Where's my crane?

[Occhidiangela]

Thanks for sharing the pictures Shadow. Dubai is an incredibly interesting locale these days. There's virtually no urban planning to speak of, and everyone is in a huge rush to get the buildings complete. I don't remember the exact statistic, but about a year ago I saw a documentary on Dubai on the history channel and they mentioned the % of construction equipment in the world located there - it made my jaw drop.

Cheers,

Munk

Nat Geo had a recent article on Dubai, and UAE, wherein they pointed out the "palm frond" communities in the Persian Gulf, and the rather nasty conditions all of the <strike>wetbacks</strike> guest workers from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and eslewhere were living and working under. Second class citizens, indentured servants, whose passports get confiscated by employers as a way to control them. "Doing work Arabs won't do."

Disgusting.

The wealthy West blithely turns a blind eye to this crap, while Bankers and Industrialists buy up those properties for winter vacation or expat business sites.

On a human level, it makes me sick. I saw similar practices in Qatar, in terms of some of the labor hired by the Qatar government to build structures on the joint use Air Base I worked at.

Occhi