OFFLINE

Remember the Dubai Ports deal story?   The Dubai World, Inc., was managing ports all over the world, and they wanted to manage three or four of ours, and everybody had a conniption fit.  And folks looked at Dubai and they marveled at what they saw, my gosh, brilliant skyscrapers going up at the speed of light, luxury hotels, it defied imagination. Where did all the money come from to build this? They were setting themselves up in Dubai as the new vacation and investment spot for all of Europe.

It turns out, two things. All of that construction was done with slave labor.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-a-morally-bankrupt-dictatorship-built-by-slave-labour-1828754.html

Also apparently Dubai's (man-made) islands are sinking! They are falling into the sea.   The ambitiously-constructed archipelago of islands shaped like the countries of the globe, is sinking back into the sea, according to evidence cited before a property tribunal. The islands were intended to be developed with tailor-made hotel complexes and luxury villas, and sold to millionaires. They are off the coast of Dubai and accessible by yacht or motor boat. Now their sands are eroding and the navigational channels between them are silting up.

Gee…now aren’t you glad we didn’t let Dubai control our ports?

OFFLINE

yeah, i heard about this too. it's hard to tell without any kind of validation.

OFFLINE

Yeah, slave labor is pretty comon in that area.  They treat the workers from other countries very badly.  I think a lot of the money for all the buildings, etc may have been borrowed. I heard some months ago that they might have to default on some loans or something.  They have oil, right?  Hard to keep up with all the countries in the world today!

OFFLINE

Originally Posted by Sarah Skinner:
They have oil, right?  Hard to keep up with all the countries in the world today!

they do, but they're running out.

OFFLINE

Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:


they do, but they're running out.

Yeah, but that's not really the issue there. Dubai had lots of oil back in the 60s and 70s but never as much as any of their neighbours, so for the last 30 years they've been setting themselves up as a trading and financial services center - they bill themselves as the "Singapore of the Middle East". Oil only counts for about 5-6% of their economy at this stage - probably even doesn't pay for all the desalinated water they have to use to keep everything green & nice. The reason they're in the **** now is because they were so heavily dependent on the financial services industry that when everything went to pot in 2008 they really got burned. They were spending stupid money on over-the-top projects on the assumption that the good times would keep on rolling and people would keep on coming, so when the global markets seized up they were way over-exposed.

As for the "slave labour" have seen that for myself. I was there pretty much about the same time that that article was written, and I saw that myself - we'd be rushing from the air-conditioned hotel to the air-conditioned taxi, and going along the road you'd see the road crews working away. Apparently the law over there is that if the temp goes above 50 celsius the workers have to stop and go indoors, but on a lot of building sites the thermometers are only calibrated to go up to 49....

And yeah, the islands are sinking - they only ever managed to finish one of them off anyway.  

OFFLINE

Originally Posted by Kieran Colfer:


And yeah, the islands are sinking - they only ever managed to finish one of them off anyway.  

you figure they'd have been smart enough to put bolders around the edges, so as to keep the soil from eroding...

OFFLINE

Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:


you figure they'd have been smart enough to put bolders around the edges, so as to keep the soil from eroding...

Well, they did, there is a breakwater all around the "world", but they had to leave gaps and channels in it to leave the water flow though around the islands otherwise it would have all gone stagnant. Problem is that the islands were all pretty much just heaps of sand dredged up from the bottom, the plan was to use boulders around them to shore them up, but they ran out of money before they got to most of them.....