9-11 & other causes of death - political discussion

[Bob]

[Art: I have moved any replies that deal with fear, 9-11, the Bush Administration, etc. to this different thread.

Because of this dislocation, the conversational flow may sound odd for the first messages in the thread.

Bob had originally asked for ideas on the best use of public funds, a topic which can be found here:
http://www.asturianus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1232 ]

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I'm starting a new thread for this because I don't want it to be seen as a reaction to any particular point of view. It's not. I'm an academic and I have the luxury of time to devote to simply thinking about things.

It occurs to be however that as horrendous and tragic as the events of 9-11 were, the death toll was approximately 2752. At the same time, traffic accidents kill well over 40,00 Americans a year (43,220 in 2003 alone), many times the 9-11 toll. I don't have the figures for the Madrid bombing and Spanish traffic deaths at hand, but I assume that they are somewhat similar. This is of particular interest to me because I teach bioethics, and the allocation of public and private resources is a major theme in the course.

I also note that smoking kills about 440,000 Americans a year (by some reports), including 50,000 nonsmokers. One study found that raising the federal excise tax on cigarettes by 75 cents a pack would generate $13.1 billion in additional revenue per year and cut youth smoking by 13 percent and adult smoking by 3 percent, saving 1.2 million lives. I take no position on whether or not this is true (I am a nonsmoker)., but it does raise interesting questions.

I'm curious about where our members in the EEUU, Spain and other countries think public funds might best be spent to maximize public benefit (i.e., minimizing deaths) , and the reasoning behind their arguments.

Personally, I'm much more afraid to fly because of the possibility of mechanical failure, bad weather accidents, air controller error, or pilot error than I am because of any terrorist threat. It would be interesting to know if perceptions and opinions differ by country. Please let me know what you think. I'll share the results with my students. Perceptions, after all, are what make up our political realities.

[Xose]

Bob, I think that the reason that the attacks on 9/11 are so burned into our conciousness has more to do with the overall scale of the devestation and blow to our long-held feelings of invincibility than the actual death tally.

Seeing two 100 storeys tall skyscrapers crumble into dust on live TV had just the effect that bin Laden wanted: To instill a fear into the minds and hearts of rank-and-file Americans that was so pervasive, so overwhelming, that it begins to feed on itself, clouding our judgement on even unrelated issues.

That the fear culture created by bin Laden was then shamlessly leveraged by the Republican party and, especially, Bush and his administration (is there a single government program out there without the word "terrorist" in its name these days?) for political gain is even more disturbing. This is something we're doing to ourselves.

Is it any wonder that people in places like West Virginia, South Dakota, and Kansas (with no real terror targets to speak of) hold an irrational fear of being hit by a terrorist attack? After all, their president tells them that every time he takes the podium. I predict that he'll do it again tonight, too.

What we need to fear in this country is fear itself (sounds familiar, no?), not imaginary boogiemen around every corner.

There are real boogiemen out there trying to do us harm, no doubt. But if we fight them with logic, shrewdness, strategy, and determination instead of letting misguided fear drive us into poorly planned brute force and draconian laws that accomplish little except crushing the very liberties our country was founded on, we'll be a lot better off.

Xosé

[Art]

On fear, once when I was in college, I was driving my father in the mountains of West Virginia. I think he was scared. He looked at my hands and said something like, "If you relax your hands, you'll be able to steer smoothly and take the corners faster."

He was right. I think it's the same with fear of terrorism. We're not going to be able to respond with agility and smarts if we're running scared.

I often wonder whether Bush & Cheney are scared or using fear to increase their executive branch powers. Either way, it reduces our adaptibility and decreases our odds of combating real threats.

But none of this is what Bob was asking for, is it?

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Sobre el miedo, una vez cuando yo estaba universitario, yo conducía con mi padre en las montañas de Virginia Occidental. Pienso que lo asusté. Miró a mis manos y dijo algo como, "Si relajaras a tus manos, serías capaz de dirigir suavemente y tomarías las esquinas más rápido. "

Tuvo razón. Pienso es lo mismo con el miedo de terrorismo. No vamos a ser capaces de responder con agilidad y inteligencia si "corremos asustados".

A menudo me pregunto si están asustados Bush y Cheney o si usan el miedo de aumentar sus poderes ejecutivos. Uno cosa u otra, el miedo reduce nuestra adaptabilidad y disminuye nuestras probabilidades de combatir las amenazas verdaderas.

Pero nada de esto es lo que Bob pidió, verdad?

[Terechu]

I don't know how many Al Qaeda members have been arrested in the USA Since the 9/11 attacks, but I presume the numbers are negligeable. In Spain, however, there have been over 300 arrests of radical islamists, belonging to either Al Qaeda or any of those other picturesque all-male, all-ugly terrorist clubs. The big difference is that while Spain seems to be a real hotbed of islamist terrorists, our Government goes quietly about the job of putting them behind bars, without much ado. The big difference, as I was saying, is that the population is not continuously being scared out of their wits by irresponsible politicians. Maybe because Spain has nothing to gain from alienating the population to gain support for "preventive wars"?
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No sé cuántos miembros de Al Qaeda se habrán arrestado en los EE.UU. desde los atentados del 11/9, pero supongo que el número será insignificante. En España, sin embargo, se han arrestado más de 300 islamistas radicales, pertenecientes bien a Al Qaeda o a algún otro de estos exclusivos clubs de terroristas masculinos y feos. La gran diferencia está en que, mientras España es un hervidero de terroristas islamistas, el gobierno cumple calladamente con su deber de meterlos en la carcel sin grandes aspavientos. La gran diferencia, como iba diciendo, es que no se está asustando permanentemente a la población por parte de políticos irresponsables. Se deberá a que España no gana nada con aterrar a la población para conseguir su apoyo para "guerras preventivas"?

[Art]

Terechu, I don't feel informed about this, in part because there has been a great amount of governmental secrecy, but I know that our government [USA] detained a lot of Moslem men right after 9-11. And I do think they were mostly male. The few stories I've heard indicated that very few, if any, of them turned out to be involved in any way with terrorism. And any links to Al Qaeda were pretty limited. But we don't hear about this much.

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Terechu, no me siento informado sobre esto, en parte porque hay mucho secreto gubernamental, pero sé que nuestro gobierno [EEUU] detuvo a muchos hombres musulmanes inmediatamente después de 11-9. Y realmente pienso que eran casi todos masculinos. Las pocas historias he oído indicaron que muy pocos, si alguno, de ellos estaban implicado de cualquier modo con el terrorismo. Y cualquier enlaces con Al Qaeda estaba muy limitados. Pero no nos enteramos mucho sobre este tema.