Headline, March04, 2014

"' CAPITALISM ON STEROIDS : 

WONDERLAND DUBAI "'

Dubai lies near the Tropic of Cancer,   -on the Arabian Gulf, as we call it :

One of the seven sheikhdoms that constitute the United Arab Emirates. Dubai is not a big place:

The United Arab Emirates occupy an area of 82,000  square kilometres  - a little more than  32,000 square miles  - a geographical trifle among the great territories of the Arabian Peninsula :

Oman, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia. Within that geographical trifle, Dubai is an area of not even 4,000 square kilometres  -1,500 square miles. This is about the size of Rhode Island, the smallest of the United States.

But Rhode Island has a coastline of  400 miles. Dubai's coastline, on the Persian Gulf, is less than 45 miles.   

In his surrealist manifesto of 1924, Andre Breton declared, " I believe in the future resolution of these two states :

Dream and Reality,   -which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak."

"' Well, Andre, here we are! "'

The building of this temple of the marriage of dream and reality is so vast an undertaking that it can be truly appreciated only from the sky.

It is, in fact, an undertaking that encompasses one of the only man made constructions that can be seen from outer space, as evinced by NASA photographs taken from the International Space Station.

One brilliant authored snippet runs as such : The temperature is 106 degrees. The door of the helicopter is wide open, and the wind feels good. On the ground, where there is no wind, not even a breeze, but only the wicked heat and glare of the sun, the work goes on.

In every direction, as far as eye can see, there is endless, teeming construction. The shore does not contain it. Arabesques of manufactured islands rise from the blue sea waves.

Tens of thousands of men labor down there in that heat and glare, in a congestion of work so dense and so intense that, even from up here, its full scope evades grasp and shakes the mind.

As if following blueprints derived from an overlay of medieval translucent-vellum schemas of Dante's  "Inferno"  and  "Paradiso,"  the panorama is at once hellish and grand, monstrous and marvellous.

It is inspiring of awe in the true meaning of that word: a feeling of solemn wonder, tinged with latent fear".

Two-lane roads have become  10-lane highways, and under the noonday sun is almost at a standstill.

Even the immensity amid the waves, that thing that can be seen from outer space  -a palm tree shaped structure whose trunk,  17 fronds,  and circular sea barriers soon will bear 32 luxury hotels, more than a thousand lavish villas and apartment complex:

And a projected population of more than  70,000 people  -even this singular immensity is but a glimmer of all that shimmers in the burning sun. Seventy thousand new people? The least of it.

When the sun turns red and goes down, nothing ceases. The tens of thousands of workers of the day are replaced by ten of thousands of workers by the night. The excavating, damming and dredging of the sea, the heavy movement of bulldozers"

Steamrollers and  steam shovels, derricks and dump trucks: it is all without end. Light gleam and glisten on the big cranes and girders, and beautiful risen Venus,  the evening star,  al--Zuhara,  is but a lone, diminished shinning above them.

Yes, Andre, who in your conceits envisioned merely words and pictures: Here we are, in a surreal future beyond your aesthete's imagining:

It's called Dubai.

Imagine the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids of Giza, the leaning tower of Pisa, the Taj Mahal, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Then imagine them bigger   -and all in one place. You're thinking of Falconcity of Wonders.

IN THE PERSIAN GULF, on a not particularly oil-rich piece of desert about the  size of Rhode Island:

Sits the  Capitalist Dream on Steroids: Dubai.

Expanding faster, taller, bigger than nay other country on the planet, spawning schemes of impossible luxury such as  Falconcity of Wonders, Sunny Mountain Ski Dome:

And a manmade archipelago called the World!

The Emirate has become a juggernaut of tourism, finance and Information Age business, where everything    -crime, religion, terrorism  -takes a backseat to hard profits.

The newest past is the best past. Slavery was abolished in 1963. The term "'guest worker"'  is now preferred.

No, -in Dubai, they don't care about the charade of voting There are no elections in Dubai. But maybe, in not too distant a future there will be an Election World in............ !!! Dubailand !!!. 

But then democracy hasn't been totally forgotten. Dubai Internet City has taken care of that. Dubai Outsource Zone  -"the world's first free zone dedicated to the outsourcing industry,'' will offer:

^100 percent exemption from taxes, arguably the world's most reliable technology and communications infrastructure, a one-stop shop of support services, and the best possible working environment^.

"' Welcome to the Western dream "'.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the United Arab Emirates. See Ya all on !WOW! :  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

"' One & Only  "'

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless