This Article sums it up well (2015): https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11936981/Who-in...

This is a truly surprising and relevant article (especially as it was written pre-Brexit, as we now seem to have our brexiteers arguing we should become something like Dubai in economic terms)

I am amazed it got published in the Torygraph !

I’m not sure why this has to be brought up every single time a successful middle eastern nation is mentioned. Why not appreciate the positive qualities of a country while recognizing that every country has flaws?

It’s not like all other countries are paragons of human rights. If your country’s justice system puts innocent folk in solitary confinement for three years without trial over a false accusation (Kalief Browder), or if your country’s law enforcement murders innocent people unacceptably often and rarely gets punished for it, then you need to “take the log out of your eye” before accusing others.

That's a valid point, but there are degrees of freedom.

You don't have to be a "paragon of human rights" to do better, or much better, than another country. And Dubai is pretty damn law by all standards.

That said, you do have a point in the hypocrisy of how not only some countries's citizens routinely paint something as uniquely outrageous despite the same or worse things going on in their countries (key word here being "uniquely", as in "look at what those savages do", or "this would never happen here at home").

But also on how some countries are praised by the same pundits (despite their abuses and absolute power) and others are condemned (because of theirs).

It's almost as if the concern is not with the abuses and power dynamics, but with the interests of the nations and the power elites that pay the journalist's salaries.