| QUOTE |
| Snow falls under Dubai desert sun DUBAI: Under the scorching desert sun of the Arabian city of Dubai, a new indoor Alpine ski resort has risen up complete with the world's first indoor black-run, glacial winds, icicles and not an avalanche in sight. The powdery snow slopes have been intentionally laid in terraces to avoid the risk of avalanches at the Ski Dubai dome due to hold 6,000 tonnes of real snow when fully operational next month. Tourists tan on nearby furnace-like beaches as children giggle in glacial caverns and hide behind fir trees made of plastic at the ski dome nestled inside the brand-new, gigantic Mall of the Emirates. In the insulated dome, jets pulverize real snow onto the slopes, much to the pleasure of the first visitors, many of whom are Gulf Arabs touching snow for the first time. The US$272 million resort is but the latest extravagant project in the Gulf emirate seeking to become a major tourism hub, following on from the world's tallest tower and only undersea hotel. Ski Dubai, a manmade mountainous scene as big as three football fields that can hold up to 1,500 visitors, will have five slopes of different degrees of difficulty, the longest being 400 metres with a fall of 62 metres. The lower level slopes will start welcoming skiers on Friday, and the upper runs including the world's first indoor black run on December 14, said the resort's chief executive, Phil Taylor. Snowboarders can also test their skills on a 90-metre-long quarter pipe, as well as jumps and rails. The resort includes a snow park of ice caverns complete with howling wind where the young and less young can daub graffiti with their fingers on a frosted wall or play on a wall of acrylic icicles. Apres-ski pleasures are also catered for, whether it be drinking a hot chocolate or savouring a fondue by a crackling fireplace at either the Avalanche or St Moritz cafes, perched on the slopes. Teenagers with thick coats, woolly hats and warm gloves throw snowballs at each other under the bemused eye of shoppers standing on the other side of large window panels. Wearing sandals and light summer clothes, a group of curious onlookers cool their palates on ice creams while using their mobiles to shoot pictures of teenagers sliding down bobsled rides. Foreign tourists also snap souvenir pictures of Gulf nationals walking on snow with their Arab headdresses dangling on rented black coats made intentionally long to cover their traditional white robes. "I may get married in the next few months and move to Europe. I am hoping this experience will help me get accustomed to the cold weather," said 28-year-old Emirati banker Alia. Snow here is made the same way as in nature, with water atomized to create a cloud of tiny ice particles that allow snow crystals to form and fall on the slopes, lodges and trees. "It looks like a Christmas postcard, a rather surreal feel especially with people in the mall looking in from behind the glass as if it is an aquarium," said German tourist Hans. "Snow in the desert is such a unique experience for locals who have never seen snow" and for the nearly 6 million tourists who flock annually to Dubai and want more than just beaches and malls, Taylor said. "Ski Dubai is a good school for Gulf nationals and others, so that they learn skiing in order to really enjoy skiing holidays abroad afterward," he said, admitting he would be the first to take up lessons. Source: China Daily |
| QUOTE (samf @ Dec 4 2005, 06:19 PM) |
| I think it's a colossal and perverse waste of money and expertise. But impressive nonetheless. |
| QUOTE (Anti-Flag @ Dec 4 2005, 07:51 PM) |
| UAE is pretty smart. It has 10% of the world's oil reserves but knows it won't last for long. So it has focused a great deal on tourism hence the ridiculous amount of money going into these extravagant tourist attractions. It's also been quite generous with aid donations in the Muslim world especially. (compared to others that is) |
| QUOTE (The article linked above) |
| Since a watershed 2003 decision to open unrestricted freehold ownership to foreigners, wealthy Europeans and Asians have rushed to become part of the Dubai bubble. A beachfront in one of the "Palms" or, better yet, a private island in "The World" now has the cachet of St. Tropez or Grand Cayman. The old colonial masters lead the pack as Brit expats and investors have become the biggest cheerleaders for Sheikh Mo's dreamworld: David Beckham owns a beach and Rod Stewart, an island (rumored, in fact, to be named Great Britain). An Indentured, Invisible Majority The utopian character of Dubai, it must be emphasized, is no mirage. Even more than Singapore or Texas, the city-state really is an apotheosis of neo-liberal values. On the one hand, it provides investors with a comfortable, Western-style, property-rights regime, including freehold ownership, that is unique in the region. Included with the package is a broad tolerance of booze, recreational drugs, halter tops, and other foreign vices formally proscribed by Islamic law. (When expats extol Dubai's unique "openness," it is this freedom to carouse -- not to organize unions or publish critical opinions -- that they are usually praising.) On the other hand, Dubai, together with its emirate neighbors, has achieved the state of the art in the disenfranchisement of labor. Trade unions, strikes, and agitators are illegal, and 99% of the private-sector workforce are easily deportable non-citizens. Indeed, the deep thinkers at the American Enterprise and Cato institutes must salivate when they contemplate the system of classes and entitlements in Dubai. At the top of the social pyramid, of course, are the al-Maktoums and their cousins who own every lucrative grain of sand in the sheikhdom. Next, the native 15% percent of the population -- whose uniform of privilege is the traditional white dishdash -- constitutes a leisure class whose obedience to the dynasty is subsidized by income transfers, free education, and government jobs. A step below, are the pampered mercenaries: 150,000-or-so British ex-pats, along with other European, Lebanese, and Indian managers and professionals, who take full advantage of their air-conditioned affluence and two-months of overseas leave every summer. However, South Asian contract laborers, legally bound to a single employer and subject to totalitarian social controls, make up the great mass of the population. Dubai lifestyles are attended by vast numbers of Filipina, Sri Lankan, and Indian maids, while the building boom is carried on the shoulders of an army of poorly paid Pakistanis and Indians working twelve-hour shifts, six and half days a week, in the blast-furnace desert heat. Dubai, like its neighbors, flouts ILO labor regulations and refuses to adopt the international Migrant Workers Convention. Human Rights Watch in 2003 accused the Emirates of building prosperity on "forced labor." Indeed, as the British Independent recently emphasized in an expos on Dubai, "The labour market closely resembles the old indentured labour system brought to Dubai by its former colonial master, the British." "Like their impoverished forefathers," the paper continued, "today's Asian workers are forced to sign themselves into virtual slavery for years when they arrive in the United Arab Emirates. Their rights disappear at the airport where recruitment agents confiscate their passports and visas to control them" In addition to being super-exploited, Dubai's helots are also expected to be generally invisible. The bleak work camps on the city's outskirts, where laborers are crowded six, eight, even twelve to a room, are not part of the official tourist image of a city of luxury without slums or poverty. In a recent visit, even the United Arab Emirate's Minister of Labor was reported to be profoundly shocked by the squalid, almost unbearable conditions in a remote work camp maintained by a large construction contractor. Yet when the laborers attempted to form a union to win back pay and improve living conditions, they were promptly arrested. |
| QUOTE |
| Paradise, however, has even darker corners than the indentured-labor camps. The Russian girls at the elegant hotel bar are but the glamorous facade of a sinister sex trade built on kidnapping, slavery, and sadistic violence. Dubai - any of the hipper guidebooks will advise - is the "Bangkok of the Middle East," populated with thousands of Russian, Armenian, Indian, and Iranian prostitutes controlled by various transnational gangs and mafias. (The city, conveniently, is also a world center for money laundering, with an estimated 10% of real estate changing hands in cash-only transactions.) Sheikh Mo and his thoroughly modern regime, of course, disavow any connection to this burgeoning red-light industry, although insiders know that the whores are essential to keeping all those five-star hotels full of European and Arab businessmen. But the Sheikh himself has been personally linked to Dubai's most scandalous vice: child slavery. Camel racing is a local passion in the Emirates, and in June 2004, Anti-Slavery International released photos of pre-school-age child jockeys in Dubai. HBO Real Sports simultaneously reported that the jockeys, "some as young as three - are kidnapped or sold into slavery, starved, beaten and raped." Some of the tiny jockeys were shown at a Dubai camel track owned by the al-Maktoums. |
| QUOTE (Adolf Chiang @ Dec 4 2005, 10:08 PM) |
| You're going to cite some liberal rant site? You do argue for the sake of argument, Oob. |
| QUOTE (Adolf Chiang @ Dec 4 2005, 10:22 PM) |
| Every society has a lower class, it's just that some people choose to bitch about it and label then as slaves. |
| QUOTE (Hauser @ Dec 5 2005, 12:10 AM) |
| 1) The King/Emir/Whatever-The-Fuck-Sharif has a falcon. |
| QUOTE (Hauser @ Dec 5 2005, 12:10 AM) |
| 2) They are building huge fake trees there. They are building trees. The largest one they built is apparently visible from space. Fucking bizarre. |