Gideon Hallett ([info]gmh) wrote,
@ 2009-04-07 10:22:00
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From [info]major_clanger, a link to a superbly-written article about the flip side of Dubai's economic miracle.

Caution: it is not easy reading in any way; and if you're anything like me, you will very probably be quietly seething at the end of it.

Nonetheless, this is real news; the sort of stuff that needs to be spread around the airwaves for all to read.

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[info]major_clanger
2009-04-07 10:01 am UTC (link)
Ta for the plug, but just to avoid confusion I have an underscore - [info]majorclanger is someone else entirely...

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[info]gmh
2009-04-07 10:14 am UTC (link)
Cheers; momentary brainfart, now fixed!

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[info]shezan
2009-04-07 10:18 am UTC (link)
Wow. I used to think Hari flip and not terribly serious, but this is brilliant.

I was in Dubai ten years ago for a couple of days, and had already noticed that the official temperature (on the public displays; next to the masthead of the Gulf News) was always listed as 48C. Yet one day in the inside pages there was a piece about a flock of imported cows dying of the above-50C heat in the desert. I asked around, and was told the WHO forbids working people outside at 50C, "so it's always 48C here."

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[info]ewx
2009-04-07 10:31 am UTC (link)

Dubai (and for that matter much of the rest of the Arabian peninsular) is going to be in serious trouble once they stop being able to sell oil to the rest of the world (for whatever reason). The Hijaz should be OK with pilgrims bringing in money, but what has the rest got?

I wouldn't want to be a foreigner there (rich westerner or enslaved Asian) when the balloon goes up. Well, not that I want to be there now personally...

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[info]shezan
2009-04-07 10:32 am UTC (link)
what has the rest got?

Perish the thought that they might actually, you know, work. Making or thinking up things. Like, oh, the dreaded Israelis? *boo! hiss!*

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[info]_nicolai_
2009-04-07 10:59 am UTC (link)
Israel's got some interesting work demographics: Workforce participation levels (i.e. people who do work out of people who could work) are far less than Western levels at only something like 55% ("bit over half" anyway). When you look deeper into that, it's because secular (or moderately religious) Israelis have similar workforce participation rates as the Western world. The non-working people are largely the very religious ones. This really pisses off secular Israelis.
I don't know yet of any firm work to correlate this with the level of religious observance in the rest of the Middle East or with the unequal status of women there, but it certainly seems to me that workforce participation in a lot of the rest of the Middle East is lower because women are prevented from doing most anything in some countries and being equal in most of them, while men being uselessly occupied in noodling religion is considered a reasonable thing to do.

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[info]shezan
2009-04-07 12:51 pm UTC (link)
That, and the curse of overpaid make-work public sector "jobs" the males are entitled to from cradle to tomb. (Kuwait city airport is PEOPLED with arrogant, uselesss Kuwaitis hanging around while underpaid foreigners scurry about actually running the place.)

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[info]ewx
2009-04-07 12:44 pm UTC (link)
Israel's economy gets a foreign subsidy too, without even having to dig up oil for it. But yes, it does look like they've got more native industry and shouldn't be in such a big hole if they lost it.

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[info]_nicolai_
2009-04-07 10:52 am UTC (link)
Dubai's not got much oil anyway, hence the wild expansion into financial services and playground-of-the-rich.

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[info]naath
2009-04-07 02:07 pm UTC (link)
Sun. I bet if they put their mind to it they could export solar power.

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[info]ewx
2009-04-07 02:32 pm UTC (link)

Perhaps. They're rather distant from anywhere rich and sunless, though - much of the rest of the middle east is better placed to export electricity to Europe for instance. And they don't have the kind of surface area of places like Libya or Algeria.

Also, the place as it stands has its own enormous energy requirements - double the oil consumption per person of somewhere like Israel (to use the same comparator as above) or the UK. Presumably much of this goes on desalination.

(Source: CIA WFB.)

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[info]sshi
2009-04-07 03:12 pm UTC (link)
Theoretically, that could all be powered by solar power, instead of oil. Assuming the Sheik was willing to set up the collecting and distribution networks and change all of the transport to electric power, which judging from the article, is not likely to happen in a million years.

Interesting to hear that the whole island-building gimmick has already fallen apart - I suspect that the credit crisis may end up being the only thing to stop the environmental collapse from happening.

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[info]silly_swordsman
2009-04-07 02:29 pm UTC (link)
I read a different article on the same theme just the other day. Trying to find where, but I've been rather frazzled a while so I can't recall where. Possibilities are Guardian/Times paper edition, or BBC/DN websites. Hang on... Yup, BBC Panorama. Different authors, though.

Thing is, coming from a liberal democracy with modern rights and a fair justice system (which we still have to a large extent, regardless what the doom-mongers say) it's very easy to assume that would be the case in other countries, especially countries that have the technological trappings of modernity.

To paraphrase/quotemangle Heinlein, we assume the customs of our tribe are universal laws.

A feudal system, like the kingdoms of UAE, is fundamentally and by definition unfair, since it's based on the idea of some people having a different worth and different rights than others.

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[info]commodorified
2009-04-07 05:12 pm UTC (link)
"Quietly seething?" Truly the British are, as advertised, masters and mistresses of the Killing Understatement.

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Dubai
[info]boolie
2009-04-07 08:44 pm UTC (link)
Thirteen years ago I went on a five day work thing to Dubai. One of the first thing's my (Scottish) host did was show me the sights - where the TWN (third world nationals) lived, and told me the 'truth' about Dubai. How most of the expats were there because they couldn't get work here -usually because of a drink problem, how overworked the TWN's were. How if you wanted something done you always asked the TWN's because the Management were either useless or lushes, or both. About the blind eye turned to parties, about how you had a quota of alcohol and about the lazyness of the Emirati. I stayed at the Jumeirah Beach, and couldn't hack them turning my bed down. I had about £6 left and rather than change it up I gave it to the chap who managed my room. He started crying. Apparently it was the equivalent of a weeks wages. One of the funniest things I saw was when the bloke who owned the hotel turned up. His security guards turfed all the guests out of the lifts and then the entourage started fighting to get into the same lift as the Boss. It was like something out of Benny Hill. Pathetic.

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[info]happydisciple
2009-04-08 09:53 am UTC (link)
During a quick skim-read of my f-list, I misread that as "[...] the flip side of Dubya's economic miracle." and my mind went *whut?*

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