Saw this over at Newshog and thought it was one of the more sensible things I’ve read.
Can we get beyond the hype, counterspin and the kneejerk Islamophobia here? Maybe? Yes? Take a chill pill and listen a moment.
Kevin Drum has it right and the
Wall Street Journal for once has some sense to it’s Opinion.
The London Financial Times says the paranoia is needless and adds “The bluster about national security conceals one of the uglier faces of US protectionism – the one with the slightly racist tinge”.
I’ve some other observations:
P&O was a British company so the ports in question were already run by a foreign company. Given the UK’s multicultural basis, several employees were no doubt Moslems. If it’s a problem of national security to have foreign companies own sensitive national assets then how come no-one worried about the Brits owning the ports? Or for that matter about the Brit companies, 100% state owned by a socialist government, that have been handling US nuclear waste and nuke plant fuelling, maintenance and construction this last decade and more?
DPW already runs major port facillities worldwide, including in Australia and Europe, and has done since before 9/11. Notice none of it’s people have blown anything up? In fact, Lloyd’s of London regards it’s abilities very highly. DP World recently won their DP World won the prestigious (within the industry) `Container Terminal Operator’ award. Oh, and they intend keeping the current P&O management in place, with the headquarters of the division still in London.
Both the right and left are contributing to runaway Islamophobia over this. Think Pogress spits out an Indian report (yeah, that’ll be unbiased – NOT) that Bin Laden was meeting the UAE royal family in Afghanistan in 1999. The writer, Judd, fails to draw attention to there being absolutely NO evidence for any UAE royal being present – just an official aircraft. The testimony quoted is full of mights and possiblies that Judd happily ignores in the pursuit of hysteria. If Malkin did this on another issue Judd would jump all over her.
Meanwhile LGF has a fearmongering bit about a Hamas website being run from Dubai but doesn’t mention that Rightwing favorites the Murdoch’s get on very well indeed with the Emirate’s royal family. As if the nation of origin of the Hamas website really matters – most are hosted in Russia.
Then there’s the way that money being channelled through Dubai banks to al Qaida or some of the 9/11 team passing through the UAE are being brought up by all and sundry. For that matter, money passed through US and UK banks too – it doesn’t mean their governments or state-owned companies will give al Qaida material aid. And let’s remember that ALL the 9/11 hijackers passed through the US. Does that mean that America should be labelled as an abettor of terror and disalowed from running its own or anyone elses port facillities? Of course not.
Rampant bigotry disguised as argument by way of fearmongering. I am frankly ashamed of my colleagues on the Left who have joined this witchhunt so rabidly.
Although there are actually a few points worth discussing:
The sale has been major news worldwide for since November last year, with discussions in the British parliament and all…so let’s not believe Bush knew nothing about it till five minutes ago shall we? Either that or he is admitting to being the bubble-boy we’ve often accused him of being. Take your pick – it’s one or the other.
There’s the big question of how much cronyism was involved.
First there’s uncertainty over how much influence Dave Sanborn had. He was Director of Operations for Europe and Latin America for DP World until nominated by Bush to be Maritime Administrator on 24th January. Then there is John Snow who was head of another company that sold out to DP World the year after he left to join Bush’s administration as Treasury Secretary – the guy who whose agency heads the federal panel that signed off on the deal.
Then there’s this:
The Atlanta-based law firm Alston & Bird has advised DP World for several months as it worked for clearances for foreign investment in the United States, a source told NBC News. Now former Sen. Bob Dole, special counsel at the firm, has become part of the team working on the Dubai company’s case, according to the source, who is close to Dole.
Allied to the cronyism aspect are questions, legitimate ones, about why the statutory 45 day investigation wasn’t done in favor of a 25 day look at the deal and it’s implications.
All those questions will have to be answered but none of them are about “national security”. The ports will still be run and managed by the same people, right down to the lowliest stevedore. The Coastguard and DHS will still be running security and customs. The only thing that will change is that the company owning the ports will be a state-owned company from a nation whose support for Islamist extremism is difficult to make into a really serious case.
I’m reminded of the scares over mobile phones on aircraft and subways because they could be used to trigger bombs even though no intelligence has ever shown that to be planned when timers or suicide switches are more reliable. I’m reminded of the illegal immigrant hysteria of the wingnut right. I’m reminded of so many more examples of fear and loathing in America.
As Alan Reisner at Reuters writes: “For almost five years President George W. Bush has warned Americans to fear terrorism, but now those words may come back to bite him.”
Cernig’s blog Newshog has some excellent content. If you’ve never seen his work before, check it out.
facts could stop the juggernaut, but I will not postpone important respiratory activity.
To tell the unpleasant truth, I don’t think the mainstream voters in the US want facts. Facts only incite confusion, and could be used to erode support for the war on terror, and Operation Iranian Freedom.
I find the whole thing depressing.
It’s weird to see this kind of collective stupidity on the left and to ride the crest of bullshit to higher polls. Allah knows that Bush deserves it but it still doesn’t make it the correct thing to do.
I don’t want to emulate Lieberman and step on the message so I am a bit cryptic about it. Perhaps not cryptic enough, as no one at Daily Kos even picked up on my main point.
People at Kos were distracted by the curves diary right under yours — which now has over 200 comments. Cryptic vs curves? Cryptic will always lose.
Although I’m not really sure how you can use non-cryptic language and not risk emulating Lieberman.
In “real life” the people that I’m around are talking about this a lot — and it starts with UAE bashing but the primary concern that they come back to again and again is — why are we outsourcing this at all? Even to a British company. And that leads to the discussion of outsourcing, debt, china, etc. All real concerns. Granted, they are a pretty intelligent bunch and tend to lean Democrat.
is that it is a client state
Few seem to have picked up on that. Whatever horrible things the sheik does, he does so with the blessing, and more frequently than not, for the benefit of his patron: The US. Without American tax dollars, he would be unable to do any of those things.
To be as un-cryptic as possible, the principal “terror links” of UAE are to Washington itself.
Actually Ductape these people DO pick that up. They understand the connection between Bush, oil, the UAE, other middle eastern companies and American dollars. They understand the problems with American debt and the slow job growth, all of it. They read about it, they talk about it.
They just talk about it once every few weeks instead of once every few hours. Why? Because they don’t feel they can do anything about it and they have other things to do.
But now, they ARE talking about it. Sure, they start out by UAE bashing because that’s what’s expected. They wander down the hall and into offices and bring it up that way. It’s a way of feeling out your audience to see if you can say what you really think. The difference is that this subject finally has them having long (and I mean long) conversations about it because its clear that people are ready to talk about what they think.
It might be depressing to think that THIS is what it takes. But when you find your way in, seize the moment.
than for this to lead to something constructive. In my diary on this subject, my list of questions Americans should be asking started off, first on the list, with the question of client states, and whether Americans feel they receive a benefit from this policy.
I would love to see the US discontinue the practice of maintaining all client states, and for the people who live in them to be able to choose their own governments, and for American tax dollars currently spent on making sure nothing like that happens to be spent on some domestic situations that are in their own way, constitute a very urgent threat to US national security.
However, I also recognize that the amount of money at stake is more than you or I can even imagine, and greed is a more powerful force than reason.
Are you saying the royal families of UAE are oppressed by Americans in keeping them as a client state?
and engage in all kinds of terrible practices.
I am in favor of liberating them.
Should their subjects, free of foreign interference, choose to hold elections and nominate them as candidates, and elect them, then Americans can freely engage in UAE bashing without fear of violating any provisions, secret or otherwise, of the Patriot Act, nor will they make themselves vulnerable to being called unpatriotic for expressing opposition to their own country’s policies.
‘bash’ kos, but I don’t think it is bashing to simply point out the fact that the prevailing views there are more right wing than yours, meaning generally stronger support for corporate rule and US policies in general, and less inclined to analysis or unpleasant facts.
Is there any mention of the total number of ports being 21 instead of 6? I didn’t see the concerns mentioned of this company being one of the key elements in a new sharia based stock exchange which is trying to work around fundamentalists whiles still being Islamic based. Any chance that might invite problems?
That’s what Arthur Silber was saying yesterday.
And while Governor Eherlich (Republican) of Maryland and Mayor O’Malley of Baltimore (Democrat, running for Governor) act as if they never even realized a foreign corporation has been running Baltimore’s commercial port for some time now, one Maryland businessman writes in the Montgomery Gazette:
There are certainly weaknesses in the security at America’s seaports that need to be addressed and that have been woefully underfunded, but this entire brou-ha-ha is vastly missing that point.
More to the point, once the “base” is all riled up in anti-Arab furor again, where do you think the administration is going to re-direct all that outrage….? Where will the specter of the mushroom cloud next be imposed? Not the UAE, you can be sure of that.
Operation Iranian Freedom was already as solid as anyone could possibly want among the politicians, and the voting class was already all but demanding that the invasion begin immediately, but now the Republicans and Democrats must conduct a “More anti-Arab than thou” contest, some of them may be aware that Iranians are not Arabs, but this is a fine distinction. They’re still Muslims, and therefore still useful for the Charles Martel channeling threatens to replace baseball as mainstream America’s national pasttime.
And of course no one is suggesting that US stop propping up its pet sheiks and emirs and kings and princes and let the people in the various client states have a little bit of that freedom Mr. Danger loves to talk about, and elect their own governments and apply the US tax money spent to prevent such terrorist activity to provide, oh, I don’t know, hey – how about health care? – to the American people who worked for that tax money.
Anyway Janet, thanks for the voice of reason. 🙂
Just for clarification, DPW was formed sometime around last September.
The Hamas website isn’t so much an issue as is the admin’s case that any association to Hamas must be prosecuted.
yes, it is a client state, but that doesn’t mean that the place doesn’t have its share of anti-american sentiment in high places.
I mean, the biggest U.S. client state is Saudi Arabia and there is no chance that we would let them manage port security.
I know there is a whole strain of thought that sees the U.S. as behind every terror attack, but that is not true.
We may have got the ball rolling but our son grew up and left the house a long time ago.
It’s not stupid to question the wisdom of this deal. It’s stupid to act shocked about it. It’s stupid to think that you can outsource your port management and then dictate who buys the corporation you outsourced it to.
When DPW told the White House that they were thinking of buying P&O the White House should informed them that we would cancel our contracts. Failing to do that will amount to a fraud on the shareholders of both companies.
And we wanted to be nice and pay them back for their enormous Katrina gift we could have made other arrangements to compensate them.
Ultimately, we can’t just screw DPW and give the business to one of their competitors. That isn’t right and it isn’t how things are done.
It amounts to a teachable moment about the global economy.
Many Americans seem to have lost track of the extent of foreign ownership and business involvement in the United States. Obvious examples are Toyota and Honda; less obvious are companies like Saudi-owned Aramco Services Corporation, which is right in the middle of our energy supply system.
https://www.aramcoservices.com/cgi-bin/internet.dll/display.jsp?Cat=About+Us/History&File=DEFAUL
T&BV_SessionID=@@@@1747971006.1140831763@@@@&BV_EngineID=gaddfkkmkmdhbedcgifcflhdi.0
We live in a multi-national community, and must understand that before we go on rampages about “no foreign management of our ports” and other fantasies.
See? Those d*mn foreigners can’t even get their web sites to work right!
You’re right that this is definitely a teachable moment. Bu$hCo handled this badly, and unfortunately our congress critters seem to have handled their reaction badly as well.
Hunter’s diary on dKos can be read as a reply to this. He notes several facts about Dubai’s history and leaders that are (a) disturbing and (b) have nothing to do with race or religion. Dubai is a real place, not an abstract symbol of Arab race and Islamic religion. I’m not willing to call Hunter a bigot.