I think I'll enjoy the architectural beauty of Dubai from afar, thank you very much

I'm not sure I quite understand the aims and goals of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. It seems to me that they have two quite contradictory goals. One, create some of the most ridiculous buildings, structures, and resorts known to man in an attempt to lure business and high end tourism dollars. Two, subject anyone who goes there to the most arcane, regressive, and unfair judicial system anyone could possibly conceive of. I'm no rich Arab oil sheik or developer, but those two goals don't seem to mesh together.

Let me explain.

A United Arab Emirates sheikh was acquitted Sunday of charges connected to the videotaped beating and torture of an Afghan grain dealer.

Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of the emirates' ruling family, was charged with rape, endangering life and causing bodily harm in connection with the nearly three-hour long tape shot in 2004 in the desert outside Abu Dhabi, one of the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf region.

See, they're just like us! Sure, one might say that he's probably guilty just because there's a three hour tape of the man pouring sand in a victim's mouth before beating him with a nailed board, burning his genitals with a cigarette lighter, shocking him with a cattle prod, leading him to believe he would be shot, pouring salt into his wounds, and repeatedly driving an SUV over him. But others would say, that you should shut up. I mean not only was he taking prescription medication that caused all of this, probably Rapinex or Abusitol, but they say that tape doesn't show everything the tape explicitly shows in graphic detail. Who can really argue with that?

Then there's stuff like this.

A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison.
...
A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar - on the tread of one of his shoes.

Frankly the man should have known better: there was that case where a man was imprisoned for having three poppy seeds. Then there's that whole thing where you're at fault if you get raped there. It works that way for both women and men. Equality!

So there are positives and negatives. Sure, you get to partake in five star hotels and the lavish life of the ultra rich... on the other hand you'll probably be raped and tortured in the desert, get thrown in jail for letting it happen to you, and then get an extra four years tacked on to your sentence of "1st degree getting raped and tortured" because they found out you had lemon poppyseed cake at breakfast. But, on the other hand, those buildings are really crazy and they have a massive hotel shaped like a giant wind sail! Agassi played Federer on its helipad! So I guess you'll have to make that decision for yourself. I think I'll just Google architectural reviews of their follies and "Dubai financial collapse" from afar.

Oh, I forgot to mention the slave labor and... we'll just call it "all the other stuff". Don't ever go there.

Broken News: Ludicrous building industry near collapse as Dubai economic crisis worsens

DUBAI—The recent opening of the 2,717 ft, 160 floor Burj Khalifa skyscraper was greeted with joy by many. However, the centerpiece of what Dubai officials are hoping will become the London or New York of the Middle East has been met with trepidation by several groups. Indeed, the number of vacancies in the $1.5 billion skyscraper, combined with the debt incurred to build such monstrous buildings, and the resulting collapse of Dubai’s finances, have signaled the death of one of the world’s formerly booming industries: immensely stupid construction.

In fact, with the Burj Khalifa completed there are no new plans for any new intensely idiotic building concepts or even marginally feeble-minded and functionally useless projects. Recent months have seen a dramatic scaling back or even outright cancellation of some of the dumbest and most ill-conceived architectural projects known to man.

All this has many wondering what lies ahead for the stupid building construction industry that fueled Dubai’s growth at the outset of the 21st century.

“Yeah, times are tough,” a mournful Henri Duplass, CEO of Duplass Merde, one of the largest builders of foolish structures in the world, noted. “I remember when we built that giant 22,500 square meter indoor ski slope and followed it up by building the world’s largest outdoor pool and fake beachfront 100 yards from an ocean beachfront. Those were heady times."

“Before everything went to shit, we were designing a fake Swiss lakeside mountain retreat. We were carting in a trillion tons of granite for our mountain, had drawn up plans to dig out an artificial lake the size of Lake Champlain, and were still tinkering with the massive air conditioning/sprinkler system that would have been required to keep natural Swiss flora and fauna alive in the middle of a 120 degree desert. It was going to cost $7 billion dollars and be of no use to anyone. It would have been so... so beautiful...”

“Now? We’ve been reduced to crafting practical structures that are of use to normal people. I designed some low-income housing the other day and almost vomited in my mouth.”

Indeed, the industry has taken a massive hit. In recent years, Dubai had boasted 25% of all the world’s cranes in operation, but has recently seen that statistic shrink to an alarmingly sensible level for a Middle Eastern country with little in the way of industry, culture, or population.

In addition to the Dubai Swiss Chalet project, the recent economic troubles have cause the cancellation or delay of numerous ridiculous projects including the Dubai City Tower, a 1.5 mile high 400 floor building that was to have a vertical bullet train instead of an elevator, a Hanna Barbara-themed amusement park on a hover platform, an artificial island shaped like a construction team building an artificial island, a five thousand seat stadium dedicated to women’s sports, a Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, a branch of the science department of the University of Alabama, a monument to human folly, a Catholic church, and a series of metaphorical buildings that were to be built on foundations of sand.

According to analysts most of the problems in Dubai result from a drastic overestimation of the desire of people to live there, resulting in numerous home and business vacancies combined with the sheer amount of debt the United Arab Emirates amassed to build these asinine structures. With estimates of $100 billion in debt for the state owned businesses that amassed them and little hope of recouping losses and filling vacancies in this economic climate, the outlook is bleak.

“Some would say that we’re up shit creek without a paddle,” observed Ali Mohammed Sahan, a spokesman for Dubai World, the government owned investment company that funded most of the retarded structures. “But I disagree. We have a paddle, it’s just that it’s over 600 meters tall, made of platinum and diamonds, and affixed to the ground through a complex jumble of steel trusses. It’s going to take an incredible sum and a greater influx of foreign capital for us to detach and use said paddle.”

But despite these setbacks and the massive contraction that the stupid building industry is about to go through, those close to the situation remain optimistic for the future.

“Somewhere in a backyard someplace, there’s some kid in a sandbox building some dumb fucking thing out of whatever he can get his hands on,” observed a prideful Duplass. “And somewhere there’s some rich idiot who wants to deficit spend his country into poverty and utilize the modern equivalent of slave labor to get it built. That’s the kind of thing that gives me hope for the future.”

“We’ll be back before you know it. Building, I don’t know, a bunch of skyscrapers that fit together like Tetris blocks or something,” Duplass smiled. “We’ll be back.

Picture of the day

Part of a Time Magazine photo essay on the largest middle finger in human history and the biggest possible "fuck you" that one country could possibly give during a global recession, the newly rechristened Burj Khalifa, named after light hitting mid-eighties Pirates shortstop Sammy Khalifa.

If you're up for reading some more about the Burj, try the La Times article called A Temple to Hubris or this BBC article detailing the inhumane conditions it took to build the Burj and most of Dubai. It just shows what you can do when you dare to dream... and dare to spend way beyond your means... and dare to employ slave labor.

Video of the day

One of the workers of the Burj Dubai in....Dubai, decided to give you a glimpse of the world's tallest structure in the best way he knew how: by climbing to the top of the spire and dangling a camera over the edge.



"The tower wobbles, dreadfully, so if my hand is shaking, it's not just me." Well, then next time bring up a HD camera with some stability control, asshole. I barely got vertigo or a crippling awareness of my fear of heights from watching that.

The Burj is slated to be finished early next year. Unclear is when Glenn Beck and Joe the Plumber plan to fly a 747 into it. I guessing in early September.

Picture of the day

From Popular Science comes this look at the Dubai Air Show.....FROM SPACE. The GeoEye-1 satellite to be more specific. The Dubai Air Show is the largest airshow in the Middle East, barely beating out a rural shack in Afghanistan where an opium farmer has two beat-up WWI-era Fokker's that he keeps on display. It is the fastest growing airshow and will soon become a centerpiece of Dubai's grand plan to be a home to the largest and gaudiest everything in the world.

As always click to embiggen.

Design of the day

via Ecofriend comes this look at Graft Lab's Vertical Village, the next salvo in Dubai's attempt to transform itself into a Final Fantasy video game. The building is for, what else, hotel and entertainment facilities with some residential mixed in. Presumably for those that come to visit and work there short term and not for the dozen people who are actually from Dubai. People from Dubai live in London. The project will receive LEED Gold Star certification, which is expected considering it is a giant solar panel that people can party in.

Unconfirmed reports have it stealing all of the earth's sunlight via it's massive massive solar collectors. Be forewarned: we will have to go to Dubai to visit warmth and light now. On the bright side, they do have ample hotel space for us all.

The Iranian Election

The results of the Iranian election will be known by tomorrow. At stake is the future of who we will be able to demonize as the new Devil for domestic political purposes. Running against each other are the old new Satan, Mahmoud "Not a fan of the Jews" Ahmadinejad, and the man who wants to become the new new Satan, Hossein "Obamadinejad" Mousavi.

At stake? Whether Iranians will repudiate President Obama's wishes for a more democratic Iran and more open dialogue between us or if they will agree with America. There are also chances of a third route where they don't even take America's views into consideration and instead base their vote around what they think is the best decision for their own country, but this possibility has been laughed off by American political commentators as "ridiculous beyond all belief." It's totally about us. Everything is always about us.

Iranians packed polling stations from boutique-lined streets in north Tehran to conservative bastions in the countryside Friday with a choice that's left the nation divided and on edge: keeping hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power or electing a reformist who favors greater freedoms and improved ties with the United States.
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But Mousavi has offered hopes of more freedoms at home. If elected, he could try to end crackdowns on liberal media and bloggers and push for Iran to embrace President Barack Obama's offer of dialogue after a nearly 30-year diplomatic freeze. He favors talks with world powers over Iran's nuclear program, which the United States and others fear is aimed at making weapons. Iran says it only seeks reactors for electricity.

Iranians around the world also took part in the vote. In Dubai, home to an estimated 200,000 Iranians, the streets around the polling station at the Iranian consulate were jammed with voters overwhelmingly favoring Mousavi.

"He is our Obama," said Maliki Zadehamid, a 39-year-old exporter.

Bah, I bet Mousavi can't even ball. Turnout is expected to surpass 80%, which kind of rubs our noses in shit as THE freedom loving freeple of freeberty and freemocracy. We're getting schooled by the oppressive hand of Islamic theocracy. It's all meaningless though, whoever they elect is just gonna be run by a shadowy group of clerics who hold the real power. They don't even have the decency to let their government be run by a shadowy group of corporations who hold the real power. And Iran calls themselves a democracy.

So, just a heads up. You might have to start thinking about a new despotic, antagonistic, enemy leader of Iran. I just don't want you to be confused if you hear Newt or Rush saying some Mousavi guy is the new Hitler or we have to carpet bomb Iran because of this Mousavi guy. Be prepared.

Vindication for Mosley!!!!

Mosley wins court case over orgy

British court ruled today the UK's News of the World breached World Motorsport boss Max Mosley's privacy to the tune of £60,000 in damages and £850,000 in court costs over claims that an S&M orgy he took part in had Nazi overtones. So congrats Max, you aren't a guy who has S&M bondage orgies with five hookers that have overtly fascist overtones, you're a guy who has S&M bondage orgies with five hookers that have overtly fascist undertones. VINDICATION!

He told the court that the publicity had been "totally devastating" for his wife of 48 years, and he could think of "nothing more undignified or humiliating" for his two sons to experience.

Well not unless they want to pay five hookers for the privilege of being humiliated like their old man.

News of the World editor Colin Myler said the paper was pleased at the lack of punitive damages, but added that "our press is less free today after another judgement based on privacy laws emanating from Europe".

Yes the important role of the press to root out freaky sexual proclivities of mildly famous people will be forever damaged. Once proud reporters will have to go from panty sniffing and paying hookers to talk to doing something seedy like rooting out government corruption or covering human rights. Truly a damaging day. I can see the toll it could take on your website: "Which one of our nude models looks best?", "Cristiano scores with two beauties", "Boxer's boys turned room into sex den" and "The truth about my lesbian sex tape" are just some of the important stories we'll miss out on because your inability to get facts straight on sensational tabloid crap made the press less free. I'll have to find a way to live without "Dubai romper wife swap" and "Royal thigh stress" in this new fascistic press world.

DAMN YOU COURTS, DON"T YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID? THEY MIGHT HAVE TO CHECK AND MAKE SURE THESE ARE ACCURATE NOW!!!