WMD 3.0: How Big Brother Is Murdering Us - by Fear
In a recent science section piece, the venerable New York Times reports a highly revealing psychiatric study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry which indicates that the Bush/Cheney administration’s policy of fear mongering actually constitutes a greater threat to Americans’ lives and well being than Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda.
Says the Times:
when statisticians look at cold numbers, they have variously estimated the chances of the average person dying in America at the hands of international terrorists to be comparable to the risk of dying from eating peanuts, being struck by an asteroid or drowning in a toilet. But worrying about terrorism could be taking a toll on the hearts of millions of Americans. The evidence, published last week in the Archives of General Psychiatry, comes from researchers who began tracking the health of a representative sample of more than 2,700 Americans before September 2001. After the attacks of Sept. 11, the scientists monitored people’s fears of terrorism over the next several years and found that the most fearful people were three to five times more likely than the rest to receive diagnoses of new cardiovascular ailments.
[See full article here: Living in Fear and Paying a High Cost in Heart Risk]
Granted that any which slick statistical correlation no irrefutable causality makes, it only stands to reason that, rather than guaranteeing a more secure life, reiterated terrorism alerts will only service the administration’s transparent agenda. If anything, homeland security is merely achieved in that citizens who are forced to cower and spend their time in cardiologists’ waiting rooms are highly unlikely to call the bluff the powers that be are spoon feeding them with on a 24/7 basis.
And, of course, the show goes on – like a clockwork. As Counterpunch columnist Dave Lindorff points out:
Bush, Cheney and other charlatans like Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and the former senator and now Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Rick Santorum continue to do the scare routine, warning that we are in grave danger — from Al Qaeda or Iran getting The Bomb, to Venezuela buying military aircraft from Brazil, to Cuba manufacturing dangerous biological weapons.
[Full article: They’re Scaring Us to Death. You may also want to read some of the reader comments.]
So are we denying the reality of modern day terrorism to don our tinfoil hats and subscribe to one of those copious conspiracy theories concerning 9/11 floating about these days? No need for that: The ancient Roman investigative principle of cui bono? (“who profits from it?”, or should we rather say: “follow the money?”) still holds good to this very day.
But then, of course, the Roman elites were early masters at playing their particular version of the Big Brother game, so it’s not entirely surprising that the smartest minds of their time caught onto the act as well, is it?
