UAE Committed to Democracy

"UAE Committed to Democracy" that was the headline of the Gulf News a few days back - I'm just catching up on my reading. I don't know that there's anything that I can say about that other than HAHAHA *snort* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *more snort* ... ha....ha *wipe tear*. The UAE is about as far from being a democracy as I am from being a size 2.


The first thing I thought when I saw this headline was "does the current government realize that the next Prime Minister or Vice President (they do a love a good title) would be Indian or Filipino?" I'm just guessing that would be true given that most of Dubai seems to be made of folks from those two countries.

Dubai is a never ending contradiction. The pure blood folks treat most people like they are solidly below them on the food chain. The workers who are building everything here are paid about the equivalent of a couple of dollars an hour and are considered to be disposable. Yes, I meant to use the word disposable.

A few weeks back a bridge that was under construction collapsed killing 7 and gravely injuring another 15 workers. It collapsed because the untrained labourer who was given the task of running the giant crane that day didn't realize that the supports on the bridge couldn't take the weight of the many, many iron rods he was stacking on them - as he was told to do. Now anywhere else in the world this would inspire new safety procedures to be put in place, better training for the workers and a lot of news time. Here the story disappeared the next day except for a notice that the building company had decided to compensate the families of the dead men by giving them 10 years salary - if you do the math you will be thoroughly appalled.

If Dubai ever does commit itself to democracy I will eat my punching, light up camel pen.