India may hold the whip hand in Dubai power game

[Louisiana1976]

Allah was kind to Dubai yesterday. Just when the emirate’s unspeakable wealth appeared on the point of collapse—stock markets, of course, naturally “trembled”—along came the feast of Eid al-Adha and sent all the kings and emirs and sheikhs off to their diwans to celebrate the decision by the father of monotheism—the Prophet Ibrahim himself—not to kill his son Ismail. But then again, Sheikh Mohamed bin Rashid al-Makhtoum knew that the week-long holiday in Dubai would close down the local markets even if it couldn’t stifle the rumours.

Among the latter came the old canard that Sheikh Mohamed will have to hand over his immensely profitable Emirates Airlines to his Abu Dhabi cousin, the ever-beneficent Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, who seems to spend much of his time bailing out Dubai’s outrageous tourist and oligarchical ambitions. Indeed, Dubai may have the tallest tower in the world and the largest man-made island but it would help if it paid off the Japanese company that has just built the emirate’s first metro system—even if trains to the airport cannot carry passenger baggage.

snip

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/india_may_hold_the_whip_hand_in_dubai_power_game_20091127/?ln