Xanadu Atlantis
In Jumeirah did Big Sheikh Mo
A massive great hotel decree
Where streams of sacred sewage ran
Through beaches uninhabitable by man
Down to a polluted sea
So twice five dozen top celebs
Did mingle with the local plebs
And there were fireworks bright with flashing stars
Apparently they could be seen from Mars
The only ones that didn't party or rave
Were some newly captured Pacific dolphin slaves
A sheikh with a kandoora
In a vision once he saw
It was an Abyssinian maid
Overworked and poorly paid
And with fireworks loud and grand
He did build that Dubailand
That massive mall! Those slopes of ice!
And we all thought them very nice
But all should cry, Beware! Beware!
This sandy land is not so fair
And now financial storm clouds grow
It might be time to pack and go
For we on honey-dew hath fed
It's time for some real life instead
Comments
A massive great hotel decree
Where streams of sacred sewage ran
Through beaches uninhabitable by man
Down to a polluted sea
So twice five dozen top celebs
Did mingle with the local plebs
And there were fireworks bright with flashing stars
Apparently they could be seen from Mars
The only ones that didn't party or rave
Were some newly captured Pacific dolphin slaves
A sheikh with a kandoora
In a vision once he saw
It was an Abyssinian maid
Overworked and poorly paid
And with fireworks loud and grand
He did build that Dubailand
That massive mall! Those slopes of ice!
And we all thought them very nice
But all should cry, Beware! Beware!
This sandy land is not so fair
And now financial storm clouds grow
It might be time to pack and go
For we on honey-dew hath fed
It's time for some real life instead
Comments
23 Comments:
$50 a barrel, financial crisis, real estate crashing. The end is near. Dubai will go back to being the quiet little harbor/whorehouse/money laundering/under invoicing re-exporting/British colony/slave trading that it always was. Either that or they will be absorbed by Abu Dhabi.
I met a traveller from a far off land
Who said: Vast and empty towers of steel
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Lies rusting in the wind,
A shatter'd dream.
On a pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymaktoum, sheikh of skeikhs:
Look on my city, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Of the city, nothing remains: round the
Debris of that extravagant wreck,
The drifting sands will return one day.
ELK.
Xanadu - Kubla Khan
a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Xanadu
Kubla Khan
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
lol when will the dubai bitching end, its quite sad...everyone get a grip and stop moaning, the end is near for shitty england, dubai is crap but england is a lot crapper
On a more serious note:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-11-22-uk-happy-hour_N.htm?csp=34
Some MORE news
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/watch/player.html?pkg=rc59_dubai&seg=1&mod=0
This is where it's at..
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=97748
Excellent!! And you are right on! Dubai is going from fantasy into reality FAST! The Atlantis fireworks were symbolic of the beginning....of the end.
What a friggin' waste these excesses while the world spins in a limbo!
Now, Dubai really SCares.
'Nuff said!
Veena:
Thank you for the PBS video.
That part in the video about the blond Russian girl who wanted to be a teacher but ended up in the flesh trade was touching. I don't blame her for not knowing what she wants out of her life anymore.
Shame on everybody that wrecked & derailed her dreams.
Shame on everybody that drives a woman or a girl off the reservation and onto a path of chaos & confusion.
But most of all, shame on Dubai, for continuing to turn a blind eye to this and every other girl's predicament in a similar vein.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article5226294.ece
Danger in Dubai
Superlatives alone cannot shield the Middle East's financial hub from crisis
The biblical portents for houses built on sand were never good. Nor are they out of date, if Dubai is any guide. Last week, as the major economies shed jobs and marked down growth forecasts, a South African billionaire hosted the “party of the decade” to open a vast, pink hotel on the palm-shaped island constructed from poured sand and concrete a short helicopter ride from Dubai's new international airport. Robert De Niro came, as promised, and the lobster was pronounced exquisite.
But elsewhere on the island, villa owners were being told that their properties had lost 40 per cent of their value in two months. Construction of another colossal artificial island was quietly being shelved, and speculation grew that Dubai as a whole, for nearly a decade the world's most exuberant symbol of the fruits of globalisation, might have to sell off assets to service its debts.
Yesterday the Government of the United Arab Emirates was forced to confront that speculation. The chairman of a committee set up to lead the UAE's response to the global downturn said that Dubai's debts were dwarfed by its assets and that “the Government will step in to assist if needed”. Only that implicit guarantee held fears of a default at bay. The stock market was unimpressed. Having lost nearly two thirds of its value this year it promptly lost another 5 per cent.
A year ago the UAE was fondly regarded by Western governments and bankers as a potential saviour of capitalism. Like Singapore and China, it had accumulated prodigious reserves in sovereign wealth funds whose search for a steady return appeared to complement the banking system's urgent need for capital. The Gulf Co-operation Council, with the UAE at its heart, looked better placed than anywhere to weather the coming financial storm.
A month ago, Dubai still boasted property prices and returns high even by Central London standards. The Dubai bubble has not quite burst since then, but it has shrivelled dramatically: a property boom fuelled by loans for speculative off-plan purchases has shuddered to a halt as a direct result of frozen international credit markets.
As Dubai's skyscrapers add yet more storeys, prices for their penthouses plunge. As landlords fail to refinance, their brokers send mass text messages to advertise distressed sales at swingeing discounts. One result, engineered by the Finance Ministry in 24 hours over the weekend, was the merger of two of Dubai's biggest mortgage lenders. The Government has called it a milestone; others, a takeover.
Dubai's rise has been a spectacle of unmatched enterprise - and hubris. But its troubles should give no one satisfaction. With no significant oil reserves of its own, this is the emirate that diversified in order to compete. It borrowed heavily to do so, leaving itself vulnerable to the global credit crunch while its financial safety net - neighbouring Abu Dhabi's oil wealth - was simultaneously weakened by the oil price plunge.
The party in the Gulf's most vibrant market economy is over. But it remains the region's best hope as a laboratory of political as well as economic pluralism, and there are signs that the downturn is forcing Dubai's rulers to take seriously investors' demands for greater trans-parency. That would be a significant silver lining in a city long since too fond of smoke and mirrors.
What I find interesting are the implications of the Fall of Dubai for the Rise of Abu Dhabi.
I've long wondered if Abu Dhabi was happy to be the Washington to Dubai's New York. I think it was under Zayed, but not now.
However rather than having to deal with Dubai, the financial crisis may rather neatly take care of the problem.
It will be more like LA and Vegas rather than Canberra and Sydney, if that makes any sense.
SD you probably know but you are being stalked
http://whoissecretdubai.blogspot.com/
I've sent suitably rude responses.
Asshole
Love the poem BTW!
HMHB
ps, what's your take on Sheikh Moh'd not turning up for the Atlantis party on Thursday? It was a joint Atlantis / Palm Jumeirah opening and I think it strange that he wasn't there.
There was a place setting for him and Princess Haya so he was expected.
Fireworks can be seen from space......okay so what? Its for humans on earth to see right? who the F is going to watch it from space? Martians???? How stupid is this??
COOL!!!
Ten years for MURDER! I have no sympathy for the Brits that act in general like they own the place but given the fact that this guy might be pardoned for Eid, Ramadan, good behaviour or whatever... makes you wonder about what is next? Gangbanging little Swiss boys? No wait that has already been done. Even non UK, Western EU media have become aware of what the Dubai reality realy is. No one believes the hype, marketing spin, or whatever, anymore and no one is ready to dump their € £ o $ in this town anylonger.
And before you b.tch and moan about more Dubai bashing on Secretdubai, remember that it could have been your mother, wife, daughter, etc... not coming back home that night because some nitwit, probably inbred local had a superioty complex fuelled by a sense of impunity instilled by the pervasive inane lack of culturale mores of this place.
SUV killer receives 10-year jail term
By Bassam Za'za', Senior Reporter
Published: November 27, 2008, 23:28
Dubai: An Emirati who mowed down and killed a British woman with his Hummer will spend ten years in jail despite his lawyer claiming his actions were not premeditated.
The Public Prosecution charged the 26-year-old Emirati tradesman with premeditatedly killing the 52-year-old British woman. The Dubai Court of First Instance handed down the prison sentence.
The man's lawyer Abdul Moniem Bin Suwaidan told Gulf News he would appeal the ruling soon.
Presiding Judge Abdul Majid Al Nezamy also ordered the man, identified as U.A., to pay Dh20,100 in temporary compensation to the woman's husband, J.W., and referred the civil compensation claim to the Dubai Civil Court.
Unintentional
Bin Suwaidan earlier said his client unintentionally ran down the 52-year-old victim, C.W.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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"He did not have any premeditated intentions as there was no acquaintance or relation between him and the victim and what happened was due to provocation," said his lawyer.
U.A. earlier denied before the court the charge of premeditatedly murdering C.W. after she stepped out of a cab. He also denied intentionally attempting to kill her 54-year-old husband, J.W., who is a project manager, and their friend, a 33-year-old Australian operations manager.
Public Prosecution records said the two men escaped death, but sustained injuries.
"Contrary to what the Public Prosecution mentioned in its arraignment sheet, the suspect ran down the deceased while backing up. No medical reports were available to confirm that the suspect injured the husband and his friend when he reportedly hit them with his sport utility vehicle and which was examined by the forensic laboratory and there were no signs of blood either on the wheels or the bumper," said Bin Suwaidan before Judge Al Nezamy.
Bin Suwaidan also asked the judge to drop the premeditated murder charge and charge his client with accidental killing or assault which led to death.
A Dubai police captain testified that U.A. turned himself in after police failed to find him.
The accused claimed during investigations that he could not avoid hitting the cab, which had stopped in the right lane. He alleged when he rammed the taxi and went on the pavement a number of Europeans walked towards him and yelled at him. He claimed he got frightened and drove away not noticing and unaware he had mowed down a woman, said the police captain.
The victim's husband said when they stepped out of the taxi U.A. mowed him down. Then he drove over his wife's body. The cab driver maintained he used his emergency lights when he stopped.
http://www.gulfnews.com/nation/Police_and_The_Courts/10263125.html
The initial verdict is still subject to appeal within 15 days.
The Bahamas establishment not doing so well, they were firing even as the fireworks popped in Dubai: http://www.bahamasb2b.com/news/story.php?title=atlantis-bahamas-lays-off-800-workers
how long before the same happens here?
Massive heart attack is the reason for no-show at the festivities.
Great restaurants in Dubai can be found at: http://www.diningcity.com/dubai
I have been to Dubai twice. To me Dubai seems like a massive "Mega-Mall". You can see people from all over the world shopping in these huge Malls and having good. time. I think, Dubai is best known for shopping. Due to the economic downturn tourists are finding it hard to travel to places like Dubai. This will make things for this nation more hard. Yes, Dubai is also a very important trading hub. However, due to the property burst and the consequent effect on banks, the economy is going to take severe beating while the trading activity is at a low point.
Ha ha! Brilliant post, SD!
the first comment is hilarious. very true. however do not forget that most of the developed world is in the same boat. things here in the US are bleak as well. and do look into the petro dollar scam presentation that is online - perhaps the end is near for many? we must rebuild and not make the same mistakes. live and learn my friend. dubai has a very good thing going for it, its location is central in the global landscape. it is what it is because of trading. oil is less than 7% of the economy. stick to the basics and do it well....dubai will be alright in the long run
leave our country we dont want u in it
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