NEWS -- Any storm in a port...
Well, the port saga continues.
Bush is continuing to defend the deal. In a surprisingly succinct comment from him, he said, "What kind of signal does it send throughout the world if it's okay for a British company to manage the ports, but not a company that has been . . . cleared for security purposes from the Arab world?"
Not surprisingly, Congress is still unhappy. I tend to think Congress will always be unhappy--if you gave them everything they wanted immediately, they'd complain that you caved-in too quickly.
There has been a fair amount of coverage of the Coast Guard's apprehensions about, "intelligence gaps" about Dubai Ports World. That doesn't worry me--many bureaucrats have an attitude that they should know everything about everyone.
In the BBC's story about the Coast Guard's apprehensions, the final paragraph makes reference to a lawsuit filed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and implies--but does not explicitly say--that P&O had to seek permission from the Port Authority before the transfer could take place. If so, then P&O might only have limited rights to the contract, which, in turn, would affect my property rights arguments on this issue. I tried the Port Authority's press releases--there's nothing about it on there, unless hybrid busses or the Goethals Bridge come into play on this issue in an unexpected way. CNN's story on the subject is worth reading, both for lawsuit details and for another corruption angle (the claim that the U.A.E.'s $100,000,000 donation to Katrina relief was really a bribe). The story is more reason to look skeptically on the deal, but I'm still not convinced that this deal is as bad as its critics claim.
As a final note, I had a link on my "Dubya does Dubai" article to a Detroit Free Press article ("...even going so far as to lodge no objections to a 45-day security review of the deal..."). That article is already a different story from the one I linked to. Disappearing links are always a problem with news items, but this one isn't disappearing, it's changing. I've redirected that link to this blog entry. If you want to read a complete news story about the 45-day review, you'll find it here (I hope).
Bush is continuing to defend the deal. In a surprisingly succinct comment from him, he said, "What kind of signal does it send throughout the world if it's okay for a British company to manage the ports, but not a company that has been . . . cleared for security purposes from the Arab world?"
Not surprisingly, Congress is still unhappy. I tend to think Congress will always be unhappy--if you gave them everything they wanted immediately, they'd complain that you caved-in too quickly.
There has been a fair amount of coverage of the Coast Guard's apprehensions about, "intelligence gaps" about Dubai Ports World. That doesn't worry me--many bureaucrats have an attitude that they should know everything about everyone.
In the BBC's story about the Coast Guard's apprehensions, the final paragraph makes reference to a lawsuit filed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and implies--but does not explicitly say--that P&O had to seek permission from the Port Authority before the transfer could take place. If so, then P&O might only have limited rights to the contract, which, in turn, would affect my property rights arguments on this issue. I tried the Port Authority's press releases--there's nothing about it on there, unless hybrid busses or the Goethals Bridge come into play on this issue in an unexpected way. CNN's story on the subject is worth reading, both for lawsuit details and for another corruption angle (the claim that the U.A.E.'s $100,000,000 donation to Katrina relief was really a bribe). The story is more reason to look skeptically on the deal, but I'm still not convinced that this deal is as bad as its critics claim.
As a final note, I had a link on my "Dubya does Dubai" article to a Detroit Free Press article ("...even going so far as to lodge no objections to a 45-day security review of the deal..."). That article is already a different story from the one I linked to. Disappearing links are always a problem with news items, but this one isn't disappearing, it's changing. I've redirected that link to this blog entry. If you want to read a complete news story about the 45-day review, you'll find it here (I hope).
Labels: NEWS
posted by John at 3/01/2006 02:06:00 AM
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