From the Onion. Keep on fightin’ that TWAT!
I know Aldous Huxley and George Orwell wrote the originals, but this, from the Cato Institute via BoingBoing, is a very practical explanation of just how useful a state of terror can be to a government who wants to hang onto power when the people want to freshen up the litter box.
Only traitors try to make us afraid of terrorists
In this mind-blowing, exhaustively researched Cato institute paper by Ohio State University’s John Mueller, the case against being afraid of terrorism is laid out in irrefutable logic, backed with credible, documented statistics about terrorism’s risks. From the number of fatalities produced by terrorism to the trends in terrorism death to the fact that almost no one has ever died from a military biological agent to the fact that poison gas and dirty bombs in the field do only minor damage — this paper is the most reassuring and infuriating piece of analysis I’ve read since September 11th, 2001. The bottom line is, terrorism doesn’t kill many people. Even in Israel, you’re four times more likely to die in a car wreck than as a result of a terrorist attack. In the USA, you need to be more worried about lightning strikes than terrorism. The point of terrorism is to create terror, and by cynically convincing us that our very countries are at risk from terrorism, our politicians have delivered utter victory to the terrorists: we are terrified.
Much of the current alarm is generated from the knowledge that many of today’s terrorists simply want to kill, and kill more or less randomly, for revenge or as an act of what they take to be The shock and tragedy of September 11 does demand a focused and dedicated program to confront international terrorism and to attempt to prevent a repeat. But it seems sensible to suggest that part of this reaction should include an effort by politicians, officials, and the media to inform the public reasonably and realistically about the terrorist context instead of playing into the hands of terrorists by frightening the public. What is needed, as one statistician suggests, is some sort of convincing, coherent, informed, and nuanced answer to a central question: “How worried should I be?” Instead, the message the nation has received so far is, as a Homeland Security official put (or caricatured) it, “Be scared; be very, very scared — but go on with your lives.” Such messages have led many people to develop what Leif Wenar of the University of Sheffield has aptly labeled “a false sense of insecurity.”
From Sploid, although it’s been sourced in any number of other places over the past year as well.
Being homeless comes with any number of inconveniences, not the least of which is the boredom that comes with having nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Until recently, hobos in Massachusetts used to be able to check out library books.
Robert Bombard has loved books even longer than he’s been homeless. He worked at the library as a teen, volunteered there as an adult and even worked in the prison library during his last stretch.
He got a rude awakening three years ago when he went to check out a few books from the Worcester Public Library.
“They said ‘Oh, no — you live at a shelter,’ right in front of everybody,” he told Adam Gorlick of the Associated Press. “It made me feel like a second-class citizen.”
It seems a new policy said that people without a permanent address were forbidden to take out more than two books at a time.
The city’s head librarian, Penelope Johnson, says the lawsuit over this change in policy prevents her from discussing the number of books lost to the homeless, she would only say that it had become a problem.
She adds that the policy — which allows folks with homes to take up to 50 books — wasn’t meant to discriminate against the homeless, just treat them differently.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Thanks for the clarification.
One is reminded, one is, of a long argument one had with one’s coworker about whether or not the coworker had the right to sunbathe nude. One took the position, one did, that if the coworker had the inherent right to sunbathe nude then so did people who didn’t own private courtyards. It was at this point the negotiations broke down. I call it for the homeless… but the cops don’t always see it the same way. In fairness to them, they wouldn’t call it for the property owners if they had the chance, either.
But I’m still pale as a banana slug.
Librarians have historically been among the most patriotic and freedom-loving members of this great nation. Time and again they have thwarted efforts by government storm troopers to stomp on the civil rights of others. This is indeed a sad turn of events.
