Fascinatingly bad genetics » « That was a weird thing to find in a frying pan

When I picture Hell, it looks like Dubai

I have a long list of places I’d like to visit, but am aware I’ll probably never get the opportunity: Florence, Italy; Lagos, Nigeria; both Antarctica and the far North; Istanbul (but that one scares me, I’d probably get arrested); and many others. I’m fortunate that I have been able to visit the Galapagos Islands, Beijing, China, and a scattering of places in Europe. If I had infinite money, I’d probably be flying off to a new place every week.

But one place I never, ever want to see is Dubai. My infinite money has a limit, and that limit stops cold at hellholes of vast wealth (I know, that’s a contradiction, but I will never have infinite, or even large amounts, of money, but Dubai actually does exist.) One journalist visited the place and now regrets it.

I went to Dubai wrongheaded. I learnt nothing and left nauseated. I had thought it would be fun – funny, even – to experience the disorientation of standing at the pivot point between two world systems. Instead, it was merely disorientating – sickeningly so. There are hells on earth and Dubai is one: an infernal creation born of the worst of human tendencies. Its hellishness cannot be laid solely at the feet of the oligarchs, whose wealth it attracts, nor the violent organised criminals who relocate there to avoid prosecution. It is hellish because, as the self-appointed showtown of free trade, it provides normal people with the chance to buy the purest form of the most heinous commodity: the exploitation of others. If you want to know how it feels to have slaves, in the modern world – and not be blamed openly for this desire – visit Dubai. But know that you will not be blameless for doing so. Every Instagram post, every TikTok video, every gloating WhatsApp message sent from its luxury is an abomination. A PR campaign run by those who have already bought the product, and now want only to show you that they can afford it.

I am ashamed to have visited. There are some experiences that journalism cannot excuse. I add nothing to the record by having gone. I thought the trip would present a grotesque tapestry that might disclose some new truth about the reordering of the world. It got the better of me. I imagined a gonzo-style reveal about ordering a mojito in Russian from an Indian barman while gazing towards Iran. All of this is possible, but none of it makes my visit worthwhile.

That’s about how I feel about the place. It’s an abomination, the end result of shameful wealth inequity, and I have no empathy to share with the rich tourists who fly there to do…what? I don’t know.

Fascinatingly bad genetics » « That was a weird thing to find in a frying pan

Comments

  2. says

    One of the “Fast & Furious” movies had a totally cool (and totally ridiculous) car-chase scene in Dubai. And a girl-fight scene with Rhonda Roussey. But you don’t have to go there to see the movie.

  3. Dunc says

    I have no empathy to share with the rich tourists who fly there to do…what? I don’t know.

    C’mon, it says right there in the article: “to know how it feels to have slaves, in the modern world – and not be blamed openly for this desire”. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

    They don’t need your empathy, and wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway. They’re already got the best friends money can buy.

  4. raven says

    When I picture Hell, it looks like Dubai

    I don’t know, my imagination has never gotten that far.

    When I picture hell, it looks like for example, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, or Bakersfield, California. Orange county comes close.

    It says something of the modern world, that my list of things that look like hell is actually dozens of places at the least and the list is too long to post here.

    My list of places that look like heaven is so far…empty.

  5. williamfrost says

    I’ve been a few times, most recently 2021 (it was the easiest place to get to from the even more repressive country I was working in). I went there to experience the comforts of the US (comfortable hotel, decent restaurants, ability to buy a new phone and some vaccinations for my pets) that I couldn’t get where I was working. There was some real culture left, but mostly it was just … weird. Like the world’s biggest mall. I didn’t do any of the weird touristy stuff – I relaxed in my hotel, went to restaurants, and bought groceries I couldn’t get (like chicken).

    I have no desire to return, though.

  7. christoph says

    Know what the difference is between Abu Dhabi and Dubai? People in Dubai don’t watch The Flintstones, but people in Abu Dhabi do.
    (I thought this discussion needed some comedy relief.)

  8. sincarne says

    I do hope you get to Florence. It was an incredible place to visit, and I am fortunate to have done so. I ate the absolute best soup of my life there (Pappa al Pomodoro), and have been trying to recreate it ever since.

  9. stevewatson says

    I keep seeing a commercial for Emirates Airlines, that starts off with a couple strolling around Paris, Rome and London, then transports them to Dubai, on an airplane with a stand-up bar. I’m obviously not their target market, because it makes the first three places seem far more attractive.
    However, I’ll give them some props for making the couple bi-racial, even if it’s the white man doing all the talking.

    I’ve been to London, spouse has been there and also Rome; the only non-Western places I’ve been are Mongolia and Beijing. The latter is a continuous sensory overload, and I imagine Dubai would be even more so. So: not on my bucket list.

  10. springa73 says

    I have a slightly different interpretation of the reasons why many people like Dubai and other similar places. I think that some people are just extremely impressed by grandeur on the surface – giant gleaming skyscrapers, everything new and shiny and clean, and low crime rates – and don’t think about or just don’t care about the oppression and exploitation that are necessary to produce that surface glitz.

  13. John Morales says

    Petrostates that don’t diversify are going to lose their wealth as demand goes way down (by those allegedly pyrotechnic EVs, for example) and revert to mediocrity, but alas, UAE (and Dubai) is gonna be fine.

    The country: UAE Ministry of Economy 2024 GDP Report.

    H.E. Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, Minister of Economy, emphasized that the latest GDP figures released by the Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Centre (FCSC) reflect a renewed and positive momentum in the national economy. They further underscore the new milestones achieved by the UAE in economic diversification and competitiveness, guided by the vision and directives of its wise leadership. With non-oil sectors accounting for 75,5 per cent of the UAE’s GDP by the end of last year, H.E. emphasized that these indicators reflect the sustained success of the nation’s economic strategies, which are driving the transition toward an innovative, knowledge-based, and sustainable economic model aligned with global trends and emerging technologies.

    —

    The city:
    cf. https://focus.hidubai.com/dubai-beyond-oil-the-city-that-redefined-wealth-and-the-future/

    When people think of Dubai’s prosperity, they often assume it was built on oil. While oil played a role in the city’s early development, the truth is that today, it contributes less than 1% to Dubai’s GDP. Unlike many resource-rich economies that remain dependent on oil revenues, Dubai took a different path—one defined by innovation, strategic investment, and economic diversification.

  15. John Morales says

    The featured photo in the OP reminds me of this video from a couple of years ago:

    (from the auto-transcript)

    One look from space at Dubai, and the first thing that grabs your attention is the massive artificial islands built over the past 30 years. These aren’t ordinary islands—they’re engineering marvels shaped like a palm tree, a map of the world, and even the universe.
    You might wonder: is Dubai short on land and forced to expand into the sea? The answer is no—not even remotely. So why spend tens of billions of dollars building the world’s largest artificial islands? Why blast entire mountains for rock and dredge millions of tons of sand from the seafloor at such enormous cost? And why are many of these islands still undeveloped—completely empty?
    Even most Dubai residents don’t have an answer. But we do.
    Let’s start with the big question: why did Dubai pursue these mega-projects despite having land? The Emirate of Dubai spans about 1,577 square miles. The answer lies in the early 1990s, when Dubai’s rulers decided to reduce reliance on oil and diversify the economy—focusing on tourism, technology, renewables, and innovation. Their top priority became luxury tourism and transforming Dubai into a vertical, opulent, easily accessible city.

  18. imback says

    Also note that UAE is bankrolling the horribly violent civil war currently going on in Sudan. If Satan were real, he’d live in Dubai, UAE.

  19. John Morales says

    [meta + OT]

    FWIW, those m-dashes above are a tell that it’s chatbot output; what I did is copypaste that section of the youtube transcript and tell the bot to massage it into plaintext and remove inappropriate line breaks and timestamps. In so many words!

    (A good heuristic, probably shan’t last)

  20. Ted Lawry says

    From Wikipedia:
    :International crime hub and criminal haven
    Dubai is a notorious global centre and sanctuary for money launderers, drug lords, corrupt political figures, and sanctioned businessmen.[101] It has been called a ‘gangster’s paradise’.[102] This includes money laundering by major crime syndicates.

    This state of affairs has been enabled by a complex range of factors: the lack of extradition treaties with many countries, banking secrecy, liberal visa policies, low taxes, a large expatriate community in which shady figures are easily absorbed and welcomed, a non-transparent real estate market that readily enables money laundering, and not least the monarchical dictatorship of the Maktoum family which facilitates it through deliberately lax legislation and policy.[103][104]

    Dubai’s Role in Facilitating Corruption and Global Illicit Financial Flows, a 2020 report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, stated: “Part of what underpins Dubai’s prosperity is a steady stream of illicit proceeds borne from corruption and crime…Meanwhile, both Emirati leaders and the international community continue to turn a blind eye to the problematic behaviours, administrative loopholes, and weak enforcement practices that make Dubai a globally attractive destination for dirty money.”[107]

    etc. etc.

  21. Pierce R. Butler says

    I recently stumbled upon Atossa Araxia Abrahamian’s The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World, which has a fair amount to say about Dubai (unfortunately, without an index – grrr).

    That little (less than 40 miles by 40) nation has all the legal rights of a nation, which it can sell or lease to multiple purposes (the subject of Abrahamian’s book), plus a lot of investment capital: the perfect recipe for creative unscrupulousness. It operates the Dubai International Financial Center, “a free zone overseen by a board appointed by the city-state’s ruler, with its own bespoke laws drawn up for the benefit of international business. More than 5,500 companies are registered to the DIFC as of this writing, some with tangible connections to the emirate, others mere letterboxes exploiting advantageous regulations.”

    Emirati workers had no say in the development, but they don’t get a say in much. Citizens constitute barely 12 percent of the autocracy’s population; foreigners—from the impoverished migrant workers who likely built the Gate to the billionaires who would trade in it—make up the rest. …

    Dubai’s founding myth—that its business-minded rulers transformed it from a mere fishing village to a financial behemoth over a few short decades— is a lot like Shenzhen’s and Singapore’s. (What is it with capitalists and their fishing villages?) … Never mind that all the cities in question were for centuries outposts for colonial and regional trade, local culture, and political traditions. Free trade was a much more convenient explanation. … In a part of the world that had been hemorrhaging money to wars, civil unrest, and geopolitical shocks, the DIFC promised businesses an oasis of protection and deregulation: a little Switzerland on the Gulf. The center’s tenants—who would come to include Bloomberg, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs—would benefit from concessions including huge corporate tax breaks, fully foreign ownership of companies, and expedited immigration procedures for expat workers. …

    … in 2005, … the DIFC opened a startup court to oversee civil and commercial matters within the zone. Its laws came from elsewhere. So did its judges. and the plaintiffs. And its defendants. The result was a state within a state, or, to borrow from a DIFC publication, “another example of how globalisation is reconfiguring the relationship between legal institutions and political systems in the twenty-first century.”

    Abrahamian calls the 110 acres of the DIFC “a microcosm of a world where we will someday all live” – which does not, alas, necessarily contradict its depiction here as a hellhole.

  22. StevoR says

    When I picture Hell, I picture eternally black sky – night or day, a grey surface that is either searingly hot or staggeringly cold and a whole lot of craters fractally down to the surface since it is the lunar regolith located on our nearest large astronomical body :

    Hell is a lunar crater in the south of the Moon’s near side, within the western half of the enormous walled plain Deslandres. To the southeast, also within Deslandres, is the larger crater Lexell, and about 9° to the south lies the prominent Tycho crater.[3] The crater received its name in 1935 after the Hungarian astronomer and ordained Jesuit priest Maximilian Hell.[4] It has 19 satellite craters with diameters ranging between about 3 and 22 km. Nearly all Hell craters are relatively flat and shallow, with a sharp, well-defined rim and a typical diameter-to-depth ratio of about 10.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_(crater)

    Well, that or the stereotypical cave fuill of lava, demon / devils or Bosch triptych, Dante, Event Horizon kinda shit..

  23. StevoR says

    See also wikipages :

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Judgment_(Bosch,_Vienna)

    Thematically, the hell at right is not different from the Last Judgement.[3] Satan, in the center, receives the damned souls. The torture scenes continue in this panel, within a dark landscape dominated by flames and devilish figures.

    Plus WARNING SPOLERS :

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_(film)

    It really says “Libera te tutemet ex inferis” or as he translates it: “Save yourself from hell”).[5] D.J. concludes that the ship’s drive must have opened a gateway somewhere beyond the known universe and brought something horrible back with it. A video log discovered on the Event Horizon adds more weight to this conclusion, revealing a scene of the crew brutalizing each other after engaging the gravity drive, with their captain chanting in Latin as he holds his own eyeballs in his hands.

    Or y’know the old Doom computer game whith its similar versopns set on / inside Martian moons Phobos, Diemos adn, well the Christian mythtology whichit says are dimensions / levels as can be seen here – Original Doom Gameplay [Nightmare Difficulty] lasting 5 & a half mins.

  24. redwood says

    @8 sincarne I second visiting Florence. I went to five cities when I visited Italy and Florence was by far my favorite. It had the nicest people and the best food. I took a bus to the hills overlooking it and saw a couple getting professional wedding photos taken and a gorgeous sunset along with a view of the city and its lovely Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

  25. birgerjohansson says

    Isn’t Dubai part of the united emirates? The nation that is paying the genocidal bastards in Sudan? The nation that did LOTS of evil stuff in Yemen?

  27. StevoR says

    @ ^ birgerjohansson : yes and also yes for #25 so I gather.

    .***

    From the linked article in the OP :

    in Dubai there is nothing to do, and I mean nothing, other than to feel rich and be waited upon.

    Well,there is a Dubai motor racing track FWIW although the UAE’s F1 race is at Abu Dhabi instead :

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai_Autodrome

    It might be a better track torace at than Ab Dhabi which is terrible in my view. Still.

    Also, ofc, the “nothing to do” äpplies to rich guests and those in power there not those working and building the place.

  28. StevoR says

    From its wikipage :

    Many theories have been proposed about the origin of the word “Dubai”. One theory suggests the word used to be the souq in Ba.[19] The linguist Zana Vahidzadeh (Dana Pishdar) holds that the word comes from ‘money’, a reference to the prosperity of the trading centre or that the word refers to ‘two brothers’—Deira and Bur Dubai.[20][21]

    The poet and scholar Ahmad Mohammad Obaid traces it to the same word, but to its alternative meaning of “baby locust” (جراد) due to the abundance of locusts in the area before settlement.

    Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai

  30. jasonfailes says

    Seventeen years ago, I was dating a Brit who was teaching English in Oman.

    I landed in Dubai, but basically just went directly to Sohar from the airport.

    However, at the end of the trip, she insisted we spend the last few days in Dubai. For me, it was a nightmare. Garish opulence up to the skies, Indian-all-but-slave-labour down below, keeping warm by burning oil drums.

    It made me sick.

    She liked it. The contrast between poverty and riches made her feel rich, because she was staying in the hotel above the shanty-house poor.

    We broke up shortly thereafter.

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