The real reason why we've been obsessed with terrorism the past decade or so is because it suits certain individuals in power who see that personal gains can be made by usurping fears that dramatic images of 911 created. It made Haliburton and other corporate military organizations very rich. Those with stock in the right companies and holding positions of power in media fanned the flames of fear for profit. Far more lives are lost in ordinary ways, so the excuse that "we fight terror to save lives" is side stepping the real reasons for it, to deflect criticism by the callous "you don't care" argument. It is blown out of proportion to reality. If saving American lives was really the issue, then stop sending all those troops over to die on foreign soil. Bush's stupid statement "we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here" is BS. They can still make it to the USA any time they want.
Absolutely on the mark.
Although its a little out of date now, have you seen 'Hijacking Catastrophe' produced by the Media Education Foundation? Its excellent.
Also a British multi-part documentary by Adam Curtis:
Power of nightmares: Rise of the Politics of Fear that was aired on BBC2
Adam Curtis is particularly pertinent in putting some of the extremely complex ideas surrounding the politics of fear.
The Trap: What happened to our dreams of Freedom is also very good. It looks at the rise of Cold War Game theory and how it permeates every aspect of the modern, target driven life. Including the engineering of responses to particularised social mobility
Best thing to come out of the BBC for years!
Personally, I would rather give up some liberties for safety and cooperate fully with law enforcement than to open my family up to possible terrorism.
What a load of utter rubbish!
May I refer you back to one of your great Patriotic figures in the guise of Benjamin Franklin; who, in 1759 in the Historical Review of Pennsylvania said:
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
it is precisely this approach which leads to people to accept the following BS that we have had to put up with in the UK for a number of years now:
Erosion of civil liberties was gradual and arbitrary under the Blair government. Authoritarian centre left (well, not even left as Blair cited Isian Berlin and the Nash Equillibrium as some of his biggest influences).
We were subjected to random stop and search through SOCPA and the Anti-Terrorism bill, grannies were harrassed because they photographed themselves on a bus trip near Menwith Hill, I was nearly arrested at a totally peaceful demo because I was obscuring my face (forward intelligencing teams photograph people and get right in their faces with cameras for no reason other than mass surveillance and information gathering) - we have an abhorent peice of legislation called section 38 here in the UK. It means that if a police officer thinks a crime IS ABOUT to be committed, he can essentially arrest an individual beforehand as a preventative measure. That came out of the Anti-Terror bill. And you know what percentage of people are actually charged with a crime under the Anti Terror bill in ratio to those arrested?? 1.8% ... fucking stupid
Not everything is as black and white as you would like to think - police here think the laws are deliberately vague so they are open to interpretation...
