cause us to work long weeks to pay for all these deficit-ridden government programs, we'd be booming too and much happier. We'd be working fewer hours, making more money.

Hmm...

Where to start?

Perhaps by pointing out that in Dubai, as in the rest of the UAE, government and private enterprise are one and the same. The largest corporations - the ports authority, the various oil-industry companies, the airline (probably the world's best), the property-development companies building all those seven-star superskyscrapers and artificial archipelagoes - are owned by members of the extended royal family. And it's not that extended, either - Dubai isn't Saudi Arabia with it's 1,000-plus 'princes'.

And all these giant corporate entities are - you guessed it - monopolies.

Other businesses may not pay income tax*, but by law, every business must be at least part-owned by a UAE national - of whom there were, according to the 2006 census, 241,740 (17% of the population). Take away those under 20, who make up roughly half (yes, you read that right) the population, and you are left with the interesting statistic that roughly 120,000 people own a significant stake in a $35 billion economy. And do you know what this 'ownership' amounts to? It amounts to sitting at home and receiving rents from the expatriates who actually set up and run (and reap the residual profits from) these companies. This rent paid to Emerati subjects therefore stands in place of a corporate income tax on earnings. So much for 'low tax rates' - some of these local rentiers charge swingeing commissions to be sleeping partners in these companies.

Furthermore, all land in the UAE is owned either by the government or by one of those 120,000 lucky chaps. So individuals pay rent on their homes (typically 1/3 of an expat's income goes on rent) and companies pay rent on their premises too. That's yet another form of taxation.

These sit-back-and-count-the-money aristos are, incidentally, featherbedded from birth. They get free education and health care, of course; but they may also get free housing, various cash gifts from the state (for example, on the birth of a son) and a whole host of other freebies. Few Emeratis work, and the ones that do are rarely found at their desks; they rarely need to be there, since any real work that needs to be done will be attended to by expatriate subordinates.

Oh, and where does this handful of industrious locals work? Not in private companies, you may be sure; they work in the state sector, which is bloated with sinecures in which to accommodate them. The bureacracy in Dubai - as in all Arab countries - is enormous and powerful. But unlike in some other Arab countries, the state isn't corrupt - its officials are far too wealthy to have any need for gladhanders and kickbacks. The bureacrats of Dubai are mostly agreeable fellows, happy to wield the rubber stamp for you.

The state in Dubai is pretty big. In addition to kosher businesses like the ones I mentioned in the opening lines of this post, all utilities - water, power, telecoms, internet - are state-owned. The state is also a huge property developer - all those architectural gargantuae you see are built on land that is, ultimately, owned by the state. It is only in the last two or three years that non-Emeratis have been able to own land in Dubai, and most of what they're buying appears to be land newly reclaimed from the desert or from the Persian Gulf (which Emeratis like to call, in defiance of Western geographers, the Arabian Gulf).

I understand much of this is changing now, as Dubai modernizes its financial and services sector. But the changes, dear ChocoTaco369, aren't those you would approve of. For example, one change, which has been impending for years and is now imminent, is the introduction of a value-added (goods and services) tax.

Your economic prescriptions may well, for all I know, be right for America; but I assure you they are not being practised in Dubai. The reasons for Dubai's prosperity are much simpler: few people, lots of oil and land, and a family of enlightened despots willing to share the wealth among their subjects, and to reward foreigners who will help them multiply it.

Dubai was never like America, and America was never like Dubai. They are chalk and cheese.
*Apart from banks, financial services and the oil industry, which are subject to corporate income tax.

[edit on 22-7-2008 by Astyanax]

reply to post by Astyanax


I enjoy reading your free style exposes on Dubai.
But just for the record as you have quoted:
“It is only in the last two or three years that non-Emeratis have been able to own land in Dubai,”
I have purchased a flat in 2000 at Dubai Marina adjacent to Jumeirah Beach, which many of my friends back then was advising me not to, because of Arab country stereotype des-info.

Kacou.

does babylon ring any bells ?

Originally posted by Optix
Well thats a city full of non philanthropist. Wow! If they could take that money and do something good instead of trying to impress themselves and everyone else.

[edit on 21-7-2008 by Optix]

Very enlightening, brings all sorts of thoughts to mind.

Originally posted by TKainZero
They can do all of this now.

Just wait a 100 years and they will be sucking sand again.

---

Anyway, i am going to visit there within the year... i hope its nice...

[edit on 7/22/2008 by TKainZero]

Hey, this being a conspiracy site and all,

What if we been sitting on all our oil for this very reason, use up theirs first.

Just crossed my mind

Originally posted by Stormdancer777
Hey, this being a conspiracy site and all,

What if we been sitting on all our oil for this very reason, use up theirs first.

Just crossed my mind

Not just yours. When was/is peak oil?

reply to post by Sleuth


OH cool, not just me then.

Originally posted by LeeHawt
What a waste of resources on such a crappy place, looks cheap to me no culture just looks like a new Vagus. This kinda stuff disgust me,how can some humans be so greedy, people are starving in the world and some are building Michal Jackson style wonderland in the desert. I only hope that this is the only place in are galaxy that this happens.

That's humanity for ya! I couldn't agree with you more. Unfortunately our society is dog eat dog.