Two Wrongs Don’t Make It Right
May 1, 2008
Thursday evening, April 10, the Community Center was packed with locals and media for a meeting with a long table of representatives of the Border Patrol prepped to answer questions largely chosen in advance of the event.
Regarding the surveillance towers, Tom King, BP Director of Field Operations from Washington, DC told us that “Boeing didn’t hit the ground running” when it took on the erection of the 9 towers last year (at a cost of 20 million tax dollars) from the Babo through the Altar Valley to Tres Bellotas Road south of Arivaca. Now, a year later, deadlines unmet and a basketful of excuses, they admit the towers are so flawed they are unworkable and will be abandoned.
So what’s in the future? King says they will replace the faulty towers with all newly designed models. When asked who has the contract for this upgrade, King said, “Boeing. ” A snicker went through the crowd but there was no reproach; we were all making nice.
Reinforcing the general attitude from the head table, Agent Fitzpatrick, Assistant Chief of the Tucson sector, told us that “we may or may not abandon the Tres Bellotas Road location (the spy tower that overlooks our 1,500+ residents), but it won’t have anything to do with how the citizens feel about it, it will be a matter of logistics. ” – Logistics? Their system of reasoning places public opinion – the constitutional rights to privacy and freedom from undue surveillance – in the trash can! Boeing has been granted another massive sum of money to create these new toys ($68+ million. The cost of living has gone up 3.4 times, right in line with our daily bread… ).
The table of dignitaries certainly did not prove to those of us who attended the meeting that the situation of smuggling, migration or terrorism (a word they wisely refrained from using this time around) would be improved by more millions being thrown at Boeing, a corporate giant closely linked to Cheney and Halliburton.
When is all this BS going to end? The country slides closer and closer to total bankruptcy and we are all now feeling the crunch, while Boeing laughs all the way to the bank!
Two wrongs will never make it right. It won’t ever help our southern neighbors feed their children or help the human species to survive, and that is the bottom line.
Copyright 2008 C. Hues
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