Pligget

Pligget
Little to say for myself

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Deals, Blocks and Vetos

Fascinating.

Reported in today's NY Times is the news that Bush would veto any attempt to block the takeover of certain US seaport terminals (New York, New Orleans, Miami and elsewhere), by Dubai Ports World. Apparently some members of Congress had said they would campaign to have the takeover blocked on security grounds.

Aside from the obvious implication that Congress believes every Arab to be a potential terrorist, what's fascinating is that there's virtually no mention of something I would have thought was pivotal. It's not until the last 60 or so words of the NYT's 1740-word piece that there is any mention of the fact that the current owner of those terminals is "Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation of Britain" (i.e. P&O) - and it seems to mention that fact only for the sake of completeness. If you'd blinked you would have missed it.

How, may one ask, would the US Congress have gone about blocking the takeover of one foreign company by another anyway? Is this an example of the US Administration believing everything in America to belong to Americans, or that "big business" is the exclusive preserve of (or at least is answerable to) the USA?

I have a theory about why the NYT omitted to mention this crucial aspect of the story. It reported the takeover 11 days earlier, in its business section, and nowhere in that article was there any mention of the fact that this would include US port terminals. My guess is that their highly-paid business staff and editors hadn't twigged the implications of the takeover, and weren't keen to broadcast that fact.

posted by Plig | 15:29 |

Comments:

Plig...whenever I see you not spending time with these blogs, I know life is going well.

just stopped by

Jim

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:55 am

Forget the sentimental notion that foreign policy is a struggle between virtue and vice, with virtue bound to win.
Forget the utopian notion that a brave new world without power politics will follow the unconditional surrender of wicked nations.
Forget the crusading notion that any nation, however virtuous and powerful, can have the mission to make the world in its own image.
Remember that diplomacy without power is feeble, and power without diplomacy is destructive and blind.
Remember that no nation's power is without limits, and hence that its policies must respect the power and interests of others.
Hans Morgenthau

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts
Bertrand Russell

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one
Albert Einstein

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative
Martin Luther King Jr.

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man
Bertrand Russell

I think it would be a good idea
Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun
Pablo Picasso

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others
Groucho Marx

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it
Mahatma Gandhi

Always make new mistakes
Esther Dyson

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