
How dangerous is America? - jessaustin
http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2013/07/27/how-dangerous-america/TrzB0skxcsJH8yjAlslZCL/story.html
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mpyne
As usual, fun quotes for all sides of a debate:

"Many raised doubts about the claims -- especially that the NSA played a key
role in uncovering a 2009 plan to bomb the New York subway system --but the
rough number of plots was comparable to what I estimated, which makes the
NSA’s assertions seem credible to me." "...Perhaps our government’s
controversial counter-terrorism efforts have prevented more Bostons than is
commonly believed"

"Recently, the former coordinator of the UN team that monitors Al Qaeda and
the Taliban said that, between 2007 and 2011, your chances of being killed in
a terrorist attack were about 1 in 20 million. You have about a 1-in-126,000
lifetime risk of being killed by lightning"

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shirro
While I think the "War on Terror" has been mostly a huge waste of tax payer
money and a threat to civil liberties, when comparing it to lighting you have
to consider that the rate of lightning strikes are probably fairly constant
over time subject only to slow processes like climate change.

Terrorism could potentially grow quite quickly so perhaps it does make sense
to expend a bit more effort than protecting people from lightning. We seem to
have failed to do that in an entirely rational way but the lightning - terror
comparison seems invalid. Probably better to compare it with preventable
deaths from some cause like car accidents or pool drownings (which is probably
even worse for the anti-terror lobby) and which might get out of hand unless
there is active prevention. Though again the cost benefit compared with
preventing death from other causes doesn't help the authoritarians.

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TeMPOraL
So America is safer for its residents than they feel it is.

But I wonder what would be the result if one was to ask Europeans, "how
dangerous is America [for Europe / the World]?".

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adamconroy
The USA is very fucking dangerous if it decides it doesn't like your
ideologies or thinks you have too much oil or the president is a red neck
whacko warmongerer.

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gcb0
hogwash with a lot of open pools and estimated numbers. what exactly is the
point of this article even existing?

