Mike Davis - Fear and Money in Dubai

Fear and Money in Dubai - what a fascinating article, fascinating in part because my oldest and best friend has lived in the middle east since I first met him at boarding school and now lives in Abu Dhabi, where I will be heading to be his best man in 6 months time!

I have always been a bit perplexed by the existence of the UAE and how such a monstrous place could have been created from the nothing that it was all of roughly 60 years ago. This article has definately offered a better understanding of how and why all this happened.
The edifice complex of bigger is better rules over all and its interesting how this has been created through the running of Sheikh Al Maktoums country like a business and the global marketing of that business which in turn feeds the gigantisism. If you look up Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum you will find some pretty wild facts, for example he has 19 children, a senior and junior wife and in 2008 was estimated to have amassed a fortune of 28,000,000,000 us dollars!

The problem with all this however is that the world pays for it and oil is where it all started, Saudi just next door owns 13.9% of the worlds oil reserves by contrast the UAE only owns 3.2% of the worlds oil. However the UAE is only 4% the size of Saudi so by land mass is far richer in oil. I always find statitistics difficult to accept because they only pertain to one single number relating to one single relationship. Anyway its clear that UAE has loads of dosh! The question now is not why but how do they have so much dosh and I was interested to read how Al Maktoum has created these low tax incentives to draw in business from the rest of the world so that it isnt just oil that keeps the economy ticking.

Finally the question of ethics arises and clearly ethics are not a gigantic factor in this world of biggism, no matter how you look at it its pretty clear that work forces are drawn in from poor countries to build the place. The BBC ran a Panorama documentry on it earlier this year:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7985361.stm

and what pisses me off more than anything is the rich bastards who dont seem to be doing anything about it. Architects moreover like Zaha who head out there to produce their wild and wonderful concotions should be at the front of the opposition.


http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2635