Dubai Keeps Its Piece of Miami Port Terminal

RUSH: ‘The Dubai-owned company that promised to surrender its U.S. port operations has no immediate plans to sell its U.S. subsidiary’s interests at Miami’s seaport, a senior executive wrote Monday in a private e-mail to business associates. Even if DP World were to sell its Miami operations to quell the congressional furor over an Arab-owned company managing major U.S. ports, ‘that would probably take a while,’ wrote Robert Scavone, a vice president for DP World’s U.S. subsidiary.’ So for all this that’s happened, they still own a port, and they say they’re not going to sell this one. They’re going to keep the port that they have in Miami. (Laughing)

I love it. I don’t know why, I just love it — and then we have a development on another US entity that might in fact be making moves soon to acquire the DP World port interests that they promise to sell. ‘Private equity firm The Carlyle Group established a team to acquire public-purpose facilities such as ports a day after a United Arab Emirates company said it would transfer newly acquired operations at American ports to a U.S. organization.’ The Carlyle Group is despised as much on the left as is Halliburton. They despise it. The Carlyle Group is made up of a bunch of former big-time government bigwigs and they’re all gazillionaires and they are thought to work in secret, under the cover of darkness, manipulating world affairs for their own back-pockets benefit.

They’ve announced ‘an eight-person team would invest in public-purpose infrastructure projects such as ports, transportation and water facilities, airports, bridges and stadiums. The team will begin work March 13.’ They’re going to branch out into this. Well, they say their new infrastructure team has been planned for six months, but the Carlyle Group decided Thursday to launch it. Now, the Carlyle Group doesn’t want to be the entity that manages. Said their spokesman, ‘We have zero interest in that deal, and we will continue to have no interest,’ but we are interested in brokering a deal for some buyers so we can get a take and be involved. There’s still a possibility that Halliburton will get involved in this, or that Carlyle will call Halliburton and they’ll get together.

Oh, the fireworks will just continue to roll on!

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RUSH: I also got an e-mail here from a subscriber at RushLimbaugh.com. ‘The first words out of your mouth today were about the UAE not leaving Florida. Then you laugh! Don’t you realize some terrorists can enter the US more easily through a port managed by the UAE? I was a ten-year listener, but no more, you dumb ass. Eugene Genzardi.’ Eugene, let me explain to you the reason for my laughter. We just had a three-week hysteria fit — a three-week tsunami of uninformed hysteria — demanding that this company not be allowed to conclude its purchase to manage these terminals at six or nine US ports, and we hung tough, and we got a vote in Congress, and we kicked them out of the country, and we said, ‘We don’t want you here, you’re Arabs — but it’s not because you’re Arabs, but it is because you’re Arabs. We don’t want you here.’

Lo and behold, Eugene, how long do you think the same company’s owned the port in Miami and nobody said diddly-squat? Nobody cared. We haven’t had a terrorist attack in Miami. We haven’t had one come through the port. They used American Airlines and United Airlines and they used American flight schools; they didn’t use the ports. My point, Eugene, is that they had a port all along and nobody knew it, and nobody cared. Now that they have said, ‘Oh, we may be leaving this new deal, but we’re not leaving Miami,’ where’s the outcry today? Where are these people that said, ‘We can’t allow this!’ Where are they today demanding, ‘Oh yes you are gonna sell those ports. You’re going to sell that port. We didn’t even know you were there. That’s another thing. When did this happen? Bush allowed this to happen before we even knew about it! We’re going to kick you out of Miami!’

Where is all that talk today? Where is it?

How could they end up owning a deal in Miami anyway, and nobody caring about it or knowing about it? I don’t know how long they owned it. If they owned it pre-9/11, why, folks, why, there’s a whole new perspective on this. But all I’m saying is, ‘Where is the outcry?’ and it’s only because of the UAE and DP World that we even know this because they said, ‘We are not selling our interests in Miami.’ So I just want to see where this goes, Eugene. I don’t see the same hysteria. I don’t see the same paranoia. I don’t see the same fervor — and I’ll tell you why, Eugene. It’s because that three-week embarrassing bit of hysteria had nothing to do with anything but politics.

It was nothing but politics, pure and simple; and it was guided by opportunism and cowardice, pure and simple. It was not governed by a reasoned analysis and examination of what the deal was. Even the 45-day waiting period could not even be allowed to take place because the selfish little sycophants running around Washington had to make this as much about them as quickly as they could — and then, lo and behold, less than a week after that deal is killed we found out that the same company has been operating terminals at the port of Miami. I’m sorry: it was hilarious to me, and it still is.

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