PortsCenter
I know we have a mild aversion to being too politically oriented, but I still reserve the right to blow the ideological whistle every few posts. Thus, I bring you a brilliant rant from Hunter at Daily Kos: Xenophobia? That’s What You’re Going With?
I have to remove my shoes to get on a damn plane, in the name of national security, but a country whose royals met with Bin Laden in an Afghanistan-based ‘hunting’ camp in 1999 gets to manage how the shipping containers move around at six of our nation’s ports. And I’m supposed to be damn glad for the corporate-state inclusiveness.
I’m expected to put up with the notion that my phone may be tapped by my government — without warrant or recourse — because some guy who once called his cousin who once visited Afghanistan may have called the takeout desk of a Pizza Hut ten minutes before I did some random Sunday, thus ‘linking me with potential terrorists’ — but a nation whose assistance in stopping the financing of terrorists has been lukewarm at best is alarmed that they might be barred from financial profit in one specific sector of American industry with substantial national security implications.
I’m expected to understand that the War on Terror requires executive powers unlimited by check or balance, but one of the three nations on the entire planet to recognize the horrific and loathsome Taliban government of Afghanistan, while continuing to not recognize the state of Israel, is going to be upset if there are, God help us all, financial and diplomatic consequences for those actions upon one of their state-owned businesses.