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The Dubai Ports Purchase: National Insecurity,
Imported or Homegrown?
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Americans are in a fever about possible
"Arab control" of mainland ports along both coasts
of the United States. The battle has followed entirely predictable
lines: on the one hand, those favoring the Dubai Ports purchase
point out that this is all part and parcel of being part of the
international world economy, and there's no evidence that the
transaction and the new owners might in any way compromise the
internal security of the U.S. mainland. On the other hand, foes
of the deal shout that the Arabs will be tightening their grip
on the nation's windpipe and legions of terrorists and terror
weapons might be stowed in the containers that land in America
each day by the hundreds of thousand.
Back in the early 1970s, at
the time of the oil embargo, there was even greater thundering
here about the Arab grip on the American economy. Never a day
went by but that the newspaper cartoons would show burnous-clad
sheikhs chuckling fiendishly as they choked off America's gas
pumps. Today's row over the ports is tepid by comparison.
The whole storm is ludicrous.
When it comes to America's national security and penetration
of the mainland by foreign capital, there are bigger worries.
This very week, the week of the Chicago Auto Show, the widely
read magazine Consumer Reports lists the ten safest cars
sold in America this year. They are all Japanese, mostly Hondas,
and mostly made in U.S.-based plants put up after Japanese and
other foreign automakers were welcomed in by the U.S.A. thirty
years ago, partly as a way of undercutting the Union of Autoworkers.
This same month the headlines here have been full of stories
about the collapse of the top two U.S. automakers--General Motors
and Ford--in the face of foreign competition. Well over 100,000
American workers are to lose their jobs, thus vastly increasing
U.S. insecurity. Hundreds of thousands more U.S. workers have
already lost their jobs to India, China, Mexico, and other low-wage
nations because that is the way American business, backed by
the U.S. government, wants it.
After all, "national security"
means Americans' physical security and ability to enjoy liberty
and pursue happiness. Since both Democrats and Republicans in
government have claimed wrongly that this security will be enhanced
by exporting jobs, they should be in the dock for increasing
national insecurity. The fact that the fruits of these exported
jobs come back in the form of commodities reimported to the U.S.A.
in containers that might or might not be handled by foreign-owned
stevedoring and port management companies is a miniscule issue
by comparison, far less serious even than the illnesses caused
to Americans living near the ports who have to endure the pollution
caused by the diesel fumes from thousands of large 18-wheel trucks
lined up each day to haul the containers away.
Worries about port security
back in the 50s and 60s were not aimed at Arabs, but at Communists
and labor unions. Elia Kazan's famous movie, On The Waterfront,
starring Marlon Brando, had the dock-control wars between unions
and mobsters as a major theme.
Back in the Second World War,
the U.S. Navy had port security as an obvious major concern.
This was a time when special cargoes of war matériel for
the planned invasion of Europe were being dispatched to Great
Britain and to North Africa. The Navy was worried not only about
sabotage, but also about work stoppages and strikes--particularly
the efforts of Harry Bridges, the Australian-born union organizer
with close ties to the Communist Party, who had led the 1934
general strike on the docks in San Francisco.
The Justice Department was
busy trying to deport Bridges when he showed up on the East Coast
in 1942, traveling between Boston and New York, encouraging the
dockworkers to abandon the mob-infested International Longshoremen's
Association and join his International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's
Union.
The Navy men fixed up meetings
with top gangsters Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano to plot out
the logistics of what the Navy was so eager to get--namely, a
Mob order to dockland to cooperate with the anti-sabotage (which
was also code for union organizing) effort. Luciano told Lansky
to contact Johnny "Cockeyed" Dunn, the boss of the
Hudson River docks and Luciano's strongman in the International
Longshoremen's Association; the Camarda brothers, overlords of
the Brooklyn waterfront; Mikey Lascari, Luciano's boyhood pal
who handled the New Jersey operations; Frank "the Hands"
Costello, Luciano's political henchman; and Albert Anastasia,
the CEO of Murder, Inc., who would take care of anyone who got
out of line. "You go up," Luciano told Lansky, "and
mention my name and in the meantime I will have the word out
and you won't have no difficulties."
Not for the last time there
was a confluence of interest between criminal and intelligence
organizations to crush radical unions. We will see the same story
repeated in Shanghai and in postwar Italy and France. In abetting
crime/drug cartels and crushing independent political movements
or unions, the CIA and its forebears never hesitated for a moment
to make common cause with criminals.
Bridges' planned strike was
duly broken by Mob goons under the supervision of Lanza and Albert
Anastasia, a man Luciano described as being "willing to
kill anybody who came to mind that he got mad about." When
Bridges showed up at an organizing rally in New York City a few
weeks later, Lanza handled matters personally. "I had a
fight with him," recalled Joey Lanza. "I belted him,
and that was that." Between 1942 and 1946, there were twenty-six
unsolved murders of labor organizers and dockworkers, presumed
murdered and dumped in the river by the Mafia, working in collusion
with Naval Intelligence.
On the larger issue of control
of the docks and national security, if one had to draw a balance
sheet on who benefited the most from the Naval Intelligence/Mob
partnership, the answer would surely be the gangsters. In the
first place, the partnership proved fatal to honest labor organizing
and left union locals on the Eastern seaboard, along with the
ILA, ravaged by gangsterism and corruption. And the alliance
with the gangsters established by Naval Intelligence led the
way to the postwar alliance between the CIA and the Mob. Luciano
was enlisted to persuade the Italian and French mafias to attack
the powerful dockland Communists in those two countries. The
payoff for the Mob was freedom to import cocaine and heroin into
the U.S.A. In the short and the long run, that contributed to
national insecurity in a very, very big way. There's no blaming
the Arabs for that one. The trouble was homegrown.
Footnote: the saga of the US
Navy's involvement with the Mob, and the deal between the OSS--later
CIA--and Luciano is laid out in detail in Whiteout:The
CIA, Drugs and the Press, a very fine book by Cockburn
and St Clair, which recently hit the charts as the number 5 bestseller
in Italy under the title Il Libro Nero Della Polvere Bianca
(Nuovi Mondi).
The Fall
of Mohu:
Demolisher Says Her Son Did the Right Thing When He Knocked Down
Kay Graham's Beloved Martha's Vineyard Home. On to Monticello!
My account of Bill Graham's
leveling of his mother, Katharine Graham's big house in Martha's
Vineyard, described here last
week, has elicited some sharp criticism from the man who
actually supervised the leveling. John Abrams says this was no
orgy of destruction by an angry son who saw the shade of his
powerful mother shimmering above the rambling mansion from his
own home on the property and bellowed for the bulldozers to roll.
To the contrary, Abrams cliams, this was a considerate act of
"de-construction" in which a white- elephant inheritance
was taken delicately apart , its timbers, doors and windows taken
off to storage against the day that they will be used in low-income
projects elsewhere in Martha's Vineyard. On the site of the old
house, stone chimneys remain as landmarks, with the square footage
that once echoed to the chink of Martini glasses and the laughter
of the East Coast elites now sown with native grasses. B. Graham,
Abrams argues, deserves the highest praise for footing the bill
(paid in large part to Abrams and his South Mountain Company)
for "de-construction".
The Abrams line was faithfully
echoed, with ample quotation of Abrams by Phyllis Meras in the
Martha's Vineyard Gazette for July 1, 2005. Meras achieved
the amazing feat, in a 2000-word piece about the leveling of
one of the island's best known historic homes, of never once
addressing the matter of exactly why a son should suddenly decide
to knock down the house his mother left to him, and never once
citing opinions other than Mr Abrams'. The article was actually
awarded a prize by some foolish Massachusetts organization.
Suppose that when G.W.H. and
Barbara Bush finally depart this world, they leave Kennebunkport
to G.W. and Laura, who promptly whistle up the demolition crew
and tell them to level the place. Will the local press content
itself with paeans to W's selfless act of homage to the poor
of Maine and Natural Beauty Restored? Probably.
Maybe, in the not too distant
future, low income structures in Martha's Vineyard will be enhanced
by Mohu's vertical grain doug fir flooring, thick canyon red
quarry tiles, yellow pine bead board, plus lighting fixtures
and hardware. Abrams says that's the way it's going to be. It
seems unlikely to me, though I can imagine this salvage stock
being sold off to rich people restoring their homes and the proceeds
donated to a housing charity. Here are some of the exchanges
between me and Abrams.
Alex Cockburn,
I'm writing about your Feb
25, 2006 piece called Fall of the House of Mohu. Sometimes,
when someone gets something so remarkably wrong, as you have
about this, it's hard to know where to start. So I'll start at
the beginning.
As the Vineyard Gazette reported
in a three page spread (hardly a "tiny reference" as
you called it) Katherine Graham's evocative 10,000 square feet
1920's summer house sat empty after her death. It sprawled across
a spectacular knoll above the Vineyard Sound. Bill Graham wondered
what to do with it. He thought it would be a tribute to the land
and the view from the Sound to "undeverlop" the spot
but he wished the house could be put to good purpose. He called
me and asked me to look at it. He wondered if it could be cut
into pieces, moved, and made into (desperately needed) affordable
housing. Due to the location and the construction of the house,
that wasn't feasible, but the house was built from fine, sturdy
materials which could be re-used. The trouble, I told him, was
that it would be incredibly labor intensive and expensive to
de-construct. I suggested that he pay to do that, and that he
donate the materials to the non-profit Island Affordable Housing
Fund. They could be stored and used in future Vineyard affordable
housing projects.
After hearing the estimated
cost for de-construction, Bill, to my utter amazement, agreed.
So the job was done. All those involved took great pleasure in
saving these historic materials and putting them to best use.
Today, they are neatly stacked in a barn, awaiting use in a project
now on the drawing boards.
There was no 'ferocious destruction",
only skillful hard work by committed deconstruction experts who
saved everything that could possibly be saved--which turned out
to be almost everything! They left no "splinters and rubble."
There were no bulldozers, except the one that re-graded the undeveloped
site in preparation for planting native grasses that would make
it part of the surrounding meadow. The driver carefully worked
around the two beautiful stone chimneys that we left standing
as reminders of the past.
That was it. Whole story. A
poetic and positive story--entirely different from your bleak
and negative portrayal
John Abrams
AC to Abrams
Hi John, .. To me there is
a big question as to why he wanted to wipe ma's house off face
of earth, but I'm happy to publish your letter,
Best
AC
Abrams to AC
Alex,
Publishing the letter would
be fine, or even better a statement that you've now been better
informed, and the Mohu de-construction was not at all what it
seemed to be, and was, in fact, a very good thing. Bill didn't
want to wipe out ma's house (in fact he used a few choice items
that came from there for renovations to his own house); he wanted
to make sense out of something that no longer did. What would
you do with an empty 10,000 SF summer house on your property?
Keep maintaining it so the critters would have a comfy place
to nest?
All over the country, in desirable
places with whopping real estate values, we have an ugly tear-down
phenomenon whereby fine old buildings are trashed to be replaced
by McMansions. This was the opposite: building not trashed--all
parts saved--and building replaced by open space. Not bad, huh?
Man puts money where mouth is. Now that's a story.
John
AC to Abrams
Well of course John, one would
rather expect you to say all that, given your own role. Could
you tell me more about the Affordable Housing Fund; what's it
done in recent years? Presumably, affordable houses,. Where?
How many? What cost? Are there annual reports available. Presumably
it's a tax exempt.
I don't quite understand your
statement that BG didn't want to "wipe out" his mother's
house. Isn't that exactly what, for better or worse, he did?
"Making sense" seems , in your context, to come down
to demolition.
What would I do with a 10,000
sq foot summer home on my property? I can think of scores of
possible worthy projects, starting with a low income co-op using
existing structure, or an alternative school, or a hospice, or
a retirement home for all the drunk writers and retired journalists
on the island., (some of them perhaps relicts of the Graham empire),
a writers' colony, at one end where they could drink and a bin
at the other where they could dry out.
Isn't it rather a curious application of energy to spend a great
deal of money and time taking down a large soundly built structure
in a pleasing situation, taking away the lumber, windows, doors,
etc , storing them , against the time that smaller structures
can be built, thus reducing elsewhere the "open space"
you delightedly invoke. Curious, that is, unless one concludes
that BG thought Mohu a burden for financial reasons, had no sentimental
attachment to it (to put it mildly) and saw a fine way to get
the whole place demolished, with the work and materials being
treated as a charitable donation and taken off his taxes, also
reducing his property tax burden on the total acreage at the
same time.
Again, I find your pretense
that Mohu was not "trashed"--ridiculous. If I inherited
Monticello and shortly thereafter, with whatever exquisite care,
took it down and carted all the various salvageable portions
to a barn nearby to be used at some future time for the poor
of Charlottesville, (with -- as noted above -- huge costs of
said demolition being used by me as a tax deduction and thus
paid for by the citizenry at large, ) I think I would rightly
be accused of trashing, demolishing, tearing down, a fine historic
building. I'm not putting Mohu on the same level as Monticello,
but perhaps you can take my point. You speak glowingly of the
"open space" created by the demolition for which you
were presumably well paid. Who is enjoying this open space? B.
Graham? The local flora and fauna? The bluefish out in the Sound?
The public?
Best Alex
Abrams to AC
Alex -
www.iahf.vineyard.net will
tell you about the Fund. Lots of hard work, many successes, still
learning plenty, presently continuing the work and sharing what
we've discovered with many other communities which have the same
set of problems.
Making sense, in my terms,
means making best use given the situation, which in this case
was de-construction. All those neat things that you said you'd
do with an empty 10,000 SF summer house--hah, yeah that's what
you'd do with it on someone else's property, right? And on yours?
What have you done in the past with your empty 10,000 square
foot summer houses? Easy for you to say what someone else should
do, especially without knowledge of the circumstances or the
subject, and to substitute making up the facts for learning them.
De-construction not curious
at all. Especially not to the members of the national Building
Materials Reuse Association (www.ubma.org). Or to those who patronize
the many used building material yards that have been starting
up the last decade and providing good materials at low prices
to those who need them. Or to the condition of our landfills,
the recipients of the stunning tonnage of trashed material from
building demolitions. Sadly, all too few wealthy people who are
replacing houses are willing to pay the money to deconstruct
rather than demolish. Bill Graham is not some kind of hero; just
a guy willing to do the right thing in this case. Your assumption
that he could take a tax deduction for the work and materials
is dead wrong; his tax deduction, if he took it, could only be
for the value of the materials salvaged, which is about 20% of
the cost. Citizenry at large paid for that portion, just like
we pay for your tax deduction on your mortgage interest. At least
Bill's tax deduction--if he took it--helps the poor, unlike yours.
Monticello? Well, if you do
inherit it, and you don't want it, and nobody wants to designate
it a historic structure, and it's not in a public place where
it can sensibly be used for good public purpose, I think de-construction
would be a fine way to deal with it, far better than demolishing.
If it happens, let me know--we would be happy to make a reasonable
profit doing that job, or to recommend someone more local. Fair
warning though--it won't be cheap.
The open space is on Bill's
property. He does not allow the public to romp around on it (we
have a Land Bank that does an extraordinary job of providing
managed open space for public access), but the public does use
the water and the beach in front of the house site, so their
view is now just a little nicer and less built-up.
Onward, John
AC to Abrams
Surely, the payment for your
loving de-molition approached the value of the salvaged materials.
BG could have simply donated money to low income housing .
I'm glad to hear that used
material building yards in the North East are cheap. Out here
in California they're usually very pricey, as one might expect
with old pine or redwood or doug fir casement windows, floorboards
etc.. Building with old salvaged stuff very often turns out to
be far more expensive (tho of course more attractive than buying
stock stuff at Home Depot etc.) The clientele to be found in
these salvage yards are usually fairly, or very, affluent folk
intent on re-habbing their Victorians etc with the right stuff.,
not people looking to put up low-income housing.
Anyway, it's edifying to hear
the bottom line, that property is, after all, property and the
low-income folk won't be allowed"to romp around" on
Mohu land, any more than the high-income folk can play tennis
there. I can understand where you're coming from, but how that
MVG "journalist" can write an entire piece without
once properly addressing the question of a son demolishing his
mother's well loved home surpasses belief. And believe me, there
are people aside from me who think it was a very weird thing
to do. Best Alex
Abrams to AC
Alex-
I do want to respond to one
thing. You say: "Building with old salvaged stuff very often
turns out to be far more expensive (tho of course more attra
tive than buying stock stuff at Home Depot etc. The clientele
to be found in these salvage yards are usually fairly, or very,
affluent folk intent on re-habbing their Victorians etc with
the right stuff., not people looking to put up low-income housing."
I know all about what you are
talking about--it's a part of my business--and some parts of
your statement are true. But in this case I'm not talking about
fancy materials salvaged from beneath Lake Superior and used
to make the next Stradivarius. I'm talking about the people who
patronize The Rebuilding Center (http://www.rebuildingcenter.org/)
in Portland Oregon (your coast). Go on, take a few minutes and
look at the website these materials are being used to make desperately
needed affordable housing for working people, and these materials
will enhance the homes that they will soon own. Got a problem
with that?
All best, John
PS: Like many other wealthy
Vineyarders, BG has donated money to affordable housing,
in addition to these materials.
So much for all that. Abrams
is maybe a little behind the curve on the Rebuilding Center in
north Portland, in an area now rapidly gentrifying with the poor
mostly black inhabitants being pushed out. My impression is that
a decade or so ago some big non-profits began putting some money
into these plans for "sustainable" use of old materials
for low income housing, but that the steam has somwhat gone out
of the idea, as the big non-profits rush on to the next fashion.
I have spent many, many hours and indeed many dollars in salvage
yards in the Bay Area, and it's very hard to imagine those expensive
pieces of trim, of twenties mantle pieces and glass paneled doors
ending up shoehorned into new, low income housing. When Kay Graham's
Mohu rises, in whatever components and rearrangements, elsewhere
in Martha's Vineyard, I look forward to a bulletin from John
A.
Quail Down
the Drain
From: george job <gmalmjob@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Quail in War and Peace
I thoroughly enjoy the burnished
style Alexander Cockburn displayed writing this piece. As always,
he lends the reader his pointed emotion and its clever adaptation
to earthly folly. Excellent!
I would add to the quail saga
this addition:
The California quail have made home here in Sun City, and native
hatch-lings, no larger than a ping pong ball, play covey catch
up in early spring. Their plight, apparent by the clamor a concerned
hen emits, is entrapment after falling through the storm sewer
grates while following across the street. If one goes in, the
others are sure to follow. Anton Chekhov's 'look of wonder' posses
the mother bird while Dad goes roof top displaying an uneasy
hitch in his call.
What's a retired carpenter
to do but fetch "big blue" to remove the heavy egg
crate grate and climb in.
My heated rescue exposed their
inbred fear fostered by centuries of human cruelty. The scramble
went on two hours; several escaped down the storm drain, never
to be seen again. Today, I use plastic netting tied on with tie
wraps at several locations to ward off the little creature's
early spring time demise. Hunting this bird for sport reveals
a mischievous flaw underlining modern society's disconnect from
the distance we have come from the cave. Not too far.
Thank you so much,
George Job
Henderson, Nevada.
The Origins of Zero
I quoted a letter from a fellow
last week in which he said the Arabs invented the zero. Letters
of admonition poured in. Here's one.
Peter Kilbridge writes:
"If you are going to periodically
include a short paragraph of corrigenda, I hope you will note
that the Arabs almost certainly did not invent the zero. Scholars
seem to agree that it originated in India prior to the Muslim
invasions, and was a tiny little circle originally used to represent
the column of the abacus holding no numerical value.
It was probably introduced
to the Arab world through traders, along with the rest of the
'Hindu-Arabic numerals.'"
Finally
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
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