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When you travel from the warm tropics to the warm desert, you dress for warm weather: shorts, t-shirt. It may look curious to the coat-and-scarf crowd in Newark, New Jersey or Paris, France, but what do they know about the beginning or the end, the Alpha or the Omega? The cold air, when it's available, feels good. The US government, in its usual arrogant way, requires all passengers passing through the Newark terminal to clear US customs, even if they are just in transit and not entering the US at all. For me, a citizen, it's not much of an inconvenience, just a wave of a piece of paper and a walk-through with my carry-on only luggage. But how many in-transit foreigners realize the document they just signed deprives them of almost all rights under law? Things are more civilized in Paris: if you're not part of the EU but are in transit there are no forms to fill out—and no long lines to stand in, impatiently waiting while customs agents pompously take romps through the underwear of attractive females with too many suitcases. After two days travel from Costa Rica, I'm glad to return again to civilization when I finally check into a high-tech hotel, decorated in oak and marble and bright Middle Eastern colors, and settle into a room with all the essentials of civilization: a shower with hot water, and with in-room Internet connections and private fax machine. The journey has been tiring. I update my homepage and fall asleep. In the morning I open my eyes to the Persian Gulf (or, as it is known locally, the Arabian Gulf). The Gulf is relatively narrow here, but the Iranian shoreline on the other side is nevertheless lost over the horizon. Nearby are other Dubai towers, rising like some futuristic sci-fi city out of the desert, and beyond that the area of Port Rashid and the Gulf waters which have become an international geopolitical obsession. The Gulf is not quite blue in the desert air seen from the 47th floor of the Emirates Towers Hotel. That color kicks in only after a cleansing rain, which doesn't happen often in this part of the world. But at night as the air cools, the city, the port, and the lighted ships are transformed into a shimmering mosaic of diamonds fractally displayed on black velvet. Dubai is bounded on the north by the Gulf, on the west by the Hajar mountains, and on the south and east by The Empty Quarter (think of the latter as the Forbidden Zone) called Rub Al Khali. Dubai is a trading city, much like it was thousands of years ago when it lay on a trade route between the Sumerian civilization (in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley, now in present-day Iraq, at the north end of the Gulf) and Oman and Yemen to the south. As a trading nation, UAE is in many ways neutral: a self-contained exercise in regulatory arbitrage. It is friendly to the US, but also to Iran and to China. Along with Jordan, the Emirates are a key food supplier to international bad-boy Iraq. The country's merits are conveniently accessible to English-speakers, as English is spoken as commonly as Arabic—perhaps moreso because of the majority foreign population. The local currency the dirham, is printed in both languages. So are the traffic signs and the names of most shops. When I took geography in grade school, the Emirates were still the Trucial State—seven independent Sheikdoms with maritime agreements with Britain. But with Britain's withdrawal, they united in 1971 to form the UAE. Later, oil, and gas were discovered. That changed everything. The rulers, rather than living it up with weekend trips to Paris, looked instead to the future and decided that when the oil ran out, there would remain the traditional mainstay—trade, and there would still be sand. So they constructed the essentials of ocean trading just off-shore, while on-shore they are promoting a new silicon valley, a digital mecca. Jebel Ali, the second of Dubai's ports, is the largest artificial port in the world, and the Jebel Ali free zone is filled with companies from Japan, Korea, the US, China, and Russia. Reflecting the digital focus, the local English-language paper, Gulf News, is filled with ads seeking to fill IT positions. On a drive out to the Jebel Ali free zone, which is about 25 miles west of the downtown area, I pass the newly opened Dubai Internet City, the name displayed on the archway in English and Arabic. The Urim and Thummum of the Internet Age, Microsoft and Oracle, flank the gateway entrance. I've brought some papers. The papers have been signed and stamped a dozen different ways by a dozen different hands, and they will need to be stamped and signed and processed some more by strangers who take their responsibility oh so seriously. None of this has anything to do with the actual conduct of business—that involves thought and muscle and widgets and skids and fork lifts and warehouse space and ocean-going vessels. Stamps is stamps and business is business. But I don't really mind. Byzantium helps keep out the competition, who are overly intimidated by arcane processes. Myself, I hate bureaucracies, and so tend to move through them like a tank, careful however to destroy only what is absolutely necessary. This is a Patton-type operation, oriented toward efficiency and success, and not a Sherman-type one, bent on destruction and revenge. Everywhere people are courteous, efficient, and friendly—without the excesses of either humility or arrogance. It's easy to like Dubai. As we drive along a boulevard, a local consultant waves at the buildings and says: "It's like Manhattan, no?" No. It's not sufficiently crowded, the buildings are too new, the roads are too wide, and the cabs are too clean (and the cabbies even have change). Though in one respect it turns out to be precisely like New York: at the Dubai court at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, it's impossible to get a cab. Yet when one finally shows up, the arab who is there first graciously offers to give up the cab to me. I graciously decline. No, this ain't New York at all. On the way back to my room I am attracted by the sound of quality blues music, and end up having a late lunch in a Cajun restaurant. This is the Persian Gulf, baby. Don't believe the propaganda. But this is why Dubai will succeed as a digital mecca. First, it believes in free markets, free trade, and the rewards of hard work. Second, it's a cosmopolitan city. Writing recently in the Laissez Faire City Times, Jim Peron stated his livability requirements: "I want a real place where I'm allowed to flourish. I want to be able to walk down the street and go into restaurants. I want to have a small house with my library, cats and lots of books and not worry about tax officials and various bureaucrats knocking on my door." Well, most techies want these exact same things. And Dubai has them. Have I discovered any negatives? Checking the latest hacking news one day (a link on my links page) I discover an Internet block. Hmm. I check another link, one to Das Blick Girl, a daily feature of the Swiss newspaper Blick. Another block. The typical kiddie filters: hacking and sex. But I don't mind. I am using the free Internet service which is available to everyone in the Emirates, and they have the right to put whatever filters they damn well please on it. If I don't like it, I can pay for my own service (or, more likely, simply by-pass the filter). One thing Dubai (and the Emirates) doesn't like or tolerate is drugs. (We're not talking about alcohol: the hotel I'm at has its own 24-hour bars and restaurants.) And that's okay with me: even though in principle I may disagree with almost all prohibitions, I've in truth seen enough of drug-addicted people to last a lifetime. It's much more humane here than the US-style drug war, where on one hand the US government tolerates (and even promotes) drug-dealing and distribution, and on the other-hand exercises social control by selective prosecution and imprisonment (among other reasons, to provide the slave labor needed by the billion-dollar DOJ-run US Prison Industries). The streets are extremely safe at night in Dubai. Today in the paper I read about some people from Pakistan being arrested for carrying drugs in their luggage when they arrived at Dubai airport. Now, anyone who goes through an airport with drugs in their luggage has got to be one of the stupidest persons on earth. So a natural process of Darwinianism would call for their immediate execution. It's pretty much like taking guns through airports. As my friend Chuck Hayes used to say, "Why would you even want to carry a gun through an airport? No matter where you go, if you need a gun, you can always take one away from a local policeman." Exactly. Dubai will succeed as a digital mecca, because it wants to become a digital mecca, and because it's a friendly, intelligent, free trading, mostly laissez-faire, modern and pleasant place. Meanwhile, in the real world, I'll deal with those widgets. I am in Scarlett's, a Southern restaurant, having a good steak. The bartender tells me that DKNY is having a function there tonight, giving away free prizes to promote their products. The party will go on all night. I make a mental note to not be around. Maybe this is too much like New York after all. Then I look again at the huge Confederate flag on the wall. Well, not Confederate flag: it's actually a Georgia state flag, but it'll do. No, I'm in Dubai, alright. I'm safe. J. Orlin Grabbe is the author of International Financial Markets and resides in Costa Rica. His home page is located at http://www.xs4all.nl/~kalliste/ and his email address is orlingrabbe@orlingrabbe.net.
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