5-Alarm Islam Update… The Dubai Ports Deal is back, but this time by stealth, and it’s coming to the Port of Wilmington, Delaware
March 29, 2018 in News by RBN Staff
Please forward to others… There’s STRENGTH in numbers…
In addition to those identified, Gultainer’s website confirms that two other current members of its Executive Board are shown: Peter Richards (second from the left) and Mohamad Makkawi (to the right of Bill Clinton).
Patriots,
I have just discovered a 5-alarm situation of national importance, but especially affecting the people of Delaware. In last Friday’s edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer, it was reported that a UAE company, Gulftainer, a subsidiary of Crescent Industries, is about to win the bid for operating the Port of Wilmington.
After looking further into this bid, I discovered that we are witnessing what is effectively a new attempt at the Dubai Ports deal of 2006, but this time it is being done on the sly, with the ports quietly pursued one by one, thus only needing state-level approval and avoiding national attention.
The first port that Gulftainer acquired was Port Canaveral, in 2014. Now they’re going after the Port of Wilmington, and in a few years we can be confident that they will try to acquire other east coast ports.
All of the security issues that created a national uproar in 2006 are just as relevant today, but this time Gulftainer and their supporters are keeping everything quiet. As you can see from the articles below, the public didn’t even know that Gulftainer was making a bid until the news was announce in the Philadelphia Inquirer on March 23, a mere two weeks before Delaware’s legislature is scheduled to vote on approving the deal on April 6.
Available information as of November 12, 2017 (notice how applicant identities are hidden): https://www.delawareonline.com
New information, announced March 23, 2018 (Gultainer announced as winning applicant): http://www.philly.com/philly/b
Background on Gulftainer winning Port Canaveral contract: https://americandigitalnews.co
I have already been in contact with a couple state legislators about this deal, and they either claimed to know almost nothing about it, or were completely dazzled by the $600 million in promised infrastructure improvements offered by this UAE company as a part of the deal. Unless we take drastic action, Gulftainer is going to get approved.
In response to this outrage, I wrote the article below, which I hope you will forward to others to help wake up the country. ACT for America headquarters has also been informed… stay tuned for future announcements.
I am currently in the process of setting up meetings with legislators to discuss this deal. If you live in Delaware, please contact me about joining forces in Dover, to meet with legislators and possibly organize a march against this deal.
Our elected officials are supposed to serve the will of the people, so it is disturbing to find out that Delaware’s legislature is about to take a major action that affects the lives and security of all of us without seeking any public input at all. This must not stand… It is up to us to put a spotlight on this huge and shady deal.
Thank you for all you do to protect our nation’s freedoms… I look forward to hearing from you…
Dave
Return of the Dubai Ports Deal… This Time by Stealth
By Dave Bailey March 28, 2018
Do you remember the infamous Dubai Ports Deal of 2006, which was personally championed by President George W. Bush, but which raised such a backlash over security concerns that Congress blocked it, under the rallying cries of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)?
My, how times have changed… And how they have stayed the same…
This time, instead of Dubai Ports World, we have Crescent Enterprises and its subsidiary, Gulftainer. And instead of trying to acquire six ports at once, Gulftainer is picking them off one by one. They have already taken control of Port Canaveral in Florida – right next to the Kennedy Space Center – and now they have their sights set on the Port of Wilmington in Delaware.
Here’s what’s happening: Apparently the long and arduous search for a proper suitor to operate and expand the Port of Wilmington is coming to a close. In the Fall of 2017, three unnamed firms were being considered, but now only one remains: Gulftainer, as announced in the Philadelphia Inquirer this past Friday. The plan is to have the Delaware General Assembly approve this choice on April 6, only two weeks after it was announced.
By building a deep-water port in Wilmington, significant economic activity and jobs should be injected into a city and state that has long suffered sluggish growth and a precipitous drop in blue collar jobs. Usually news like this would be treated as a great success, celebrated with fanfare and public acclamations. And yet… what do we hear from politicians and the business community? Crickets… What do we see? Almost nothing…
Disclosures and details have been as hard to find as hen teeth. The only specifics we have come from the Inquirer article: that an Arab port operator and logistics company, Gulftainer, has been chosen for this significant project, and that Gulftainer is owned by Crescent Enterprises, which is a subsidiary of the Crescent Group of the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East.
“Crescent,” as in the Crescent moon of Islam, not Pillsbury crescent rolls.
Gulftainer, Crescent Enterprises, and the Crescent Group are all privately held, where, according to its website, the Crescent Group is the holding company of an unnamed “progressive family business group involved in the economic landscape of the Middle East and North Africa region for close to 50 years.” Gotta love the transparency.
On the brighter side, Delaware Senator John Wash (D-SD9) revealed that Gulftainer plans to invest $600 million dollars of their own funds to expand the Port of Wilmington and also make use of duPont’s old Edgemoor site. What they receive in exchange for this hefty investment has not been disclosed to the public. Maybe the boys from the UAE just like our Brandywine Valley and want to help us out. I doubt it, but I do wonder who in Delaware will benefit from this mountain of money, which represents about 15% of Delaware’s entire budget for 2017.
Hopefully these details will be presented to Delaware’s legislators in time for a proper review prior to the early April vote. It would also be helpful if we were informed of the vetting process that selected Gulftainer over the other applicants, whose identities we still don’t know. Who selected Gulftainer, and what were the benchmarks used to choose them over their competitors?
Under the leadership of Chuck Schumer in 2006, numerous federal politicians have said that no foreign company should manage the operations of United States ports. What has changed since then?
In her former role as New York Senator, Hillary Clinton suggested that the U.S. should allow foreign companies to run U.S. terminals, though ownership by foreign governments should be forbidden. But since Gulftainer, Crescent Enterprises and the Crescent Group are all privately owned by people who conceal their identities, no one knows the true ownership structure. And could one really say that a company owned by an Arabian royal or top government member is private?
According to Senator Walsh, this UAE firm is “committed” to using Delaware labor in both the construction and operation stages of the project, and their goal is to double the work force once the new facility is up and running. Funny thing about commitments, though… they aren’t legally binding unless there is a legal contract signed by all interested parties.
Delaware has seen this kind of bait and switch before. Years ago, a charter school affiliated with the Turkish Islamist Gulen Movement was proposed here, and as the proposal progressed, the proponents claimed that there were no teachers in Delaware qualified to teach at the school, so that the teachers would all have to be imported from Turkey. As anyone who has watched a construction project go from proposal to completion, “commitments” are very useful for silencing objectors, but in the end they mean almost nothing.
What we can discover from the websites of Gulftainer and Crescent Enterprises is that Gulftainer claims to be the largest container-terminal operator in the most corrupt and least democratic parts of the world, with operations in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Russia, Turkey, North Africa… plus… its new US facility in Port Canaveral, which it took over in 2014, after a years-long cozy arrangement between ex-President Bill Clinton and Crescent Group Vice-Chairman Majid Jafar, as co-chairs of UNESCO’s “Business Backs Education” campaign, largely during Hillary Clinton’s term as Secretary of State. Bill Clinton reportedly earned $5.6 million for his service, and now the Kennedy Space Center’s new neighbor is Crescent Enterprises. Amazing coincidence.
Port Canaveral was a radically kind of location for Gulftainer back in 2014, but now that the Port of Wilmington is being targeted, it appears to be the beginning of a trend. What we’re seeing looks like the beginning of a new Dubai Ports deal, except that, this time, the Emiratis are being more clever about it. Instead of making a proposal to take control of six ports at once, which required federal approval and attracted national attention in 2006, they are targeting individual ports one after another, thus staying out of the spotlight and only needing state approval. In fact, the Emiratis have become so stealthy that the public only found out about their bid two weeks before the date on which Delaware’s state legislature plans to vote on it.
This is not to say that the legislators themselves haven’t known about this proposal. Obviously, a vote on April 6 was preceded by many months of review. So why haven’t they been forthcoming to the public?
If this port deal was such a great deal for Delaware, politicians and the business community would be praising it to the skies, and yet they’ve been silent. Why?
My guess is that they remember the Dubai Ports deal and don’t want to let a public outcry ruin what promises to be a very sweet deal for insiders. It is time to put a spotlight on this threat to our national security.
