How to truly increase airport/airplane security.
1. Consider it the security of the American people, not just airports and airplanes.
2. Forget responding to the last threat because they’ll just come up with something else. We’re still taking off our shoes, why?
3. Start reading the terrorist watch lists and correlate them with expiring visas and do not fly lists. It’s been eight years now. Where have you been?
4. Homeland Security is a big agency that can’t do anything right. Fix it. It can’t do domestic hurricanes right because it treats resident victims like terrorists.
5. The correlation of #4 is that the US treats terrorists like visitors and citizens like terrorists. Go figure.
6. If the correct agencies do their screenings and have lists available of potential terrorists, USE THEM. Do not body-scan Texas grandmothers or strip-search 14 year-old US girls.
***Here are some other thoughts, based on the recently issued regulations: [this is meant in serious humor]
1. People fly naked. No pillows or blankets allowed.
2. No overhead storage, on a $49 Southwest flight it’s $500 extra to check a bag.
3. No bathrooms on the plane, no exceptions.
4. Passengers are locked into their seat belts upon door-lock for the duration.
5. Not only are back-seat trip monitors disabled on transatlantic flights to the US, passengers have no idea to which city they’ll be traveling and their departure times will be confidential so neither they nor their families will know when, or even if, they’re nearing arrival home.
6. All passenger windows will be blacked out for the duration of the flight.
7. All cockpit windows will be blacked out except for takeoff and landing. It’s OK, they’re just playing games on their laptops anyway.
8. Flight controls at all US airports are not allowed to do anything without contacting Janet Napoletano personally.
9. US Congress bails out the airlines for having no passengers. Everyone sues for not having a bathroom in flight or for not being able to stretch their legs on a 13 hour transatlantic flight and being struck with leg cramps that drug manufacturers are eager to ease, never cure. Because then it wouldn’t be a chronic condition aiding their bottom line of profits.
10. Terrorists shoot or bomb anything that moves because Immigration still has no control on expired visas.
11. Personal planes become the new car and no-one listens to Air Traffic Control again. Or, Air Traffic Control gets controlled by terrorists and everyone blows up.
*** end***
We enjoyed a quiet Christmas weekend only to find all this going on. We wanted to fly somewhere for our anniversary but perhaps not. I am an ardent American citizen and voter. I’ve also been a privacy advocate for the past 25 years. Not active, but my means is writing the editorial in the right place at the right time.
I lived through Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike and was very disappointed in the government’s reaction, predominantly Federal because they governed food banks. Please see my Ike posts (look on the right). Immigration couldn’t detect the Taliban arriving en masse on our shores (probably because they don’t check ships) and if they did, probably everyone would have a visa, perhaps expired. Bin Laden could be walking the streets in NYC and not even be noticed. Just another cab driver.
Please look at the origins of the problem, not the latest attempt and punish all American citizens for trying to fly to see their relatives for the holidays. Look at it this way. Often doctors treat symptoms, not causes of disease. My fear is that our government has been doing this all along and scrambling to catch up with the criminals isn’t good enough and body scans for the 99% of us who are really going to see grandma are unnecessary.
Cooking with Dee 