Video & Multimedia
Related: About this forumUncle Joe
(58,267 posts)Thanks for the thread Pluvious
tblue37
(65,212 posts)cilla4progress
(24,709 posts)Boil it down for me?
Warpy
(111,117 posts)(Harper's, I think) about going down to the beaches that looked so white and lovely from the air and finding them choked with trash and reeking of raw sewage.,
You'd think they'd have thought about putting in a sewer system, but look how long it took London to get around to that once the Romans had decamped and nothing worked any more. The article also predicted that it will be sand again within a century. Global warming will make it sand under water with the tops of the towers poking up.
I guess flashy new money is always obsessed with glitz and glamor and rarely thinks of things like landfills, sewers, transportation, and simple amenities like local markets and food stalls.
The glitz in Dubai seems to catch on fire a lot, too.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,935 posts)I can read a summary lickety-split and then decide if the video is worth spending time on.
Warpy
(111,117 posts)because it exposes it as sort of a rich man's Disneyland, an expensive facade covering the fact that he forgot to consider a lot of important infrastructure.
It also mentions the slave labor that built it and maintains it.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,935 posts)Pluvious
(4,305 posts)A great author once coined the phrase for such places...
Disneyland with the death penalty
Rhiannon12866
(204,586 posts)PhylliPretzel
(139 posts)My daughter moved to the UAE to take a teaching job about 15 years ago, so I have visited there frequently. Alas, this video tells it like it is.
What really galls me is the hypocrisy. Officially high labor standards are written into law; no one follows them. High building standards are on the books; they are regularly disregarded. No one is held to account.
Officially, Muslims do not consumer alcohol and will not be served in bars (which are only in tourist hotels.) However, if a couple pops into the rest room, changes out of their dishdasha or abaya into Western clothes, and returns to the bar, they will be served.
Appearances triumph over reality.
Pluvious
(4,305 posts)pfitz59
(10,296 posts)Potemkin nation