News Ports and Dubai

Ports and Dubai

So do concur with president bush with letting this middle eastern company operate our ports

It makes a huge deal to me that maybe two of the terrorists were from UAE and they drew money from them. It can start with two bad apples and soon enough the entire tree is poisoned. We really dont know to what extent if any they have with any of these groups. The ports are our weakest point security wise I belive in our country. I belive that we should have someone within the country run the ports untill we can solve the security issues. BTW i think that its really cool that you get to go over there Tiger Woods not that long ago did a golf event over there looked so nice

Ive seen some pics of the houses and cars over there...I want to go.

i know basic geography. And I also understand what you are trying to say but isnt it better to be safe then sorry. How doesnt this implicate security?

I agree with E's first post fully, this is the real form of bigtory.

Well it appears the whole deal is dead now anyways.

I spent 3 months in UAE (Dubai), sweetest place ever... very rich country (from the oil of course). The base I was at we even worked along side their military and they are actually pretty cool people who are totally against the idea of terrorism.

As for the ports being out weakest security point... someones been watching 20/20 havent they, haha.

Its a great country. In the military its one of the few TDYs (temporaty duties) where you can eat at T.G.I.Fridays and Outback Steakhouse on the regular, haha. You're there to support a war and yet you are eating a blooming onion for dinner.

glad that its a done deal..

Wow, this little discussion is in just about every forum, lol....

But I say that its an issue that we need to comply to. Stereotyping a company because it comes from country in an area associated with the words "Middle East" will get us nowhere in the future. Personally, I have no problem if DP World wants to take over the port operations. However, I do have a problem with the following...


The parent company of a Dubai-based firm at the center of a political storm in the US over the purchase of American ports participates in the Arab boycott against Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned. The firm, Dubai Ports World, is seeking control over six major US ports, including those in New York, Miami, Philadelphia and Baltimore. It is entirely owned by the Government of Dubai via a holding company called the Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation (PCZC), which consists of the Dubai Port Authority, the Dubai Customs Department and the Jebel Ali Free Zone Area. "Yes, of course the boycott is still in place and is still enforced," Muhammad Rashid a-Din, a staff member of the Dubai Customs Department's Office for the Boycott of Israel, told the Post in a telephone interview. "If a product contained even some components that were made in Israel, and you wanted to import it to Dubai, it would be a problem," he said.

In 1977, the US government passed a law creating the Office of Anti Boycott Compliance in the Department of Commerce in order to prevent any US persons from joining into foreign sanctioned boycotts against nations friendly to the US, thus preventing individuals from creating de facto foreign policy. This law primarily applies to the Arab boycott of Israel, making it illegal to take actions in furtherance of that boycott. The OAC primarily concerns itself with prosecuting businesses that supply information about Israeli product content and other business dealings with Israel to boycotting nations. To get around the secondary aspects of this law, Arab countries simply require declarations that the goods shipped are 100% US made, thus Arab importers accomplish their boycott goals by assuring the product contains no Israeli components. OAC-imposed fines for supplying information about Israeli product content to boycotting nations can be hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus denial of future export licenses. But the OAC seldom enforces the law.

Second, the bill of lading is documentation about every shipment via truck, train or ship and contains detailed information about a shipment's content, quantities, origin and destination. With this information, the U.A.E. via Dubai Ports World would be able to examine detailed information about shipments to and from Israel, a nation the U.A.E. actively boycotts. Even if such information is guaranteed to remain in the US, digital copies of such data can be made and emailed globally. The DPW deal would therefore facilitate the supply of information contained in the bills of lading of commercial products to be used by the Arab League nations to offer alternative products to US buyers, thus creating a trade barrier for Israeli exporters. In fact, by Dubai having this information, the Arab world would be able to launch a full-scale economic war against Israel by using shipping information to enact total disruption of Israeli exports in the US and around the world.

This is not a cloak and dagger fantasy. The Arab League and its members have been running several campaigns to ruin Israel economically on a global scale for years. The first such campaign was the Arab League boycott which started as early as 1921, twenty-seven years before Israel was a state, and which is still in full force today. A second "divest-from-Israel" campaign was enacted to, in the words of its organizers, make Israel 'economically unbalanced' and to create a 'one state solution' meaning a Palestinian state without Israel. A third such campaign, which was enacted while the Palestinian Authority was claiming to negotiate with Israel in good faith for a Palestinian state, is the PA-organized economic blockade of Israel in Malaysia.

Third, having DPW-managed ports would also make shipping military goods to Israel difficult. Tanks, trucks and other large military hardware do not fit into shipping containers, thus they can not be hidden, even by the CIA. This is not information the US or Israel wants in the hands of countries sworn to Israel's destruction. When push comes to shove, Israel is still the most reliable American ally in the Middle East and another democracy.

Since the DPW deal would facilitate the bill of lading information for all shipments through DPW-managed ports to Israel to be given to directly to every Arab nation that is sworn to the destruction of Israel, the DPW deal should ring alarm bells for both American and Israeli security.

On the terror front, since the U.A.E. is a major drug port and DPW will have access to secured shipping areas, ceding our ports to Arab control may potentially be opening US ports to a new channel of drug and weapons imports, including terror weapons imports and money laundering. Out of the thousands and thousands and thousands of house sided port containers that enter the US, only a handful are randomly inspected since it would be impossible to inspect all port containers even in one port in one day. It is true the Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security are responsible for port security, but when the same company runs both the import and export port for a single shipment, security can too easily be compromised. For that same reason, we should not allow, for example, a Colombian or Mexican port operating company to have operational access to US ports for shipments to and from those countries either to staunch drug shipments.

yea its a copy and paste from two sites and two opinions that i had read and found most compelling and agreeable....but like i said, i dont really have a problem with DPW taking over....it would probably be for the better for the US to give it to a foreign company anyways....who knows, maybe they can run it better than our government...i see a few reasons for concern but it shouldnt be any different than handing over control of ports to a company from any other country....to add on to what you said E, i actually think that if they dont go through with the deal, the US will probably be frowned upon not only by the UAE and the rest of the Middle East, but the world alike as magisterial "bigots"