There, I said it.
The only possible reason I can see for opposing this is that people don't like the idea of an Arab company running it as opposed to good old proper limeys. I haven't seen anything saying that the UAE government itself has a connection to al-Qa'eda, and certainly not DWP. Just because a couple of Emiratis were part of 9/11 doesn't mean the UAE is aligned with al-Qa'eda. The London bombers were from the UK, but we don't suspect the British government of terrorism.
The ports will continue to be owned by the cities like they always have. The security will still be carried out by the Coast Guard. A foreign company has already been seeing to the day to day operation of these ports for awhile without a problem. I can't see why it would be any different if a different foreign company now does.
Just as P & O was about to accept Dubai World Port's offer, the Guardian had an interesting feature on the city of Dubai.
Is Dubai, in fact, the fulcrum of the future global trading and financial system? Is it, in embryo, what London was to the 19th century and Manhattan to the 20th? Not the modern centre of the Arab world but, more than that, the Arab centre of the modern world.
I do kind of wonder if Americans are just not as familiar with Dubai as say, the British or Europeans. Brits frequently holiday in the Dubai Riviera. A friend of my godfather works there, as does the brother of my boyfriend's brother's girlfriend.
While Dubai is certainly not Saudi Arabia, it has the same Gulfi problem of importing and abusing a lot of cheap labor, as well as a less-than democratic government. But well, these are certainly not problems specific to Arabs.
P.S. Josh Holland over at Alternet came to the same conclusion and put the problem in more accurate terms: democracy vs. corporatism. I'm all for bitching about corporatism run amok, but let's do it consistently, not just when it's an Arab corporation.
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