• Hadriscus@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    a materialistic hellhole built by slaves in a desert is apparently a metric for success

    • PanArab@lemm.ee
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      24 hours ago

      Would it have been better if built on stolen indigenous lands? say perhaps in North America?

      • Zealousideal_Fox_900@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        24 hours ago

        Whataboutism, what a fucking classic move, with the downside of showing literally anyone with slightly more of a half of a braincell that you don’t have any other real arguments. 👍

        • PanArab@lemm.ee
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          24 hours ago

          Whataboutism is such a cope. You would rather your hypocrisy not be called out.

  • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    As someone who grew up in Dubai I can tell you it is slavery.

    Also as someone who grew up in Dubai and remembers the ‘Dubai! The city that cares!’ Ads on the radio I wonder if those fuckers considered that woke or not.

    Also the children’s magazine Majjid added a female police officer to their police comic some time in the 2000s. I don’t remember when, but apparently the Hitler stache wearing sidekick goof cop is still there being a moron (yes…)

      • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        I looked up the wayback machine. I did find some stuff, but I am on my phone and I need my real machine to properly get them. I’ll report back in several hours. Stay tuned!

      • mothersprotege@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        Looks like it’s Majid with one “j”. Found this page; which seems to show the character OP mentioned, Lieutenant Maryam. Can’t find when she was first featured—wikipedia just says she was added later.

        • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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          2 days ago

          Yes you even have the Hitler stache guy in it.

          Damn… they REALLY changed their art style since the 90s or even 2000s.

    • neons@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      okay, so if I want my country to become successful, I should establish slavery and start massacring children in Sudan. Got it!

      brb, making Switzerland into a world power!

    • PanArab@lemm.ee
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      24 hours ago

      Liberals told me Joe Biden isn’t guilty of the genocide in Gaza because he personally isn’t in charge of Israel. By the same logic, the UAE’s support of the RSF in the Sudanese Civil War doesn’t mean they are guilty of the war crimes the RSF has committed.

      Personally I believe both are guilty. Who supplies the weapons and funds and who commits the crimes.

  • menas@lemmy.wtf
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    24 hours ago

    Well, we can’t deny that the silencing the opposition (like wokists) help to maintain a slavery society. So both are actually right. But one is a shitty fascist

      • menas@lemmy.wtf
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        23 hours ago

        The lack of wokeness in Dubai may be one of the condition for it’s slavery system to exist. Both actors are reading the event from their point of view: a woke one, and a fascist one

  • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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    2 days ago

    Dubai isn’t successful, it’s a rich fucks playground but no one wants to actually live in the shithole country.

    A successful country is one where human rights are enjoyed by all, where people are happy, free, and safe. Where the needs are met, and people don’t die unnecessarily.

    • fullsquare@awful.systems
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      2 days ago

      there are people who do want to live there (criminals wanted by their home countries with enough money to stay afloat, as long as uae decides to not extradite them)

    • This is fine🔥🐶☕🔥@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      For those rich fucks, being rich is success. They dgaf about the people.

      A quote commonly attributed to Sheikh Rashid reflected his concern that Dubai’s oil, which was discovered in 1966 and which began production in 1969, would run out within a few generations.

      “My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel”,[5][6][note 1]

      He therefore worked to develop the economy of Dubai so that it could survive after the end of oil production, and was a driving force behind a number of major infrastructure projects to promote Dubai as a regional hub for trade

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_bin_Saeed_Al_Maktoum#Development_of_Dubai

    • neo2478@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      What an amazing way to define success!! I will steal this and share it with the world!!

      Fuck all rich assholes who define success as hoarding wealth!

    • 𞋴𝛂𝛋𝛆@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Sold. Adopt me. I’m a poor American refugee trying to escape belly flop-rocket cyberfrucked TACO golden shower up the doge until I tear-if

      • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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        2 days ago

        You probably wont like this. Most places who actually care about everyone (except those who want to change that) are socialists. Either authoritarian or libertarian socialists.

    • als@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 days ago

      That first photo is a very famous one of the Paraisópolis favela and the Morumbi district in São Paulo. (Source)
      The second photo is of the Naya Nagar neighbourhood in Mumbai’s Dharavi area. (Source)
      The third one is, however, actually what you purport it to be. (Source)

      I imagine you’re not trying to deceive people and I agree with the points you’re trying to make but please make sure that you check your sources before spreading info

      • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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        2 days ago

        Fuck, now i feel bad. Really Cant trust the internet these days.

        I changed it up and included the one picture i could find that appears authentic but because that picture of mumbai was actually labeled dubai i really dont know anymore.

        Thanks for pointing it out.

        I also found this one but its the same source as the mislabelled mumbai picture so i cant trust it.

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Even if the oil is only 1% of GDP recently it was still 50% of GDP back when they were building all of their ports, airlines, banks, and hotels. They’ve also proven as recently as 2020 that they can flood the market with so much oil that it dips into negative cosr per barrel in other nations like the USA and Russia.

        • Maeve@kbin.earth
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          2 days ago

          And cleaning the compounds, being nannies, groundskeeping, chauffeuring, tutoring…

        • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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          2 days ago

          Well paid professional native Arabs and foreign experts because it’s a notoriously dangerous and sabotage prone industry?

          You’re talking about an industry where you can throw a water bottle into a chemical vat and kill everyone in the building or loosen a valve and set an oil rig on fire lmao.

          Slaves under the kafala system are used in domestic duties, construction, and service (or “service”) jobs. Not jobs that require significant trust and knowledge.

          You need well treated wage slaves that think they’re free for those.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    2 days ago

    And the oil. Everything in Dubai is funded by oil either directly because of subsidies or indirectly because it brings people to a region that is otherwise essentially an enormous empty desert.

    Do you think people would go to las Vegas if there weren’t casinos there?

    • PanArab@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      Oil makes up 30% of UAE’s GDP and an even smaller percentage of Dubai’s: only 1% according to this Wikipedia article. Dubai is one of seven emirates that make up the UAE. Dubai has existed prior to the discovery of oil as a fishing and trade port, and has been rich before due to pearl diving. It was a major source of pearls before the Japanese invented cultured pearls.

      For thousands of years, most seawater pearls were retrieved by divers working in the Indian Ocean, in areas such as the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and in the Gulf of Mannar (between Sri Lanka and India).[10] A fragment of Isidore of Charax’s Parthian itinerary was preserved in Athenaeus’s 3rd-century Sophists at Dinner, recording freediving for pearls around an island in the Persian Gulf.[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_hunting

      The following map shows Bronze Age trade routes in purple:

      Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/roads-of-arabia-presents-hundreds-of-recent-finds-that-recast-the-regions-history-127324646/

      There are good reasons to hate the UAE such as hosting US soldiers and normalizing with Israel. No need to lie about their history and origin.

      • Geobloke@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        Yeah, I don’t think pearls or trade is making Dubai that rich anyhow any more. Especially after the Suez and like you said "cultured pearls.”

        • PanArab@lemm.ee
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          2 days ago

          Neither is oil. The experience of losing pearl money and going poor for some years before oil was discovered is what motivated them to plan moving away from oil decades ago.

          They are rich from trade though.

          • Geobloke@lemm.ee
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            2 days ago

            Trade in what, that makes no sense… Oil and gas exports make up 85% of its economy

      • MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        Once a city gets big enough it can be self sustaining from the people that live there and tourism even if manufacturing or resource extraction dies.

    • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Do you think people would go to las Vegas if there weren’t casinos there?

      This is an even more apt comparison because the Mafia started setting up those casinos out in the middle of the desert so they could do so in a place where they could control all the laws

  • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    You mean an oil state that is destined to run out of their sole economic value of oil in a few decades.

    • PanArab@lemm.ee
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      24 hours ago

      You are in for a disappointment then because their economy is not oil based. Oil makes up only 1% of the GDP of Dubai a lesser share than some Western European countries, and the US and Canada. For the UAE as a whole, i.e. Dubai plus the 6 other emirates, oil makes up 30% of their GDP.

    • flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
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      2 days ago

      I think it would be less flashy than today but actually a minor success. It was already on the rise before oil.
      And it’s perfectly positioned for flying between Africa, Europe and Asia. There’s a good reason so many major airlines are from the Gulf.

      • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        But their airport and national airline were build with oil money. Could Dubai have become a major travel hub without oil, maybe. But surely not as quickly as they have done with oil.

        • PanArab@lemm.ee
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          2 days ago

          If Japan never invented cultured pearls. That’s what got them rich before oil and gave them the experience that a major revenue source could be lost at any moment. The Emirate of Dubai lead the UAE and the rest of the GCC in moving away from oil.

    • PanArab@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      I wish, that would be an improvement. Instead they are US and Israel vassals. Their economy though is not oil based. The UAE as a whole is only 30% dependent on oil for its GDP, the percentage is lower for Dubai.

      In the past they were rich from pearl before Japan destroyed their pearl-based economy.

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        The temperature would be lower, because all that asphalt, glass and concrete create heat islands that traps heat and makes everything more miserable. It would smell nicer too, since Dubai has no sewers and garbage collection is awful, so the whole city smells like shit and putrefaction.

  • josefo@leminal.space
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    2 days ago

    Slavery as in actual people owning others as property or more like slave wages? I always thought it was just oil.

    • pneumatron@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      They bring in workers from Nepal and Bangladesh etc, and take their passports and then stuff 30-40 into a little apartment with no ac. They charge them thousands for the privilege to come work in Dubai and they have to live there until they pay off their debt