Asian Airline Association Warns Against Use of Full Body Scanners
January 8, 2010 by joel
Filed under Government
January 08, 2010
Flight Global
By Leithen Francis
The Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) has warned against regulators over reacting in the wake of the recent terrorist attempt on a Delta Air Lines passenger aircraft bound for the USA.
“It takes real political maturity to remain calm and not fall into the trap of knee jerk reactions such as imposition of new security measures,” it says.
“Additional security measures are only justified when it can be demonstrated that the benefits outweigh the additional burdens they impose on society.” it adds.
Following the 26 December attempted bombing of a Delta Air Lines flight from Amsterdam Schiphol to Detroit, the Dutch airport announced it would be introducing full body scanners.
But the AAPA says “there is insufficient evidence regarding the effectiveness” of full body scanners, “to justify their immediate deployment”.
“Rather than focus on ever more intrusive passenger screening, the key lesson from this, and previous terrorist incidents, is the critical importance of effective intelligence gathering and analysis,” it adds.
Government Wants Tax To Help Cover Cost for Bribing Taliban
November 20, 2009 by joel
Filed under Government
November 20, 2009
Prison Planet.com
By Paul Joseph Watson
Not content with savaging American taxpayers with two huge new financial burdens during an economic recession, in the form of health care reform and cap and trade, close allies of Barack Obama have proposed a new war surtax that will force Americans to foot the bill for the cost of protecting opium fields in Afghanistan, paying off drug lords, and bribing the Taliban.
Warning that the cost of occupying Afghanistan is a threat to the Democrats’ plan to overhaul health care, lawmakers have announced their plan to make Americans pay an additional war tax that will be taken directly from their income, never mind the fact that around 36 per cent of federal taxes already go to paying for national defense.
“Regardless of whether one favors the war or not, if it is to be fought, it ought to be paid for,” the lawmakers, all prominent Democratic allies of Obama, said in a joint statement on the “Share The Sacrifice Act of 2010 ( PDF),” reports AFP.
The move is being led by the appropriately named House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey, Representative John Murtha, who chairs that panel’s defense subcommittee; and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank.
The tax would apply to anyone earning as little as $22,600 per year in 2011.
The proposal is described as “heavily symbolic” with little chance of passing, but it once again illustrates the hypocrisy of an administration that swept to power on the promise of “change” to the Neo-Con imperial agenda and a resolve to reduce U.S. military involvement overseas. In reality, there are more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan now under Obama that at any time during the Bush administration.
At the height of the Bush administration’s 2007 “surge” in Iraq, there were 26,000 US troops in Afghanistan and 160,000 in Iraq, a total of 186,000.
