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The Dubai Debt Trap

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Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it’s enjoyable for brief tourist/business visits, you’ve got literal slaves attending to you.

A redditor living there once responded to "why would you be okay living in a country with slave labor?" by asking the commenter: who made the stuff they owned. Who mined the minerals for your electronics (probably exploited miners), who made your clothes (probably underpaid Bangladeshis). So the difference between the average Westerner and a Dubaian is the distance the slaves are to the consumer.

This is a very Reddit take, I think. The distinction is significantly more nuanced. Distance and percentage of slave labor used changes culpability, for example. I would argue that a person having a slave wait on them directly for all needs creates significantly more culpability than the fact that the lithium in my iPhone battery may or may not have come from some class of exploited labor worlds away from me. Further, while the slave owner could divest themselves of slaves directly, I don’t think there is any way for a modern westerner to rid themselves of anything in the supply chain of their lives of same. It doesn’t make it right, but these things are not equivalent.

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#112
post #60
post #5

All I ever hear is horror stories about this place: environmental destruction, structural racism, serious abuse of human rights, culturally hyper conservative, corrupt legal system, plus it's absurdly hot. I can't believe anyone would voluntarily go there, seems like hell on earth.

I say this as somebody who lived in one of those Middle Eastern countries for a good period of my life. I'm not a white person and at that time I didn't have a US/European passport, so I didn't lead an extra privalaged life there. Here's what you can hear about the USA. 1)Endless suburban sprawl, resulting in massive environmental destruction. Illegal immigrants heavily involved in the construction industry, leading…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#113
post #5

All I ever hear is horror stories about this place: environmental destruction, structural racism, serious abuse of human rights, culturally hyper conservative, corrupt legal system, plus it's absurdly hot. I can't believe anyone would voluntarily go there, seems like hell on earth.

> plus it's absurdly hot

Most of the places people visit and live aren't absurdly hot. The largest cities in the middle east BY FAR are Ciaro, Tehran, Istanbul, and Baghdad.

Cairo is hot most of the year - but one of these places are hotter than Phoenix - which is currently one of the places people are moving to in droves in the US

Tehran & Istanbul, for example, aren't even much hotter than Los Angeles: https://weatherspark.com/y/105125/Average-Weather-in-Tehran-...

If you think Los Angeles has bad weather - you're just out of touch with almost everyone else in the world.

Riyadh and Dubai are VERY HOT. KSA is its own strange destination from a Western perspective. It's mostly religious. But Dubai is similar to Las Vegas and Miami in many ways - in the crowd it attracts and what people do there. It's still much hotter - I agree, don't know how people do it there.

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#114
Seriously, anywhere in the Middle East is a "NO GO".

Their rights are non-existent. The laws are draconian and arbitrary. And if you're a woman, you're effectively a 2nd class citizen. And good luck if you're raped as a woman (shocker! sex out of wedlock, so youre a criminal).

Sure, that can be construed as anti-Arab. I don't particularly care. The laws (or lack thereof), the slavery, treatment of women - all of these tell me what I need to know. And this is what passes as "Islamic" countries. Shitholes indeed.

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#115
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wax poetically about UAE (mostly emotion, little fact), then remind the reader that it is an Islamic dictatorship. Why would any intelligent person ever set foot there? I'd lose over half of my current rights as it stands.

I’m not waxing poetic about anything. I agree that the UAE has engaged (and continues to engage) in several atrocities. Many many horrible things which as mentioned, I’m also combating during my time here. Also you mentioned little fact, mostly emotion, but i stated things like the Year of Tolerance, the religious temples being built, etc. but I’d hope others can also investigate on their own. We are so quick to pain…

> Also you mentioned little fact, mostly emotion, but i stated things like the Year of Tolerance, the religious temples being built, etc. but I’d hope others can also investigate on their own. We are so quick to paint countries as evil without understanding the full situation.

You are correct. Let me help rectify my transgression by providing a very consolidated list of things I can do in America that you can not do in the UAE:

1. Hold elections.

2. Form political parties.

3. Criticize my government and officials.

4. Have extra-martial or casual sex.

5. Consume alcohol.

6. Consume cannabis.

7. Be homosexual.

8. Kiss my partner in public.

9. Eat, drink, and smoke between sunrise and sunset during Ramadan.

10. Swear - both IRL and online.

Is that enough or do you need more concrete examples? The list is quite long.

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#116
post #66

Quoted post unavailable.

By taking everything you've got and more, locking you up for decades, fraudulently seizing foreign properties, and all without a lawyer, in a language you don't know. I don't doubt the US legal systems has many problems, but I think it's still on a completely different scale than this.

There have been instances of local police departments making a fucking contest on who could seize the most money on the next highway [1] from people just passing through. In total, it's many dozens of billions of dollars [2] - in 2015 there was more property being seized by police than taken from people by burglars [3] ffs.

The scale of "civil forfeiture" by corrupt and/or greedy cops in the US is mind-boggling.

[1]: https://eu.greenvilleonline.com/in-depth/news/taken/2019/01/...

[2]: https://ij.org/press-release/new-report-finds-civil-forfeitu...

[3]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#117
During the 2007 financial crisis Dubai finance minister was always on radio and news network saying if they do default the banks can scrape the roads, bridge and building and bring it home with them since that is the collateral of the debt.

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#118
post #110
post #25

As a Bay Area native who moved to Abu Dhabi / Dubai roughly four years ago, I have a lot of issues with the way the UAE is portrayed across sites like Hacker News and Reddit. A lot of them are in the comments for this story, focusing on all the negatives of the country, structural racism, human rights abuse, etc and we certainly have a right to raise these things (of which I actively fight against here every day). Th…

You remind me of myself when I used to work for Amazon. I'd also spend a lot of time explaining to friends how "It's complicated" and "You know, they also do a lot of good things". But the reality I wouldn't admit to myself was much simpler: they were doing awful things, but I was willing to work for them as long as they paid me enough and made my life comfortable enough. It's very uncomfortable to admit to yourself…

I appreciate the thought, but I’d raise the same thing I mentioned in the other comment, that I’m here for humanitarian reasons rather than simply trying to “strike it rich” or something. My ethics and morals are incredibly important to me and you suggesting that just by merely being present in this country without knowing why is in someway selling myself out is presumptuous.

I’ll add something else, as someone who has faced racism growing up in the Bay Area very very often, I’m sensitive to it and it’s something I push back on every time I’m faced with it here.

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#120
post #7

One of many reasons that I will never enter the UAE. There is no rule of law, and so no protection if anyone decides to charge you for anything. I've read of women being raped and then being charged for reporting it which essentially admits sex outside of marriage, or of foreigners who get driven into by a local and then charged as if they were the ones being reckless. That's not even going into their de facto slaver…

The first example seems more like a strict rule of law instead of no rule of law.
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