Now, I do not want to be accused of understating the suffering endured by the relatives of those killed in terrorist attacks. The "so" in the title is intended to mean "by comparison with other ways of dying".

Governments around the world seem to be treating terrorism as if it were a significant cause of death in an otherwise safe world, and draconian laws are essentially being justified in that way.

Yet the truth is very different. The main thing about a terrorist act is that it can kill a large number of people in one place, and a finger can be pointed at the person or persons who deliberately caused those deaths.

But dead is dead. It doesn't matter whether you die as part of a group, or on your own. Your surviving relatives will still grieve, and I rather doubt that they're comforted by the thought that you did not die in company.

The ABS provides statistics on numbers and causes of deaths.

http://tinyurl.com/ypjskt

In 2005, 270 people were the victims of murder, another 25 of manslaughter, and a further 201 were victims of driving causing death. Yet that total of 496 people dying is just the tip of the iceberg.

This document

http://tinyurl.com/2enakl

shows that in 2004 more than 5200 people died in accidents, more than 2000 died from self harm (whether or not they intended to kill themselves, which may not be known anyway), and nearly 8000 died from other non-health related causes, such as poisonings and violence (including the murders etc, that would have occurred in 2004).

Finally, one can note that in that one year, more than 132,000 people died from all causes.

So, yes, terrorism is an awful crime, and yes we ought to try to prevent it, but doing so does not have that much affect on how likely we are to die in any given year. Is it really worth compromising our liberty for the sake of reducing the already very low incidence of terrorism even further?

Sylvia.

YES. I and my family as infidels are not the target of these laws and so our freedoms are not jeprodised. In fact our freedom to shop and take trains etc. is more likely to be made safer by these laws. When these acts of terrorism stop then these laws will be scraped. There will simply be no need for them. Western democracies will never tolerate these laws once the threat of terrorism is over

Thank you, Sylvia.

To take your argument further, as I believe the Pentagon once did (see http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1153513,00.html), the risk we face from terrorism is even less significant when we consider the risk we face from global warming, other dire threats to our environment and the exhaustion of our natural resources, particularly oil, fresh water and metals such as copper and platinum.

Sylvia....

The danger of terrorism is not in the numbers killed in specific attacks (unless they start with dirty bombs, nukes, or biological attacks)but in the ideas behind them.

The attacks (from Islamists) we have endured thus far have a much bigger goal. I hope you will give that due attention.

I don't know why you would make a forced comparison between 'ways of dying' when the real issue is the competing belief and social systems.

I'm still shaking in my boots from a near miss yesterday, when totally unexpectedly some moron made a turn from the turn lane of lights (major intersection, him facing a red no turn light, me cruising thru on the green) in front of me as if I was not even there.

But the trauma of that near miss will fade, the concern about those who will kill our bodies so they can next kill our minds and spirits and those of our children AFTER the actual traumatic incident... that will never fade.

thx, sylvia, always pleasant to hear a voice of reason.

Part of what motivated me to post the item was Philip Ruddock's comments to the effect that in the light of a number of terrorism suspects being granted bail despite the requirement for exceptional circumstances, it may be necessary to change the law so that such people cannot even apply for bail.

My concern there is that it would mean that the mere accusation of involvement in a terrorist offence would be sufficient to keep a person locked up at least until the committal hearing, regardless of the strength, or even existence, of the case against them. Further, the accusation would only need to be of something trivial, as long as it's labelled a terrorism offence by the Criminal Code. As we've seen, even giving someone a SIM card has been construed as a terrorism offence by the authorities.

So all the Government would need to do to take someone out of circulation for months would be to accuse them. This would see the person placed into solitary confinement and deprived of most of the usual ways of communicating with the outside world. It is little comfort that a person so accused might then be able to sue successfully for malicious prosecution at a later date. The government could easily regard this as an acceptable price to pay.

It takes little imagination to see how such action, and threats of such action, could be abused. That Philip Ruddock could even suggest such a change to the legislation tells me that he's completely lost touch with reality on this.