US ports

mmap

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I'm surprised this hasn't been discussed here before, but here goes...

People have been making a big deal about all muslims not being evil and / or terrorists etc. And that the US has great friends among them...

But them when the port / dock / harbour (what ever you call them) operations are sold to a Dubai company all of a sudden it's a national risk that an Arab nation has conrol over these operations... The United Arab Emirates have been nothing but friends to the US AFAIK, so how is it different from a UK company running them?

Hypocracy of the highest order if you ask me. All they are saying is that really they think all arabs are against them and they will not trust any of them.
 
Re: US ports

mmap said:
I'm surprised this hasn't been discussed here before, but here goes...

People have been making a big deal about all muslims not being evil and / or terrorists etc. And that the US has great friends among them...

But them when the port / dock / harbour (what ever you call them) operations are sold to a Dubai company all of a sudden it's a national risk that an Arab nation has conrol over these operations... The United Arab Emirates have been nothing but friends to the US AFAIK, so how is it different from a UK company running them?

Hypocracy of the highest order if you ask me. All they are saying is that really they think all arabs are against them and they will not trust any of them.

Blame our politicians. The Democrats threatened to use the ports issue (playing to the fears of the public), so the Republicans took the issue over, against the sane judgement of the president. All it is, is a political dick measuring contest, which in the end will end up hurting this country more than it helps.
 
Absolutely stupid why this plan was stopped. I see racism and xenophobia within the reasons.
 
On Bill O'Reily he noted that a few Saudi and UAE newspapers editorialized on how they felt a bit betrayed or back stabbed by the deal gone awry.

This will only hurt us in the long run. Democratic Senator Chuck Schummer from NY was very vocal about the port deal and definitely played into the ignorance and fears surrounding it. I think some politicians also stated that security would be outsourced by the UAE which was totally untrue.

It is dissapointing too to see Republicans turn their back against the President too. That was really disheartening and cowardace. :thumbsdown:

I wonder if some of these politicians, Democrats and Republicans, will make the same amount of noise about communist China having control of some ports in California. Talk about hypocrisy. :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown:

There are NO American companies making bids for control of the ports and I'd rather have them in control by the UAE than China.

This is not good for fighting the war on terror because it can be used against us for propoganda and will not help sway moderate muslims in the region to favor the US. I wish Bush would just veto congress and go on with it, this will bite us in the ass. :thumbsdown:
 
Yeah, saw an interview with Colin Powell and he was wondering what all the fuss was about. The docks would still have only american workers and state and federal forces plus homeland security would still be watching over the operations (just as they do now).

Really does not look like a good message to send to the muslin / arab nations.
 
mmap said:
Yeah, saw an interview with Colin Powell and he was wondering what all the fuss was about. The docks would still have only american workers and state and federal forces plus homeland security would still be watching over the operations (just as they do now).

Really does not look like a good message to send to the muslin / arab nations.

You know the really sad part? You are more informed of this than the average American.
 
justin syder said:
On Bill O'Reily he noted that a few Saudi and UAE newspapers editorialized on how they felt a bit betrayed or back stabbed by the deal gone awry.

This will only hurt us in the long run. Democratic Senator Chuck Schummer from NY was very vocal about the port deal and definitely played into the ignorance and fears surrounding it. I think some politicians also stated that security would be outsourced by the UAE which was totally untrue.

It is dissapointing too to see Republicans turn their back against the President too. That was really disheartening and cowardace. :thumbsdown:

I wonder if some of these politicians, Democrats and Republicans, will make the same amount of noise about communist China having control of some ports in California. Talk about hypocrisy. :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown:

There are NO American companies making bids for control of the ports and I'd rather have them in control by the UAE than China.

This is not good for fighting the war on terror because it can be used against us for propoganda and will not help sway moderate muslims in the region to favor the US. I wish Bush would just veto congress and go on with it, this will bite us in the ass. :thumbsdown:

Well, Bush had said he would veto congress, but the dubai firm took the pre-emptive action of relinquishing control of the ports, so the deal is effectively dead. I don't think there's a way to ressurect it, even though in reality thats what would be best. The politicians destroyed the world's view of America for another 50 - 100 years as a result of this.

The sadder part of this that the Americans who are against the ports deal, are doing exactly what the terrorists want, being afraid of terrorism. Terrorism is based on terror. People changing their lives out of fear of what might happen. These politicians and 50.5% of the US population (i'm guessing) are afraid of the UAE, because someone said they were linked in some way to terrorism.

I for one am not afraid of what might happen. I agree with Justin, I would prefer the UAE managing our ports over China, or Saudi Arabia for that matter. I'd prefer an American company only for the fact that the money paid to them would come back into this country, instead of heading into another country's treasury, but that's not a reason to kill this deal, in any way shape or form.
 
this is really bad, in my opinion. i heard the NPR story about the port security, and for once I don't agree with the democrats. If we're trying to "win the hearts and minds of the Arab people," this will just piss them off more. Bad stuff. bigtime stupid move on the part of the congress and etc.
 
I've been swaying back and forth on this issue....I'm not sure how I feel.

People like Schummer don't seem to care about telecommuniation projects (like installing the congressional phone system) and other homeland security projects have been outsourced to Israeli companies.

Bottom line is...America should be in control of its own security. This goes for any country in fact.

The problem with this Dubai ports deal is the timing. After 9/11, the ports should have been, for lack of a better term, nationalized. Not that the american govt. should have full control, but an american company at least.

But since that didn't happen, it is hypocritcal to put the kaibash on this deal...If the ports are for sale to foreign companies, good luck to the highest bidder.

Now that this deal has fallen through, people are worried about the economic impact as well as the impact on the "war on terror".....Apparently Dubai might strike a deal with Airbus instead of Boeing....another unintended consequence I guess
 
The problem really is that in fact you do not want that a foreign country (not company) has direct control over any company which is not based in their country. We have laws preventing this, but there are always ways around e.g Schiphol owns 40% of JFK's terminal 4 and Schiphol is a state-owned company.
Here we really saw the wrong reasoning for something which should not happen, this way the US economy will suffer in the long run, even though a nation should never have direct investment and control of "private" enterprises outside its own bounderies.
 
You can't help but think of how ignorant (and racist) the majority of American people is from news like this. All these politicians are blocking the deal because they can actually get votes for it.

And this has many precedents too. American politicians blocked the Unocal deal, and were crying foul when Hong Kong based Hutchison took over control of the Panama Canal.
 
haha604 said:
You can't help but think of how ignorant (and racist) the majority of American people is from news like this. All these politicians are blocking the deal because they can actually get votes for it.

And this has many precedents too. American politicians blocked the Unocal deal, and were crying foul when Hong Kong based Hutchison took over control of the Panama Canal.

Sadly it's not racism on the people's part, its all ignorance... The politicians object to these deals based on their own criteria and sell it to their constituents in one of two ways:
1. Protecting us from terrorism (Dubai deal)
2. Protecting us from high oil/goods prices (Unocal and Panama Canal deals).

And most people are too stupid to realize that killing/opposing those deals won't actually reduce the threat of terrorism, or reduce oil prices...

Most Americans don't know any better and take what the person they elected to congress says as fact, and continues on with life. Those of us that actually take time to look at the outside world, can see these deals possibly being beneficial, but unfortunately there's not enough people who could defeat them in an election.

I agree it's sad, but there's very little that can be done about it, because complaining to elected officials is about as useful as standing on a busy street screaming your ideas. Of course adding money to the mix would get attention, but then you run into conflict of interest. (No American company would willingly want to be replaced by a foreign competitor, they would prefer hundreds of millions in government subsidies to keep them in business.)
 
What's funny is...

According to some of these politicians, Dubai should be our #1 enemy. Apparently their links to al qaeda and terrorism are larger than that of Iraq. If they are as bad as they say, we shouldn't be dealing with them at all...in fact, we should probably invade them or put sanctions on them.

They put this image into peoples minds that if the deal goes through, Arabs are going to be working in our ports inspecting the cargo.
 
hokiethang said:
Sadly it's not racism on the people's part, its all ignorance... The politicians object to these deals based on their own criteria and sell it to their constituents in one of two ways:
1. Protecting us from terrorism (Dubai deal)
2. Protecting us from high oil/goods prices (Unocal and Panama Canal deals).

Racism maybe too strong a word, but discrimination certainly plays a role. eg. Arabs=terroists, China=military and economic threat.
 
no, all foreigners.

it surprises me how much people in this country still think that race even matters. It's a class war people, not a race war.
 
It surprises me how much people think that race doesn't even matter.
 
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