Playing Monopoly

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As Abhi posted earlier, there’s a big outcry in the U.S. over the sale of a British port operator to one based in Dubai. What few people have pointed out is that in the international edition of Monopoly, when you buy P&O, you get India for free:

Yet nowhere else has the deal for P.& O., as the company is known, drawn much anxiety… in other countries it will vastly increase the company’s reach. In India, for instance, Dubai will take control of about half the country’s container shipping operations, but there has been little public outcry there. [Link]

Through this deal the Gulf-based company will have in its kitty India’s three major container terminals… Mumbai… Chennai… and… Gujarat; apart from a share in… Vishakapatnam.

Also, with the development… by Dubai Ports in Kochi, a majority of the Indian container shipping is expected to be in the hands of the Gulf-State backed company… “Dubai Ports is going to rule the India container industry…” [Link]

The deal’s purported security risk would affect desi Canadians as well as Americans via Vancouver:

But what’s at stake, specifically, is the Centerm hub in Burrard Inlet, which handles about a quarter of the shipping containers passing through Canada’s third-largest city. Centerm is where P&O — and soon, Dubai Ports World — makes money by loading and unloading shipping containers…

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p>Vancouver’s ability to safeguard against terrorism is crucial for the continent… In 1999, Algerian al-Qaeda member Ahmed Ressam cooked up a massive bomb in Vancouver… he had been hoping to… [set off] the bomb in… Los Angeles Airport. In 1985, Sikh terrorists placed deadly bombs aboard two Air-India jets at Vancouver’s airport. [Link]

Flat-earther Tom Friedman piles in for the free-marketers:“This is about keeping ‘a bunch of Arabs’ out of our country”

“I think it’s a shameful and has slightly racist overtones to it… This is about keeping ‘a bunch of Arabs’ out of our country, that’s what this is really about. And it’s a bad thing, not only because it doesn’t reflect our real values.”

Friedman points out that American companies like IBM, FedEx or UPS run around doing business in the Arab world. “What if they then turn around and say, ‘You’re not going to take ours, well, we’re not going to take yours…’ ”

“Both sides are guilty of it. When people ransack a Danish embassy in Damascus and the government allows it.. We have nativists in our country. They have nativists in their country that are going to always want to push these issues. Government’s job is to restrain that.” [Link]

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p style=”margin-right: 0px”>We absolutely need to get serious about high-volume container scanning. Pro-bin Laden sentiment in the Emirates and Dubai’s history of nuclear transshipment gives me serious pause. But I agree with Abhi: who owns the back office is an issue apart. Dubai is a major international port with at least one illustrious, long-term customer, the U.S. Navy. A lot of P&O’s managers are Westerners, and you can always set up a firewall between investors and day-to-day ops. To me the port business sounds like airlines: way too competitive for the government to run, but highly amenable to security regulation.

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p style=”margin-right: 0px”>Liberal blogger Kevin Drum writes sarcastically about how easy it is to tar another ally with the same brush:

PSA, which stands for “Port of Singapore Authority,” is owned by the state of Singapore… if it acquires Stevedoring Services it will end up running terminal services in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston, Charleston, New Orleans, and a whole bunch of other U.S. cities… Singapore… has a sizable Muslim population of its own, and is surrounded by the predominantly Muslim countries of Malaysia and Indonesia, both of which are known to harbor al-Qaeda cells. [Link]

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p style=”margin-right: 0px”>By the way, does anyone find it odd that this company is still called Oriental Steam? You don’t see IBM, KFC or NCR touting their original anachronisms. As for the Oriental bit, I hope they’re talking compasses.

P&O, whose full name is Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co… [Link]

Related post: Why Bush occasionally embraces truthiness (I can’t bring myself to type ‘Why Bush is r… ri…’)

11 thoughts on “Playing Monopoly”

  1. I live near Vancouver, so this doesn’t make me happy. Canada is a country that does not have a good record fighting terrorism.

    As for 1985 air india bombing trial. It was for sikh’s what the OJ Simpson trial was for blacks. I have had many older sikh’s tell me that those 2 guys who got away it. They did it, but for them it was revenge for the 1984 attack on Golden Temple and the 1984 delhi riots, so they are happy they get away with it.

  2. so they are happy they get away with it.

    Yeah and karma is a b!tch – considering how the children of same folks have now grown up and are dying in Sikh gang wars of Vancouver! Canada’s liberal asylum policy to Khalistanis is coming right back to haunt them.

    Afterall most of these asylees were Khalistani terr0rists – and terror breeds terror as we know. So not a surprise that latest Sikh generation in Canada have turned out to be mini thugs killing shooting each other on the streets of Canada.

  3. Friedman points out that American companies like IBM, FedEx or UPS run around doing business in the Arab world. “What if they then turn around and say, ‘You’re not going to take ours, well, we’re not going to take yours…’ ”

    I hate to break it to you, Tom, but there is a huge difference between the ports and the examples you just cited. IBM, FedEx and UPS are private companies selling products or services – nothing you would find on a Monopoly board, probably because such companies face competition. P&O isn’t a private company, it’s government owned. But never mind that. What P&O would be in control of is a municipal service, thus taking something that should be the responsibility of the American government out of its hands. And this is the main issue, foreign control over government services. And it’s a trend happening with all the services being bought out by either domestic or foreign companies, whether the service is the roads, water, or public education. And, like the cable television companies, there’s no competition. I’m sure this pleases Bush to no end. Bet the guy can’t wait till he can sell Social Security away to the highest bidder. Why Tom Friedman thinks this is such a great idea is mystery, unless it’s to amuse himself watching a social experiment play itself out.

  4. Canada handles its terrorism problems more competently than most other nations. Notice the lack of bombings in Canadian streets.

    Yes, the Khalistan issue was a huge deal two decades ago. The movement is mostly dead and has limited bearing on current terrorism issues.

    Surfer, I will not deny that there is segment of South Asian (not limited to Sikhs) youth involved in thugery. You will find the same segment in Vietnamese, Chinese, Somali and Aglo Saxon communities.

  5. What P&O would be in control of is a municipal service…

    AFAIK that’s incorrect, it would run the business end while the government would continue to handle security. The government neither runs the port business today (lots of foreign operators) nor would it be good at it.

  6. Mr. Friedman, the shill for all things involving globalization, seems to have forgotten this incident from back in the Clinton days involving the leasing of a naval base to the Chinese:

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 4 June 1998 CHINA WAIVER SHOWDOWN PRESIDENT MUST DECIDE WHETHER TO ISSUE NATIONAL SECURITY WAIVER TO CHINESE FIRM WHICH SHIPS ARMS AND MISSILE COMPONENTS COSCO SHIP CURRENTLY ON ITS WAY WITH MATERIALS FOR PAKISTAN’S MAIN NUCLEAR WEAPONS LAB WASHINGTON, DC—The mayor of Long Beach, CA has asked President Clinton to issue a waiver allowing a Chinese shipping firm to take over the former Long Beach Naval Station. According to current law, authored last year by U.S. Representatives Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA), the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) cannot move into Long Beach without a Presidential waiver based on national security assessments. Public Law 105-85, signed by President Clinton on November 18, 1997, states that the Long Beach property may not be conveyed to COSCO or any of its subsidiaries. The law directs the Secretary of Defense and the Director of the FBI to submit reports to the President and Congressional defense committees regarding the potential national security implications of conveying property to COSCO. Each report must specifically identify any increased risk of espionage, arms smuggling, or other illegal activities that could result from a conveyance of the property to COSCO and recommend appropriate action to address any risk. After numerous intelligence briefings, Reps. Hunter and Cunningham have stated they are “compelled” to prevent COSCO from gaining their own terminal. Problems with COSCO first came to public attention when the shipping company was implicated in the 1996 seizure of 2,000 Chinese-made AK-47 machine guns bound for street gangs in Los Angeles. Today’s Washington Times details the travels of a COSCO ship currently on its way from China to Pakistan with “weapons materials and electronics destined for Pakistan’s major nuclear weapons laboratory.” According to a report by the House of Representatives Task Force on Terrorism, “Although presented as a commercial entity, COSCO is actually an arm of the Chinese military establishment. COSCO provides services to the logistics and transportation arms of the PLA’s [People Liberation Army] Navy and Air Force.” The Task Force has also found that “COSCO is purchasing, under a commercial cover, both cargo ships and, more recently, transport aircraft the PLA cannot purchase for military uses. The importance of these purchases lies not only in the availability of high quality U.S.- and Western-made platforms (ships and aircraft), but the access the PRC [Peoples Republic of China] gets to [the] most modern electronic navigation systems they can copy for military use.

    The public memory is rather short it seems. I suppose preventing the Chinese was also “racism” according to Mr. Friedman and other people here. Those 2000 AK 47s were obviously meant for “peaceful” purposes on the LA streets.

  7. There is an excellent piece in The Nation about this. Bush uses fear mongering all the time. He never thought it would come back to bite him in the ass once his opponents realized that fear mongering actually works:

    A conservative blaming hysteria is hysterical, when you think about it, and a bit late. Hysteria launched Bush’s invasion of Iraq. It created that monstrosity called Homeland Security and pumped up defense spending by more than 40 percent. Hysteria has been used to realign US foreign policy for permanent imperial war-making, whenever and wherever we find something frightening afoot in the world. Hysteria will justify the “long war” now fondly embraced by Field Marshal Rumsfeld. It has also slaughtered a number of Democrats who were not sufficiently hysterical. It saved George Bush’s butt in 2004. Bush was the principal author, along with his straight-shooting Vice President, and now he is hoisted by his own fear-mongering propaganda. The basic hysteria was invented from risks of terrorism, enlarged ridiculously by the President’s open-ended claim that we are endangered everywhere and anywhere (he decides where). Anyone who resists that proposition is a coward or, worse, a subversive. We are enticed to believe we are fighting a new cold war. But are we? People are entitled to ask. Bush picked at their emotional wounds after 9/11 and encouraged them to imagine endless versions of even-larger danger. What if someone shipped a nuke into New York Harbor? Or poured anthrax in the drinking water? OK, a lot of Americans got scared, even people who ought to know better. So why is the fearmonger-in-chief being so casual about this Dubai business? Because at some level of consciousness even George Bush knows the inflated fears are bogus.
  8. Al Qaeda Claimed To Have Infiltrated UAE Government Three Years Ago by Joe Gandelman This New York Post report could prove one more headache for the Bush administration as it digs in its heels on its approval of a highly criticized plan to let a United Arab Emirates company manage key U.S. ports: Al Qaeda warned the government of the United Arab Emirates more than three years ago that it “infiltrated” key government agencies, according to a disturbing document released by the U.S. military. The warning was contained in a June 2002 message to UAE rulers, in which the terror network demanded the release of an unknown number of “mujahedeen detainees,” who it said had been arrested during a government crackdown in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. …Little is known about the origins or authorship of the message. “You are well aware that we have infiltrated your security, censorship and monetary agencies, along with other agencies that should not be mentioned,” the message said. “Therefore, we warn of the continuation of practicing . . . policies which do not serve your interest and will only cost you many problems that will place you in an embarrassing state before your citizens.” The Post also quotes “terrorism expert Lorenzo Vidino” as noting that this does show that the United Arab Emirates is cooperating with the United States on the terror war. On the other hand, he says: “But it also reveals that even though they [the UAE] are our friends, al Qaeda seems to have people on the inside in the UAE, just as it has in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Qatar and Kuwait.” http://www.themoderatevoice.com/posts/1140888642.shtml
  9. The government neither runs the port business today (lots of foreign operators) nor would it be good at it.

    This company buying the ports is government owned. How is one government more efficient than another?

  10. This company buying the ports is government owned.

    It’s not government-run, it’s not a government agency. The managers are from the private sector. Yet that’s what the U.S. critics want– a U.S.-government-run company. Very bad idea.

    The U.S. government already runs the port’s security, past present and future.

  11. In 2002, the UAE received a letter from Al Qaeda that the terrorist organization has infiltrated important government positions. Granted, the story is in the New York Post, and granted, they’d probably be more likely to say this if they hadn’t done it. But it still brings up issues about putting them in charge of the ports. I understand Americans will be hired for security, and I understand Americans will be hired for most of the staff. But it still means U.A.E. officials will have access to our intelligence on the ports.

    And I also understand England and Singapore have control of many of our ports. But what is the necessity to allowing ANY foreign government or organization to have this control? If that’s paranoid, then wanting more than 5% of the cargo containers must also be paranoia.