Brown Sludge

Sovereignty For Sale? So What Else Is New.

February 17th, 2006

The blogosphere is set to go apoplectic over the Dubai Port debacle.

CFIUS – (The government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) has apparently approved a deal that will shift the control of six major ports in the United States to a state-sponsored company based in Dubai – the United Arab Emirates.

Yes – the 9/11 commission determined that these same Arab Emirates were tied in more ways than one 9/11 hijackers.

So everyone is up in arms about the deal.

The right is screaming.

The left is screaming.

And at the moment - I’m calling “Tempest in a Teapot”.

Because.

Like, so much of American’s Sovereignty – a lot of our ports have already been sold out to foreign owners – this is nothing new. Right along side a great deal of American Business.

The right is desperate for the clowns in the media to stop hounding Cheney over Quail-Gate.

The left is desperate for some ideological traction. Somewhere. Anywhere. Howard Dean has made them look like blathering ninnies for so long they’re starving for legitimacy.

Both sides are famished for “good red meat”. Cheney was a Little Debbie. This could be steak tartar.

The truth of the matter is that there is nothing new here.

For the last two decades Corporate America has been slowly, inexorably selling out America and Americans and American Sovereignty by “offshoring” and “outsourcing” and selling to foreigners and foreign countries every job and every industry they could get their grubby little hands on (and this includes many high paying, non-union, important white-collar jobs and industries).

It is now actually considered a laughable insult and a weakness among CEO’s if your company is considered an “American” company. It means you haven’t been aggressive enough in selling off it’s assets – and selling out it’s workers and moving the company to a place where it’s easier to obfuscate the companies tax obligations. To the United States.

Videe Well My Brothers and Only Droogs – these quotes from top “American” Business People (Attrib: “The Great Betrayal” – Patrick J Buchanan - 1998) :

Gilbert Williamson - President of NCR:

“I was asked the other day about U.S. competitiveness, and I replied that I don’t think about it at all. We at NCR think of ourselves as a globally competitive company that happens to be headquartered in the United States.” (p99)

George W. Ball – Shaper of the Kennedy Economic Program and much of Jimmy Carter’s Mid-East Policies:

“The urgent need of modern man is to use the world’s resources in the most efficient manner…that in turn will be possible only when national boundaries no longer play a critical role in defining economic horizons.” (p106)

Strobe Talbott - Clinton’s Oxford roommate and architect of his Russian Policy:

“All countries are basically social arrangement…No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary…Within the next hundred years…nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority.” (p106)

President of IBM’s World Trade Corporation in 1974:

“For business purposes, the boundaries that separate one country from another are no more real than the equator. They are merely convenient demarcations of ethnic, linguistic and cultural entities.” (p106)

They do these things and say these things secure in the knowledge that the current administration – and all the administrations who went before - consider anything less absolute heresy before the god of Free Trade.

Hell… the Republic is for sale and everyone knows it - has been for years.

You’ve sat idle while our economy and our commerce and our jobs and our factories and our service industries and our medical records and our financial records and every other thing of value has been sold to foreign governments…

And now you’re acting surprised to find that the Bush administration via CFIUS is jumping on the bandwagon?

As my teenage daughter would say.

Puhleeeze.

Update :
Via Califorina Conservative - a couple of interesting developments.

A Miami firm is suing to block.

And this afternoon (Sunday 2/19) the families of the 9/11 plan to blast this situation in public at a press conference with Chuckie Schumer.

Check out the California Conservative’s piece here.

I’ve said it before - I’ll say it again. It’s time that America wasn’t for sale any more. Why does this port sale to DPW mean so much more to you than all the jobs and industry and the rest of America’s Sovereignty?

Entry Filed under: General