Richard Sanders of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade has referred us to research he has done on Lockheed Martin's missile defence work.
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/57/Articles/22-28.pdf
As Sanders notes, besides raising people hackles because of the BMD issue, it's also significant to our census efforts because there was a scandal around the company many years ago when whistleblowers said that Lockheed Martin was guilty of stealing publicly funded Canadian intellectual property and giving it to their parent company! This info is on page 28 of issue 57, in the above link.
Note: http://coat.ncf.ca/our_...
Lockheed Martin Previously Guilty Of Stealing Canadian Intellectual Property
Posted on Wednesday, May 17 at 11:26 by sthompsonContributed By
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Page 1
Bush turns to big military contractors to gain control of U.S. borders
By Eric Lipton The New York Times
THURSDAY, MAY 18, 2006
WASHINGTON The quick fix may involve sending in the National Guard. But to really patch up the broken border, President George W. Bush is preparing to turn to a familiar administration partner: giant military contractors.
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the largest, are among the companies that said they would submit bids within two weeks for a multibillion-dollar contract to build what the administration calls a "virtual fence" along the U.S. borders.
Using some of the same high-priced, high-tech tools these companies have already put to work in Iraq and Afghanistan - like unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites and motion-detection video equipment - the defense contractors are zeroing the long borders that separate Mexico and Canada from the United States.
It is a humbling acknowledgment that despite more than a decade of initiatives with macho-sounding names, like Operation Hold the Line in El Paso or Operation Gate Keeper in San Diego, the U.S. government has repeatedly failed on its own to gain control of the borders.
The Bush administration intends to not simply buy high-tech equipment to help it patrol the borders - a tactic it has also already tried, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, with extremely limited success. It is also asking the contractors to devise and build a whole new border strategy.
"This is an unusual invitation," Michael Jackson, the deputy secretary of homeland security, told contractors this year at an industry briefing, just before the bidding period for this new contract started. "We're asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business."
The effort comes as the Senate voted Wednesday to add hundreds of miles of fencing along the border with Mexico. The measure would also prohibit illegal immigrants convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors from any chance at citizenship.
The high-tech plan has many skeptics.
"We've been presented with expensive proposals for elaborate border technology that eventually have proven to be ineffective and wasteful," said Representative Harold Rogers, Republican of Kentucky, at a hearing on the Secure Border Initiative last month. "How is the SBI not just another three-letter acronym for failure?"
But Bush said he was convinced that the government can succeed this time.
"We are launching the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history," Bush said in his speech Monday.
Under the plan, the Department of Homeland Security and its Customs and Border Protection division will still be charged with patrolling the 6,000 miles, or 10,000 kilometers, of borders.
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The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.... : Albert Einstein