Word: rulers
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...declared it was unable to pay its debts. Officially, Dubai owes its creditors $80 billion, though a recent report by regional investment bank EFG-Hermes estimates that the city may be in the hole for as much as $170 billion. After Sheik Khalifa al-Nahyan, the oil-rich ruler of neighboring Abu Dhabi, stepped in with $10 billion to stave off an embarrassing default, the skyscraper's owners changed the building's name to Burj Khalifa. For a city used to grand statements, it was a remarkable comedown. (See pictures of the world's tallest building...
Still, Qatar insists it is not trying to become the next Dubai. Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, Qatar's ruler, doesn't want to make his country a global capital, so much as use his nation's gas resources to move what was once a tribal, Bedouin society into the modern world with Muslim culture and values intact. Qatar, say state officials, will never try to do the kind of high-volume business that put Dubai on the map but also made it so vulnerable to a speculative bubble. "Dubai is all about numbers and bringing in huge infrastructure...
...failures without having to take such risks themselves. In part, that's because Dubai is not more but less politically free than other places in the region. Sheik Mohammed al-Maktoum, the Emir of Dubai, is able to take daring risks not just because he is a hereditary ruler, but because he is unaccountable to the vast majority of Dubai residents, 95% of whom are foreign and who live in Dubai subject to his favor. Other places in the gulf have larger native populations, or more active national assemblies than Dubai. While rulers in those places are no doubt authoritarian...
Munich's newly opened Louis Hotel claims inspiration from mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Stand in the lobby, though, and the eccentric ruler, famed for his love of golden chariots, towering palaces and extravagant grottoes, definitely does not spring to mind. Would he really have taken to these simple clean lines and neutral color palettes, or joined guests for a tea ceremony in Emiko, the hotel's Japanese restaurant? Perhaps not. But he might have appreciated the flock of beautiful origami birds fluttering in the alcove, or the playful furniture (it's designed to look like luggage) in each...
...rural voter in a ‘Democracy by Ethnicity’ like Sri Lanka cannot not go beyond the policy of communal intoxication and anti-western sentiment. Another example of this reality was the conduct of state media during the polls—they continued to depict the ruler as a pious and pure soul offering prayers in the temples, thus not allowing the average voter to think past the Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism. These are the exact types of policies that nurtured hate and communal disharmony in every Sri Lankan election leading to several ethnic riots unleashed on Tamils...