[scandium]

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

So if more people die from these things than from Islamic based terrorism, that means the latter is negligible?

I hadn't said that, you tell me.

I live in Israel. I'm not going to bother looking up what here kills more people, simply because it makes no difference.

Really? Let's look at where I live then, Canada, where there hasn't been a domestic terrorist attack in decades. Now pretend you're the government, whose job it is after all to provide for the education, health, safety, and security of the people and to do that you have a budget of say $100 million dollars.

Since "it makes no difference" how we attribute our resources, why not spend the bulk of the money reassigning law enforcement to counter-terrorism, hardening possible terrorist targets, manning our vast border, logging and tracking all domestic and electronic communications, and putting into place a vast surveillance network?

It matters because resources are finite, and every resource you allocate to one task is a resource that isn't being put to use on something else. Civil liberties aside, I would be horrified if my country took the funding that is put into say healthcare and squandered it on the creation of a Big Brother style surveillance network to combat a threat that is non-existant only to end up neglecting those getting sick and dying of those things that are actually killing people here.

Islamic terrorism is a threat, sure, but it needs to be met in manner that is both responsible and proportional, and in a manner that also combats the roots of the problem rather than just its symptoms.

Indeed sickening naivety.

No Avon, naivety is becoming hysterical over the sensational items that hit the front page, having no clue at all about the illness of which they are only a symptom, having no solutions at all as to how to deal with them or their causes, and all the while ignoring the more mundane but far more lethal causes of death that are the true epidemics.