Originally published at: Dubai tortures and imprisons man for 25 years for having non-psychoactive CBD oil | Boing Boing
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Whoa, no Dubai for Papasan.
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Yup, Dubai is off my list. In truth it was never really on there, except that I’d love to go visit a friend who lives there.
I suppose it is possible that the very wealthy who play there are subject to the same draconian punishments for trivial things, but who are we kidding?
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A few years ago, I read this story about one of my favorite musicians who was jailed in the UAE.
Prior, I remember we had gone to see Tiny Universe at a local club and DJ wasn’t playing with the band. I didn’t know why and googled his name the next day and read about his arrest in Abu Dhabi. Fucking scary, man.
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The word “friend” in this sentence seems a bit generous, given the rest of the story.
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See also this in the Singapore topic:
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Well, there goes my retirement plans.
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I’m amazed by how many people from liberal Western democracies move to or visit someplace like Dubai, focusing purely on the amenities, on their paycheck, on what kind of material lifestyle they’ll be able to lead there, but totally ignore the lack of human rights and the draconian local laws. They take their rights completely for granted. However, there’s also more than a bit of the “ugly American/Englander” (not being aware of the local situation, expecting that things will be exactly the way you want them - i.e. like home, that perhaps the laws won’t actually apply to them, etc.) effect at play, facing a very rude awakening.
I see some of that in Californians moving to red states like Texas, looking at just the cost of living, and being shocked that living under a government with different notions about human rights and regulations has significant material drawbacks…
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Yea, there was a time as a systems engineer where myself and people I know would get calls from recruiters about contracts in places like the UAE. They paid a shitload, but my answer was FUCK THAT.
Which would also be my answer about a job in TX. Or FLA.
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I recollect seeing a UAE booth at the Game Developers Conference (where they were trying to drum up interest in people opening game studios there) and being flabbergasted that such a thing even existed. I mean, you have all the issues of working there (with educated workers from a creative industry) combined with the censorship issues that would impact media creation… People are always trying to start new game studios in more rural, red states which involves the added problem, in an industry with a lot of studio closures and layoffs, of having all your employees move there from another state, work for a couple years and then finding themselves in a state with no support and the need to move out of it immediately. Not very appealing for a lot of reasons.
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Dubai based recruiters have contacted me fairly often, but whenever I press them on details such as “Will I be able to keep my passport on me at all times, or will my employer be taking it?” “What legally binding guarantees can you make that I will actually be paid?” and “As an atheist will I be safe and allowed to practice my non-beliefs without issue?” they go away and leave me alone for a while.
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I’m still amazed at how poorly designed even those amenities themselves are. Like how they didn’t bother to hook up their famous skyscraper to a municipal sewage system so they have to send in a fleet of poop trucks to haul their waste away every day.
Between the mind-boggling social inequities, the terrible civic planning, and an economy that is still almost entirely built around exporting their finite supply of fossil fuels I fully expect to see the UAE collapse as a political entity within the next few decades at most. Dubai is going to be a pretty fascinating case study for those future archaeologists though.
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I wonder if the emirates, or kings or whatever they call themselves, also outsource the policing and beatings and stuff to imported Indian and Philippine laborers, like they do most other difficult and dirty jobs.
Just like Vegas, these opulent middle eastern cities should not exist where they do.
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The appeal is all completely superficial, so it’s not surprising the amenities are too. But it’s also about how even the impressive things they’ve built were put together in a very piecemeal fashion in a way that doesn’t rely on any other infrastructure that might improve things for anyone else if it existed. E.g. they built a shiny new development - but you can’t even cross the street without driving (a mile or more) to get there, because the roads are like freeways where there’s no way a pedestrian can (safely) do so, as even when they do build infrastructure, it was built for a specific purpose for specific people, with no consideration for anyone else or any other uses.
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…isn’t Whatsapp supposed to be encrypted?
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I am not going to Dubai, right now!
(Or ever.)
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I wouldn’t even take a flight that stops in Dubai anyway but … this is horrific.
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Yup…Don’t know what you got till it’s gone…
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Exactly this. It’s always cis het white men making this mistake, too. No queer person or woman is going to move to Dubai and forget where they are for a moment. It’s only certain people that are used to “always having rights”. You couldn’t pay me to visit there. Hell on earth, if you ask me.
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The UAE as a whole is still heavily dependent on oil and gas exports, but Dubai - which never had much oil in the first place - has transitioned to a service-based economy and is using its location as a major airline hub, container port and finance to stay above water. And so long as individuals and governments are prepared to overlook its appalling human rights, it’s going to keep doing just fine.
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