Picture: from a news article "Terror in their sights", Tasmania's Mercury, 25/6/07 (http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,21961594-921,00.html)I've just read an article from some right-wing retard named Andrew Bolt who writes for the Herald Sun, owned by News Corp, unsurprisingly controlled by Rupert Murdoch. (http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21828247-25717,00.html)
This bloke is surprised and shocked that two white democratic leaders, ie our own Little Johnny Howard and the USA's George Dubya, were named by Amnesty International's Secretary-General Irene Khan as being named as examples of "trampling and trumpeting an ever-widening range of fears". He seemed to think this was unfair. When you read the report itself - not just this bloke's skewed slant on it - you find an accurate, balanced and truthful document. John Howard DID use fear of asylum seekers to win an election. He's good at it - he uses National Security as his cattle prod to steer a majority of voters into his camp every 4 years. Luckily, current polls seem to indicate that the punters have stopped listening to him. If Labor don't stuff up too much in the next couple of months we should see a change of government.
And how about G.W.B? Yes, the USA suffered attacks on 11/9/01. Around 3,000 civilians were killed. Now compare this with the subsequent "War on terror" casualty figures. How many has George killed? 130,000? Are their deaths 43 times less meaningful than those of Americans? Fear is a powerful motivator. A scared population is easily led. These two, along with other dodgy leaders around the world (not only Robert Mugabe and Omar Al-Bashir, but Vladimir Putin of Russia and Lech Kaczynski of Poland, to name a couple) use fear of difference to consolidate their power base for their own ends.
Take Australia, for example. Not one act of terrorism has taken place on Australian soil. Bali, yes. 88 Australian lives, along with another 114 from other countries (including 38 Indonesian citizens) were lost. In 2005, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau states that Australia had 8 road deaths per 100,000. That's about 1,600 road deaths based on population of 20million, as it was in 2005, and this is accepted as normal.
In 2001, the USA had a population of roughly 283,000,000. Their road toll figure for 2005 was roughly 15 per 100,000. Assuming it hasn't changed much from 2001, that's a whopping 42,450 deaths on the road. They lost 3,000 to terrorism. Who's the terrorist?
After 9/11 (why the Yanks put the month first I'll never know), the Australian government started their scare campaign. Every few weeks there was a news story about some new special forces group being trained in counter-terrorism tactics, high-publicity stunts like SOG cops dropping from Blackhawk helicopters over Sydney Harbour, leaflets mailed to every Australian household, new terrorism hotlines. This is all scare-mongering and window dressing - the need to be "seen" to be doing something to protect you, the helpless public, from these scary looking bearded men with tea towels on their heads. As such, it's a waste of tax-payers money. Why didn't it go somewhere useful? Make the roads safer, improve driver training, tax tobacco, legalise drugs (then tax them), fund research into the major diseases. These are things that save lives - but they just aren't sexy enough. The issues are too complex for the average punter. No, get yourself an outside threat, with high-definition shots of planes flying into skyscrapers, pictures of deluded saps like David Hicks holding an RPG - inflate the profile and the threat, and Mrs Blogs with her 50 excess kilos and her high blood pressure, or Mr J Citizen with his 40-a-day habit, or even 18-year-old Davo with his new licence and V8 ute will vote in a leader who promises to protect them from this deadly danger.
In the USA, just to make sure you don't forget your fears, there's a whole raft of TV shows featuring terrorism - 24, Sleeper Cell, The Unit etc.
Check out the UN's "academic concensus definition" of terrorism.
"Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby — in contrast to assassination — the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat- and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperilled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought (Schmid, 1988)."
Anxiety-inspiring, as in instillation of fear - repeated violent action, such as invasion of another country - seeking intimidation, coercion, or propaganda. Sounds like our government, doesn't it.
Yes, terrorists are dangerous. Heart disease is worse.
Marty 10/6/07
This bloke is surprised and shocked that two white democratic leaders, ie our own Little Johnny Howard and the USA's George Dubya, were named by Amnesty International's Secretary-General Irene Khan as being named as examples of "trampling and trumpeting an ever-widening range of fears". He seemed to think this was unfair. When you read the report itself - not just this bloke's skewed slant on it - you find an accurate, balanced and truthful document. John Howard DID use fear of asylum seekers to win an election. He's good at it - he uses National Security as his cattle prod to steer a majority of voters into his camp every 4 years. Luckily, current polls seem to indicate that the punters have stopped listening to him. If Labor don't stuff up too much in the next couple of months we should see a change of government.
And how about G.W.B? Yes, the USA suffered attacks on 11/9/01. Around 3,000 civilians were killed. Now compare this with the subsequent "War on terror" casualty figures. How many has George killed? 130,000? Are their deaths 43 times less meaningful than those of Americans? Fear is a powerful motivator. A scared population is easily led. These two, along with other dodgy leaders around the world (not only Robert Mugabe and Omar Al-Bashir, but Vladimir Putin of Russia and Lech Kaczynski of Poland, to name a couple) use fear of difference to consolidate their power base for their own ends.
Take Australia, for example. Not one act of terrorism has taken place on Australian soil. Bali, yes. 88 Australian lives, along with another 114 from other countries (including 38 Indonesian citizens) were lost. In 2005, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau states that Australia had 8 road deaths per 100,000. That's about 1,600 road deaths based on population of 20million, as it was in 2005, and this is accepted as normal.
In 2001, the USA had a population of roughly 283,000,000. Their road toll figure for 2005 was roughly 15 per 100,000. Assuming it hasn't changed much from 2001, that's a whopping 42,450 deaths on the road. They lost 3,000 to terrorism. Who's the terrorist?
After 9/11 (why the Yanks put the month first I'll never know), the Australian government started their scare campaign. Every few weeks there was a news story about some new special forces group being trained in counter-terrorism tactics, high-publicity stunts like SOG cops dropping from Blackhawk helicopters over Sydney Harbour, leaflets mailed to every Australian household, new terrorism hotlines. This is all scare-mongering and window dressing - the need to be "seen" to be doing something to protect you, the helpless public, from these scary looking bearded men with tea towels on their heads. As such, it's a waste of tax-payers money. Why didn't it go somewhere useful? Make the roads safer, improve driver training, tax tobacco, legalise drugs (then tax them), fund research into the major diseases. These are things that save lives - but they just aren't sexy enough. The issues are too complex for the average punter. No, get yourself an outside threat, with high-definition shots of planes flying into skyscrapers, pictures of deluded saps like David Hicks holding an RPG - inflate the profile and the threat, and Mrs Blogs with her 50 excess kilos and her high blood pressure, or Mr J Citizen with his 40-a-day habit, or even 18-year-old Davo with his new licence and V8 ute will vote in a leader who promises to protect them from this deadly danger.
In the USA, just to make sure you don't forget your fears, there's a whole raft of TV shows featuring terrorism - 24, Sleeper Cell, The Unit etc.
Check out the UN's "academic concensus definition" of terrorism.
"Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby — in contrast to assassination — the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat- and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperilled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought (Schmid, 1988)."
Anxiety-inspiring, as in instillation of fear - repeated violent action, such as invasion of another country - seeking intimidation, coercion, or propaganda. Sounds like our government, doesn't it.
Yes, terrorists are dangerous. Heart disease is worse.
Marty 10/6/07
1 comment:
If you think this is absurd, the number of Americans committing suicide far exceeds those who lost their lives to terrorism.
In short, you are more dangerous to yourself than the terrorist perse.
Now trying unscrewing that!
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