Current mood:	tired
Current music:	Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Entry tags:	homeland security, politics, uae, us politics

uae buyout of p&o, why do we care?
the us government has given approval for a uae state owned company to buy p&o。 p&o owns some us ports， though the us government runs port security。 the uae is a unequivocal us ally in the fight against jihadi nuisances。 the uae is far and away the biggest financial centre in the muslim world， no doubt due to the relatively open and tolerant nature of its society。 it also happens to be a largely muslim and arab country。 that last is apparently sufficient reason for many - right from moonbat left through to fundie right - to take exception to the deal and the us government's acquiescence to the deal。 i've yet to see any sort of case for the panic。

frank j takes on the mantle of "president khalifa bin zayid al-nuhayyan of the united arab emirates" and explains why there is no need to get all het up about this deal：

Yes, I cheered for a moment at the deaths of so many infidels... until I remembered how much business we do in New York! My country has a huge per capita income, but it's honestly not the most solid in the world. Implications of us involved in terrorism could knock us over the edge, and, if you took a poll of our citizens, you'd see a near majority consider economic stability more important than mass murder. As much as I want you all to die, we have our own housing bubble to worry about over here. Do any of you understand that? Sometimes I think I'd have to use a pipe bomb to get through your thick skulls.

And honestly, how many of you knew your ports weren't owned by Americans before all this? I swear, if any of you raise your hands, I'll cut them off. None of you knew anything about the ports until the talking heads and harlots jumped on this issue, and suddenly all of you are like, "Oh no! The Arabs are going to run our ports and they want to kill us all!" Hell yes, we want to kill you all, but it's not like we could fit that in our business plan. Have any of you looked at our business plan? Of course not. Holy Allah, I so want to strangle you all!

All I want you stupid infidels to understand is that this deal is all business. All thing being equal, I would stab you all repeatedly and then behead you, but that is not a money making venture.

this article effectively demolishes what little argument， other than "they're not white"， the panic-mongers are providing。 there may yet be real problems with this deal， although i would expect such problems， even if they exist， to be dwarfed by things like the inevitable incompetence of the government 'run' security：

At least one of the ports where DP World is set to operate, Baltimore, has been dogged by security shortcomings for years. A Baltimore Sun investigation in June 2005 revealed that the port's fiber-optic alarm system on the perimeter fence malfunctioned and was usually switched off, and that port police were so understaffed that their patrol boats often dry-docked because there was no one to operate them. The newspaper also found that a pair of "video cameras" guarding the entrance to one important marine terminal were actually blocks of wood on poles.

Last summer, a tour of the port, the nation's eighth largest, revealed gaps in perimeter fences, unattended gates, surveillances systems that didn't work and insufficient police patrols on land and sea.

one could almost suspect that the sudden focus on this non-issue is a deliberate attempt to distract from the real security problems that are not being dealt with。