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
Comments
One Response to “Two Wrongs Don’t Make It Right”
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The writer of this article sure makes it sound like Big Brother is going to do what they want regardless of community opinion and that they approached the table with a stacked deck. But that is just one man’s opinion. The agent that is named in the article, Fitzpatrick, I have met several times and he has always seemed to be a straightforward person. He has always given me the impression of an honest and uncomplicated man who was hard at work doing his job.
“Spy Cameras”, wow that term gives those towers the character of being able to see down into your very soul, doesn’t it? Not the realistic view of a couple of day/ night and thermal type cameras that have their own limits and that are pointed south to the open areas of the border where we know that illegal aliens and drug smugglers are crossing.
No, this writer has his own agenda here and it is not an agenda that will better protect our community. Not an agenda that will encourage the public safety of our area that will bring sustained growth and revenue which in turn would allow us to better our community. No this writer likes things just the way they are in Arivaca. The reality is that things never stay the same. They either get better or worse. Which do we perceive will happen to our community with all the activity that Mexico is experiencing to our south? The Border Patrol deserves our support, not our distain.
-Mark