Boeing/Israeli spy towers aren't working at Arizona border

Israel's 'Apartheid Wall' model for Arizona/Mexico spy wall

By Brenda Norrell
U.N. OBSERVER & International Report

ARIVACA, Ariz. – The Israeli's "Apartheid Wall" is the model for the new spy towers at the U.S. Mexico border, which are not working. The U.S. border hysteria is resulting in billion-dollar contracts for Bush-friendly corporations violating human rights at the border.
The new spy towers built by Boeing and the Israeli’s Elbit System are now being called “Arizona’s Apartheid Spy Fence.” The startup of the spy network was delayed in June, because of radar problems.
Boeing is already the subject of an ACLU lawsuit for the torture flights to secret prisons of its subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan. Now, Boeing is under scrutiny for joining the Israel company Elbit to build a border spy network here. Elbit is building the Apartheid Wall in occupied Palestine.
Southern Arizona residents are wondering if the new virtual spy fence’s radar problems are related to the bat population here. Tens of thousands of bats fly out of the caves of Ruby, Arizona, near the new spy towers.
The new spy towers, composed of 98-foot surveillance towers, use infrared and radar to track human movement. The question that residents have posed is whether this radar would interfere with the bats' navigation abilities and their ability to pollinate.
The bats' pollination is essential to the saguaro, yucca and other desert plants in the fragile ecosystem of the Sonoran Desert.
Bats rely on a keen echolocation (or sonar) system to navigate and capture insects in the dark. Bats emit high-frequency sounds that are inaudible to human ears. By listening to echoes, bats can discern objects in their path, even in the night.
The big question -- with this $2 billion spy fiasco -- is whether the environmental impact statement took into consideration that this is a major bat habitat.
Further, the good folks that live around Arivaca don't want their every move spied on by the US/Israeli team. They are organizing in opposition to the spy towers, Project 28, under the Secure Border Initiative.
Meanwhile, few newspapers have reported that O’odham graves were dug up and the remains removed on May 17, in violation of federal law, for construction of the border barrier wall, on the Arizona border. Homeland Security has built two detention centers for migrants on Tohono O’odham tribal land, where many migrants die each year for lack of water.
Human rights activists point out that the border/migrant hysteria is turning into a billion dollar cash cow for Bush-friendly corporations. The migrant/border hysteria has been pumped up by U.S. television news and fueled by hate groups.
The bottom line is that the border hype is really about Bush and friends’ corporate welfare system. Halliburton didn't just get rich in Iraq. Halliburton was funded to build migrant prisons. The Frankenstein Wackenhut is also back, contracted to transport detained migrants.
Billion-dollar contracts for spy equipment and border walls are the latest deceptions to enrich Bush-friendly corporations, aided by an impotent U.S. Congress.

Related:

Apartheid Wall in Palestine becomes international model:

“The “Apartheid Wall”—as Palestinians call it—is scheduled to snake across 400 miles of the territory, encircling or cordoning off whole Palestinian communities to isolate them from expanding Israeli settlements that have moved into the region. The walls, which will come to incarcerate whole populations of Palestinians in their native lands, has become an international model.”
http://www.bordervoz.org/featuredarticle13.html/

Video of Arivaca residents reacting to spy fence:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2007/05/25/VI2007052501089.html?referrer=emaillink

Arivaca residents don’t like Big Brother watching:
http://www.tucsoncitizen.info/ss/breakingnews/53598.php/

From the St. Louis Post Dispatch:”Boeing's big border fence project is off to a bit of a bumpy start. The 28-mile first stage of the Secure Border Initiative, or SBInet, missed its scheduled start-up date last week, and officials at Boeing and the Department of Homeland Security can't say for sure when it will be operational. http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/0/6FCCE73AFD562DE086257302000C57D7?OpenDocument

”The DHS awarded the SBI contract for the border security project to prime contractor Boeing over Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. In addition to Boeing and Elbit, the other members of the $2 billion program are telecommunication heavy-weights Lucent, L3 Communications, Perot Systems and Unisys Global Public Sector”
http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enDispWho=Articles%5El1450&enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=TechnologyFrom

WW4 Report:
”How ironic. We noted in August that ex-Israeli security chief Uza Dayan was warning the US against emulating Israeli strategies in securing the Mexican border. Now it appears that Elbit Systems, an Israeli firm which is building the ‘Apartheid Wall’ in occupied Palestine, has been awarded a contract, along with Boeing, to build the wall on the Mexican border.”Elbit press release: http://www.elbitsystems.com/data/ESLT_Kollsman_Boeing_SBI_Project.pdf

O’odham remains unlawfully excavated at border:
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/06/oodham-ancestors-remains-unlawfully.html/

Jeppesen sued over 70 torture flights:
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_6023854/