The biggest building site on earth

[annihilation]

Those looking for tranquil, unspoilt beaches, rustic charm and authentic maritime culture will probably choose to look elsewhere. But for the world's permatanned classes with bling to display and money to burn this extraordinary construction project in the Persian Gulf is an irresistible draw.

Begun in 2001, the Palm Islands are a 12-square-mile group off the shores of Dubai. With 14,000 labourers toiling day and night, the first of three unfeasibly large, palm


shaped artificial islands, Palm Jumeirah, is nearing completion, and about to receive its first residents.
When the luxury homes on the Palm's 17 giant 'fronds' were first put on sale in 2004, the buyers - of what will become a cross between Las Vegas and Wilmslow-on-sea - included the Beckhams, who put a deposit down on a £1.2million designer pad with two swimming pools, Michael Owen, Anthea Turner and Grant Bovey, and Gary Neville.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=399673&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true#StartComments

[2Sheds_Jackson]

Dubai is like another planet. It's quite western in it's wretched excess - though if I had the choice, I'd prefer to vacation at an actual mountain, with real snow rather than to go to some miserable Mideast Las Vegas with an indoor ski slope. It's like taking a vacation at a mall.

[ZeroZen]

yeah, thats right

[Zvucni Efekti]

Dubai is like another planet. It's quite western in it's wretched excess - though if I had the choice, I'd prefer to vacation at an actual mountain, with real snow rather than to go to some miserable Mideast Las Vegas with an indoor ski slope. It's like taking a vacation at a mall.

Yeah, because there are a lot of actual mountains all around Dubai, with real snow, the whole deal. :roll:

To me, it's amazing what they've managed to do there. Stuck in the sixteenth century my arse.

[Kaapeli]

Dubai is going insane. Though they do have a vision: they know the oil is going to run out sooner or later. What else do they have? A warm climate and the biggest and luxuriest hotels soon. That's their future "oil".

[Beaufort]

Yeah, because there are a lot of actual mountains all around Dubai, with real snow, the whole deal. :roll:

To me, it's amazing what they've managed to do there. Stuck in the sixteenth century my arse.

Hmmm, I wonder if without all that oil they would still have managed so well.

[Zvucni Efekti]

Hmmm, I wonder if without all that oil they would still have managed so well.

Without all that oil, the Arab world would likely be more advanced than it is today. If anything, oil holds them back. It discourages the growth of their economies, the education of their people, etc. After all, they've got a sh*tload of oil, why do they have to worry about anything else?

I've got a few PDFs on the subject tucked away somewhere, I'll see if I can find them, then find where they came from.

Edit:
"Saudi Arabia Enters the 21st Century: VI. Building True Wealth Versus Over-dependence on Petroleum and the State"
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/s21_06.pdf

That's the first I found. It focuses on Saudi Arabia, as is obvious by the title, but much of what it said is applicable to nearly every Arab state.

[taotie]

This gigantig building site can be seen from outer space they told on TV. Must be true, as big as the islands are.
It seems that tourism will determine Dubai's future.

[Mr.K]

They could have used that money for a better cause, lets say developing Palestine and Lebanon which they care so much about.

[Zarathustra]

I'm impressed, that will probably be awesome.

[annihilation]

Dubai is going insane. Though they do have a vision: they know the oil is going to run out sooner or later. What else do they have? A warm climate and the biggest and luxuriest hotels soon. That's their future "oil".

They want to be the financial hub of the middle east I think.

[vryhpyammoadded]

Impressive yes. Very cool... Oh Ah...

I would rather spend my days sailing around the world in a cramped, leaky, wooden 65 foot schooner…

[Rictor]

If you ask me, Dubai has ruined whatever charm or beauty it might have had, and the Middle East does indeed have a certain something, in their rush to become an Arabic Tokyo.


Those looking for tranquil, unspoilt beaches, rustic charm and authentic maritime culture will probably choose to look elsewhere. But for the world's permatanned classes with bling to display and money to burn this extraordinary construction project in the Persian Gulf is an irresistible draw.
I don't know why anyone would consciously want to attract the perma-tanned, bling-wearing masses, other than to extract the contents of their wallet, which I suppose is the point here. I guess this is why I never really liked Dubai, and never got particularly excited about their mega-projects.

[budgie]

Dubai is like another planet. It's quite western in it's wretched excess - though if I had the choice, I'd prefer to vacation at an actual mountain, with real snow rather than to go to some miserable Mideast Las Vegas with an indoor ski slope. It's like taking a vacation at a mall.

Seems every foreign paper has a new story about up-and-coming Dubai. Trust me dude I live in Dubai and it's way over-hyped.

Most of us complain that the town is a little boring. Unless you're a multi-millionaire with a cruise yacht, unlimited shopping account and a wife to use it, there's not much to do. Even then it would probably get real tired, real quick. Indoor skiing? Might impress the Arabs and Indians but I lived in Sapporo for 4 years; shopping; only designer brands - it doesn't boast something for everyone; desert tours? Seen one seen 'em all. It's too hot to go outside from June to Sept (although this year it started a little late), and they shut the whole sleepy dump down for one month every year for Ramadan. Speaking of which even a non-muslim can be fined for drinking a bottle of water in public between sunup and sundown during Ramadan.

The drivers are inconsiderate bastards to be kind: there were 300,000 accidents last year (in a city of less than 1,000,000 cars) but to be fair, the roads are so poorly planned you have to drive half a mile to do a u-turn. If you have an accident with a local the cops will always side with him, so keep a dish-dash under your car-seat just in case.

The beaches might once have been pristine but the water is getting polluted from the massive offshore construction projects (just one 10km stretch of prime waterfront has currently got three 'palms' under construction, 'The world' offshore islands and various on shore resorts that require beach landscaping. Go to the beach with a girl any other day than Sunday (ladies only) and you'll be stared at by all manner of third-world creeps with no respect for women, whom Hollywood has led to believe any woman without a Halloween costume on is a slut.

There's a definite class system - the rich Arabs being on the top of the heap and South Asian labourers at the bottom. These fancy construction projects (perpetually behind completion date due to shortage of materials and apathetic workers) are only made possible because they employ legions of Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers at about $300 a month: and this in one of the world's most expensive towns. They're kept in labour camps with poor sanitation and barely adequate air conditioning and are frequently not paid at all. If they strike or dispute with their employers (inevitably Shiekhs or friends of the ruling family) they are threatened with deportation. Needless to say under such conditions they hardly do their best work: building safety practices and finished towers are shoddy pieces of workmanship for all their glitz.

I don't know how much locals would be willing to do such work for. The government has traditionally kept UAE nationals living in luxury (mansions, land, handouts) as a kind of a bribe for allowing them to rule perpetually. With that money a few smart cookies have started business but then with the kind of overheads I described above, they're almost guaranteed a profit.

Since the oil dried up the Shiekhs have been turning to commerce but it seems like a house of cards to me. Their only buisness model for the last 50 years has been screwing foreigners out of a dollar. That was fine when they had petrol to sell, but now they're turning to finance - an area that the Arabs no very little about outside of backhanders, family connections and other dubious practices. Foreign businesses are going to be in for a rude surprise when they realise all the locals want to do is get their money quick.

The latest scam brings us full ciircle: construction. Dubai is undergoing a property bubble much like Japan did in the early nineties. Prices soar year by year as much as 50, 100, 200 percent. People buy aprtments that haven't been started yet and sell them at a profit before they're finished. What's going to happen when the David Beckhams of the world realise they've bought something neither worth the price they paid or all it was cracked up to be? We all know what happened to Japan.

I'd certainly rather live in Singapore if I could do the same job. If I didn't get to spend half the month away on layovers I wouldn't live in Dubai at all. It's just like Vegas without the booze, gambling and the strippers - in other words a bunch of kitschy expensive buildings in the desert. In 20 years they'll all be empty.

[sferrin]

This gigantig building site can be seen from outer space they told on TV. Must be true, as big as the islands are.
It seems that tourism will determine Dubai's future.


"Seen from outerspace" is marketing talk. My cat can be seen from outer space with the right satellite looking at it.

[AROUETLJ]

They can build ski slopes in the desert, and they can build some of the world's biggest artificial islands and the tallest skyscrapers. And yet they haven't managed to hold democratic elections.

[Durandal]

Without all that oil, the Arab world would likely be more advanced than it is today. If anything, oil holds them back. It discourages the growth of their economies, the education of their people, etc. After all, they've got a sh*tload of oil, why do they have to worry about anything else?

Yeah, because they were on the rise 90 years ago. :roll:

With those massive sand and fig resources...well, the sky's the limit.

What ƒucked them was Islam, plain and simple...and that started at the pinnacle of Moorish culture, wrecked by a bunch religious mad men...

No, Ralph Peters has it right...this region is a blight upon the res of humanity, taking money and truly contributing NOTHING...no better than a drug pusher.

[Zvucni Efekti]

Yeah, because they were on the rise 90 years ago. :roll:

With those massive sand and fig resources...well, the sky's the limit.

What ƒucked that are was Islam, plain and simple...and that started at the pinnacle of Moorish culture, wrecked by a bunch religious mad men...

No, Ralph Peters has it right...this region is a blight upon the res of humanity, taking money and truly contributing NOTHING...no better than a drug pusher.

Have you ever studied the Islamic Caliphate? Don't you think there's a reason we in the West use Arabic numerals? At one point in time, Muslim Culture far surpassed Western Culture.

Ninety years ago they were a bunch of s**ty countries because they weren't countries at all, they were colonies, and were raped by the colonizers much as most of Africa was.

[stuntman]

I thought our
western numerals came from India?

[Zvucni Efekti]

I thought our came from India?

From Wiki
"The numeral system came to be known to both the Persian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persians) mathematician Al-Khwarizmi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al-Khwarizmi), whose book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals written about 825 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/825), and the Arab (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab) mathematician Al-Kindi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Kindi), who wrote four volumes, "On the Use of the Indian Numerals" (Ketab fi Isti'mal al-'Adad al-Hindi) about 830 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/830), are principally responsible for the diffusion of the Indian system of numeration in the Middle-East (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-East) and the West [1] (http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/%7Ehistory/HistTopics/Indian_numerals.html). In the 10th century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10th_century), Middle-Eastern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-East) mathematicians extended the decimal numeral system to include fractions, as recorded in a treatise by Syrian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian) mathematician Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu%27l-Hasan_al-Uqlidisi) in 952 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/952)-953 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/953)."

"l-Khwarizmi's 825 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/825) treatise On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals was translated into Latin in the 12th century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12th_century), as Algoritmi de numero Indorum (Algoritmi being the translator's rendition of the author's name, al-ḫwārizmī, ultimately leading to the term algorithm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm)). Fibonacci (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_of_Pisa), an Italian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy) mathematician who had studied in Bejaia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bejaia) (Bougie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bougie)), Algeria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algeria), promoted the Arabic numeral system in Europe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe) with his book Liber Abaci (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Abaci), which was published in 1202 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1202), still describing the numerals as "Indian" rather than "Arabic"."



That's all pretty off topic, though.

[Steel21]

From what I read the Baghdad Caliphate was in decline when the Mongols came and finished it off. The incessant turnover in Caliphs through assasination......taxes were hampering progress.

However, it seems the caliphates were far from the austere Islamic societies invisioned by the fundamentalists. They primarily profited through traded, much of which stemmed from China.

So somewhere in moderation lies the truth, that the Caliphates were never as advanced as some thought they were, nor were they models of Islamic society....but on the other hand they were certainly far in advanced of their peers in Western Europe.

Its as though technological and cultural progress can only come with the trade off in religious austerity.

[stuntman]

Early Devanagari (Indian); Later Devanagari were the first to use our current number system according to
http://www.islamicity.com/Mosque/ihame/Ref6.htm (http://www.islamicity.com/Mosque/ihame/Ref6.htm)

I think Arabs were responsible for introducing it to the west as the west used Roman, Greek and Egyptian number system. Europes main reason for adopting this new method was because Bishops of the time couldn't calculate Easter.LOL heard that somewhere...

http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9367121

They originated in India in the 6th or 7th century and were introduced to Europe through Arab mathematicians around the 12th century (see al-Khwarizmi). They represented a profound break with previous methods of counting, such as the abacus, and paved the way for the development of algebra.



But this is off topic...

[Noble713]

budgie, is it true that the domestic servants/maids are mostly just Filipino prostitutes in disguise? Are they expensive, or does it seem like everyone has one?

[Zvucni Efekti]

budgie, is it true that the domestic servants/maids are mostly just Filipino prostitutes in disguise? Are they expensive, or does it seem like everyone has one?

I donno...how much 'ya got? p-)

[Durandal]

Have you ever studied the Islamic Caliphate? Don't you think there's a reason we in the West use Arabic numerals? At one point in time, Muslim Culture far surpassed Western Culture.

Ninety years ago they were a bunch of s**ty countries because they weren't countries at all, they were colonies, and were raped by the colonizers much as most of Africa was.

I never once claimed that the Moors were NOT ahead of Western Culture. There were, by leaps and bounds. While the Europeans were burning peat, trying to stay warm, trying to eek out an exist, the Islamic Caliphate (I am using this as a general term to describe the Moorish regions under control of several different Caliphates during a period of about 300 years) was almost at a 1500s state of intellectual learning.

Then Radical Islam destroyed that. Not the Christians, not plague, not a natural disaster, but a religious group. Old Islamic/Moorish Culture never had chance.

What resulted was more death and destruction of those fabulous Kingdoms, standards of living, and education than any Western culture.

The myth that imperialism and colonialism "destroyed" has been told and retold. I am not making ANY claim that it benefited those regions...in some rare cases it did. At the same time to claim colonization somehow made things worse is to somehow, magically, acknowledge that the regions were better. Which, I'll argue is a poor argument since those regions were in fact, like Egypt or Saudi Arabia, were these great places of civil rights, freedom, education, and science...

They simply weren't....

Its like bitching about China. Yeah, China had some good dynasties in there, but at the time the European control of her coastal waterways CHina was a stink hole of corruption and at no one point in Chinese history till, well, even today, did they NOT have some sort of caste system with a majority of the population being ignorant and raped by the upper elites.

I think you should reread my post and see exactly what I said...though it looks I need to edit a grammatical error...hmmm...

[vryhpyammoadded]

When I studied colonialism, I saw either a bunch of corrupt, decadent and lazy nations getting scooped up like some unused tool by someone willing to do them a favor and use it to build something or, a bunch of loin clothed, spear chucking primitives getting mowed over like that possum I saw that challenged an eighteen wheeler this morning on I10.

[Rictor]

If you think about it, the claim that oil-rich nations are in fact held back by their resources does make sense in a way.

Oil as a business model allows profits to be concentrated in a few hands, whether that's government hands or a few large corporations. This is an atmosphere that's bound to breed corruption, more so than a traditional mixed economy. Look at which countries are oil rich: Russia, Iran, Saudi, Venezuela, the UAE, Iraq and so on. Notice anything? They are all have a relativrly low per-capita GDP, meaning they're poor. The nations who have the highest per-capita GDP, Europe, America, Japan, South Korea and so on, don't have a drop of oil in them.

Oil, if it is managed exceedingly well, can be a great benefit for the country. But for that to happen, you need either enlightened, altruistic leaders, or very little corruption. But it can also be a detriment, since everyone can count on their oil to bring in the cash, and not develop other sectors of the economy, while in fact the profits from oil go mostly into the coffers of a few well connected individuals, and don't reach the population as much as if the economy were more diversified.

[IraGlacialis]

I never once claimed that the Moors were NOT ahead of Western Culture. There were, by leaps and bounds. While the Europeans were burning peat, trying to stay warm, trying to eek out an exist, the Islamic Caliphate (I am using this as a general term to describe the Moorish regions under control of several different Caliphates during a period of about 300 years) was almost at a 1500s state of intellectual learning.

Then Radical Islam destroyed that. Not the Christians, not plague, not a natural disaster, but a religious group. Old Islamic/Moorish Culture never had chance.

What resulted was more death and destruction of those fabulous Kingdoms, standards of living, and education than any Western culture.

The myth that imperialism and colonialism "destroyed" has been told and retold. I am not making ANY claim that it benefited those regions...in some rare cases it did. At the same time to claim colonization somehow made things worse is to somehow, magically, acknowledge that the regions were better. Which, I'll argue is a poor argument since those regions were in fact, like Egypt or Saudi Arabia, were these great places of civil rights, freedom, education, and science...

They simply weren't....

Its like bitching about China. Yeah, China had some good dynasties in there, but at the time the European control of her coastal waterways CHina was a stink hole of corruption and at no one point in Chinese history till, well, even today, did they NOT have some sort of caste system with a majority of the population being ignorant and raped by the upper elites.

I think you should reread my post and see exactly what I said...though it looks I need to edit a grammatical error...hmmm...

You are right in that fact. If you look at the history of Moorish culture, it was flurishing with advancements in the arts, sciences, and humanities. In there Muslims, Christians, and Jews could live in reletive harmony compared to the rest of Western Europe. However, later on bickering in the Caliphate system weakened the goverment, leaving the area vulnerable to the Spaniards (Castilians I think) to be able to take over. And they did, first expelling the Jews and later the Moors (the Moors were kept to be architects and artisians till they were banished during the Early Renaissance).
The same could be said for Baghdad. The city was the pinnicle of Islamic learning. Since it was at trade routes, literature, mathmatics, and sciences such as chemistry (alchemy at the time), medicine, and astronomy flurished. Then problems with the Caliphate and multiple dominace by different cultures weakened the leadership and defense. The sack by the Mongols was the final blow which it never recovered from.

The Islamic world was one of the most advanced areas during the Middle Ages. While they flurished, Europe (not counting the Byzantine Empire (which was also sacked and taken over by Crusaders and Turks due to a falling apart of leadership)) was stewing in a cesspit of fuedalism and religious extremism (See a correlation with the Middle East of today?). I bet that if proportionately placed in the 21st century, the civiliztion would be ahead at least 25 years. Yet bickering about leadership and how to interpret the Koran lead to it being weakened from within and allowed it to be colonized, throwing the civilization back a few centuries. The radicals today keep it that way.

[kraf001]

Islam could be considered the savior of Arabs instead of what set them back.. trust me life of an Arab before Islam was way worse than after Islam... BUT to say that the "Islamic empire" was scientifically advanced is a misconception… actually without Persian/Turk (basically non-Arab) scholars there wouldn’t have been a golden age of Islam... these non-Arabs who were looked down on by Arabs (in case of Persians they were called “Ajams”) were already motivated and scientifically advanced ages before Islam and just because Islam took over their nation doesn't mean it was the drive behind their scientific success..

actually Islam as a religion was a set back for Persian scientist because their original religion, Zoroastrian, introduce no limit (Abrahamic religions all introduced some limit to science although Christians felt it more but it existed in all of them) in scientific discovery... talking about this topic and maintaining a PC approach is very hard but going back to the time of Muhammad using two of his famous advices for Muslims would be a good example for you to see where the Arab world stands:

Muhammad once said:

"teach your kids horse riding and archery"

he also said:

"gain knowledge even if you have to travel to China for it"

what happened was almost every Arab took the first advice and most of them (if not all) ignored the second one... it is a shame how Islam gets the credit for scientific achievement of ppl who weren't devoted Muslims by any definition... most Persian scientists were poets as well and you can clearly see lots of verses in their poems defying basics of Islam... even today if you add up all the points scored by all the Arab participants of any academic Olympiad it doesn’t match the score of a single Iranian, Turk or Jewish student… it has nothing to do with oil or Islam!

[kraf001]

Seems every foreign paper has a new story about up-and-coming Dubai. Trust me dude I live in Dubai and it's way over-hyped.

Most of us complain that the town is a little boring. Unless you're a multi-millionaire with a cruise yacht, unlimited shopping account and a wife to use it, there's not much to do. Even then it would probably get real tired, real quick. Indoor skiing? Might impress the Arabs and Indians but I lived in Sapporo for 4 years; shopping; only designer brands - it doesn't boast something for everyone; desert tours? Seen one seen 'em all. It's too hot to go outside from June to Sept (although this year it started a little late), and they shut the whole sleepy dump down for one month every year for Ramadan. Speaking of which even a non-muslim can be fined for drinking a bottle of water in public between sunup and sundown during Ramadan.

The drivers are inconsiderate bastards to be kind: there were 300,000 accidents last year (in a city of less than 1,000,000 cars) but to be fair, the roads are so poorly planned you have to drive half a mile to do a u-turn. If you have an accident with a local the cops will always side with him, so keep a dish-dash under your car-seat just in case.

The beaches might once have been pristine but the water is getting polluted from the massive offshore construction projects (just one 10km stretch of prime waterfront has currently got three 'palms' under construction, 'The world' offshore islands and various on shore resorts that require beach landscaping. Go to the beach with a girl any other day than Sunday (ladies only) and you'll be stared at by all manner of third-world creeps with no respect for women, whom Hollywood has led to believe any woman without a Halloween costume on is a slut.

There's a definite class system - the rich Arabs being on the top of the heap and South Asian labourers at the bottom. These fancy construction projects (perpetually behind completion date due to shortage of materials and apathetic workers) are only made possible because they employ legions of Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers at about $300 a month: and this in one of the world's most expensive towns. They're kept in labour camps with poor sanitation and barely adequate air conditioning and are frequently not paid at all. If they strike or dispute with their employers (inevitably Shiekhs or friends of the ruling family) they are threatened with deportation. Needless to say under such conditions they hardly do their best work: building safety practices and finished towers are shoddy pieces of workmanship for all their glitz.

I don't know how much locals would be willing to do such work for. The government has traditionally kept UAE nationals living in luxury (mansions, land, handouts) as a kind of a bribe for allowing them to rule perpetually. With that money a few smart cookies have started business but then with the kind of overheads I described above, they're almost guaranteed a profit.

Since the oil dried up the Shiekhs have been turning to commerce but it seems like a house of cards to me. Their only buisness model for the last 50 years has been screwing foreigners out of a dollar. That was fine when they had petrol to sell, but now they're turning to finance - an area that the Arabs no very little about outside of backhanders, family connections and other dubious practices. Foreign businesses are going to be in for a rude surprise when they realise all the locals want to do is get their money quick.

The latest scam brings us full ciircle: construction. Dubai is undergoing a property bubble much like Japan did in the early nineties. Prices soar year by year as much as 50, 100, 200 percent. People buy aprtments that haven't been started yet and sell them at a profit before they're finished. What's going to happen when the David Beckhams of the world realise they've bought something neither worth the price they paid or all it was cracked up to be? We all know what happened to Japan.

I'd certainly rather live in Singapore if I could do the same job. If I didn't get to spend half the month away on layovers I wouldn't live in Dubai at all. It's just like Vegas without the booze, gambling and the strippers - in other words a bunch of kitschy expensive buildings in the desert. In 20 years they'll all be empty.

nice finally someone with actual knowledge about Dubai.. trust me I have tried (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=84940) to draw a more real picture of Dubai but "shiny buildings" always win!! :)

[budgie]

budgie, is it true that the domestic servants/maids are mostly just Filipino prostitutes in disguise? Are they expensive, or does it seem like everyone has one?

Nope not really true. There are a fair number of prostitutes working the discos in hotels - mostly Russian, African and Chinese, with the occasional Filipino or Thai. The Domestic servants tend to be honest women - usually not particularly young or attractive. Most are Filipino because the locals want their kids to learn English from a young age. In Saudi the vast majority of housemaids are Indonesians from conservative Muslim communities. They have good Arabic so the priority doesn't seem to be English so much as Islam.

While there may be a few domestic workers engaged in part-time prostitution there are not many, and it's more likely to be the prettier barmaids or cafe workers from the Philippines - again not many though. More hosuemaids are likely to be subject to ****** abuse and in some cases 'pimping out' by their employers but this is punished harshly in Dubai.

In neigbouring Saudi tales of rape and physical abuse are the norm. Housemaids who get pregnant are 'given amnesty' that is deported so that their abusers don't have to face the music. It's a crime to get pregnant when you're not married - how convenient. BTW this is first hand - I once crewed a flight from Jeddah with over a hundred Indonesian women who were given amnesty. We didn't have enough infant seatbelts on board for all the newborns and a good number more were pregnant.

[SrB-23Q]

They can build ski slopes in the desert, and they can build some of the world's biggest artificial islands and the tallest skyscrapers. And yet they haven't managed to hold democratic elections.

If its all going well for them why ruin it?

[Andreas]

Dubai is like another planet. It's quite western in it's wretched excess - though if I had the choice, I'd prefer to vacation at an actual mountain, with real snow rather than to go to some miserable Mideast Las Vegas with an indoor ski slope. It's like taking a vacation at a mall.

And the the punishment for getting caught with 5 teenage hookers and a pound of coke would be less than in Dubai...