What is DU's opinion of the United Arab Emerites?

[TheVirginian]

I can't post a poll, but here are a list of options to choose from (or feel free to use your own!):

- Terrorist country
- Can't be trusted
- Needs constant supervision
- Moderate, secular Arab country
- Key ally of the U.S.
- Other

It might also be beneficial for those who respond to answer honestly if they could pick out the UAE on a map.

[acmavm]

1. A bunch of bad rabbits. n/t

[Maddy McCall]

2. Most westernized Arab country, even in their exploitation of women.

[seriousstan]

3. Damn skippy

[Nitrogenica]

4. Here's one reason I have a poor opinion of them.

http://www.antislavery.org/homepage/resources/cameljockeysgallery/gallery.htm

[xultar]

5. They are kewl. The men are good looking. I'm in different. But

if it was like just a UAE company with no ties to the royal family or government I wouldn't be jazzed about it but I wouldn't be so crazed like I am now.

How can you let a foreign government take over your own ports?

I don't get that shit. Let's let Chinese government run the TSA!

[sam sarrha]

6. it is a major hub in the Arab slave trade of stolen children and women..

[Coastie for Truth]

7. Arab version of those

little Caribbean "tax haven" islands - with the luxury hotels and the mail drop lawyers' offices with 40,000,000 corporate address plates on the front wall.

[mtnsnake]

8. Aren't they the ones who make snow in the desert and go skiing

because they have so much friggin money they don't know what else to do with it?

[norml]

9. The UAE, famous for drug smuggling, weapons smuggling, money laundering,

people smuggling, terrorism, and investing in the Carlyle Group.

[physioex]

10. LMAO...

All true but they have done some smart things. There was a piece in 60mins on how they brought in all the top US universities to put sattelite office so their children can get educated. So they have done a FEW things right...

[countmyvote4real]

11. And they'll be so much better at the previous list. n/t

[physioex]

13. LMAO....

Come on. I think in the long term, real long term Dubai might become an alright country. Its Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that worrie me....

[rman]

15. "might become"?

and Dubai isn't a country.

[Douglas Carpenter]

12. well actually I lived there between 1989 and 1991

It is certainly not a western democracy. But by middle east standards it is relatively open. By third world standards it is extremely wealthy and relatively westernized.

I was aware that the local camel races used small children between 8 and 12 years old who were basically purchased in Pakistan or the Sudan. In the City (Al Ain) I was living in I learned had only shut down the slave market in 1972.

I have heard that the sex trade in Dubai (I worked and lived about 80 miles from Dubai in Al Ain in Abu Dhabi Emirate) certainly existed at the time but is now flourishing and now largely involving woman from Russia.

Not to sound calloused in anyway whatsoever. But life in any third world society is much more brutal than life in the west. Just as life in the west was a lot more brutal a hundred years ago than it is today. I have lived about half of my adult life in one or another third world country and one finds a lot things. The UAE in that respect, would not be all that exceptional. Please remember that the third world is the vast-overwhelming majority of the human race.

[fujiyama]

14. A tiny, extremely wealthy

gulf state ruled by a small group of people close to Bush.

Also as others have mentioned, a major hub for commerce (including money laundering and financing of terrorism), terrorists to pass through, the sex slave trade and child slavery, in the middle east. What comes first to my mind is that they were also one of the nations to recognize the Taliban.

But the sad thing is, it's probably the most modernized of all gulf states. Not a single one of them could be considered democratic, but it makes Saudi Arabia look like the freakin Netherlands in comparison.