this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2025
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Microblog Memes

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[–] [email protected] 158 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

Also all the oil money.

Mostly the oil money, I think.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I assure you they are not rich because of oil anymore than they are rich because of pearl.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Dubai

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

Even if the oil is only 1% of GDP recently it was still 50% of GDP back when they were building all of their ports, airlines, banks, and hotels. They've also proven as recently as 2020 that they can flood the market with so much oil that it dips into negative cosr per barrel in other nations like the USA and Russia.

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[–] [email protected] 134 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

Dubai isn’t successful, it’s a rich fucks playground but no one wants to actually live in the shithole country.

A successful country is one where human rights are enjoyed by all, where people are happy, free, and safe. Where the needs are met, and people don’t die unnecessarily.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 weeks ago

For those rich fucks, being rich is success. They dgaf about the people.

A quote commonly attributed to Sheikh Rashid reflected his concern that Dubai's oil, which was discovered in 1966 and which began production in 1969, would run out within a few generations.

"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel",[5][6][note 1]

He therefore worked to develop the economy of Dubai so that it could survive after the end of oil production, and was a driving force behind a number of major infrastructure projects to promote Dubai as a regional hub for trade

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_bin_Saeed_Al_Maktoum#Development_of_Dubai

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

there are people who do want to live there (criminals wanted by their home countries with enough money to stay afloat, as long as uae decides to not extradite them)

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

As someone who grew up in Dubai I can tell you it is slavery.

Also as someone who grew up in Dubai and remembers the 'Dubai! The city that cares!' Ads on the radio I wonder if those fuckers considered that woke or not.

Also the children's magazine Majjid added a female police officer to their police comic some time in the 2000s. I don't remember when, but apparently the Hitler stache wearing sidekick goof cop is still there being a moron (yes...)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Got any pics of that Majjid comic? Google and DDG are coming empty

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

I looked up the wayback machine. I did find some stuff, but I am on my phone and I need my real machine to properly get them. I'll report back in several hours. Stay tuned!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Looks like it's Majid with one "j". Found this page; which seems to show the character OP mentioned, Lieutenant Maryam. Can't find when she was first featured—wikipedia just says she was added later.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 2 weeks ago

Well he isn't wrong, having slaves isn't very woke

[–] [email protected] 59 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

And the oil. Everything in Dubai is funded by oil either directly because of subsidies or indirectly because it brings people to a region that is otherwise essentially an enormous empty desert.

Do you think people would go to las Vegas if there weren't casinos there?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Oil makes up 30% of UAE’s GDP and an even smaller percentage of Dubai’s: only 1% according to this Wikipedia article. Dubai is one of seven emirates that make up the UAE. Dubai has existed prior to the discovery of oil as a fishing and trade port, and has been rich before due to pearl diving. It was a major source of pearls before the Japanese invented cultured pearls.

For thousands of years, most seawater pearls were retrieved by divers working in the Indian Ocean, in areas such as the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and in the Gulf of Mannar (between Sri Lanka and India).[10] A fragment of Isidore of Charax's Parthian itinerary was preserved in Athenaeus's 3rd-century Sophists at Dinner, recording freediving for pearls around an island in the Persian Gulf.[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_hunting

The following map shows Bronze Age trade routes in purple:

Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/roads-of-arabia-presents-hundreds-of-recent-finds-that-recast-the-regions-history-127324646/

There are good reasons to hate the UAE such as hosting US soldiers and normalizing with Israel. No need to lie about their history and origin.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Yeah, I don't think pearls or trade is making Dubai that rich anyhow any more. Especially after the Suez and like you said "cultured pearls.”

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Do you think people would go to las Vegas if there weren't casinos there?

This is an even more apt comparison because the Mafia started setting up those casinos out in the middle of the desert so they could do so in a place where they could control all the laws

[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Behold; the epitome of success!

EDIT: first pictures were not Dubai so i changed them. Sorry!

(https://uae-dubai-pesci.weebly.com/poverty-and-policies.html)

(Worker/builders)

Dripping with success. The people who risk their lives building skyscrapers even get their own bed (sometimes)

[–] [email protected] 55 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

That first photo is a very famous one of the Paraisópolis favela and the Morumbi district in São Paulo. (Source)
The second photo is of the Naya Nagar neighbourhood in Mumbai’s Dharavi area. (Source)
The third one is, however, actually what you purport it to be. (Source)

I imagine you're not trying to deceive people and I agree with the points you're trying to make but please make sure that you check your sources before spreading info

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 weeks ago (9 children)

Dubai without oil would just be no different from Afghanistan.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

It is no secret that a large proportion of the wealth accumulated by Dubai merchants comes from smuggling gold bullion (mostly from Britain), Swiss watches and Japanese cloth into Pakistan and...

https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/1970/06/06/golden-dubai

Gold flown from London’s bullion houses like Johnson Matthey and Samuel Montagu to the The British Bank of the Middle East and the First national Bank in Dubai played a significant part in making Dubai what it is today. Shipped out by Arabs, Pakistanis and Indians in dhows to Bombay and other ports like Kutch and Calicut in western India, it brought much wealth to the merchants and the larger business community of expatriates who had made Dubai, home. The narrative of oil in the Persian Gulf has largely overshadowed that of gold and underplayed its significance in linking Dubai to the international economy.

https://mei.nus.edu.sg/think_in/gold-smuggling-between-dubai-and-bombay/

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

They also clean gold that is slave mined at gunpoint in Columbia for the cartels.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Yes it would. Dubai is a small coastal emirate. Afghanistan is a large landlocked country in one of the highest mountainous regions of the world.

Afghanistans largest ethnic groups are Iranian ethnicities (Persian) and the historical and cultural background are very different from the Emiratis who are Arabs.

What you said would be like saying "Italy without Pasta would just be like Denmark."

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Isn't that the same thing?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Pretty sure being anti-slavery is woke at this point

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

UAE is also massacring civilians including women and children in Sudan

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago

They can do that because they don't have any wokeness

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 weeks ago

That or maybe the slavery.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Oil. I wonder if this guy really believes his own bs.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

At its core he's likely a religious fundamentalist, so yeah he does believe his own bs.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

They also don't have sewage infrastructure.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago

Aka woke pipes

/s

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

a materialistic hellhole built by slaves in a desert is apparently a metric for success

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

You mean an oil state that is destined to run out of their sole economic value of oil in a few decades.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I have yet to hear anything good about Dubai except from people who live there or are stupidly rich and live in a completely different reality than a normal person.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That's exactly what he said x)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Yea its like when the President of Iran said they don't have gay people there. Everyone was posting about how wrong he must be but I think he meant they don't have any because they execute them.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Slavery as in actual people owning others as property or more like slave wages? I always thought it was just oil.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

They bring in workers from Nepal and Bangladesh etc, and take their passports and then stuff 30-40 into a little apartment with no ac. They charge them thousands for the privilege to come work in Dubai and they have to live there until they pay off their debt

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Closer to indentured servitude, which is a form of slavery.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago

No different really to the US' "post-slavery" sharecropping.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

Tomato; Tomato

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Its like a stage magician saying, "I do magic" and they get mad if some yells out how they do the trick.

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