The Dark Side Of Dubai.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html
Bangalore
The Dark Side Of Dubai
by Bangalore 6 Replies latest social current
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cameo-d
This is so appalling, so horrible. So unreal. I can only take reading this in small doses. It is too much to comprehend. It is both tragic and frightening.
"The thing you have to understand about Dubai is – nothing is what it seems,"
(This is so true of most anything on this planet. It's as though this entire blue globe has been bewitched with Genie tricks.)
"They named it after a local locust, the daba, who consumed everything before it."
(This is very telling and almost prophetic, in a sense, of what has happened to all living there. Must be some of those locusts from the pit!)
"Israel used to boast it made the desert bloom; Sheikh Maktoum resolved to make the desert boom.
(Isn't there some scripture in Revelation about "the desert will bloom"?)
" "To get you here, they tell you Dubai is heaven. Then you get here and realise it is hell,"
(How many of us have been deceived and tricked by these same illusions?)
This sounds like something straight out of The Grapes of Wrath! How can this be going on in this day and age...still?
quote:
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.
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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.
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This is just unreal that a supposedly "civilized" nation treats it's people like this. Like I said, I can only take reading this in small doses because the horror of it is just too much to take.
And the opening story was such a nightmare; it's just unthinkable.
I realize that this story was first published last April. I can't help but wonder if the story has caused any changes at all? Why do the little people seem powerless to stop this evil? The little people are greater in number than those who are running the show. But I suppose those who are running things are paying their puppets well.
Something has to give. Something has to break.
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PEC
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.
This tells it all, today Dubai, tomorrow the world.
Philip
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Tuesday
This reminds me of the story I read about a year ago about a woman and a man brought to trial for having sex outdoors when they weren't married. They were both sentenced to multiple years in jail because of a fornication law.
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designs
Human Chattel......
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Married to the Mob
A number of years ago I had the chance to move to Dubai and work. The money was fantastic and more than I could possibly want but bits of the lifestyle was not for me. While I was there I noticed that most of the wives on the compounds were very bored and turned to drink or bed hopping or both! Don't get me wrong not that at the time it mattered (as I was single) but it was like an accident waiting to happen.
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shamus100
I was thinking of moving to Dubai a few years back too, MTTM. I don't know why I didn't take the job offer, and I thank the flying spaghetti monster to this day that I didn't do it. Er, um, god if you exist.
Frankly, I was not aware that your employer tells your bank if you lose your job, but I heard of everyone leaving in droves when they lost their jobs. I would never live there now, not for all the tea in china.