NEWS: Arab Firm May Gain Control of Several U.S. Ports

I got an Idea, if the ports will be given to the Arabs of Saudi,

Then the Homeland security should be handle by Iran.

Pakistan can take care of the CIA.

Syria of the FBI

China can be good with FEMA.

Like that we can show the world that US is not bias at all even in the face of terrorism and enemies all over.

Marg, before assuming the nation's intentions, look into them or read the post right before yours. The UAE is vastly different than Iran in their dependence on America and their relations.

Unless you think all arabs are the same

Originally posted by junglejake

Unless you think all arabs are the same

I don't know Jake my opinions has change very much since all the chaos and violence going on in other nations.

It's all for sale, and always has been...feed the greed.




Outsource it all and hope you have dual citizenship in a nuetral country, just in case.

Almost all ports, just like nearly all Hospitals, airports and train stations are privately owned. the ports themselves are mearly a business like any other, not a National intelligence or security agency. Making that comparison is just rediculous. HSBC bank is a chinese bank but a good deal of americans carry their credit cards. I bet many people on this board have HSBC credit cards. Whens the last time some identity thief was allowed by the bank to hijack your account? Companies are the last entities on earth to be influenced or governed by fanatical religious ideals.

The problem I have with it is that DP World is owned by the Dubai government. Governmentally run companies can be.

gee, both the hard left and the hard right agree on something. how about that.
this is clearly badistan, man.
and yet, it is happening.
it will be fun to watch a few hard one-wingers start flapping the other way at least. there's always a silver lining, lol.

JungleJake has it right about UAE. I wouldn't quite say their with us, but they're not against us really either. They've got money, their money depends on oil, oil depends on the straight of Hormuz, Iran is a potential threat to the Hormuz.

Cap Weinberger (who I happen to be a pretty big fan of) talked about this back in 96 when he wrote The Next War. The premise in one of the scenarios was that Iran got the bomb and demanded that the US remove all forces in the ME back to Diego Garcia, and then moves to control the Hormuz to gain control of oil prices. It makes sense to me: Strategically speaking, UAE is in the way of one of our enemies, and RealPolitik applies.

The "connections to 9/11" thing is way too thin for my mind. Walmart is an American company, so therefore Walmart has ties to the Mai Lai Massacre, does it not? So why in the world would any Asian country have Walmart? Clearly the Walmart employees in China are going to start burning down villages and raping the women; their a bunch of white devils.

Except... they're Chinese people, and Walmart has no connection to Mai Lai anyhow.

What you forget is that even if, hypothetically, the US had no control over who can run the ports, the US does have control over immigration and worker visas, and can legislate safety regulations that apply to foreign operations on US soil, including DOJ background checks, or the presence of government supervisors.

Last but not least, a vessel doesn't have to get into port to hit us; actually I would prefer not to get into port before striking if I was making the attack. I'd use a missile, even a jury-rigged one if needbe, to accomplish an airburst, and I'd fire from as far as I could in hopes of ditching my vessel and living to fight another day.


This is NOT (actually, SHOULD NOT be) a racial issue. It's an issue of what our government is doing to monitor a major potential source of drug and weapons traffic, not to mention a potential vulnerability to terrorism, as opposed to simply trusting civilians whos primary job description does not include counter-terrorism.

For those of you who didn't know, AK-47s and Ecstasy are coming into LA by sea regularly already, and the ports aren't owned by Arabs. It's not even a secret. Anybody with the social skills to chat up their drug dealer can find this out. The guy who told me this isn't exactly a big wheel- just some E-tard who looked around for a good price on his bad habbit and ended up finding out that there was a veritable contraband bazzar available to him if he gave a few hundred dollars to a couple of mid-level drug dealers.

This is a REAL issue, not a racial one.

I am willing to accept that the UAE is only looking for a new business opportunity as well as a way the strengthen ties with the US. That their intentions are honorable.

What I am not will to accept on faith is that there are absolutely NO radical islamist sympathizers in the entire UAE. Call that paranoid or whatever, but this is just a new possible avenue for terrorism against the US. Not to say that as soon as the switch takes place that tons of terrorist and bombs are going to be flooding our ports, but it would just be a matter of time.

You think that the terrorist aren't trying to figure out who's palms they need to grease already? Heck, they may even have a man on the inside right now, no matter what people may think of them, they are not fools.

Think about it this way, back in the late 80's some nut was going around to stores and poisoning over the counter pain relievers (that's why we have our tamper-proof packaging now). The companies that manufactured the drugs were just trying to make a profit (and help folks to a lesser extent), the stores that sold the drugs were doing the same. There was one nut who decided to exploit a weakness in the chain and a lot of people died. That's what scares me about this, it only take one person in the right position, and this could be VERY bad for the US.

I don't see that it really matters who owns the operation. All goods in and out are still subject to inspection by US customs and other security checks.
The people doing the work will stay, the people supervising them will stay, although there may be some changes at the very top level of management.

Apart from the scare-mongering, it's really a bit of a non-event

Originally posted by Britguy
............
Apart from the scare-mongering, it's really a bit of a non-event

I woud still prefer if the U.S. was in control of those ports, and every other U.S. port.

That's Globalism/Capitalism for you Muaddib.
We all have big corporations that receive government tax breaks then outsource all the production overseas to slash labour costs and increase their stock portfolio profits.
I agree, it would be nice to have the jobs and ownership remain at home but, as the old saying goes, "money talks"

Edited with the following thought......

If our own government think so little of the people they supposedly represent, should we, the voters, have the opportunity to outsource them too? I'm sure there are plenty of foreign politicians out there willing to do the job for less. Hell, we might even get a better service

[edit on 20-2-2006 by Britguy]

Britguy, Capitalism is not to be blamed for this. People will try to use any economic system to make money, that's the truth.

Capitalism is based on individual rights, we, the people have the right to give our vote as to what we think is right or wrong, and governments have to act according to what we think, as a majority, that's Capitalism in a Republic.

[edit on 20-2-2006 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Muaddib

I woud still prefer if the U.S. was in control of those ports, and every other U.S. port.

I agree with you 100% muaddib we can not afford to play with our security specially when it comes to what comes and go inside of the US.

Originally posted by yadboy
What I am not will to accept on faith is that there are absolutely NO radical islamist sympathizers in the entire UAE.

I'm sure that there are radical islamist sympathizers somewhere in the UAE. John Walker Lindh taught me never to assume too much.

The ports, however, remain under US control. We control who can come in to work in them, even if it's not Americans. The vessels coming in are subject to our customs agents and our Coast Guard. We can require employees there to be subject to any check we like and we can put federal inspectors there whenever we like.

Nothing has happened that makes it even one little bit easier (or harder) for anyone to bring a boatload of BM-13s and RPG-7s into this country. Depending on where you get them from, and whether or not our intelligence has gut eyes on them, your chances of success are about the same. The only difference is who makes the money when that ship puts in to port.

Take airports for example. When El Al, Quantas, Virgin, or whoever else is operating a terminal in the US, it's still a bunch of Americans handling the baggage and running the security.



Conspiracy to chew on
Imagine the soundbyte though if something did happen through those ports now. Can you say blackmail?

Picture this: a load of weapons is caught in one of these ports, or worse yet, there is an attack that comes into one of them. The hawks are screaming for retaliation against the UAE. The diplomats are pleading with the UAE, "We know it wasn't you, but our people are freaked. You've gotta show some good faith if we're going to avoid a conflict. Let us put some extra jets in your country and clear us to use them against Iran if the need should arise. Use your guest worker program to put together a small foreign legion to help us in Iraq. Just do something to calm our citizens down."

Look i think the USA stands for the United States of America or has it changed through the years? I think that the usa needs to clean up our own back yerd before thinking about other countries. Look people this country belongs to us the tax payers yes! that is us this goverment has forgot that they work for us taxpayers. if it wernt for us the dam politicians would not have a job. We the citizens must stand together and make the people who think they run this country listen to us. We run this country not Bush he needs to pull his head out of his ASS!!!!!!!!

Originally posted by todd_wing
Look i think the USA stands for the United States of America or has it changed through the years? I think that the usa needs to clean up our own back yerd before thinking about other countries. Look people this country belongs to us the tax payers yes! that is us this goverment has forgot that they work for us taxpayers. if it wernt for us the dam politicians would not have a job. We the citizens must stand together and make the people who think they run this country listen to us. We run this country not Bush he needs to pull his head out of his ASS!!!!!!!!

It's nice to think that the people run this county, but that just isn't the case. Not to say we have no control, but we really don't have much. If the polititians want something to happen, it WILL happen. Reguardless of the law, public outcry, or opinion polls. Republican, Democrat, these lables are just a way to keep the general public divided, because they know if we all got together, I mean really got together, we COULD boot them all out on their rich, pampered behinds.

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...", it's much more interesting to fret and fume about hunting accidents (be it an accident or not).

P.S. - I would rather Bush kept his head up his bum, Lord knows what havoc he could reek if he could actually see and hear what's going on!

I TOO AGREE THAT THE PORTS SHOULD NOT BE HANDLED AUE. THEY SHOULD BE OWNED AND OPERATED BY THE USA.USING USA EMPLOYEES.

Originally posted by JACLESK1
I TOO AGREE THAT THE PORTS SHOULD NOT BE HANDLED AUE. THEY SHOULD BE OWNED AND OPERATED BY THE USA.USING USA EMPLOYEES.

WELL, IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL ANY BETTER, THEY....Ahem

If it makes you feel any better, they'll still be using the same employees they were. This is happening because a British company was bought out by a company owned by the UAE government. If anything, they're going to up security and inspect more than 5% of the international shipments coming in so as to convince Americans they're going to protect American assets, knowing full well the horrible diplomatic backlash that would result if something did manage to get through.

Quite frankly, the more I've been thinking about this, the more shocked I am that the UAE actually wants to take this on. One mistake, and conspiracy will become a mainstream concept.

Originally posted by marg6043

Originally posted by Muaddib

I woud still prefer if the U.S. was in control of those ports, and every other U.S. port.

I agree with you 100% muaddib we can not afford to play with our security specially when it comes to what comes and go inside of the US.

I agree 150% with both of you, we need to keep our ports under our control and out of the hands of possible terrorists.

It's time that WE THE PEOPLE take back our country from the "Benedict-Arnolds" that has taken us down this road of betrail that they have been leading us on for the past four years or more.

We need to "outsource" Bush&Co to the middle-east for good and take back what belongs to us,... the citizens of the USA,... our heritage demands that we take care of our country and our people in it,...... 10 to 1 our dead servicemen and women from all past and present wars are rolling in their graves at the injustice that is befalling our nation at the hands of this Administration that is holding our White House, people, and Nation hostage for their lust of greed. We need to plurge ourselves of these people once and for all !

It's high time that we demand that the Senate and House start Impeachment proceedings against the criminal elements in the White House