For me the most absurd thing is that all this erosion of peoples rights and several wars have been justified by the threat of terrorism.
I'm not going to even bother finding some statistics to post right now but the actual threat of terrorism is vanishingly small. For example in 2012, more Americans died crushed by their TVs or furniture than from terrorism.
Be careful with this kind of argument. Among the reasons that we object to the treatment of Mr. Miranda et. al. is that it can cause a chilling effect, similar to what terrorism does.
Are you prepared to argue that the threat of home furniture will ever cause a chilling effect?
Yes, I agree there is a difference between an accident and an attack.
The main point I'm making is the organisations involved are clearly using terrorism as a pretext, greatly inflating its media presence.
If the US for example really wanted to reduce terrorism things like better universal education and social welfare would probably really be effective as the vast majority of the US' terrorism is internal. (Killing of abortion clinic doctors and so forth)
http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/sta...