The dark side of Dubai

Re:The dark side of Dubai by brown9-2 on Monday November 30, 2009 @03:51PM (#968653)

The opinion piece was written before doing any research or interviews, the research and interviews were set to tell the story.

I'm not sure how you can make this claim. Do you have knowledge of the chronology of the author's events as to when she wrote the article and when she performed the numerous interviews - with both sides - in the article?

The author doesn't care about the good.

I think that the author's point is that there is no good if the country/economy/system is built on the back of what amounts to slavery and fraud. That it doesn't matter how much "good" has been done if these abuses took place as a part of manufacturing the "good".

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Re:The dark side of Dubai by lionhearted on Monday November 30, 2009 @03:58PM (#968664)

> I think that the author's point is that there is no good if the country/economy/system is built on the back of what amounts to slavery and fraud.

I don't mean the big buildings - I mean the author doesn't mention all the good that happened for a lot of workers that came to Dubai with no other options, were treated relatively did well, did hard work but were paid extremely well for it, and went from being poor to being upper middle class in their home countries after their tenure was over.

> That it doesn't matter how much "good" has been done if these abuses took place as a part of manufacturing the "good".

The author didn't make an attempt to get the average wages, or how the process works on average, or how widespread any abuses are. She didn't publish anyone's account who came out well in Dubai, and there's many. She didn't write about the people who, by working in Dubai for a couple years, made enough to live very well in their home countries, buy property, send their kids to good schools, and get their families out of poverty. That happened too. That's the good I was referring to.

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Re:The dark side of Dubai by crux on Monday November 30, 2009 @04:07PM (#968680)

I think you're missing the point. The general argument here is: we're all aware of the accounts of those who have done well. Dubai was up until recently quite obviously prosperous. I have no doubt that the stewardesses of Emirates Airlines were doing marvelously. But if the lowest stratum of Dubai suffers these conditions, then the prosperity of the Emirates Airlines stewardess is blood money.

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Re:The dark side of Dubai by pyre on Monday November 30, 2009 @04:21PM (#968715)

I have to agree. If the backbone of Dubai is built on slave labor than all of the people higher up (whether they came from poverty in Southeast Asia or an affluent background in the West) are building their wealth on the backs of those slaves. Good for some stewardess from China taking her family from rags to riches. But all of that money that she made was only possible because people were suffering horribly at the bottom of society.

From the description of the conditions that those workers are in, I would rather be homeless and dumpster diving for food in a Western country.

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