How Dubai Became Dubai

Indeed, until President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 declaration —“Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” — the Emirati royals really were with both; the UAE played the seemingly impossible game of being friends with both the Americans, for whom Dubai serves as the largest overseas naval port, and the man who had declared war on America. Hardly dyed-in-the-wool jihadis, the Emirati royals likely saw bin Laden as an eccentric buddy — part of their social milieu of Gulf Arab millionaire heirs but with an added frisson of radical chic.”

“While in the foreign concessions of Shanghai, different people were bound by different legal codes based on their nationality, in Dubai the same people would be governed by different legal codes depending on where they were within the city. In Shanghai, extraterritoriality meant that no matter where you were in the treaty port, you were, in a legal sense, always back home; in Dubai, the free zones made traveling from neighborhood to neighborhood, in a legal sense, like moving from country to country.

The Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) free zone, opened in 2002, is physically set on a block of desert off of Sheikh Zayed Road. The DIFC complex, designed by San Francisco architecture firm Gensler as a massive horseshoe-shaped office building wrapped around a central 12-story arch, soon filled up with the giants of global banking, including Citibank, HSBC, Standard Chartered and Credit Suisse. As with the architectural blueprints, the intellectual blueprints for the DIFC had been drawn up for the monarch by an American firm — consulting behemoth McKinsey — which advised the Dubai government to create a financial district governed by Western-style business regulations.

Republicans had both Houses of Congress and the White House for the years 2003-2006.

They had wars in the middle east going and those wars were portrayed as part of America’s war against Radical Islam.

But all during that time of War Against Radical Islam, the entire US government, politically in the hands of the Republican party mind you, from the White House on down, was partnering in every way possible with ALL THINGS MUSLIM that it deemed were not “radical”.

These United States alliances include military, intelligence, business and financial alliances with most Islamic countries, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia arguably being the closest alliance of all. Islamic sovereign wealth funds (the investments of the governments of Islamic countries and their ruling families) are PREMIER partners of the United States in global trade and finance.

All along, however, there were grumblings here and there from the neocon political right about Saudi Arabia “EXPORTING WAHHABISM”.

Nevertheless, the neocon’s grassroots voting bloc solidly supported just about anything the White House did during those total Republican-controlled years from 2003 through 2006.

And now...

the propaganda is attempting to tell us...

we must resume the “War on Radical Islam” to avoid our DOOM - the rise of a “global caliphate” that will conquer America and the rest of the world.

Well, since during the ALL REPUBLICAN years of 2003 through 2006 the POLITICAL RIGHT WING LEADERSHIP in America was HARD AT WORK HELPING to financially grow and financially diversify the sovereign wealth funds of Islamic countries, and doing all they could to foster massive build up of economic development and technical modernization of Islamic countries, and doing all they could to help muslims immigrate to America and gain citizenship, invest, do business, get education and training, embark on their new American life and career, and even get elected to public offices in their new country, America...

it’s pretty hard to argue that the RIGHT WING LEADERSHIP fears ANYTHING about Islam.

The only time the right wing says anything negative about Islam at all is when they point at terrorist acts committed by muslims and then call for a “War on Radical Islam”.

Of course, in very conservative grassroots circles, the rank and file - and perhaps a few who seem like they are there simply to stoke the fire a bit - will often get overexcited and go off ranting about nuking Mecca, or about going to war against “all Islam”, etc., in what seems like a call to go to war against any and all Islamic nations. Also, the grassroots voices an enormous resentment of the continued “cultural invasion” of Islam into the US.

But in these two points, both the foreign and domestic one - the grassroots is ALL BY ITSELF.

Because the Republican LEADERSHIP in America NEVER speaks of those two points, let alone supports them.

So if the conservative grassroots votes for Republican leaders based on pursuing any significant kind of “War on Islam”, they will be sadly disappointed in the results when their Republican candidate takes office. Because the Republican leadership speaks of a war on “Radical Islam” - but NEVER a war on Islam in general.

Quite to the contrary, all lipservice to the grassroots aside, Repblican leaders continue to provide all the support they can towards the improvement of conditions for Muslim nations and Muslim people - both internationally and domestically.

Piet, never overlook the Defense Industry/Muslim bond.

Whenever things get tight, we can always sell our Muslim friends a few new or used pieces of outrageously expensive hardware and training packages, and always at the top MSRP.

The theory is that without this Muslim market, our own cost for this equipment would skyrocket, which of course, it does anyway. In return, our Muslim friends have us as very reliable oil customers, also at top MSRP.

In effect, our Muslim pals send us back our own money, laundering it very effectively through the oilcos and defense industry. Of course, a good bit does get "left on the table," as friends reward each other.

Nothing personal. Just business. As far as the Feds go, just think back to the way it handled the Indians. Some were Good Indians and welcome at the Indian Agent's Trading Post. Some were Bad Indians, and by golly, just had to be exterminated. Some days, it was hard to tell who was a Good Indian and who was not, and of course the Good Indians did an awful lot of awful business with the "Radical" Bad Indians ... and so did some if us!

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