Across the Gulf region, states are vying to build ever grander museums and towers from the world’s most famous architects. But this display of soft power masks deeper ethical concerns
On the Doha corniche, on the route into the city from its airport, a monumental pile of fibre-cement discs is nearing completion. It is the new National Museum of Qatar, where the country’s “cultural heritage, diverse history and modern developments” are to be displayed. It will, says its silver-tongued Parisian architect Jean Nouvel, “symbolise the mysteries of the desert’s concretions and crystallisations, suggesting the interlocking pattern of the blade-like petals of the desert rose”. It does indeed look like the clusters of sandy crystals that go by that name.
This is the same Jean Nouvel whose outpost of the Louvre opened last year in Abu Dhabi, which for now is one of Qatar’s enemies. He also designed the 238-metre Burj Doha, completed in 2012, which is from the same genre of anatomically suggestive towers as his Torre Glòries in Barcelona and Norman Foster’s Gherkin in London. The burj is the most memorable building in an instant downtown called West Bay, an extravagantly variegated constellation of vertical glass of a type now familiar from China to the Gulf to the US to London.
The wealthy dynasties who rule the Gulf states have their reasons for such huge investments
The building suggests both fortified power and a complex intelligence that may or may not be benevolent
The dilemma is that posed by China, or Azerbaijan or any number of repressive regimes: is it better to avoid or engage?
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Human rights group warns case of Ellie Holman, who accepted alcohol offered by Emirates, is symptomatic of confused UAE laws
A woman who was detained in Dubai with her four-year-old daughter after drinking a complimentary glass of wine on a flight from London has expressed her relief after she was cleared by authorities and allowed to return home.
Ellie Holman, a dentist originally from Sweden who lives in Sevenoaks, Kent, with her husband and three children, had been facing a year in detention while awaiting a court hearing after she was arrested on 13 July having drunk one glass of wine on her eight-hour Emirates flight to Dubai.
Related: Woman held in Dubai with daughter after drinking wine on flight
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It is impossible to know whether this post at Al-Emirati.com on the victims of the recent Air India disaster is intended to be some appalling attempt at humour or satire, but by every single measure it is absolutely beyond the pale:
Not really. Not only do I not care if the victims "rest in peace" but it seems to me that they are, rather, resting in pieces!
I am of course talking about flight IX 812 from Dubai to Balglapour (or some other hell hole, they're all the same) that recently crashed (click here)
I know I know. Mean, blah blah. The way I see it is as follows. The UAE is (about) 50% Indians, Something that I, and 90% of all other Emaratis see as a bad thing.
This plane, carrying Indians who live and work here, means that 160 indians that clog up the roads, cause accidents, fail code inspections at Indian restaurants, speak like this guy, and are a general drag on the security of the UAE, wont be coming back. That is a very GOOD thing!
I can only pray that this happens every week!
Sadly, we'll probably have 160 new VISAs for 160 new Indians issued in 3 hours... And the authority in charge of this will flaunt that, as if it's a good thing.
