BY SARAH STEPHEN
At the start of a new century, the world has entered a new and frightening "age of terror", the world's ruling elite tells us. The attack on Manhattan's Twin Towers supposedly "changed everything".
There is a "real and present danger posed to Australians by unscrupulous fanatics in our very midst who exploit our liberal values and our respect for civil liberties by plotting murder and mayhem against us", the June 2 editorial in the Murdoch-owned Australian claimed.
Western governments tell their citizens that military budgets must be boosted and civil liberties curbed in order to successfully fight "terrorism" and countries that "harbour" terrorists must be brought into line — by force if necessary.
On this pretext, the US has led a war against Afghanistan, which killed more people than the number who died in the attack on the Twin Towers, and a war against Iraq, a country with no link to the al Qaeda terrorist network, at a cost of more than 7000 civilians' lives.
Western governments have been able to propose severe restrictions on commonly accepted rights because of the intense climate of fear whipped up since September 11.
Starting with the draconian USAPATRIOT Act, First World governments have been introducing "anti-terrorism" legislation that removes the right to legal counsel and gives police and secret police agencies the authority to arbitrarily detain people suspected of terrorism or having had contact with alleged terrorists.
A Human Rights Watch briefing paper, In the Name of Counter-Terrorism: Human Rights Abuses Worldwide, prepared for the 59th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, was released on March 25. It listed examples of governments violating human rights in the name of fighting terrorism:
- The US government's response to the September 2001 attack on New York's world Trade Centre has been to arbitrarily and secretly detain non-citizens and subject them to secret deportation hearings, and to militarily detain without charges US citizens designated as "enemy combatants", denying them access to legal counsel.
- In Egypt, the authorities have arrested hundreds of suspected government opponents, many for alleged membership in the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned but non-violent group, and others for possession of "suspicious" literature.
- In India, children as young as 12 have been arrested under a sweeping new anti-terrorist law.
- Russia has justified its brutal war in Chechnya by linking it to the global campaign against terrorism.
- The United Kingdom has passed new laws which permit the long-term, arbitrary detention of foreign nationals.
Convincing citizens that their very lives are threatened by "terrorists" has provided many governments with mass support for such attacks.
A Gallup poll conducted in the US in March 2002, six months after 9/11, found that four out of five Americans would give up some freedoms to gain security and four in 10 worried that terrorists will harm them or their family. Around one-third of those polled favoured making it easier for authorities to access private email and telephone conversations. More than 70% were in favour of requiring US citizens to carry identification cards with fingerprints.
This climate of fear has also provided a justification for increasing military spending, which Western governments had previously found increasingly difficult to justify in the years following the end of the Cold War.
The US military budget now stands at US$396 billion — its highest level since 1954 (following the 1950-53 Korean War) and far exceeding the Cold War average annual spending of just under US$300 billion. While no match for such an obscene waste of money, the Australian government has also boosted military spending to record levels, now A$15.8 billion.
Fear of terrorism continues to affect the attitudes of large numbers of people, especially in the US. A poll conducted by Braun Research in August surveyed 800 Long Islanders and 800 New York City residents. It found that, 12 months after 9/11, an overwhelming majority thought about the attacks at least once a week, and almost half did so every day.
Most Long Islanders — 61% — said they were more watchful of other people than they were before 9/11. Almost 30% said they felt less secure in their day-to-day activities. Among New York City residents, more than 40% said they felt less secure.
People also worried about the likelihood of further terrorist attacks. Among Long Islanders surveyed, 86% felt it was likely the United States would be struck again, and 77% thought it would happen within two years.
The sustained level of fear reflected in this opinion poll, and many others like it, is not simply a product of the terrorist attack itself, but also of the calculated way in which the US government has exploited the attack, and the role of the corporate media in magnifying the issue out of all proportion to the reality of terrorist activity.
Outside of the US, public opinion has retained a healthier sense of reality. A Gallup International poll released on September 29, based on 35,000 interviews conducted in 46 countries, found that almost twice as many people (18%) believe that poverty is a more significant concern than terrorism (10%). This compared with 6% of US citizens who thought poverty was the greatest problem, while 21% cited terrorism.
Nevertheless, the hysteria continues to affect some people's sense of proportion. On a 3AW talk-back radio on May 30, a day after a man on a Melbourne to Launceston flight injured two flight attendants with wooden stakes, a caller asked Prime Minister John Howard: "John, in the event of what happened yesterday, don't you think it's about time we had the death penalty in Australia?"
The open-ended War on Terror declared by the US government and supported by the vast majority of First World governments is justified by the unquestioned assumption that terrorism is on the rise, that catastrophic loss of life is waiting around the corner unless decisive action is taken. But is it really true that the world is more vulnerable than ever to terrorist attacks? Ironically, the US's own figures prove this inflammatory rhetoric to be a lie.
In releasing the US State Department's report Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002 on April 30, US coordinator for counter-terrorism ambassador Cofer Black stated: " There were 199 international terrorist attacks during 2002. That represents a significant drop from the previous year — 44% fewer attacks."
A key reason for the decline was the "increased security measures in place in virtually every nation", Black said. "Nations are on guard against terrorism", he explained, and more than 3000 al Qaeda suspects have been arrested. "Nations worldwide are fighting terrorism energetically, and they should take some measure of pride in the historically low number of attacks recorded that year."
The decline in 2002 was no anomaly — there has been an steady decline in terrorist attacks since the mid-1980s. The high point was in 1987, when there were 665 terrorist attacks around the world.
The average number of terrorist attacks in the 1981-1990 period was 537, while in the following 10 years there were 381 such attacks. The average for 2001-2002 stands at 277. What is striking is that these are not significant numbers.
The number of people killed in terrorist attacks is similarly small. In 1998, 741 people died in terrorist attacks globally; 12 of them were US citizens. The following year, 233 people died in terrorist attacks globally; 6 of them were US citizens.
In 2001, 3572 people died in terrorist attacks globally; 1440 of them were US citizens. Most of those killed, died in the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers.
Last year, 725 people died in terrorist attacks globally; 26 of them were US citizens.
The 3572 people who died in terrorist attacks in 2001 were three times more likely to die from being hit by lightning. While 1440 US citizens died in terrorist attacks in 2001, three times as many US citizens died of malnutrition, and almost 40 times as many people died in car accidents. Eighty-eight Australians died in last year's Bali bombing. By comparison, almost 20 times more died in 2002 in road accidents and around more than four times died in reported murders.
The fear of terrorism massively outweighs the actual likelihood of dying in a terrorist attack. The rhetoric about a new "age of terrorism" is a fabrication, used by the US ruling class and its allies in other First World countries as justification for launching a series of wars with the aim of asserting military, political and economic dominance over the peoples of the Third World.
From Green Left Weekly, June 11, 2003.
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