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Sat 18 Feb, 2006 09:28 am
Bid to nix port sale is gaining steam
BY RICHARD SISK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Quote:WASHINGTON - Efforts to block or stall the sale of port terminals in New York and New Jersey to a Dubai firm snowballed yesterday as Mayor Bloomberg urged a calmer look at the deal.Against strong White House support of the sale, Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) offered a long-shot bill to block foreign governments and companies from buying U.S. port operations.
"Our port security is too important to place in the hands of foreign governments," Clinton said. Menendez warned that "our ports are the front lines against terrorism."
The Senate Banking Committee next week will also grill members of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., the secretive arm of the Treasury Department that approved the deal by a 12-0 vote.
The congressional action was aimed at the $6.8 billion purchase from a British firm by the Dubai Ports World company of the rights to run terminals and cargo operations in six U.S. ports - New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Miami.
The deal would put the United Arab Emirates firm in charge of the New York City Passenger Ship Terminal in the West 50s and a cargo terminal in Newark.
The Manhattan terminal is on city-owned land, but Bloomberg said he would let the Bush administration and Congress balance the free trade and security concerns.
"Look, you want to have international commerce," Bloomberg said on his weekly WABC radio show. "U.S. companies make investments overseas all the time and if we want to be able to do that, you have to have foreign companies be able to make investments here."
Critics of the deal have noted that one of the 9/11 hijackers was from the United Arab Emirates, but James Zogby, head of the Arab American Institute, accused lawmakers of "shameful" political grandstanding in raising terror concerns about an Arab-owned firm.
"This is more about local politics" than security issues, Zogby said. "The United Arab Emirates is a friend and ally. They invest in us heavily."
Where do you stand? Should we allow vital facilities such as ports and who knows if it wont be airports to next to fall under foreign ownership?
Re: Bid to nix port sale is gaining steam
au1929 wrote:
Where do you stand? Should we allow vital facilities such as ports and who knows if it wont be airports to next to fall under foreign ownership?
Well, you sure do know how to write a loaded sentence, au, but this time, I'm going along with you.
I think Bloomberg is right, if we want unfettered investment over seas than the same rules must apply here. The complaint that the investor is a Dubai company is a mix of ethnocentrism and fear mongering. No one was complaining about the British company.
Acquiunk
It may be in your opinion fear mongering But in mine it is lack of trust.
Re: Bid to nix port sale is gaining steam
Quote:"Look, you want to have international commerce," Bloomberg said on his weekly WABC radio show. "U.S. companies make investments overseas all the time and if we want to be able to do that, you have to have foreign companies be able to make investments here."
Critics of the deal have noted that one of the 9/11 hijackers was from the United Arab Emirates...
I'm trying to imagine the outcry if some other western country was to pass legislation preventing American companies from investing there, because
America invaded Iraq or something along these lines........
old europe
Ther US is presently at war. And who do you suppose we are at war with.
If it were a major port facility, OE, I just imagine they would be willing to live with the outcry.
OE
I keep hearing that Islam is a peaceful religion. Someone should tell that to their adherents. In the name of their religion they will turn on the West in an instance. Note the riots over some cartoons. When religion not humanity rules you have no friends.
Pakistani Cleric Announces Bounty For Killing of Danish Cartoonists
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 18, 2006; Page A21
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 17 -- Protests sparked by newspaper cartoons of the prophet Muhammad continued across the country Friday, as a cleric announced a $1 million bounty for the killing of any of the Danish cartoonists responsible for the caricatures and Denmark temporarily closed its embassy.
Hundreds of protesters gathered in the capital, Islamabad, after midday prayers. Rallying at a downtown intersection, some chanted, "Bush is a dog!" and others carried banners reading, "Death sentence for the cartoonists." Police in riot gear watched from the sidelines. Similar demonstrations were reported in other cities across the country.
For the most part, the demonstrations remained peaceful and did not match the scale or intensity of protests earlier in the week that left five people dead and scores of businesses, many of them Western franchises, in ruins.
Political leaders from moderate as well as hard-line religious parties have vowed to continue the demonstrations, which have expanded beyond the cartoon controversy into a broader attack on Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, and his Western backers, especially the United States.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021702036.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
The interesting thing, though, is that when the UAE order 30 Boeing Dreamliners, people are delighted. But when they want to invest in US ports, they're all of a sudden in the same category as the ultra-radicals from the Pakistani Medressahs.....
Perspective.
OE
The US gives Egypt approx. $1.5 Billion a year to Egypt. Does that means we trust them or we are trying to buy their "Friendship?" Meanwhile the most radical group is gaining power in their legislative process. Is there any assurance it will not topple the present government and task over? Is the UAE immune from the same type of Islamic radicalism?
The question could be asked if any government is immune from being overthrown and replaced by radicals who see you as their enemy number one. Has happened almost everywhere...
But quite apart from that, I find it amazing how free trade, globalization, foreign investments etc. are hailed as desirable achievements as long as you are on the side that's making the profits.
That not even an American thing, we are all guilty of that. We are happy about "bringing democracy to that region", as long as the candidates democratically elected are the ones we favor. We are all about open markets, as long as those bloody Chinese refrain from exporting cheap cars to our countries. We are telling Brazil and Argentina to stop whining and join free trade agreements and quit subsidizing their agricultural sector, while each and every major trading block is guilty of subsidizing is very own agricultural sector and imposing protective tariffs.
Therefore, I'm not quite sure how hyped up the whole port affair really is.
Just have a look at the southern border. I have a friend in Mexico who's been traveling to the US countless times, without showing his passport once. At the same time, I'm getting photographed and fingerprinted upon entering the US. Talk about security....
I do absolutely agree that the ports are a weak spot in the US "homeland defense". But the reason is not an UAE investment. The problems were and are well known, and NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING has been done about it.
I think it is odd to outsource our ports, but then I don't know too much about how these things are normally done.
But this is what homeland security had to say:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060219/ap_on_go_pr_wh/port_security
revel
With Bush is in favor of the sale. Would the toadies of homeland security dare say anything different?
au wrote :
'For the most part, the demonstrations remained peaceful '
as i wrote on another thread : 'count the number of protesters and count the muslims going about their every-day work trying to make a living".
sure, there are a bunch of lunatics out there; aren't there all over the world ?
the worst thing we can do. is pour gasoline on the fire, but some nespapers and others are doing it in the name of 'freedom of the press' - but they are hiding their true colours.
isn't there something called 'the army of god' in africa , who recruit children and turn them into killers in the name of jesus ? we sure don't identify all other christians with those lunatics. of course, there is one huge difference, this 'army of god' operates in darkest of africa and represents little danger to western world at this time. so we'd rather not hear about those murderers. hbg
What won't the U.S. do in the name of greed??
Anon
hamburger wrote:au wrote :
'For the most part, the demonstrations remained peaceful '
as i wrote on another thread : 'count the number of protesters and count the muslims going about their every-day work trying to make a living".
sure, there are a bunch of lunatics out there; aren't there all over the world ?
the worst thing we can do. is pour gasoline on the fire, but some nespapers and others are doing it in the name of 'freedom of the press' - but they are hiding their true colours.
isn't there something called 'the army of god' in africa , who recruit children and turn them into killers in the name of jesus ? we sure don't identify all other christians with those lunatics. of course, there is one huge difference, this 'army of god' operates in darkest of africa and represents little danger to western world at this time. so we'd rather not hear about those murderers. hbg
I wrote what? That statement may have appeared in one of the articles I posted however I would never characterize the protests as being peaceful. Not with buildings being torched and people being killed. It would appear to me that the Moslems do not understand the concept of a peaceful protest.
Bill Would Stop Sale of Port Operations to Arabs
Bill Would Stop Sale of Port Operations to Arabs
By Nicholas Johnston
Bloomberg News
Saturday 18 February 2006
Democratic senators cite security issue.
Washington - Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Robert Menendez of New Jersey have introduced legislation to prohibit companies owned or controlled by foreign governments from buying U.S. port operations.
The measure is intended to block the $6.8 billion sale of a company that operates six U.S. ports to a firm controlled by the United Arab Emirates.
"Our port security is too important to place in the hands of foreign governments," Clinton said in a statement Friday.
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Thursday called for hearings on the purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., the U.K.'s largest port operator, by DP World, Dubai's port company. With the acquisition, DP World would gain control over most operations at ports in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Miami, Baltimore and New Orleans.
"Ports are the front lines of the war on terrorism," Menendez said. "We wouldn't turn the Border Patrol or the Customs Service over to a foreign government, and we can't afford to turn our ports over to one either."
Lawmakers have also asked the Bush administration to conduct a more thorough review of the purchase. Seven lawmakers sent a letter Thursday to Treasury Secretary John Snow asking a government panel known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to look into the purchase.
Snow said Friday that while he had not seen the congressional requests for an additional review, the committee was "thorough, and carefully considered the issue of national security in that acquisition."
"The process worked as it is intended to work," Snow told reporters in Carol Stream, Ill., a western suburb of Chicago. The Departments of Defense and Homeland Security are part of the process, he said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the administration continued to support the sale and would brief members of Congress on its decision.
"It's the considered opinion of the U.S. government that this can go forward," Rice told a roundtable of Arab journalists Friday at the State Department in Washington. Rice, who will visit the UAE next week as part of a three-country Middle East tour, said there had been a "thorough review" of the sale and "it was decided that this could be done and done safely."
Rice described Abu Dhabi as "a very good friend" of the United States.
Two of the Sept. 11 attackers in 2001 were citizens of the United Arab Emirates and the country's banking system helped transfer money to the plotters, according to Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. He was one of the signatories to the letter. "I approach this with a great deal of dubiousness," Schumer told reporters in Washington. "The chances for infiltration are just too great."
Jarrod Agen, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, said Thursday that the U.S. government would still control the ports.
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