What I can't comprehend is how can any wealthy hard working person who truly worked their way up, from the first-world, can go there, enjoy it, and ignore-it-all.

In my opinion all those people that enjoy it and knowingly ignore are just as guilty. They contribute to the slavery and condone the policies.

UPDATE: after reading the entire article, I'd have to say this comment sums it up: "All the people who couldn't succeed in their own countries end up here, and suddenly they're rich and promoted way above their abilities and bragging about how great they are. I've never met so many incompetent people in such senior positions anywhere in the world." She adds: "It's absolutely racist. I had Filipino girls working for me doing the same job as a European girl, and she's paid a quarter of the wages. The people who do the real work are paid next to nothing, while these incompetent managers pay themselves £40,000 a month."

If this is true, then I'd accuse these people for truly building what we see as Dubai.

And the point about globalization makes all of us in first-world countries just as guilty.

Fuck Dubai. No flashy tourist attraction is worth that kind of risk.

That's unfair. Thanks to terrorism the US & most western countries now laws that can decimate your privacy & can hold you in prison with little to no evidence. We put up with it because we know that by the numbers there's little chance of it affecting us as individuals. The same goes for Dubai. Even those laws exist, you're unlikely to be affected by them and most of the time the police look the other way even if you do get caught by one of the ridiculous laws.

The increased paranoia in the US after 9/11 is a good point. But it hasn't had negligible effects. Tourism in the US has suffered because of the hassles and risks of getting in to (and out of) the country. Fewer people are coming to work and study in the US, and Americans in other countries are being treated worse as payback for the shameful treatment their citizens get in the US.

The people who have least to worry from the state paranoia are the privileged classes, races, and ethnicities (ie. wealthy whites). But if you're part of the non-white underclass (nevermind Muslim), you can bet the post-9/11 paranoia and increased vigor of the police state is going to be of some concern (sometimes to the degree of fleeing the country if you're able).

Something similar is probably the case in Dubai. If you're wealthy enough, and/or have enough connections, you're probably not going to have to worry too much (except maybe about the polluted beaches, if you insist on taking a dip in the sea outside your hotel room) as long as you don't try to interfere in their politics. But the worry of running afoul of their draconian laws and of being exploited by their oppressive system increases and becomes more legitimate the lower on the totem pole you get.

Although your comment is extreme, many people moved there to make lots of money and live like kings. Which they did.

Edit: Not sure why I'm being downmodded; all I did was answer the parent's question.

My comment wasn't extreme. The fact that that kind of stuff happened at all is what's extreme.

They moved to Dubai to participate (willingly or unwillingly) in a bubble, basically.

It wasn't just that they were participating in a bubble. As this article makes clear, they were participating in a system built on slavery and oppression.

While I certainly would not want to live/work in Dubai, its very difficult to _not_ participate in a system built on slavery/oppression. Have you ever been to the factory cities in Asia where a good bit of your things are made? Have you bought a tank of gas and thought about what percent of your money is going to oppressive regimes? If you're a U.S. citizen, do you pay taxes which support a global military hegemony (do you know how may have died in Iraq over the last 8 years)?

Its real hard to not be a part of the system. I do understand your point and it does feel better to be further removed from the bad behavior. But most of us are participants.

As someone who grew up in one of these manufacturing-centric Asian countries full of child labor and such, I disagree.

Dubai had (and maybe still has) widespread problems with slavery and indentured servitude - both are problems not widespread in any of the major manufacturing centers in East Asia. Where the worker in Dubai is hit with a litany of hidden fees upon arrival, the worker in China is not. Where the worker in Dubai has his passport held until false debts are repaid, the Chinese worker does not. Working in a Chinese factory is almost utopian compared to the conditions that have apparently been exposed in Dubai.

I didn't mean to imply that China factory towns were _worse_ than Dubia. I've lived and worked around them a good bit and I agree its not slavery in the Dubia sense and Chinese certainly have rights and government protections better that most Americans understand they do. Though I do know Chinese that have been put in jail for debts. I also know some Chinese construction workers in Shanghai have been treated very unfairly simply because they are undocumented workers and have no recourse. You can't go to the Shanghai government for help because your not supposed to be working there.

My original post was simply finding examples of how people use their spending power to participate in various forms of oppression. Widespread marginal participation is possibly the worst as its hardest to solve. One billion people marginally participating racks up more power than a few hundred thousand oil-rich do.

The question is, where are you going to draw the line? In my eyes, the more direct and deliberate your involvement, the more culpable you are.

It's one thing to be forced to pay taxes, some of which may go towards a war you're against, and quite another to go and get rich off the slaves of Dubai (especially if you do it knowingly), or go to Dubai specifically to exploit the slaves (as some of the people interviewed in this article admitted to doing).

Everyone participates in this, some more than others, some knowingly and most people, unknowingly. I remember when I was a kid, there was a movement to boycott crackers (during diwali time) in India, as kids were employed by the industry. Lots of people, including me, stopped buying crackers. It did have some effect, but I doubt how much.

Ultimately, it is left to the each individual I guess. If only each one of us decide not to buy products of slave labor, not to support war etc, world would be a better place in an instant.

Is that a bad thing (on a per-person level)? Again, many people made out great.

Well I guess that comes down to a moral choice.

Would you be okay with "making out great" and becoming rich if it meant that other people had to work in 130 degree heat for 18 hours a day in order to build the buildings you live and work in, and had their wages withheld and passport confiscated by their employer?

Would you think that you had made a bad choice?

As I read in a previous expose the workers are often tricked into acquiring the position they are shipped from poorer areas, they effectively buy the job which turns out to be effectively slavery - they don't even have the decency to give them good water to drink, it's poorly desalinated. Basically the people directly in charge have no respect for the lives of these workers.

That is exactly the question I am asking. If someone gave you (and I don't mean you in particular) the chance to make all this money with minimal effort on your part, are you so sure you'd turn it down?

To answer this question regarding myself, I don't know. For example, I wear clothes and shoes that are obviously made using horrible labour in third-world countries. Also, what are the people who already live there supposed to do? Halt their lives and livelihoods and move out?

All I'm calling for with my comments is more restraint when it comes to the 'holier than thou' comments. It's too easy to express casual outrage and condemnation on the internet.

No offense, but the conditions that these workers are in seem a lot worse than anything you could have inside a factory in China.

Simple: There's money involved, and nobody thinks any of that will happen to them.