Dubai Is A Parody Of The 21st Century

[Pluvious]

Pretty sobering

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread Pluvious

[tblue37]

2. K&R for visibility. nt

[cilla4progress]

3. Essence?

Boil it down for me?

[Warpy]

4. I'll never forget reading an article so,e years back

(Harper's, I think) about going down to the beaches that looked so white and lovely from the air and finding them choked with trash and reeking of raw sewage.,

You'd think they'd have thought about putting in a sewer system, but look how long it took London to get around to that once the Romans had decamped and nothing worked any more. The article also predicted that it will be sand again within a century. Global warming will make it sand under water with the tops of the towers poking up.

I guess flashy new money is always obsessed with glitz and glamor and rarely thinks of things like landfills, sewers, transportation, and simple amenities like local markets and food stalls.

The glitz in Dubai seems to catch on fire a lot, too.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. I'll never forget READING. What is the point the video is making? I'd be grateful for a summary

I can read a summary lickety-split and then decide if the video is worth spending time on.

[Warpy]

7. It's worth the entertainment

because it exposes it as sort of a rich man's Disneyland, an expensive facade covering the fact that he forgot to consider a lot of important infrastructure.

It also mentions the slave labor that built it and maintains it.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. Ah. Thank you. . . . nt

[Pluvious]

9. Thanks for contributing to the thread Warpy-san

A great author once coined the phrase for such places...

Disneyland with the death penalty

[Rhiannon12866]

11. Thanks so much for the explanation

[PhylliPretzel]

5. All very true

My daughter moved to the UAE to take a teaching job about 15 years ago, so I have visited there frequently. Alas, this video tells it like it is.
What really galls me is the hypocrisy. Officially high labor standards are written into law; no one follows them. High building standards are on the books; they are regularly disregarded. No one is held to account.
Officially, Muslims do not consumer alcohol and will not be served in bars (which are only in tourist hotels.) However, if a couple pops into the rest room, changes out of their dishdasha or abaya into Western clothes, and returns to the bar, they will be served.
Appearances triumph over reality.

[Pluvious]

10. Wow. That is both sad and unsurprising nt.

[pfitz59]

12. Been there. Seen it.

Potemkin nation