A Storm in Any Port

I really would like the world to settle down and chill out. I rather enjoy not ranting on and on about corporate greed, religious zealotry, and organized campaigns of national murder. However, the world keeps shoving these things into my face and I, forced by my own perhaps hyperbolic sense of trying to make sense of things, must respond. I’d much rather share with everyone stories about what’s lying next to my toilet or, if you prefer, the frequency of bowel movements, far above that which I am compelled to address at present.

There is a lot of commotion about this port deal with the UAE. The UAE (DP World) owns and operates the company that has won the bid to take over the ports from the privately-held British firm (P & O) which held the contract these last 30 years or so. I agree with Jimmy Carter that this deal is no big deal, and there is no reason to assume that allowing the UAE to manage the ports would in anyway reduce our national security. The UAE manages ports all over the world, and thus far, their record has been good. In fact, the UAE, in its effort to maintain a sound and profitable business venture, might even bend over backwards to help make those ports even safer. They are in it for the profit, and they will protect their investment. Even if the UAE did not get this contract, another foreign state-owned company would have. A Malaysian firm was also in the running.

This is not to say that I don’t find some really stinky stuff in all this. Here is a short list of questions to ask:

A. Why wasn’t this deal common knowledge? The top levels of the Bush Administration claim they knew nothing of it until it happened right under their noses. If it isn’t a bold faced lie, then we must refer to the next question.

B. What exactly is the Bush Administration doing in Washington? It seems that everything that happens they claim to either: a) not know about it, b) not get the right information regarding it, c) defer responsibility, or d) blame it on somebody else. I would get fired from my job if I knew nothing, did nothing, and tried to shift blame to others.

C. If this is simply a matter free market policy in action, then why so much Republican effort to get the deal through? Why was it signed without going through the Congress first? There is a law that covers these types of deals and how they are transacted. As we have witnessed with surveillance and torture, following the law has proven to be problematic for the Bush Administration.

D. Why was there such a large and recent influx of money from UAE into Bush family projects, such as the Bush library? At least $1.5 million dollars was donated by the UAE. There are two possible explanations and both are disturbing. Either a) George Bush is a lot closer to Arab royalty than we think, or b) the UAE was buying the upper hand in the proposed port deal.

E. Why were some basic legal provisions overlooked or ignored? Foreign companies doing business on American soil are required by law to keep their business records in the US and have an American citizen placed in a position of responsibility. This is to ensure that American courts can have jurisdiction if necessary. These simple provisions were enforced on the UAE only after there was outcry over the deal.

F. Is it no small coincidence that our current Treasury Secretary, John Snow, who runs the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., sold his own company port, CSX, to the UAE in 2004? What about David Sanborn, who runs DP World's European and Latin American operations and who was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration? You don’t often see strangers holding hands this tightly.

G. Why has the UAE hired former Senator and Viagra spokesman Bob Dole as a lobbyist this late in the game? Why, if this is just the free market at work, are Republican politicians, paid by the people, lobbying so hard for DP World? If the President likes the deal, fine. Why, however, does it require no less than a dozen different Republican senators and representatives, to make news talk-show circuits defending or pleading the deal? On our time no less!

I believe the outcry here is overall a misplaced effort, but the abovementioned questions are very important ones to consider. How many other deals are being conducted in the same clandestine manner, and how many more are games of political opportunism? I believe this administration is the ‘Axis of Political Corruption and Conflicts of Interests’, and the shadows lurking behind this port deal are indicative of other deals they’ve brokered.

Kol Tuv