Skip to main content

Second best line of the day...

... and a great, short thought piece on the war on terror from Thoughts on Freedom:

Terrorism is a bad thing. But so is irrational fear.

One of my favourite factoids is that an Australian has a greater chance of dying from pesticide poisoning than from terrorism. I’m looking forward to the “war on pesticide poisoning”.

While looking around for a time-series for annual number of deaths from terrorism (which I couldn’t find) I found an article by by Wilson & Thompson called “Deaths from International Terrorism compared with Road Crash Deaths in OECD Countries“, published in 2005.

For calm people with a sense of perspective the results are expected. But for the frightened fear-mongers who demand trillions of dollars spending, various wars and abandonment of civil liberties… the facts are quite inconvenient.

For the 29 countries were comparable data was available between 1994 and 2003, the risk of death from driving was 390 times higher than the risk from international terrorism. Given the amount of fear (and consequent bad public policy) aimed at terrorism there are only two sensible conclusions:

* Either we should be scared shitless of driving, and immediately introduce massive government programs to save us;

* Or (as I would prefer) we calm down about terrorism and stop crying for bigger government every time something bad happens.
Labels:

Comments

Zafo Jones said…
You can usuallly count on a "War on (fill in the blank)" to really mean "I'm going to give my corporate buddies some money, and you're going to pay for it."

Remember the "war on drugs" that Nixon started way back in the 70s...and how there's no more drugs now? No? Me neither...because I wasn't born...but also because it didn't happen that way and was never really meant to.

Can't we just split the difference and write a check out to cash and give it to our local corporate big-wig? I'm sure it'll be cheaper than all the political man-behind-the-curtain crap.
December 3, 2008 at 10:06 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?
1 comment
Read more

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici
Post a Comment
Read more

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba
70 comments
Read more