Yet again, as we stare uncomprehending into the abysmal state of world affairs, we ask “Why must we now learn about Dubai?”

We are told by the Bush Administration that this deal was checked out thoroughly and that it would be wrong to discredit an Arab buyer, Dubai Ports World (DPW). Thus, we are exhorted by the same government that has brought us jihad in a half dozen Arab lands to believe that if we disapprove of this multibillion dollar contract, we are being unfair to the good Arab folks. Whenever the words “multibillion dollar deal” and “the Bush Administration” occur in the same paragraph, good folks everywhere should pay close attention.

By all reports, Dubai, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, is a rowdy seaport. Liken it to the picture of Casablanca in the famous movie of the same name. There is little regulation and no taxes!!! The usual suspects include, drug traffickers, arms dealers, smugglers, people wanting to move illegal goods globally without taxation, while blurring the lines of accountability. From say nuclear weapons, to restricted technology, to human cargo, lets just say, the biggest players in the world go here, not Vegas. According to Webster, an “emirate” is the jurisdiction of a direct descendant of Mohammed. This is an Arabian land run by chieftains, perhaps more bound by wealth than by Islamic fealty. DPW, is state owned, meaning it is the playground of the governing chieftains. Newsweek (March 14, 2005, Fareed Zakaria) characterized U.A.E. as among the most repressive governments in the Middle East and at the opposite end of the human rights scale to Israel (as long as you’re not Palestinian). This is all in contrast to the spin the Bush people now want to create about U.A.E.

The gatekeeper to the seaport deal is John Snow, Secretary of the US Treasury, who replaced Paul O’Neill. Remember, O’Neill was fired because he refused to give in to pressure from the Bush people to support the invasion of Iraq.
Until he was tapped to serve our government, John Snow was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CSX Corporation, “where he successfully guided the transportation company though a period of tremendous change.” CSX is the massive railroad monopoly that controls almost all cargo movements across America from the seaports. Snow’s knowledge of international industry “stems from his tenure as Chairman of the Business Roundtable, the foremost business policy group comprised of 250 chief executive officers of the nation’s largest companies.” This group advises the Administration on business policy.

Prior to answering the call to serve in government, CSX Corporation under Snow, paid no federal income tax at all, “supplementing its over $1 billion in pretax profits over the four year period with $164 million in tax rebate checks from the federal government”. During the same period, CSX joined the list of 100 top political campaign contributing corporations, (70% to Republicans) “gave Snow $36 million in salary, bonuses, stock and options, and forgave a $24 million loan so he would not lose money along with other shareholders as the company’s stock price declined.” (via Citizens for Tax Justice, dKosopedia)

Not trumpeted on the government’s website is the fact that Snow is now the head of a little known government committee that privately approves foreign business transactions. When CSX, was bought out one year ago this week by Dubai Ports World for $1.4 billion, Snow cashed in on his stock options. DPW, the very same U.A.E. state owned company that is now with help from Snow, closing the loop for packages moving from the slums of Dubai to your own home.
My point is this, with a nuclear bomb the size of a laptop we are already unsafe. If somebody wanted that to happen, it would. The extreme efforts and enormous expense to protect our homeland have proven utterly ineffective. This DPW deal under a microscope is yet another example of the theft of our government by a small cadre of wealthy people with a very narrow agenda. It is an effort by Bush to pay back his Arab handlers while he still can. This should put the light to their faux democracy-mongering throughout the world. It should lay open the huge homeland security budget as largely a sham and history’s greatest boon to cronyism, with the sole intent of distracting Americans from seeing that the policies and actions of our own government are the greatest danger to the safety of the people of the world today.

The Sultans of spin in the White House and the Emirates of Arabia should read the words of Mohammed. “Be charitable. Allah tolerates trade, but loveth not usury. Guard against the time when you shall be brought before your sins. Be saved from avarice.” (Holy Qu’ran 000.276-280, 059.009)

For many reasons and on many levels, Bush’s February 24 statement to the national press, rings true. “This deal would not go forward if we were concerned about the safety of America.” They are not.

David Stocker, is a writer, musician and teacher in the Midwest. He is part of a musical tribe called One Drum.

This article was also published on Counterpunch on February 25, 2006.

Frankly, Scarlet I Don’t Think He Gives a Damn…

The most disturbing thing about the disaster in New Orleans after the reality, is its translatability. Suddenly we are all one with the dispossessed of Fallujah, the drowning in Baghdad, and the homeless in Afghanistan. While we can fragment our own national distress, isolate the looters of darkness from the enlightened who are helping themselves survive in that watery hell that was New Orleans, we cannot help but feel that we are all living two feet below sea level with underfunded levees.

Of course, the outcome of the reality should be the downfall of the worst government in the history of America, maybe in the entire history of democratic republics. Of course, Bush, Rove, Rumsfeld and Rice should be tried as war criminals, penalized of all present and future wealth and sentenced to clean lavatories in a Chinese workcamp. Add to that culpable crowd, the Big Money oil gas gougers, corporate xenomorphs and insurance tightwads. All these systems were in place long ago to ensure the upward flow of money to a few and downward flow of ignorance and desperation to the rest. That all made it worse when Katrina came in off the Gulf.

Doesn’t it make you a little mad to know just how much damage could be done to an entire American city by just diverting a few million from a levee project into the war effort, and how many people are dying for want of the use of a few dozen helicopters presently busy strafing women and children in Iraq. Our National Guard in the Middle East get to watch CNN footage of their own families wading through flood waters and see photos of their own homes destroyed. This didn’t have to happen this way.

Do we now see our media for what it is? Helping us get tough to make it through the opportunistic gas price hikes, focusing on the loss of casinos before the plight of those too poor to drive their SUVs out of the flood. Flag waving us off to Iraq, while our own nation lost its soul because red white and blue sells better than black.

Do we now see who our president truly is? A narcissistic, petulant, greedy and dangerous fool who hid from national service, drenched himself in drugs and alcohol, failed time and again in business, found his personal savior and then found the backing to rise to the role of chief marionette with an agenda of gutting the last remaining superpower on earth.

Are we so proud? Our Lady Liberty now says, “Watch out or we’ll make you wretched, poor and yearning to breathe free.” From a place that stood for democracy and freedom comes the tiny and unsubstantiated whimper that “help is on the way to the good folks of” The sound of Bush’s voice makes me feel sick. How might we react differently to 9/11 if humility and real democracy were anywhere in sight? This government has placed hundreds of millions of people at unfathomable risk: Americans and Iraqis alike, Afghans and Israelis, residents of New Orleans, Najaf, Nairobi and Naperville. Meanwhile from the same events, elected individuals within this government have secured personal fortunes of an astronomical scale.

In economics there is the concept of opportunity cost. That could be likened to what Robert Frost called the “road not taken” The story of New Orleans just might have gone differently if officials there had managed to be heard and if even another $20 million had been put into the levees. For a window on the Bush legacy, multiply the story of New Orleans as many times as you can up to the $150 billion cost of this war. How many peoples’ lives could have been changed for good if this money had been spent loving life. Can we stop it now?

Shame on President Bush, shame on a Congress duped into war, bought and paid for by special interests, shame on industry whose global warming (just a theory, like evolution. Right?)..aims to make this planet uninhabitable.

What would it take for you? Maybe a catastrophic or even a minor health issue, maybe just a few weeks of lay-off, maybe a car accident or even a dead battery. Maybe a stock failure, a marriage failure, maybe a gas price hike, maybe a school closing, a base closing, a factory closing. Maybe the loss of a sector, a city or a soul.

We are all two feet below sea level, levee broke and water rising.
So how good is your levee? Mine sucks.

David Stocker is a freelance writer, State of Illinois Artist in Residence and co-creator of One Drum, a medicine band.