Transcription
When we hear the word Dubai, most of us picture towering skyscrapers, immense wealth, police with Lamborghinis, seven-star hotels with the absolute cream of society inside them, also the Palm Islands, the World Islands, the Burj Khalifa, the Burj Al Arab, futuristic symbols of incredible wealth. And so, in light of all that, I'm here to make the case that Dubai, the Emirates, and the Gulf countries in general are one of the worst places on the planet.
Now, this is a rather bold claim, I realize, but it's one that I can substantiate fully. So let's take a look at what's really behind the glitz and glamour, the true face of Dubai and the Gulf countries. To better understand what's going on in a place like Dubai, first, let's talk about Romania.
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In the decades following World War II, Bucharest, the capital, came to face the same problem as many Eastern European capitals did at the time. As urbanization increased and huge residential areas were built out, the need arose for new, high-capacity public transportation. And so, Nicolae Ceaușescu, the dictator of Romania, by candidate, gave out the order to construct a metro line. And so the engineers created a line proposal and presented it to him. And then Ceaușescu was like, "No, I will design the route personally." And so the former shoemaker assistant, who also called himself the Genius of the Carpathians, I am not making this up, sat down and redesigned the entire metro line to have it run along the river, underneath. Yes, along.
But Nicolae Ceaușescu's wife, Elena Ceaușescu, a former textile factory worker, also got her fair share of planning. Reportedly, when the planners presented the final version of the metro line to the Ceaușescu couple, Elena Ceaușescu reportedly asked why the metro would stop inside the inner city at Piața Romană, inquiring what kind of factories there are. The planners told her there aren't any factories, but there is the Bucharest University of Economics, where there are lots of students. Hearing that, Elena Ceaușescu reportedly said, "Students? They've gotten fat. They grew up belly. They should walk. No station at Romana. Let them walk."
And so, since Nicolae Ceaușescu added nothing to that, and nobody else dared to oppose his wife, the station was axed from the plans. But of course, everyone outside of the dictator power couple knew that this was [ __ ] stupid. And so the engineers, having enough foresight, decided to build the station in secret, banking on the fact that they would need to build a station there anyway due to future public pressure. And they were correct. The end result was this ridiculous and dangerously narrow station, since the engineers couldn't build a normal station hall, since they had to disguise their little secret project as regular tunnel boring. And so the moral of the story is: smooth-brained dictator plus construction equals dumb [ __ ].
And boy, what a perfect segue this is to the video's actual subject: Dubai.
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The city of Dubai is a [ __ ] joke. It's a tasteless parody of everything wrong with modern humanity. And so, why do I say that? Let's go through it, shall we?
Now, in my video about skyscrapers, I have already talked about the Burj Khalifa. It's a big, dumb tower of glass and steel stuck in the middle of the desert, serving no other purpose than a petrodollar fuel dick-measuring contest. And the building even has its own poem about itself. Like, seriously, how pretentious can you get? "I am the life force of collective aspirations and the aesthetic union of many cultures." I seriously dream stupid emotions. And what the hell is that noise? Oh no, it's the poop trucks. Yeah, did you know that the Burj Khalifa isn't connected to its sewage system? So every single day, a huge line of poop trucks have to queue up next to the building and suck out all the poop. So, a ruler's ambition and Dubai's shining dream included the world's tallest skyscraper, but not a sewer system.
And besides, I've talked about this before in the skyscrapers video. There's actually not much point to building a skyscraper. Like, the only situation where it might make sense is when you're physically out of space. But trust me, Dubai does not have this problem. Which ties into the next suspects.
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Dubai's Palm Islands are the OG symbols of the city. The construction of the first one, the Palm Jumeirah, started in 2001, if you can believe that. And according to Google's satellite images, it's still not finished. It's still getting built out. And just for good measure, let's take a look at what they actually built here. I mean, these things do look nice from space, but what are they really from up close and personal? Well, the stem is an eight-lane urban freeway, and the leaves are just individual suburban streets. Oh, and there's also a monorail in the middle. Oh, and between the point and Nakheel Mall, there are no stations. So then, how do people living on the leaves get on this thing? Well, it's a rhetorical question, of course. Just like the real suburbs in America, this thing was built around cars. And the second Palm, the Jebel Ali, will be more the same.
And then there are the World Islands, of course, which are just a complex of tiny islands for the ultra-rich and their villas. And oh my god, this looks outright post-apocalyptic. Jesus Christ. Oh, and there's a third Palm under construction, if the two weren't enough. Oh, and by the way, the sand they use for the Palms is not desert sand. They can't use it because the grains are too big. Instead, they have to get the sand from the sea floor, and they achieved this by sucking it up with these big tanker ships, and also annihilating acres of marine life in the process. Oh, and by the way, these Palm Islands were built on top of natural coral reefs, which they just ended up basically burying. Oh, and according to NASA measurements, all these islands are sinking at a rate of five millimeters per year. And by the way, have you heard about this thing called the rising sea levels? According to the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi, under the most severe climate change scenario, nearly all of Dubai, including the Palm Islands, would be underwater.
Alright, so let me get this straight. You had all the money and power in the world to create anything, and you have paid money to annihilate a coral reef to build a sinking suburb on top of it? Perhaps I treated you too harshly. And here's the kicker about these islands. That's right, I'm still not done. Why build them on the sea to begin with? I mean, you have the desert. You have all the space you will ever need. So why not just build the Palms inverted into the land? You know, having the actual body of the Palm not out of sand, but out of water. It would look just as impressive from space, and it wouldn't even demolish all the aquatic life. Hang on a second. They did do something like this already, just below the Palm tree. And oh no, these are American-style suburbs. Oh man, I can't believe it. They took the worst urbanism practices from the US and they implemented it one to one. And we actually have all the circles of urbanism hell in here: copy-paste housing, cul-de-sacs, giant highways coming through the area, no public transportation, a 12-lane arterial road. Jesus Christ.
And so, this will be our segway to Dubai's urbanism in general. It's just complete bonkers. It's kind of its own little bubble, really. A strange little rich people's dystopia in the desert. Take a look at this arrangement: two sections of skyscrapers separated by a 20-something lane freeway, and behind it, a bunch of cul-de-sac suburbs and golf courses. Is this strange mixture between Futurama and evil Los Angeles? And this just makes me feel so frustrated because all that money and all that power, they could have done so much more and so much better than this.
The way I understand it, the main motive behind building all this flashy stuff was to try and increase tourism, to help the Emirates' economy transition away from oil revenues, which is, you know, fair enough. But then why not build something truly unique? Something that isn't just a big, dumb tower of glass and steel, or a couple dozen suburban streets on sinking sandbanks, or gigantic malls, or golf courses? Imagine a city with full-on historic Arabic golden-age architecture with modern elements. Okay, this is concept art from Diablo 3, but you get the idea. I have seen skyscrapers, malls, suburbs, urban freeways, or golf courses before. What I haven't seen is a historical, or at least historicist, Arab city. That would be a great way of spending all those petrol dollars, or at least a better way, I would say. And that might even attract a more quality crowd instead of the oligarchs, trust fund babies, and nouveau riche idiots. Okay, that's a bit unfair, but Dubai right now is not exactly a haven of intellectualism, so to speak.
By the way, did you know that only 10% of the Emirates' population is actually Emirati? The other 90% being immigrants and expats. Well, actually, they're all immigrants. It's just that white people came up with this word "expat" so they don't have to call themselves immigrants abroad, because that word is reserved for brown people. Speaking of which, and this right here is my biggest problem with Dubai, the Emirates, and the Gulf States in general. All that luxury, wealth, and opulence you see all around you in Dubai rests on a mountain of human tragedies.
Poor people from third-world countries such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are lured in by work agencies promising high wages and stable employment. People take loans from friends and family so they can cover the cost of their travel and work visa, usually more than two thousand dollars. Despite Emirati law requiring the companies to pay for those upon arrival, workers' passports are often confiscated, essentially trapping them inside the country. Workers are forced to work up to 12-hour shifts, up to seven days a week, for $175 per month on average wages. Wage theft is common, many workers not receiving money for months on end. To quote from a Human Rights Watch report: "The impact on workers whose wages are withheld for even one month is very serious. They immediately fall into arrears on the debt they owe to recruiting agencies in their home countries. They incur additional interest and they are unable to send money home for their families who depend on their income. In the Emirates, in some cases, the non-payment of wages means that workers do not have money to buy food or basic goods and end up borrowing money just to survive."
The COVID epidemic only made things worse. That, and the oil price crashing, left many workers jobless. Consequently, many were abandoned by their former employers. They now spend their days in half-abandoned worker camps on the outskirts of the city, only volunteers and their food donations standing between them and starvation. A Guardian article quotes a construction worker called Hassan. He says, "Guests on and off visit and give something, but when nobody comes, we have to starve. We have nothing." All this just a few kilometers away from the seven-star hotels, the world's tallest skyscraper, the world's biggest mall, and the golf courses for rich foreigners.
According to the estimates of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, between 2012 and mid-2018, more than 10 Indian workers died in Gulf countries every single day. And these are just the Indians. In addition to that, a Jezebel article goes on to say that at least two Indians commit suicide every single week in the Emirates, a number they say is simultaneously both shocking yet unsurprising. They show photos of the accommodation the workers have to endure, unfit even for animals, a harsh contrast to Instagram's parallel universe. They call this system modern slavery, and I'm afraid they are correct.
This, and the previously mentioned issues, but especially this, is why I hate the Emirates and especially [ __ ] hate Dubai. The city of Dubai is a [ __ ] joke, one that's unusually cruel. It's a twisted parody of everything wrong with modern humanity.
I'll leave you with a poem from Bertolt Brecht, written in 1935, titled "Questions from a Worker Who Reads":
Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will read the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished,
Who raised it up so many times?
In what houses of gold glittering Lima
Did its builders live?
Where the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished
Did the masons go?
Great Rome is full of triumphal arches.
Who erected them? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph?
Byzantium much praised in song,
Only palaces for its inhabitants?
Even in fabled Atlantis, the night
That the ocean engulfed it, the drowning
Still cried out for their slaves.
The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar defeated the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook with him?
Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down.
Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick the Second won the Seven Years' War.
Who else won it?
Every page of victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man.
Who paid the bill?
So many reports. So many questions.
Thank you for watching. Uh, I'm sorry the video took such a dark journey in the end, but as I was looking up stuff for Dubai for the video, I kept encountering more and more just alarming [ __ ] up information. Like, Jesus Christ. Anyway, thank you for watching once again, and please like and subscribe if you haven't already, and do check out my Patreon tiers, link in the description. And I'll see you next time.