zlacker

>>Geeket+(OP)
All I ever hear is horror stories about this place: environmental destruction, structural racism, serious abuse of human rights, culturally hyper conservative, corrupt legal system, plus it's absurdly hot. I can't believe anyone would voluntarily go there, seems like hell on earth.

>>retube+ue
If you're a middle class European working in oil and you're a bit naive and insulated from that sort of news and current events then it's easy to miss. Dubai marketed itself well enough that many people just see one side of things, so they might believe it's a wealthy, paradise of capitalism where there are some poor foreign labourers but they don't fully appreciate the scale of the abuse.

A few of my school friends moved out there (and Abu Dhabi), they see it as a sort of dream land where they can live a luxurious life they believe they thoroughly deserve and earned. They're a mixture of disbelieving there's some gross stuff going on and dismissive of its severity. An argument I've seen by one was that there are no countries that can escape criticism, which is true in a way but it just feels a bit more cruel and deliberate in the Gulf.

So that explains a little bit of the indifference to the defacto slavery, however these sort of stories where the person suffering is white may give them pause for thought...