That you are even debating this indicates how surreal the world has become.

You have been selective in your choice of terrorist-caused deaths in the UK. An obvious example is the omitted year 1998, when twenty nine people dies in one attack alone.

I was going off records from wikipedia, which I must admit, is hardly an authoritative source in itself. If I go by data from the Terrorism Knowledge Base at The Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, the number of UK fatalities from terrorism actually falls from 70 to 56! So rather than being “selective”, I have apparently been overly generous!

Anyway, as Amir noted, the chances of Australians dying from terrorism with or without massive government expenditure to prevent it, is tiny relative to just about everything else that possesses lethality. It’s really a question of opportunity costs: spend the money on terrorism prevention to make the people you have frightened feel safer about a threat which in fact barely registers on the scale, or spend it on, say, incubators for prematurely born babies. The current government seems to think the former ranks higher on the list of priorities.

In the case of deaths on the railways a great deal of time and money has been spent seeing what caused them and removing those causes

This is silly. It is pretty easy to make this statement eat itself. E.g.: If so much money has been spent on railways to make them safe and they are still more lethal than terrorists, then that is proof enough that they, like terrorists, need to be shut down for good! You see how ridiculous the argument becomes when one is consistent about it?

The fact is that the risk of terrorism is miniscule and the money spent on ‘fighting’ it is completely disproportionate to the threat.  A person is more likely to be struck by lightning or killed by pesticides than they are from a suicide bomber or terrorist.  Despite that, the government treats terrorism as though it poses an existential threat to our society and the lives of every Australian.

Given that the resident population of Australia is projected to be 19,767,520,1 that 11 Australians per year, on average, have died in terrorist incidents during the past ten years and assuming that this toll will continue into the future, it follows that the likelihood that a randomly-selected individual will die under such circumstances during a given year is 0.0000006 (that is, a chance of 6 in 10 million or 1 in 1.7 million).Further, given that 55 Australians per year, on average, have died in terrorist incidents during the past two years, and assuming that WTC and Bali-like incidents continue and therefore that this greater toll will continue into the future, the annualised risk of death from terrorism will increase to 0.000003 (that is, 3 in 1 million or 1 in 333,333).

This risk compares to the odds, over the course of an average North American life span (let us assume that these odds are roughly comparable to their counterparts in Australia), that one will die from pesticide poisoning (1 in 200,000), a lightning strike (1 in 30,000), a motor vehicle accident (1 in 60), and disease caused by smoking one packet of cigarettes per day (1 in 6).2 Relative to the major killers of Australians, the ‘terrorist threat’ is thus minuscule; and to assert that terrorism poses a grave threat to our safety is simply false.

source

‘In view of the occasional rioting by white men at football games in the UK (resulting, incidentally, in a greater death toll than is due to terrorist acts in the UK), ‘
Any figures to confirm your claim?

Nope – the football reference was a throw-away line. I have no idea where one would find the data on such matters.

But if we want to be even sillier about it, here is a comparsion of actual data on deaths due to terrorism verses deaths due to railways:

year - terrorism - rail accidents
2006 – 0 - 1
2005 - 56 - 1
2004 - 0 – 13
2003 - 0 - 1
2002 - 0 - 7
2001 - 0 - 10
2000 - 0 - 4
1999 - 3 - 31
1997 - 0 – 6
1996 - 2 - 2
1995 - 0 - 1
1994 - 0 – 7
1993 - 4 - 0
1992 – 4 - 0
1991 - 0 - 6
1990 - 1 - 1
Total - 70 - 91

Given this UK data, where are the new Anti-Railway Laws for Australia? My two original (implicit) points re Dave’s post were: (a) constructing laws for one country based on the experience of another country (as Nile suggests in Hansard) is idiotic; and (b) even assuming we did, if one imposes laws on X because of perceived bad B1, then one should also impose laws on Y which is associated with B2, where B2 > B1. If one is unwilling to imposes laws on Y, then one must have a better reason than B1 to impose laws on X. Hope that is clear.

My comment was a response to Dave’s comment.

Fadi Rahman has been quoted as saying that over 90% of Muslims are drug users and extremist muslims are tax evaders. When the wide community read this why wouldn’t they reasonably conclude that it is better to get rid of this problem?

This post is not an example of bigotry but rather a way to reduce it. We have a cohort of imbeciles who represent us to Australia who achieve nothing except to further demonize us in order to curry favor with the govt. or to angle for public money .

There is no point complaining about this post, better that you direct your anger to the self appointed howler monkeys who we see interviewed every night.

Being a leader to Muslims is not just about angling for public funds by talking up problems, its about getting off ones backside and serving the community you seek to represent.

As you are evidently familiar with both Australia and the United States, I was wondering if you had any thoughts or observations on the differences between the two in terms of how they have absorbed immigrants. Whereas Australia has long had a policy of multiculturalism, the US seems to be based around the idea of a ‘melting pot’ (i.e. a more hands off approach to dealing with newcomers). Is this an accurate assessment and, if so, do you see any differences in terms of the result?

The reason I ask is that it has been my albeit cursory observation that politicians in the US are not as given to commenting on the religious practices of their citizenry as are politicians in the US and UK. For example, in Australia and the UK, senior politicians have criticised the wearing of the veil whereas, as far as I am aware, this is not a debate that either the President or those around him have waded into. One theory for that might be, assuming my observation is correct, that multiculturalism has effectively bought politicians the right to comment on the religious and cultural practices of their constituents whereas under the American system such talk wouldn’t be as readily accepted or seen as politically justifiable?

Of course this vile position plays well to the emotions of some of the electorate. It plays very well to the hard core true believers of the right wing. Need we say the white protestant subset of the right wing? Need we say these people would not accept Muslims under ANY condition period? Even if every Muslim was a pillar of rectitude and humility these people would not accept them. Not even if every Muslim were to convert to the “true” religion (Christianity) would they accept them. These right wingers want to exclude anyone who doesn’t fit the lily-white European mold. Today the Muslims, tomorrow the Asians, the Indians, the Mixed breeds, fill in the blank.

Interestingly enough there is another group that is all too willing foist the idea that Muslims can not adapt to societal norms. This group is not part of the anti-immigrant right wing. This group is part of the warp and woof of the Muslim community. Unfortunately in any minority community there are people who gain power via victimhood. There are organizations who’s existence requires that there be an “oppressed” minority and sadly perpetuate the sense of grievance in that minority. This is because grievance is their bread and butter. They are not going to ever stop whining because it is their very reason for being. Even sadder is the way right wing Islamophobes and Muslim “permanent victims” feed into each others demonology. The Cooperate media is also fed by this facile argument between “newcomers” vs “old blood” Australians. The Cooperate media get to slap up two screaming heads, generate some controversy and then sell ad space.

This is not to say that there is not trouble in paradise. All immigrant communities endure real hardship adjusting to their new societies. This is a very common theme in countries who’s history is that of an immigrant nation especially the USA and Australia. Eventually the immigrants and the nation get things sorted out to a fashion. Eventually everyone adapts.