A Cursed Land

One of the best articles I've ever read about the ugly nature of Dubai:

The Gulf is the proof of Carnegie’s warning about wealth: “There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.” Emiratis are born retired. They waft through this city in their white dishdashas and headscarves and their obsessively tapered humorless faces. They’re out of place in their own country.

Almost the entire Arab society in Dubai is like this -- spectacularly spoiled.

Westerners go there for the money. Then there's the largest population group in Dubai:

The workers. The Asians: Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, and Filipinos. Early in the morning, before the white mercenaries have negotiated their hangovers, long before the Emiratis have shouted at the maid, buses full of hard-hatted Asians pull into building sites. They have the tough, downtrodden look of Communist posters from the 30s—they are both the slaves of capital and the heroes of labor. Asians man the hotels; they run the civil service and the utilities and commercial businesses; they are the clerks and the secretaries, the lawyers, the doctors, the accountants; there isn’t a single facet of this state that would function if they didn’t maintain it. No one with an Emirati passport could change a fuse.

How are these Asians treated in Dubai?

They can’t become citizens, though some are the third generation of their family to be born here. They can be deported at any time. They have no redress. Many of the Asian laborers are owed back pay they aren’t likely to get.

My father legally lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for over three decades. Upon his retirement, the company gave him his pension and told him that he had a few months to pack up and leave the country. Such a warm and wholesome bunch these Arabs.

Link via Instapundit.