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USA Today – February 23, 2006
Arab leaders: Lawmakers exploiting ports issue
Andrea Stone
The furor over handing control of some operations at six U.S. ports to an Arab company has more to do with politics than security, U.S. Arab and Muslim leaders charged Wednesday.
"There's an anti-Arab sentiment that is being exploited by members of Congress who see it as an election-year win," said James Zogby, president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute. "You can stoke up a whole lot of fear by saying 'The Arabs are coming.'"
Zogby was scheduled to be in the United Arab Emirates today on business unrelated to the Dubai Ports World deal. He said the rhetoric "has been shameful, irresponsible, uninformed and dangerous" and preys on post-9/11 fears.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., one of a handful of members of Congress of Lebanese Christian descent, said, "There's no question that if this had been a German company, it would have been unlikely they would have brought up the fact that the 9/11 hijackers trained and were radicalized in Germany."
Issa said it was up to Congress to decide whether any foreign company should be allowed to operate U.S. ports or whether foreign ownership of port operations should be limited, as it is for TV and radio.
Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., also of Lebanese descent, questioned the deal. "I don't think we need to surrender the security of America by outsourcing it to foreign countries."
Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said the deal represented "normal business practice" in a global economy. "Only when Arabs became involved did we see concerns being raised," he said. "That sends a message ... to the Arab and Muslim world of a double standard, that no Arabs or Muslims need apply." ….
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-02-22-ports-arabs-protest_x.htm
Newsday – February 22, 2006
Muslim groups disturbed by ports security rhetoric
By Deepti Hajela
NEW YORK -- The political piling-on over a state-owned Arab business' plan to run some American ports is causing concern among Arab American and Muslim American groups, which say the furor is fueled by racism and bigotry.
"We're very concerned about the level of rhetoric and the way that there seems to be the assumption that because a company is Arab it can't be trusted with our security," said Katherine Abbadi, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of New York.
The president of the Arab American Institute, James Zogby, also was distressed.
"When you have members of Congress literally tripping over themselves to run to a microphone and they're saying, 'The Arabs are coming, the Arabs are coming,' preying off that fear because it's an Arab country, that constitutes bigotry," Zogby said Wednesday.
Democratic and Republican politicians have been increasingly vocal in their concerns of the deal that would put Dubai Ports World in charge of major shipping operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. The ports already have been managed for the past couple of years by a British company that is being taken over by Dubai Ports, which is owned by the United Arab Emirates. The company manages ports all over the world.
Several elected officials have said they will introduce legislation to block the deal; President Bush has said he would veto any such efforts.
Arab Americans and Muslim Americans are just as concerned about maintaining security but are upset that those concerns were raised only in context of an Arab company coming in, said Rabiah Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the Council on American Islamic Relations. It sends a message that "Arabs are not to be trusted," she said…
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--ports-arabamerica0222feb22,0,4881978.story
Sacramento Bee – February 22, 2006
Security programs strain Muslim-U.S. ties
By Lara Jakes Jordon
WASHINGTON - Nabil Amen wrote it off as mistaken identity the first time U.S. border agents handcuffed him as he returned home from Canada. When he had border-crossing troubles a third time, he decided to never leave the United States again.
Amen, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Lebanon, is among a growing number of Muslim- and Arab-Americans who say they feel singled out by federal security practices that have chilled that community's carefully nurtured relationship with the government.
Federal authorities insist they do not target Muslims or Arabs because of their religion or race, and stress their commitment to building ties with those groups, partly to help with terrorism investigations.
Yet recent disclosures of Bush administration domestic surveillance programs have put new strains on those communities' ties with the federal government.
"There are several incidents and policies that are unfairly targeting Muslims because of who they are - not because of what they did," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations in Washington.
Awad said the rapport built up with the government since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, "is at its lowest point because of these programs."…
http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/politics/story/3187930p-11900975c.html
Baltimore Sun – February 23, 2006
Bigotry seen in opposition to deal
Dubai considered a Washington ally
Matthew Hay Brown
There was no uproar when it was a British company that was taking over commercial port operations in Baltimore and five other U.S. cities.
But now that a company from the United Arab Emirates is stepping in, James Zogby says, politicians from both parties are playing on anxieties about terrorism in hopes of scoring at the polls.
"There's no question that this is the confluence of three factors: an election year, fear and the fact that an Arab country is involved," the president of the Arab American Institute said yesterday. "And that, combined, makes a very lethal brew."
Arab-Americans say a mix of bigotry and political opportunism is fueling opposition to the $6.8 billion sale last week of the London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. to Dubai Ports World. P&O runs shipping terminals in Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Miami and New Orleans.
The Bush administration has described the United Arab Emirates as a key ally in the Middle East. The deal passed a review by the Departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, among other federal agencies, and President Bush has vowed to veto any efforts to derail the sale.
But critics in Congress and beyond point out that at least one of the hijackers of Sept. 11, 2001, came from the United Arab Emirates and that others used it as a financial and operational base. The government supported the Taliban before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, and some allege that the nation was an important transfer point for nuclear components shipped by a Pakistani scientist to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
This week, Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, called the leadership of the Persian Gulf nation a "rogue government" that had "allowed terrorists to pass freely through their country."
In an op-ed piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday, Sen. Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, wrote that the nation had "long been influenced by the Islamic fascist movement."
Zogby, in Saudi Arabia yesterday, called such language "shameful and irresponsible and uninformed."
"If I was giving advice to Karen Hughes right now," he said, referring to the assistant secretary of state now in the United Arab Emirates, "I'd say pack your bags and go back to Texas. This shot your effort to hell.
"People here are saying, 'If this is the way they talk about the United Arab Emirates, given all they've done to work with the United States, then what's the point of trying to be a friend?'" . . .
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, said politicians seemed to be "falling over one another trying to determine who's going to have the most anti-Arab, most anti-Muslim attitude."
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.bigotry23feb23,0,471695.story
New York Times – February 23, 2006
Kicking Arabs in the teeth
David Brooks
It's come to my attention that many of the foreign goods we import into our country are made by foreigners who speak foreign languages and are foreign. It's come to my attention that many varieties of hummus and other vital bread schmears are made by Arabs, the group responsible for 9/11. Furthermore, it's come to my attention that the Chinese have a menacing death grip on America's pacifier, blankie, bunny and rattle supplies, and have thus established crushing domination of the entire non-pharmaceutical child sedative industry.
It's therefore time for Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Bill Frist and Peter King to work together to write the National Security Ethnic Profiling Save Our Children Act, which would prevent Muslims from buying port management firms, the Chinese from buying oil and mouth-toy companies, and the Norwegians from using their secret control of U.S fluoridation levels to sap our precious bodily fluids at the Winter Olympics.
In other words, what we need to protect our security and way of life is a broad-based, xenophobic Know Nothing campaign of dressed-up photo-op nativism to show foreigners we will no longer submit to their wily ways.
Never mind -- the nativist, isolationist mass hysteria is already here.
This Dubai port deal has unleashed a kind of collective mania we haven't seen in decades. First seized by the radio hatemonger Michael Savage, it's been embraced by reactionaries of left and right, exploited by Empire State panderers, and enabled by a bipartisan horde of politicians who don't have the guts to stand in front of a xenophobic tsunami.
But let's be clear: the opposition to the acquisition by Dubai Ports World is completely bogus.
The deal would have no significant effect on port security. Regardless of who operates the ports, the Coast Guard still controls their physical security. The Customs Service still controls container security. The harbor patrols, the port authorities and the harbor police still do their jobs. Nearly every expert who actually knows something about port security says the ownership of the operating companies is the least of our concerns. ''This kind of reaction is totally illogical,'' Philip Damas, research director of Drewry Shipping Consultants, told The Times. ''The location of the headquarters of a company in the age of globalism is irrelevant.''
Nor would the deal radically alter the workplace. If the Dubai holding company does acquire the operating firm, the American longshoremen would stay on the job, the American unions would still be there to organize them, and most or all of the management would probably stay, too….
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/opinion/23brooks.html
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