Robert M. Green at TCS Daily argues that allowing the deal would increase security. The excerpt below is less than half of a technically excellent column that ought to be read in its entirety:

Critics of the plan that would put a United Arab Emirates (UAE) company in charge of operations at six major U.S. ports have cited security as their central concern. Advocates of the deal have most often argued that security will not be effected (sic) by Dubai Ports (DP) World management, largely because port security is the province of domestic U.S. agencies.

A third argument has not yet been made by the major factions, and may never be. That argument says that the UAE company’s role here might result in better security implementation for the cargo container terminals than would otherwise have been possible.

Two factors explain potentially improved security under DP World management. The first is merely deductive. Given the intense furor already stirred to life in the media, the pressure to assure security could rise to a make-or-break agenda item for the ambitious company which already operates more than 40 terminals around the world.

….. More studied reasons for supposing port security in the U.S. could improve under DP World begin with the company’s demonstrated ability to significantly grow its business managing shipping hubs while operating within environs associated with terrorism. In the same period that terrorist Web sites have increasingly advised jihadists on different ways of attacking or infiltrating ports and commercial maritime activities, the port of Dubai in UAE has soared from a mid-level operation to one of the busiest ports in the world.

Carved from the Dubai Ports Authority, the company’s reputation for technological implementation dates back to its project to automate many of its processes in the 1990s. At that time, Dubai became one of the first ports in the world to implement so-called e-shipping, digitizing most of its planning, scheduling and operations while “building out” a CRM (customer relations management)/Web portal system that was one of the first of its kind used by a port.

According to American e-commerce experts who followed the UAE technology implementation as it has evolved, it was Dubai’s willingness to invest in IT that allowed it to offer container shipping and related services at lowered costs for its customers. Last year, a Homeland Security official called the two-terminal Dubai facility “modern and extremely efficient ports.”

While the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the implementation of the White House-backed Container Security Initiative (CSI) tested the resilience of port operators both here and abroad, the port of Dubai continued even in that period to grow both in volume and influence in worldwide shipping. In 2004 Dubai made another bold-stroke decision, becoming the first Middle Eastern port (and 35th overall) to agree to the CSI, signing formally last March. CSI gives U.S. Customs personnel a foothold in foreign ports and requires that state-of-the-art security systems such as gamma ray, x-ray and radiological detection systems be implemented for cargo inspection.

Dubai’s interest in security has seemingly followed the same upward curve that most critical infrastructure operators have followed. All confront greater threats from terror groups, and particularly from al Qaeda.

….. The company’s willingness to embrace technology could be the most significant edge it brings. While Bush administration officials and other supporters for the deal continue to insist that DP World is not going to be the security provider for ports in the U.S., security experts often note that the quality of organizational security is ultimately determined not by specialist providers or security officers but by the support (or lack of it) that operations and management interests bring.

To the extent that it can be measured, U.S. commercial port operators have not been all that committed to security. One Coast Guard estimate puts the security shortfall at American ports at about $7 billion overall, and the New York Times has reported that the very terminals DP World would operate here are among the lacking.

….. It requires no facts or metrics to say (with or without hysteria) that an Arab company represents a higher risk than weak technology does, merely because most terrorism is generated in Arab environs to begin with. But to all appearances, DP World’s embrace of security innovation as encapsulated at the Pusan Newport in Korea and its own rise to prominence via broad technology investment, might indicate it uniquely understands the risks, in part because it faces them at point-blank range. If so, DP World could become a focal point of improved security at U.S. ports.

Again, not that facts matter …..

From OpinionJournal.com’s Political Diary (link not available), new Exxon CEO Rex W. Tillerson lets go of a good one:

“….. to withhold from the American people access to their own resources is irresponsible.”

Plenty.

I have this habit of seeing a link, putting it into an empy post, and saving it as a draft, “just in case” another story comes along to build on it. This is one of those “build on” situations (there are “only” about 50 others left).

Back in November, the estimable Neo-Neocon noted the resurgence of bedbugs in the US in an article originally in The New York Times, whose report included these paragraphs (bolds are mine):

They’re the scourge of hobo encampments and hot-sheet motels. To impressionable children everywhere, they’re a snippet of nursery rhyme, an abstract foe lurking beneath the covers that emerges when mommy shuts the door at night.

But bedbugs on Park Avenue? Ask the horrified matron who recently found her duplex teeming with the blood-sucking beasts. Or the tenants of a co-op on Riverside Drive who spent $200,000 earlier this month to purge their building of the pesky little thugs. The Helmsley Park Lane was sued two years ago by a welt-covered guest who blamed the hotel for harboring the critters. The suit was quietly settled last year.

And bedbugs, stealthy and fast-moving nocturnal creatures that were all but eradicated by DDT after World War II, have recently been found in hospital maternity wards, private schools and even a plastic surgeon’s waiting room.

Bedbugs are back and spreading through New York City like a swarm of locusts on a lush field of wheat.

Infestations have been reported sporadically across the United States over the past few years. But in New York, bedbugs have gained a foothold all across the city.

….. Last year the city logged 377 bedbug violations, up from just 2 in 2002 and 16 in 2003. Since July, there have been 449. “It’s definitely a fast-emerging problem,” said Carol Abrams, spokeswoman for the city housing agency.

In the bedbug resurgence, entomologists and exterminators blame increased immigration from the developing world, the advent of cheap international travel and the recent banning of powerful pesticides. Other culprits include the recycled mattress industry and those thrifty New Yorkers who revel in the discovery of a free sofa on the sidewalk.

The bolded sentence is the big “Aha!” Bedbugs are back because of immigration (more than likely of the illegal variety) and the banning of DDT (and to a lesser extent, I would think, tourism). Neo-Neocon notes:

That banned pesticide is primarily DDT. And therein lies a very serious subject–the myriad ways in which the banning of DDT has caused problems throughout the world, problems far greater than New York City’s bedbug colonization.

Well, before I get to the “greater problems,” here’s another bedbug story that is much more recent (HT Drudge):

Woman Sues Hotel After Suffering 500 Bed Bug Bites

Leslie Fox, a 54-year-old bookings agent, says that after four nights at the 700-room Nevele Hotel in Ellenville, New York (a rural area roughly 90 miles north of New York City–Ed.) last July, she awoke to find red, itchy welts all over her body.

“I had no idea what was happening to me. We noticed the blood on the bed. I became very upset and alarmed,” she said.

She and her husband – who was also bitten, but not so badly – tore the bed apart and found a swarm of bugs under the linens.

“The bugs were sent to the University of Illinois in Chicago and verified to be bed bugs,” said attorney Alan Schnurman.

When the couple reported to hotel officials that their room was infested, the officials offered two free nights but Fox and Cohen declined, Schnurman said, because they were just itching to leave.

Yeah, that’s what I would want, more free nights at a bug-infested hotel.

Back to the point: The misguided decision to ban DDT, criticized in previous BizzyBlog posts citing John Stossel and a doctor at the Center for Science Based Policy, has led to a failure to achieve something that is eminently doable: rid the rest of the world of these and other pests without causing undue harm. Some claim this failure to act has cost millions of premature deaths from malaria and other diseases in Third World countries. Then, our poor to non-existent control of our borders has more likely than not allowed immigrants (and perhaps tourists in some cases) to bring these pests with them.

All of this has occurred because of two very basic failures to apply common sense to life’s problems. What will it take to get lawmakers, bureaucrats, and others involved in protecting public health and safety to do their jobs and get a grip on reality?

Stossel, whose comments on U.S. schools were previously noted here and here, has gone from hero on the verge of receiving a special award from a teachers’ union organization to villain in the space of one broadcast. That’s because he hosted the ABC News TV special “Stupid in America,” which, among other things, noted that:

• American kids’ collectively poor school achievement compared to other countries, which begins at around fourth grade and continues to the end of high school.
• The myth that “more money” is the answer. Stossel says school spending has tripled in real terms in the past 30 years, but that test scores are flat.
• The public school government monopoly rewards mediocrity and stifles innovation.

His passage of the day is this:

I’m sorry that union teachers are mad at me. But when it comes to the union-dominated monopoly, the facts are inescapable. Many kids are miserable in bad schools. If they are not rich enough to move, or to pay for private school, they are trapped.

It doesn’t have to be that way. We know what works: choice. That’s what’s brought Americans better computers, phones, movies, music, supermarkets — most everything we have. Schoolchildren deserve the joyous benefits of market competition too.

Unions say, “education of the children is too important to be left to the vagaries of the market.” The opposite is true. Education is too important to be left to the calcified union/government monopoly.

By the way, the teachers’ unions have announced demonstrations against Mr. Stossel in many cities, including but not limited to New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Atlanta. That’s fitting, because these cities’ school systems are among the worst in the nation.

I also have a question: Why won’t these demonstrating teachers be in the classroom?
____________________________

UPDATE: NewsBusters’ Greg Sheffield did a post covering the New York Sun’s story about how Stossel went out to meet the demonstrating teachers with a camera crew in tow.

Free Links:

• I’ve always seen near bi-partisan unanimity in Washington on what should be a controversial matter as a bad sign. Exhibit A: Sarbanes Oxley, a horrible law that was not thought through. It passed several years ago in the wake of Enron because no one wanted to be seen as a “supporter” of corporate corruption and malfeasance. The 62-2 vote in a House committee against the Dubai Ports deal is similar. The Captain is correct in assessing its potential impact: A Spoonful Of Panic Helps The Majority Go Down. When you look at the deal objectively (something I acknowledge and regret to say I did not do at first; but at least I recovered), it makes sense. From a foreign policy perspective, it makes even more sense. OpinionJournal.com (may require registration) also pitches in this morning: “What we’re watching this week is the Lilliputians on Capitol Hill tying down a Bush Administration that increasingly looks like Gulliver.” Unfortunately for the Bush Administration, it’s a largely self-inflicted wound.
• BizzyBlog Internet Wall of Shame member Google is playing Chinese Chess — In the midst of a “licensing” dispute with the government that is really a tug-of-war over what it will tell users about restricted search results, it “has decided to store search records from the site outside of China in order to prevent that government from being able to access the data without Google’s consent.” On the surface, it looks like a pretty smart move.
• Nat Comisar, the former owner of Downtown Cincinnati’s 5-stars-for-41-years Maisonette restaurant, offered his perspectives on the fate of upscale restaurants last week (HT Spacetropic). Notably absent was any mention of reopening, in the northeast suburbs or anywhere else.
• Alan Greenspan will get an $8 million advance for his memoirs — I hope the content is more interesting than the statement made by Penguin Press’s Publisher about it: “His book will be about what we can know, what we can’t know and what we should do about it.” Zzzzz.
• There is renewed talk of taxes on junk food, despite the fact, as Mark Luik notes at TCS Daily, there is little scientific support proving the health effects of reducing junk in kids’ diets. That doesn’t matter; it’s all about the money, and if left unchecked, legislators will be all too happy to create another category of “sin tax.”
• The book excerpt Sports Illustrated has published on the Barry Bonds doping saga makes it very clear that Bonds did what he did out of jealousy over the 1998 home-run record competition between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. That green-eyed monster will get you every time when you give into it. The Kirk has a nice sportswriter reax roundup. It will take years (if ever) for the credibility of baseball to recover from what Bonds and several others have inflicted on it (yes, with the see-no-evil help of the Lords of Baseball and the players’ union).
• Here is a fascinating review of progress on “microjets,” and the impact they could have on conducting business and the travel industry (HT S.O.B. Alliance member NixGuy). It’s closer than you think.
• Guaranteeing that nothing will get done on the afternoons of March 16 and 17 (or all day long on the West Coast) — CBS will offer free early-round March Madness over the Internet (HT with a longer-lasting link to S.O.B. Alliance member Interested-Participant). I hope their servers are ready.

The idea is to reinstill confidence and aid in the rehabilitation of wounded soldiers, and it’s a great one (HT S.O.B. Alliance member MilTracker):

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