Í'm republishing this article hoping the readers of this blog will find it to be of some interest.

THE FEAR GAME OUR LATEST SENSATION


Ross Gittins - The Age November 16 2005


A reply: Con George-Kotzabasis


Ross Gittins with his piece in The Age has reached the dismal lows of his training as an economist. He digs, typically of his profession, and brings up statistics to make his “game” against the fear of terror. Like as if, the actions of fanatic terror could be gauged and explained by statistics.


He must have been temporarily impaired by a bout of aphasia when he wrote his article. Statistics are good in studying and comparing the normal and ordinary conduct of human or animal behavior, not the abnormal skewed behavior of either of the latter. Millenarian fanatic terror and the fear it produces upon its victims, does not fall under the category of normal behavior. Nor is it a “passing” sensation, as he claims. It’s an everlasting feeling that will not go away until its threat is considerably diminished, if not eradicated.


Moreover, one cannot quantify - as apparently Gittins attempts to do - the extent and volume of the threat by any scientific means, and least of all by statistics. The extent of the danger of global terror can only be measured by students of history who have distilled their knowledge from the sublime pages of Herodotus, the great Edward Gibbon, and Samuel Huntington, not to mention others for the lack of space, and by the power of imagination, attributes that are obviously missing from Gittins. Doesn’t he perceive or realize, that the present terrorist “mole-hill” threat could give birth to a mountain full of “mushrooms”? Doesn’t he perceive the exponential increase in casualties by a possible nuclear attack, once these zealots possessed nuclear weapons, which they would use with glee against the decadent West? Doesn’t he realize, that this is an existential struggle for Western civilization? And finally, does he seriously believe, that the Bush administration went to war, with all the uncertainties wars are replete with, and the great loss of lives and resources, for the purpose of saving a lesser number of American lives than those falling off from a ladder?


In the annals of Australian journalism, Ross Gittins’article will be forever pilloried for its analytical flippancy and intellectual banality.