MIKE TREMOGLIE SUMS UP THE PORTS NONSENSE

The "Washington Post" headline sounded the clarion call that Arabs are "poised to take over significant operations at six American ports."..... This was all very confusing to me. As a Philadelphian who used to live near the waterfront, knew people who worked there and would occasionally watch ships unload, I knew that the port was controlled by the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority (PRPA) - not by any one company.....

It seems the facts are quite different from the hysteria. I asked the port authority to explain what will happen after DPW buys P&O. According to Joe Menta, communications director for the PRPA, what this sale means to Philadelphia is that Dubai Ports will acquire half interest in a firm that loads and unloads ships at one terminal - Tioga Marine. Little or no container cargo passes through this terminal, primarily used for the fruit trade. Menta explained the structure of the port of Philadelphia. It's controlled by the PRPA, an independent entity of the state. PRPA owns several terminals on the waterfront. It leases these terminals to private operators who are primarily responsible for arranging the loading and unloading of cargo.

Arabs will own or control no part of the port itself. The only Arab influence will be on the appointments of some of the board members of the stevedoring firm. This is quite different from the image of Arabs controlling the port. The idea that Dubai Ports World will be determining who comes, who goes, the number and type of ships, how and where they are unloaded and loaded, who's hired and the security for the entire port of Philadelphia is simply not true.

Ever since 9/11, the liberal mantra (which included even some Republicans) has been to chide Americans in general and the Bush administration specifically to be careful about stereotyping all Arabs and Muslims as terrorists. As recently as last week, Al Gore, while speaking in Saudi Arabia, said that the Bush administration had mistreated Arabs. Now, many of these same folks are now themselves stereotyping Arabs.... Many Democrats went from demanding constitutional rights for Arab terrorists in court to opposing Arab business owners buying a share of some terminals.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Feisty Scottish blogger, Neil Craig has had an apt letter published in The Scotsman: "David Irving is sentenced to three years in jail for denying the Holocaust. The late ruler of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, also denied the Holocaust, but this did not prevent us helping him to get his own country and ethnically cleansing 560,000 Serbs, 240,000 of whom are still "missing". Nor did it prevent him being invited to the United Kingdom's celebration of the defeat of Nazism in Europe. Just as there are some Holocausts which may not be denied and some which may, there are clearly acceptable and unacceptable Nazis".

Was Jerry Jewish?: "Tom and Jerry" was part of a Jewish conspiracy to present mice as clean, an Iranian official said. Hasan Bolkhari, an adviser to the Iranian Education ministry on mass media, said Hollywood Jews created the cartoon in an attempt to turn around the dirty image of mice, because Nazis had stigmatized Jews as mice. "The mouse is very clever and smart," Bolkhari said in a televised seminar on film last week monitored by the Middle East Media Research Instuite. "Everything he does is so cute. He kicks the poor cat's ass. Yet this cruelty does not make you despise the mouse. He looks so nice, and he is so clever...This is exactly why some say it was meant to erase this image of mice from the minds of European children, and to show that the mouse is not dirty and has these traits."

The British answer to rising crime: Reduced punishment: "Home Secretary Charles Clarke has outlined plans to reform the punishment system by pushing forward a new community sentencing policy which would reduce the amount of black offenders sentenced to prison for less serious offences. The incentive is part of a five year plan for the new National Offender Management Service (Noms) which will emphasis tough community punishments and sending criminals to jail only when there is a strong case. It would also contribute towards reducing the problem of prison overcrowding. Offenders who are given community orders will undertake unpaid work with possible `rewards' for offenders in the community who go on the straight and narrow. Mr Clarke was also expected to highlight previously-announced plans for "adult community prisons" for less serious offenders, which would maintain links with family and the local area. A Home Office source said: "This is the Home Secretary's vision for the future direction of how we manage offenders as well as summary of where we are now. "The Home Secretary will look at increasing the number of hours of visible, unpaid work performed by offenders in the community."

It couldn't happen to a better bunch of bastards: "CBS Corp. reported a loss of $9.1 billion in the fourth quarter on hefty charges to write down the value of its radio and television businesses, the media company reported Thursday. CBS was reporting earnings for the first time as a separate company since its split with Viacom Inc. was completed at the beginning of the year. CBS reported the fourth quarter as if it were already a separate entity. On that basis, CBS had a net loss amounting to $6 per share for the three months ended Dec. 31, weighed down by charges to write down the fair market value of its radio and television properties. The valuations of radio stations in particular have suffered in recent years due to stagnant revenues and higher costs. The latest results compared to an even larger net loss of $18.4 billion, or $10.99 per share, in the comparable period in 2004, when the company also recorded big charges to write down its radio stations as well as its outdoor advertising business".

Sharia has won in the media: "Apparently, it hasn't occurred to the media poo-bahs that the prohibition against likenesses of Mohammed should apply only to Muslims, not to the rest of us. (As Dennis Prager noted, 'It's like Jews rioting when someone else eats pork.') The cartoons should've been printed and broadcast as widely as the bruised face of Cheney's hunting partner when he got out of the hospital. That would've resolved the matter overnight, by giving cover to every news outlet and reasserting the primacy of free expression in a free society. And that's what makes the press's abject cravenness so consequential. It implies that, for all intents and purposes, we are living under sharia."

Progress on used nuclear reactor fuel: "It's a question that has dogged the nuclear industry since the 1970s: What can it do with spent fuel rods? The radioactive waste, eventually slated for permanent storage at a still unfinished site in Nevada, has been piling up, mostly at the nation's 65 commercial nuclear power plants. Late Tuesday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gave its blessing to a solution: a storage site on a barren patch of a reservation in Utah that's home to some 25 native Americans, next to a proving ground for chemical and biological weapons, and near an Air Force bombing range. The NRC licensed what would be the nation's largest -- and only private -- nuclear-waste storage facility. A consortium of utility companies would store for up to 40 years some 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel for an industry rapidly running out of space."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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