Driven by fear

One of my favourite blogs is the Les MacDonald blog, otherwise known as the SMH letters page. Don't know, never met him, but have read his letters almost daily for years. He seems a ripe, old, crusty comrade type. That he is from Balmain, once union blue collar now trendy top dollar, just adds to the image. Sometimes I want to sit at the bar and share a beer with him. Other times I wouldn't want a bar of him and what he says leaves me needing a beer. Today, it'd be my shout:

"To get an idea of the blind panic into which John Howard has encouraged us you only need examine two statistics.
The first is the number of Australians who have been killed or injured in Australia by terrorism. That number is zero, zilch, naught, nil, zip.
The second statistic is the number of people killed or injured every year in Australia by motor vehicles. That number in 2004 was 1598 deaths and 11 times as many injuries.
An issue which has caused no deaths or injuries in Australia has caused our collective governments to deprive us of basic civil liberties without apparent concern, yet an issue causing thousands of deaths or injuries yearly causes no government to even contemplate any infringement on our civil liberties.
This is an outstanding triumph of the propagandist's art."
Les MacDonald, Balmain