Sovereignty doesn’t mean that much when it isn’t enforced. It’s a popular approach in the Middle East these days - countries agree to build company towns where residents can essentially pretend they’re living in the West, sometimes with a parallel justice system, no expectation of modest dress, etc. Look at KAUST and Neom (if that ever happens) in Saudi Arabia, Abdali in Amman, the Green Zone in Baghdad. It keeps the rich expats living in your country happy without making you actually improve living conditions for everyone, including the native-born population. I fully expect that the Gulf expats who move to this development will be made to feel like they’re still living in the Gulf, the security/police will be private, and it’ll be designated a “free trade zone.”
It's kind strange they used buy rather than develop. I do also wonder how access will be controlled to this area, because it doesn't have the look of something that has a lot of low cost housing.
I think this might be the first time in forever that I've read anything about development in the Middle East and low cost housing. It's all about decadence and the ridiculousness amounts of money involved
Not going to make the news here when UAE builds a 100 unit 1 bed apartment building. But the tallest building in the world, or a ski resort in the desert? Sign us up
Right. There is of course plenty of low cost housing in the UAE, but it's not going to make the front page of HN when they open a new apartment complex.
Dubai is definitely a high-cost-of-living with extravagance abound, but it's also helped to turn them into an international destination. Just Spending time in the Dubai airport is a fascinating experience if you get the change. It's the most diverse (and by that I don't mean skin color, though of course that is reflected, but I mean all types of different people from all over the world) environment I think I've ever been in.
> Just Spending time in the Dubai airport is a fascinating experience if you get the change.
It depends on what you mean by fascinating. I was stuck in a limbo because on arrival they've lost my visa (which takes days to process). They didn't even wanted to talk to me because my visa wasn't in a pile of other visas and for those people that was the end of it. I wasn't let in into the country, and I couldn't board the plane to go back home. For what they were concerned, I could have died there in front of the counter and they wouldn't even bat an eye.
It took them close to 10 hours to relent to my ever increasing desparate pleadings and second or third shift person to have a look at the other pile of visas on the same desk. They've found it after less than a minute of search, and threw it at me like I'm a trash bin.
Needless to say I'm never going to Dubai ever again. I've travelled all over the world, but I've never seen or experienced complete disdan and disrespect for other people before and since then.
Was this recent? I think they have mostly moved to eVisas now. That being said, what you described is a typical experience in a foreign country immigration lane. I am not saying it is right or wrong ( of course it is wrong!) but overall the uae is still ahead of many other countries when it comes to accessibility.
It was about 5 to 7 years ago. Time does fly! Its not a typical experience in my view. I've definitely seen and experienced crazy stuff over the years in the airports. But what was perfectly clear to me is that they (native people working there) don't see you as an equal. Its maybe a bit hard to explain. I wouldn't go as far as to say that they don't really see you as a person at all, but I've never experienced this before and after. And this is not something I've seen on myself only, I've seen this happen on non-EU/US immigration lanes and it was disturbing and depressing. Maybe I'm just too sensitive to that.
> Just try to avoid kissing your same sex partner in public.
Well, I don't do that with my opposite-sex partner in public in the US either, so I don't think it would be that difficult regardless of my partner's sex or the country I am in.
Just to be clear, I am not a prude or a conservative/religious person, and I don't have an issue with others doing that. And neither am I afraid of something bad happening if I did that. I just tend to reserve activities that involve any amount of bodily fluids to non-public places.
On a more relevant note, I don't see how your reply negates what the grandparent comment said. There is more to diversity than just sexual orientation. It is a component of it, of course. But you would be crazy to deny that it is still possible to have a room full of people with extremely diverse backgrounds and ways of life, despite none of them being into same-sex relationships.
The parent comment refers to same-sex partners because gay foreigners have actually been arrested in the UAE for incredibly small offenses, like brushing against someone's hip at a bar [1]. And in Egypt for such crimes as waving a pride flag at a Mashrou' Leila concert [2]. It wasn't an attack against your heterosexuality - it's just a fact that gay people are especially persecuted in most of the Middle East.
The Middle East is not "a risky place to travel" - look at Israel. Plenty of gays, very little rape and when it does happen the rapist is charged, you can take selfies, you can drink wine.
If you want to say something about some culture then say it. But don't generalise to the point of slandering countries that don't have those issues.
The article kind of touches on this, but doesn't expose how bad it was: Egypt's economy was in very dire state before this. The official exchange rate was around 30 EGP to the dollar, but in the parallel market, it was 70. And it was very hard to get any foreign currency at all, meaning anything imported (or anything requiring imports in its supply chain) wasn't available. Think appliances, building materials, cars, etc. All of this meant massive inflation, broken supply chains, lots of uncertainty, etc.
This gives Egypt a few years of breathing room. Ultimately, most economists agree that the country is overspending (new capital, lots of road infrastructure, etc), has the military playing too big a role in economy/politics, has unsustainable subsidies, etc, and unless the root causes are solved, this just kicks the can down the road a few years.
GOOD Point by my wife: How come countries don’t buy and sell land to each other more frequently? It seems like it could help with budgets or simply putting land under more productive use. For example I bet Japan could do a lot with that big island just north of it (or even kamchucha)
Because selling off your land is probably the worst thing you could do. It’s about as short term as short term thinking gets. I’m not well versed in this area but I’m sure Russia regrets its sale of Alaska.
Alaska was sold cause Russian Empire couldn't hold the land and eventually would've lost it.
The islands north to Japan are important cause the access from sea ports to the ocean in winter. Plus, if they were Japanese, they'd have American bases there and there wouldn't be a way for the submarines to leave ports without being tracked.
A lot of that land is inhabited, or at least owned by citizens or companies. Pretty sure they would be against changing citizenship or losing their land.
And for government owned, uninhabited land: land is worth a lot more than its surface area. You can have natural resource of all kinds underneath – maybe some that are technically or financially not feasible to mine, yet, but may be in a few decades. (Just think of the massive oil fields in the arctic that'll soon be accessible to Canada and Russia)
If it's a coastal area it massively extends your country's EEZ – that's why there are a lot of border conflicts around tiny rocks in the ocean. That's also the prime reason why Russia will forever hang onto Sakhalin island. (Plus Japan already is not doing much with Hokkaido, I doubt they'd do anything worthwhile on Sakhalin except forestery and military areas).
In case anyone is wondering, it seems it's $35B for land approx to the highway running by this approx right angle triangle of coast:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Wvh44SKibJ3JpAQx9
170M m² = 170 km² ~= 18km * 18km (coastlines) / 2 (bisected)
incidentally there's natural gas reserves in the mediterrenean sea, which are being developed by israel, europe needs cheap gas, so it's a good fit I guess. Just not sure where UAE stands except they're Americas friends...
https://www.engineerlive.com/content/update-israeli-natural-...
If you can’t defend it, getting some gold now vs losing it for nothing later is not that tough a sell. There was no way for France to defend the westward lands so it was either take the deal, or have them grab it.
This doesn’t look like a straight purchase either. They’re selling the development rights and it would still be Egypt jurisdiction.
> There was no way for France to defend the westward lands so it was either take the deal, or have them grab it.
There was nothing to defend. France didn't control the land. It was inhabited by Native Americans; the "sale" was actually a treaty stipulating that France would not oppose the US attempting to expand westward by seizing that land from Native Americans, and also that France would nominally oppose any other colonial power attempting to seize that land (which never happened).
> I don't know why any country would ever sell land under any circumstances
Me neither, but that's not what happened here. They're "selling" the development of the area, not the land itself. At least as far as I understand the article.
I believe it is a "sale" but that hardly means it becomes the UAE's sovereign territory! It means the UAE is diversifying their economy into absentee landlordism - it is totally valid for Egyptians to question if their government should get into this kind of commercial entanglement instead of selling that land to Egyptian developers, but it's hardly treason.
The Louisiana purchase was extremely savvy of France! They scarcely controlled it in the first place and couldn't afford the money or manpower to defend their claim to it. Instead of losing it in a war and getting some people killed in the process, they instead got paid for something they hardly even owned in practice. Extremely smart move.
Sometimes countries need cash, and maintaining the land is not worth it, and someone is willing to buy. Should Denmark have sold the Virgin Islands in 1917? It was put to a referendum, and the people said yes. Napoleon also needed cash, so he sold a lot of useless land in North America to a willing buyer.
Yes, it's similar to someone buying land in California. You still "own" the land, but it's still in United States. Ras el-Hekma is still in Egypt. It just happens to be owned by UAE.
1. Egypt isn't actually 'selling' the land like Louisiana was bought. It's selling it the same way someone's house was sold to them, or how McDonald's buys the land their restaurants sit on.
2. Taking Alaska as an example, there was a real risk Russia would be in a war with the UK again. If that happened, Alaska was completely indefensible. SO better get money for it now than lose it later.
Dude, bad news but Bytedance owns an office in San Jose. Can't believe the US would sell land like that. All land should be owned by the community and developed under Sixth People's Congress Local 718 according to the Four Year Plan laid out.
