You say potatoe, I say potato....

I was listening to a reporter from the Israeli newspaper Herat on C-SPAN this morning (because I'm a big nerd). As they often do, a caller decided to grace the world with her opinion, which, as they often do, caused me to start screaming at my radio. Which is just more evidence of my Irish temper. The reporter was talking about the fact that polls show Qadima leading Labor in tomorrows parliamentary election by ten mandates (kind of like seats in parliament) and that it looked like a foregone conclusion that Qadima would win pretty handily. The caller asked a question to the effect of, "If the party that you don't want to win ends up winning in the election, are you going to break off relations with them like you did with the Palestinians?" It was an obvious reference to the Hamas victory in the Palestinian election.

And that's when I kind of lost it.

Will someone please explain to me the moral equivalence between breaking off relations with a Hamas controlled Palestinian government and a Labor controlled Israeli government? The last time I checked, Hamas was advocating driving the Israelis into the sea, wiping them off the face of the Middle East, whereas Labor was advocating taking a more centrist approach to the Palestinians and conceding to them much more than their main adversary, Likud (in pre-Qadima days). Even if they WERE hard liners, they aren't an internationally recognized terrorist organization, which is why so many nations have told Hamas that they won't be invited to further negotiations until they give up the aspects of their position and charter that advocate non-state violence and violence against civilians!

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a Zionist. I'm a big proponent of the two state solution, and I really think that something LIKE the pre-1968 borders needs to be agreed upon. I also believe in Palestinian sovereignty and dignity, and I think we should continue to give aid to the Palestinian people through charities and agencies that don't go through their government (WHO, UNICEF, et cetera). And I think that the Hamas government should be engaged, lest we run the risk of having them disengage from the international political scene and become even more steadfast in their hard line position. But we're not engaging them in a meaningful way right now, and it's understandable why, given the fact that they are directly responsible for much of the non-state violence in Israel, they are an armed branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, et cetera.

But still, there's no comparison.

Clarion Call to the Dems:

Everyone who will listen, I want to make a suggestion:

The Dubai Ports deal has given us an example of what happens when the American Public's concerns about security conflict with Bush's Big Business Agenda. Big Business wins. I urge everyone who is upset about the way that Bush has been using the phrases "national security", "9-11", and "the War on Terror" to scare the American Public into accepting the egregious actions of this administration to start a dialogue about what the president means when he uses these words. Start asking who benefits financially from a policy, any time he pulls the security trump card. And hammer this point home, religiously, fanatically, incessantly--hell, "Republicanly"--that Bush is more concerned with financial profit than addressing the security concerns of the American people.

Tell everyone that when Money and Security are at odds, Bush is more concerned with Money. Make it your one talking point, every time a conversation about Bush comes up. Whenever you hear anything about this administration that is about security, remind everyone that he's more than willing to ignore the concerns of the American people vis a vie security if it protects his Big Business Agenda. Make it so that no Republican pundit can say anything about his administration without starting a debate over Security vs. Big Business, just like the Republicans did with Kerry and the Swift Boats controversy.

And tell everyone. Tell everyone who will listen. Send them a link here, repost this message, create your own post on this issue, just get the word out the door. Get it to anyone who will listen, anyone with a sympathetic ear, anyone who feels like something isn't right when Bush et al says that they are doing something for the safety of the American people. Remind them that when push comes to shove, security vs Big Business, Bush will sell out the security of the American people so that his friends can make money. Get everyone you can to repeat this message: Bush will sell out on security to make money.

Maybe then, if we all come together, if we're all saying it all the time, maybe then the American Public will hear us and realize how bad it is.

Oh Dubai... Where has the love gone....

I've been paying attention to this entire Dubai Ports World deal, and I have to say, I'm not surprised at yesterday's news. It's just another example of how the President and his crewe manage to exculpate themselves from every controversy that in which they become embroiled.

I'm actually surprised that I haven't seen more of an imbruglio on the blogs about this issue, but since there seems to be only light attention paid to the deal (Big Pharoah and Daily Scorecard are the only two that I've seen in my little list), I thought I'd chime in.

I'm of the opinion, personally, that Dubai has been very pro-US officially, even though there is an undercurrent of anti-US hostility there. We have our largest US basing facilities in Dubai, with the largest US ship fleet outside of the US currently stationed at their ports and a great number of warplanes stationed at an Air Force base there. The Pentagon has often reviewed and never (to my knowledge) found lacking the security at their ports, which is one of the reasons that our military can do such brisk business through Dubai. They have been supportive of our presence in the region, are very pro-US business, support a large US expat community, and are progressive in the Muslim world in a number of ways.

On the other hand, they don't recognize Israel, they support Hamas, and they still have some of the more medieval codes of laws on the books in the Muslim Middle East (although they're not quite as bad as their big sister, Saudi Arabia). Those are serious concerns, but we do business with other countries who have human rights records or political positions that disagree with ours, so why should this be any different? Those are serious concerns, but they're not a reason to scuttle a business deal.

But the public here in the USA is up in arms about DPW. Why? They say security. I say the boogey man.

So the idea of a Dubai controlled company running terminals at 6 US ports is so scary to 71% of the American public that the issue had managed to do something that NOBODY saw coming--they made the Republicans divided and the Democrats united.

For the first time in 60 years.

But with overwhelming support for a bill to kill the deal in Congress, Bush springs into action threatening a very unpopular veto. The American public wakes up, Bush's poll numbers drop to my waist size, and pundits start using the term "lame duck" a lot more (except on Fox, where they're still using the term "Best President Ever").

But there is a reason to be concerned with the deal, and it has little if anything to do with terrorism. Dubai has been handling sensitive information about US shipping for years, between all of the ships that the UAE brings to port in America and the US Naval ships stationed there. They've provided good enough security for us in the past, even if it wasn't in our ports. The thing that concerns me is their financials. The UAE's reputation when it comes to transparancy has been, shall we say, "less than stellar". They're trying to straddle two different economic models, that of the west and that of the Middle East, and as a result too much business is done not only without oversight, but without the POTENTIAL for oversight. Anyone remember the International Bank of Credit and Commerce? I'll give you a hint--they were the biggest money laundering operation in history, and their two biggest clients were the CIA and UBL. If we want Dubai et al to be involved in the "War on Terra", it would be in our best interests to not give them exceptions to accountability rules, which is exactly what happened and why the Treasury department should be run up a flagpole on this one. We literally HAD TO MAKE EXCEPTIONS to our accounting rules just to let this deal go through!

There's also the concern over whether or not we want companies owned by foreign governments owning land in "sensitive areas", like the ports. But that should be a drawn out, well reasoned, healthy public debate rather than a scare-fest like this. And it should apply to companies owned by Canada just as quickly as those owned by the UAE.

So Bush threatened to veto a popular bill, and the conditions for the proverbial rock and hard place were set. How could he wiggle out of this one?

Back room deals, y'all. Back room deals. Yesterday the Prime Minister of Dubai announced that they will be transferring control over to Americans to not further threaten the relations between our countries. And they need this relationship. We support them militarily and have too many economic interests in their country to have us pull out.

So Bush is off the hook again? That's the question. But I don't think the answer is that simple. The controversy has managed to tarnish his image with a majority of Americans, something that Valerie Plame, the NSA Wiretaps, the Abramoff scandal, and even the War in Iraq hadn't been able to do. Maybe it's a culmination of all of these things, but now I think that the tarnish has finally stuck. I predict that Bush's poll numbers will jump up to about 40% and languish there and that the Republican party will continue to be divided over supporting the president's policies and distancing themselves from him. Because now Bush has done something he hadn't done before--he "betrayed" the security of the American people.

He's been playing the security card since 9-11, using it as trump card to do just about anything, including wipe with the constitution. And he's always justified doing things that were unpopular by playing to the peoples' fears. But now he's gambled against the peoples' fears and he's been forced to beat a quiet retreat, to shift the focus again. But when it comes time for him to say "We've got to cut taxes to the wealthiest Americans so that the Terrorists can't attack us over here", I suspect that now people will remember this, and wonder whether he's more concerned with protecting the average citizen against terrorism or just trying to make more money for big corporations. And if he can't play the trump card any more, he may just have to fold.

Here's Johnny

It's been a while since I've posted, and I was thinking about letting my blog die a quiet death, as do so many web pages. But I got an email from a voice that I hadn't heard from for a while. Dumpendebat asked me if he could encourage me to keep it up, so, in the spirit of our Commander in Chief...

IT'S A MANDATE! THE MASSES HAVE SPOKEN!

Sure, it's just one email, but that's enough for me! All of my enduring fan(s) can rejoice! I'm going to start posting again, making time for giving my opinion to all of my reader(s)!

But I'm a little bit out of the loop--has anything interesting happened in the past three months?