The LA Times reports on the latest Bush Administration's waste of time: building a "nice" fence on the Border that won't actually do the job:
If you can shake hands through it, you can pass drugs through it.A fence without offenseBy Richard Marosi
Strong but not lethal, effective but not ugly: The U.S. is looking for a barrier along the border with Mexico that will say 'keep out' -- nicely.
... "They want to make it seem like you could shake hands through the fence," said Peter Andreas, a political science professor at Brown University who studies border security issues.
Whether the new fencing meets aesthetic standards remains an open question. Except for a five-mile stretch of steel-plate barriers outside San Luis, most of the new fencing is made of mesh or steel tubing.Look, keeping criminals out really isn't that complicated. There's this 19th Century invention that was put up in 1914 in Europe and kept the German, French, and British armies out of each other's lines until 1918. You might have heard of it: it's called barb wire. You intertwine coils of razor wire with stronger steel elements and concrete structures, backed up with quick response, and ... it works. The Israeli fence has been keeping out suicide bombers for years, and they are a lot more motivated than coyotes.
The new structures are taller and more imposing than the landing-mat fencing. But then much of the new fencing has gone up in rural areas.
"There are very few people that can see the new fence, which may be why we're not getting reports of people not liking it," said Jeremy Schappell, a Border Patrol agent who works in the San Luis area.
One of the Fence Lab barriers that agents seem to like best so far is a double-mesh barrier made of thick welded wires in a tight honeycomb-like design. The tiny holes between the wires make climbing difficult. Axes and crow bars are useless because the layers give under pressure. Blow torches get through, but it takes more than 15 noisy minutes to cut both layers.
Still, this summer a similarly constructed double-mesh fence went up along seven miles of border in Naco, Ariz., and within days Mexican smugglers had found a way to defeat it. By inserting screwdrivers into the holes to use as handholds, they are able to scale the fence as if it's a pegboard.
"They get over in about 15 seconds," said John Ladd, 52, whose 14,000-acre ranch abutting the border is trampled daily by migrants.
Jeez, if the Bushies would come visit the Mexican neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley, they'd see that the Mexican homeowners are themselves putting up deadly fences topped with lethal finials designed to impale any other Mexican who tries to climb into their yard. C'mon, folks, Mexicans understand that the purpose of a fence is to keep people out, and they don't need it sugarcoated. If you've ever been to Latin America, you'll bring back memories of all the walls around yards with broken bottles embedded in the cement along the top. Latinos aren't into friendly-looking security partitions. They're into fences that say: This will inflict life-threatening pain upon anybody stupid enough to try to climb over into our property.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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12 comments:
The fence between Botswana and Zimbabwe is electrified.
It has been effective at keeping out Zimbabwean refugees.
When I worked as a Border Patrol Agent in San Diego, CA in the 1990's, I was tapped to lead a delegation of visiting German reporters down to our Vietnam-era landing mat fence near the Richard Nixon Memorial Park near the ocean by Imperial Beach (the Tijuana Estuary, if any of you know the area). That spot was hot-to-cross in the mid 90's, and we were just getting it under control. These reporters were doing a serial story on how different nations went about defending their border areas.
Anyway, the Germans right away began asking, "Where are your dogs?" "Where's the razor wire?" "Where are your sniper towers or floodlights?" "Where is your secondary barrier system?" When I explained that we didn't employ such methods, the Germans looked at each other, then very politely asked to be taken back to the Border Patrol Station, thence to their hotel. When I asked if they'd like to see anything else near the border, they candidly replied, "No. We've seen enough. We know why you have an immigration problem."
Here's an effective border that was setup in much more difficult circumstances.
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The barrier itself consists of double-row of fencing and concertina wire eight to twelve feet in height, and is electrified and connected to a network of motion sensors, thermal imaging devices and alarms in stretches where power supply is available. The small stretch of land between the rows of fencing is mined.
According to Indian military sources, the fence has reduced by 80% the numbers of militants who routinely cross into the Indian side of the disputed state to attack soldiers.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Kashmir_barrier
It would be awfully cruel, but I've never understood why we haven't declared that stretch of desert to be a bombing range for the Air Force. You can cross, but at your own risk!
Then there is the historical example:
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/1/1f/Berlin_Wall.jpg
And the few who did get over often had active help on the other (western) side.
A fence or a wall in military parlance is what is called a "force multiplier". By it's self it will not do anything but with adequate staffing it will be quite effective.
This in my humble opinion is what scares the _iss out of the Bush Administration. They know that once an effective fence is built all along the US-Mexican border it will be much harder for the "shock troops" to cross. The mass migration that occurs now will simply have to go somewhere else. And the other routes are not easy or cheap.
For $3.5 billion we could have a truly effective (maybe not overly attractive) double row fence repleat with barbed wire, anti-car ditches on both sides, and a gravel access road in the middle.
On top of that we could have security camera, sensors, tunnel sensors which would make it even more difficult for illegal aliens and drug smugglers to cross.
My bugaboo is that we could easily raise tham money if called upon. My guess is that if the Government made it tax deductible to donate towards the building of such a fence that money would pour out from the citzens. There might even be enough for water spouts on the Mexican side to aid thwarted migrants.
"This is just pathetic"
The LA Times is so bad now it's funny. We can afford to laugh because of their declining miniscule influence. But the AP is not funny. The AP poses as neutral boilerplate journalism, but nothing could be further from the truth. And they are a supplier to news organizations all over the country. Check out this horribly slanted article about three blacks who broke into a white family's home at 4AM. Two of the perps got shot dead and they are charging the surviving perp as the responsible party. But guess who is guilty of racism?
Rare Robbery Case Brings Cries of Racism
This is similar to the Jena 6 storyline. There is a pattern here.
Also notice how we don't learn until the thirteenth paragraph that during the break-in an innocent kid was beaten with a baseball bat to the point of brain damage. The brain-damaged kid now cannot feed himself. I suppose the AP editor felt that that inconvenient information simply had to be included somewhere. So they stuck it in near the bottom to avoid generating as little sympathy for the white family as possible.
Set your browser to open up at the AP site at http://apnews.excite.com/ for a week or two and you will see plain as day the vicious bias of AP News. The AP is a haven for lowlife anti-white, anti-Christian, anti-military, anti-American editors and reporters. We can thank the Ivy League journalism schools, and especially the Columbia School of Journalism, for the financial meltdown that is the American news industry.
Keep up the good work, you despicable bolshevik cretins!
Anyway, the Germans right away began asking, "Where are your dogs?" "Where's the razor wire?" "Where are your sniper towers or floodlights?" "Where is your secondary barrier system?"
That's what any American would have asked 15 years ago, before the internet allowed us to determine that the US government *wants* "illegal" immigration.
ben tillman is right. All the talk about building a fence or wall seems pointless until we can get the government to try to enforce the law. Once that's a real goal, maybe a wall will make sense, maybe some other technique. But passing a law that puts a wall someplace, built by people who don't want to stop illegal immigration, isn't going to work, for pretty obvious reasons.
Anyway, the Germans right away began asking, "Where are your dogs?" "Where's the razor wire?" "Where are your sniper towers or floodlights?"
Unfortunately, thanks in large part to our good friends the East Germans, employing such methods is now rather disreputable.
Check out this horribly slanted article about three blacks who broke into a white family's home at 4AM. Two of the perps got shot dead and they are charging the surviving perp as the responsible party. But guess who is guilty of racism?
Amazing. Here's the picture caption from the article:
The homeowner admits to shooting two of them to death, but it's the surviving black man, Hughes, who's scheduled to face a murder trial Thursday Nov. 15, 2007 in Lakeport, Calif
Of course it's the "black man" facing the murder trial - when you shoot someone who's attacking your family it's called "self-defense," or it was before we became the great nation of West Latin Eurafrasia.
Cabrolet - a little research on the author of that article, Juliana Barbassa, shows that she's received awards froom th "Natioanl Association of Hispanics Journalists" and is a racist race agitator par excellence.
"before the internet allowed us to determine that the US government *wants* "illegal" immigration"
"mexican voices, american dreams" an oral history of mexican migration to the US by marilyn davis makes the point that the only possible conclusion to be drawn from the actions of the US and Mexican governments is that both governments are in favor of migration (for very different reasons - the american government likes lots of undemanding 'cheap' labor and the mexican government likes getting rid of those who might demand more of it than it wants to give).
forget the public rhetoric, pay attention to what is actually done.
I perceive nothing that indicates that either side is tired of the current arrangement...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Bangladeshi_barrier
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