On The Matter of Ports…
Lately, there’s been a bit of a tempest in a teapot concerning the purchase of the old P&O Ports company by the Emirate of Dubai, especially given that one of the ports involved is just north of here in Baltimore. The thing is, this whole matter just smacks of racism, and our friends at Metblogs Dubai have a great take on the whole situation.
Given that 70 of the 80 port terminals in the USA are managed by foreign companies, this whole matter has proven that our citizenry, especially out legislatures, are perhaps not as open minded as we’d like to think.
I think it’s a VERY salient point that this is not a company that is UAE based, it is a company that is UAE OWNED. I’m not necessarily opposed to this deal, but glossing it over with these base claims that Dubai is “a staunch ally in the war on terror” ignores a lot of UAE history. They were one of the very few governments to officially recognize the Taliban and the Treasury Department itself has complained about the level of their cooperation in tracing Osama Bin Laden’s money. Who, as recently as 1999, their royal family was personally chummy with.
There may be knee-jerk racism causing some people’s concens about this deal but it’s simply untrue that there’s no good reasons to be concerned.
Except that the business has already said they’re not changing out staff, and that the mostly American workforce will continue to stay that way.
Believe it or not, NPR’s got good stuff on this, including this story on Port Newark.
Never thought I’d see the day that Pres. Bush and NPR were on the same side.
OK, everyone who believes that the new UAE owned company is not going to change out any staff or anything, raise your hands. Yea, that’s what I thought. We can’t even count on THAT guarantee with US-owned companies, as anybody who has ever worked for a company that was involved in merging with another organization, or was the victim of a corporate takeover, can certainly attest to.
But we can keep things like Immigration Law on our side and make sure they’re at least hiring Americans, ECG.
I think this about sums up my feelings about port security.