The Burj Tower, Dubai is the tallest human made structure on Earth. It's 2717 ft. tall with a zillion floors. It's just the sort of stuff that 20th century science fiction was telling us we'd have in Cleveland,...and everywhere else in the States.
George Jetson would have felt right at home in these digs.
Thing is it's in Dubai not here. While watching the video of the opening extravaganza it came to me that this marked the end, the absolute end of the American Century.
It really ended the day after we went to the moon. It's been a slow painful slide into ex-empirehood since then. We've managed to live in denial for decades. What with our ability to bully small defenseless countries we thought we were still in business.
However now the Chi-Coms, and Islam own our balls. One bought up our massive economy busting debts, and the other owns all the oil. Between then they can kill us over the phone.
So marvels are indeed coming to pass in this new century. Just not here. Frank Loyd Wright planned a mile high building in the 1950's. However the tech didn't yet exist to put it up. When it finally came America was nolonger in the vision business.
(Above is a rendering of Wright's Mile High Tower as it would look in Chicago. The Dubai Tower is in the middle there as reference. Click on images for better views.)
Anyhow them gleeful maniacs in Dubai put up a half mile tall building in just a few years. They broke ground in the fall of 2004. Which was 'after' we broke ground at Ground Zero. They finished in January 2010. This while the former World Trade site was still a semi-flooded hole in the ground.
True as I reported we're finally getting things done down there. A whole seven stories have been raised since last fall. You do the math. This country is finished as a leader in creating miracles. The vision has been passed on to other nations.
Dubai may have serious dough, and great vision for their future. However if I ever went there to see their swell stuff first hand I'd be asking for a stoning or beheading.
Things they still very much do to Queers, uppity women, and their assorted masses of "guest" workers, and slaves yearning to breathe free.
'Good thing about the States though. You can still legally buy, and eat pork chops, and wash it down with an ice cold brew. It's the 'little' things that really matter.
Gawd Bless America!
A Happy Fourth to you All!
5 comments:
I wouldn't get too jealous on account of Burj Dubai. It's mostly full of vacant units. Dubai's built on sand in more ways than one, and is having trouble meeting its debts. In fifty years the tower will be a dusty vacant monument to hubris, perhaps much sooner. By then just running the elevators will probably be more than anyone can manage.
George Jetson-style hyper-modernity was always a gigantic neon highway sign to nowhere. We should have throttled down our high-consumption lifestyle when the first oil crisis hit. Jimmy Carter, of all people, had us on the right track.
You rightly suggest that personal freedom is worth more than all the slave-built glass-and-chrome towers in the world.
You might want to read this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html
The Sister of a Filipino I know married one of those bastards, he waits at the door with a belt to beat her if she returns home 5 minutes later than the time she was allowed....but she has a nice house and servants in that hell hole.
A waitress in one of our places (Queens)was brutally slapped by her Afghan boyfriend for saying "hello" to a customer while they were on a date. Fortunately, the the Afghan did this in sight of the male customer who promptly re-arranged the arab's facial characteristics..permanently.
CBS' 60 Minutes went to Dubai two years ago, walked the man-made islands with hundreds of houses, all of which are empty as are the miles of streets.
Dubai is nothing more than the typical arab scam, a brutal corrupt slave state catering to the scum of the earth while sheltering their ill-gotten gains.
There's a book called Evil Paradises which contains an essay on Dubai. I've read an article by the author that convinced me it's a thoroughly rotten place.
You may recall the case of a European hetero couple who received an unconscionably harsh jail sentence there for (allegedly) having sex on a beach. A few years ago a French-Swiss teenager was raped there, and when he complained to the police they told him it must have happened to him because he was homosexual. That's their style of "justice."
What I've read online suggests that slavery is deeply rooted in the Arabian peninsula and has never really gone away. I suspect that if the "neo-liberal globalised world" that the Independent article mentions does indeed "crash into history" and western influence consequently diminishes, they'll soon return to practicing slavery openly and in full force, without even a pretense of suppressing it.
Another article on Dubai:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-a-morally-bankrupt-dictatorship-built-by-slave-labour-1828754.html
--found on another machine here. Since most of my friends (Mexican-Asian)fall into the category of those being abused over there it is doubly infuriating that this situation is allowed to continue.
At a certain level money talks and conscience walks.
One may however rest assured that when the bribes and money laundering for terrorists ceases to flow from Dubai planes and bombs will find their way to that fine new building. Not that it will matter, it'll be mostly empty.
It's God Bless America...get it right or Don't say it at all.
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