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Friday, February 4, 2011

Detour to Dubai - the non African start to our year in Rwanda

We duly arrived in Disneyland, sorry Dubai, on New Year's Day as goggle-eyed as the next person to see this famous Giant Pyramid Scheme in action. Why bother completing one project when foolish investors and banks are prepared to cough up for the Next Big Thing with ever more outrageous attractions for the short attention span of the consuming public.


The smaller shopping malls, left in the lurch, have to clutch at straws to retain or attract customers, in one case with an imitation London Bridge. Situated off a six-lane freeway with limited access it looked like it was struggling to compete with newer malls. These offer massive aquarium entertainment - full of the rare and long lived fish no longer readily found in the oceans swimming beside you while you buy your latest Gucci bag - or 'carbon neutral' artificial ski slopes when the outside temperature may be close to 50 degrees C. Now there is a plan to build a city bigger than Hong Kong stretching for 10 km to the north of the current coastal spread. No doubt monster attractions, perhaps a specially built giant air-conditioned mountain for climbers, will excite the moneylenders and inflate the bubble economy for a little while longer. Mmmm, anyone got some spare cash?


All the while the debt burden accumulates as gross endeavours like the island project 'The World' collapse in a heap of sinking sand. This and other madness is bailed out by multinational banks and oil rich Abu Dhabi, the senior partner in the Emirates scam, supporting a resource poor Dubai solely dependent on its endless building boom to keep up its part of Mammon's bargain. Only 25% of the Dubai population are Emiratis and have all the power but don't care much for work. This is done by the Pakistanis, Indians and Filipinas who can be thrown out of the country in bad times as happened to some in the recent downturn. Who knows, the lucky clan of nomads who wandered into Dubai creek in the 19th century, claimed it as their own and still operate it as an extended family business, could soon see themselves back running goats instead of multi-billion dollar follies.

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