Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Episode 140: Dubai Bye Bye (Patreon)

Published:
2021-02-28 22:13:56
Edited:
2024-10-11 00:17:09
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Downloads

Content

We explore the case of imprisoned Emirati princess Latifia, the lives of the GCC’s permanent class of migrant workers and the labor camps of the Middle East

Files

Comments

Lulu

Mary Robinson said that she was tricked and came out and said that she regretted it. She's genuinely not a bad human being. She was foolish for sure, but there are far worse people out there.

Jon Grace

it is in fact endearment, no imprisonment, this lies

Chris Hildreth

First of all as an athlete, wildly offended. Second, never stop opening with ads. They’re so good.

nick froehlich

the Doin it Right music segment 🥲

Thomas Siegel

Loved the Daft Punk homage midway through

Dan Z

if I wanted stop hear about kidnapped princesses I'd play mario/zelda and be 8 years old

R Finkle

never seen brace, liz and daft punk in the same room.

Jimothy Realname

These sickos make me so mad. I wish i was the doomguy

Vincent Utah

My aunt was one of the first women to get her drivers license in Saudi (this was before my uncle got canned at Aramco during their covid purge). She still had to have her husband in the car with her at all times, especially when she was outside of the company compound. They had a boy tend their yard and clean their house as “help” while they were living there, and they’ve never really clarified where this kid came from and how he got paid. I had my cousin on the ropes with this last night actually and all he could say in their defense was “oh but we fed him lunch all the time.” Guess the next family get-together is going to be awkward as fuck. Also can confirm most of the buildings in Dubai and Abu Dhabi are basically empty and there for show. Honestly this all makes me so fucking depressed. The more I delve into shit like this and other topics you guys and others have covered, the more I see it among both family and friends—people I’ve known and loved for years, some for my entire life, carelessly taking part in disgusting shit like this as if it were as simple as going to the supermarket or balancing their personal budgets. Like what the fuck am I supposed to do with those relationships now? What am I supposed to say to them? How can I get them to at least recognize that what is happening is heinously evil when they’ve complacently built their careers and livelihoods around it?

gardenwallflower

Best episode yet? Liz & Brace remain Hilarious while acing Knowledge drops about Emirate/ South Asian geopolitics & culture, amidst Chomsky’s daft punk tributes and seamless aural backdrops. Hard to beat

Ethan

Daft Chomsky

Al W

Really have no idea how to reconcile the fact that Qatar is a slave nation but also the home of Al Jazeera

Paul Webb

Is there a discount code for the dog safes?

Colin Clark

I know the daft punk was a really nice touch. This episode was perfect and so depressing.

Chas.

If you lose your way tonight that’s how you know the magic’s right <3

D. Elwood

I worked for the US army for a bit and they sent me to Qatar for a month and lemme tell you- shit sucks, I quit basically quit the day after we got back, if you ever meet someone who tells you they liked visiting Qatar you know that they are 100% a sociopath nightmare person.

tyler

fun fact: my friend’s father-in-law, until very recently, ran the PR operation for the Qatari royal family. And he has my friends drinking the KoolAid of “Qatar is actually a very progressive country”

danny

fully expected her to be queen latifah’s daughter

luis

Bring Michael Parenti on

Baron

When Liz mentioned the Malaysian exclusion, I have to wonder, was that done at the behest of Malaysia or could it have been the GCC making threats on their arms deals with the US?

Mark Owen

Gulf Counterrevolutionary Council, as Pepe Escobar calls it

Christopher Price

to expand on the BS Artist's comments and add some more nuance to the discussion of Dubai civil society here's my two cents. My ex works in Dubai and I spent a week visiting her. I stayed at a resident hotel (a place that caters traveling businessmen who want to stay someplace inexpensive and with amenities more like an apartment than a hotel) towards the western edge of the city. She lived with her co-workers in housing that her work provided. The hotel was built like all of surrounding apartments and were full of south Asian tech workers. These workers were obviously long term and had wives and families. For high end hospitality jobs those are staffed by people like my ex: east Asians, Europeans (a lot of Russians) and South Africans. The emirs aren't dumb enough to staff customer service jobs at 5 star hotels with slaves. These are people who worked high end jobs in their home countries but are interested in similar jobs in London or the US but need to work somewhere English is lingua franca while more forgiving than a native English speaking country. No one takes their passports but the control here is that their labor is highly regimented, working 60+ hours a week with only one day off per a week and that one day is never predictable. She had "weeks" where she worked 10 days straight. There's also no flexibility. There's 3 shifts per day and one person to work each shift, so you can't get sick and you can't just take a personal day or call someone to cover your shift. Then the "invisible labor" is naturally more demanding. It's a lot of east African and filipinos working fast food, retail and the hotel jobs no one ever sees. We talked about me taking a cook job over there, so at least we'd be closer but it would mean working insane hours (12-16 hours per day, especially before big banquets), and there were stories of cooks sleeping in disused spaces. Of course, as covered by the episode are the maids and construction workers that you can see all over the place being shuttled from place to place in packed shuttles. The overwhelming thing is that regardless of the work or the labor caste is the sense of alienation. There's nothing to tie anyone, you can be deported at the drop of the hat, you might work with compatriots but fundamentally everyone is a stranger.

Daniel Petrovic

off the topic, but what goes on in brace's head? i mean, what is it like in there on the daily?

James

To add to this, I spent 11 months working a government project in a remote location, about 2hours southwest on the city, right on the Dubai/Abu-Dhabi border. We were working with men from south Asia, mainly Pakistan and Bangladesh. These guys had it rough. They were being directly employed by the Dubai Municipality Government, ever wore the tan workers uniform with the insignia. You had about 8 guys sleeping in the space the three of us white folk were expected to live in. They were numerous problems with their conditions at the time we arrived (lack of toilet breaks, working through the heat of the day etc.) that we made a point of fixing before we commenced working. The were two instances where the workers stopped working because their passports had been taken from them for too long; my passport was taken from me as well to get a visa renewed and was missing for a month before I turned up at their office and demanded for it back, I'm GBR. We got to know the guys we were working with fairly well, they would tell us a lot of horrible stories about the other work they'd been doing in Dubai; even though the job they were doing with us was rough they were all incredibly grateful they were doing that instead of working construction. We also spent a month working with some guys from a major construction contractors out there, which I won't name. Those guys were in a far worse condition than the DM guys and were genuinely scared to talk to us about anything, even after the DM guys told us we were okay. Our nearest supermarket was at a shanty town (un-mortared breezeblock and corrugated iron) that had been built to house workers with one of the construction firms. The guys that lived there seemed to have a fair bit of freedom; they were based in the middle of nowhere but they'd hitch out into surrounding cities/towns and we'd give them lifts if we were heading that way. There was a foreman for the town though who was apparently a bastard, he was nice to use but our workers hated him; they went to the mosque in the 'town' every Friday and he'd give them shit. Another thing that I found interesting was that a British expat came out to work with us. Her husband was working oil and she was doing a degree related to our project in her spare time. She'd been living in an expat community in Dubai for 20+ years. We took her to the shanty town and she got the know the workers fairly well and had several chats with them; she said multiple times that she had no idea that workers lived in the conditions they did and was generally pretty shocked. I think she was genuinely shocked and I was amazed that she could've lived in the country for 20 years without knowing what was happening out in the rural areas. Also, met the sheikh of Dubai a few times. Always pleasant, first time I met him he was in a dark green velour tracksuit (maybe real velvet - didn't touch him to find out), bit of a paunch. The other times he was in a gold embroidered dish dash, similar to what he's wearing in the image for this episode. I also read his poetry book, with forward from Paulo Coelho - all about love and lust, a little bit intense, lots of lions hunting gazelles, the chase being as important as the catch yadda yadda. Lot of passion in the desert.

Christopher Price

yeah, the gulf states have basically transposed south asian society onto their own. The emirs are brahmin and nepalis, sri lankans, pakistani villagers, indian untouchables are the gcc untouchables and everyone else fills in the ranks in between.

Ed O'Brien

went back and listened to the one on jia tolentino - all great episodes

lykeomg2themax

i was reported on insta for commenting on a beauty instagram account, that huda beauty is out of Dubai & someone what aboutism’d me saying America was built on slavery 🥴 the kook was a foreigner who’s most recent pic was of the golden gate. i told her to leave america if she had such an issue; they claimed it was islamophobic (insta “safety department”) 🙄

Alexander Cabot

so the problem that people are having is that the term slave is being used. Its not like slavery slavery....its just "forcing" people to work in conditions that are questionably excessive and yeah the living conditions are inhumane....and i say forcing because these people are living in shit donditions in their own countries and this is the only work that is available to them...or a recruiter exploited their situation to get the laborer there....but wait, the emiratis are far to busy being fabulous to get their hands dirty in mundane things like migrant workers issues and the help complaining....so they pay Indian merchants or someone from one of the countries that provides the labor force and upholds the shit conditions in their own country with a fairly decent salary to enjoy some luxuries but keeps the labor force in check.....it doesnt take much (from the emirati perspective) to pay someone else to force others to do the horrible shit that is done...and while its a cost of owning a business for the emirati it might be a fortune to the "head worker."

Hector

You missed the other possibility for migrant construction workers where they get their passport taken on arrival, the company they sign on with collapses, the passports disappear along with the company, and then the police lock them into the camp with no food or other supplies. Maybe some of the expat set hear about it (cause one of them was going to be running the project and has now left/fled the country) and do a charity drive and turn up with some food, maybe not!

Erm Pert

please god stop putting yung chomsky's long synth interludes into episodes they're lazily done and never match the mood or content of the episodes and i hate them so much i'm sorry yung chomsky you're still cute

Erm Pert

like when brace and liz are like MIGRANTS ARE RAPED IN CLOSETS and it slides into this dumb daft punk cover omg i can't

Oscar

have to disagree with this. The show wouldn't be the same without yhung chomsky's interludes

Dan Greene

No one liked this comment

Erm Pert

i like the main theme and i liked his interludes before it became this constant mario kart themed brigade of synth content nerd simps get off the stage pls and go back to reddit. thank you

Steve Cum

Yo, great episode but what the fuck is an early morning brunch?

Horse Badorties

The ny lady's parents ran a labor importing/trafficking sweatshop for Filipino schoolteachers, using the same techniques L&B lay out about how imported workers are treated in UAE. She wrote a story about it that did not have any uhhhh class consciousness. "My parents had this business."

Timothy Massar

Bro, Breath of the wild is no joke. Just saying.

Amazon Abyss

i call it The-Democracy-Now-Intro-Incongruous-Funk Precedent

SF

Nah, the music's good.

Jimothy Realname

If I were to guess, it's where you drink at breakfast

Socialswine

I couldn’t tell if the simply safe bit was a real ad