ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Lovers of the English language and of humanity have been enraged for long enough by the hijacking of the meaning and application of "terror" and derivative words by the US-led Coalition and complicit, lying Anglo-American mainstream media. Thus we have the semantic absurdity of the "War on Terror" that is best appreciated if we imagine violent Coalitions conducting wars on fear, concern, sensibility, happiness or transcendent joy. However the very meaning of "terrorist" has been subverted by the leaders of the US-led Coalition who have effectively now re-defined this as "any enemy we oppose, hate and wish to destroy". 
Escape from the current Orwellian loop is long overdue. We must insist qualitatively on the centuries-old meanings of English words, as opposed to the Newspeak of the blathering Blair and verbally-challenged, bumbling Bush. We must also attempt to analyze global "terror" realities quantitatively, rejecting the "2 plus 2 does not equal 4" proposition of Big Brother in George Orwell's "1984". We need to critically examine what we mean by "terror" and try to get a quantitative handle on the actuality of global "terrorism".
"Terror" is defined in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary as "intense fear". When "terrorists" "terrorize" by applying "terrorism" to a society they attempt to impose their views or further their goals by "coercive intimidation" i.e. by "inducing intense fear" in the subject people. Further, we can recognize sub-categories of "terrorism" such as state terrorism and non-state terrorism. However the actual intensity or degree of the fear experienced is hard to estimate for individuals and impossible in practice to determine for substantial populations (e.g. Afghan mothers or commuters on the London underground). The "degree of terror" is related to "increased likelihood of death" for oneself or one's loved ones. Accordingly, we could attempt quantitation of "terror" by determining the "probability of avoidable death" for various groups of people. 
"Avoidable death" or "avoidable mortality" (technically, excess mortality) is the difference between the ACTUAL deaths in a country and the deaths EXPECTED for a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics [1, 2]. United Nations Population Division data [3] enable calculation of the avoidable mortality (excess mortality) for every country in the World since 1950. Under-5 infant mortality is a major component of mortality in Third World countries and using this UN data [3] we can also calculate the under-5 infant mortality for every country in the World over the last half century. Updated UNICEF reports [4] also provide estimates of infant mortality and other key social statistics reflecting global and national policies.
The latest UNICEF report (2005) [4] estimates that in 2003 the under-5 infant mortality was 110,000 in Occupied Iraq, 292,000 in Occupied Afghanistan and 1,000 in the invading and occupying country Australia, noting that in 2003 these countries had populations of 25, 24 and 20 million, respectively [4] and the under-5 year olds in these countries totalled 4.2, 5.0 and 1.3 million, respectively [3]. From this information we can calculate that the probability of under-5 infant death in a calendar year at the moment is about 2.6%, 5.8% and 0.08%, respectively, for Occupied Iraq, Occupied Afghanistan and the occupying country Australia. Thus at present the annual under-5 infant deaths in Iraq average 2.8 for every 100 under-5 year old Iraqi infants.
The probability of infant death is clearly very low in the Coalition occupying country Australia and is also very low in other Western countries [1, 2]. However the probability of under-5 infant death is very high in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories. It is likely that parents (and especially mothers) in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghanistan Territories would have grave fears for their infants when on average about 4 out of every 100 under-5 year old infants die each year. The appallling infant mortality in these Coalition-occupied countries is associated with non-provision of life-sustaining requisites by the US-led Coalition and represents horrendous "passive genocide" in utter dereliction of the Geneva Accords [5, 6].{mosgoogle right}
There have been about 5,000 Western civilian deaths over the last 20 years due to jihadist and Arab insurgent violence (with most having occurred in Israel and the US and the remainder largely due to the Lockerbie, Bali, Madrid and London atrocities) [1, 2]. Knowing that the total current population in Western countries is about 760 million [3], we can estimate that the probability of Western civilian death annually from terrorist attack has averaged about 0.00003%. By way of comparison, in the US (population about 300 million) [3] the annual deaths from car accidents total 42, 643 (2003) [7] and from smoking-related causes 435,000 (2005) [8]. Accordingly, the annual probabilities of deaths from car accidents and from smoking-related causes in the US are about 0.014% and 0.15%, respectively.
From the above calculations we can see that the "probability of under-5 infant death" in Coalition-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan is about 100,000 - 200,000 times greater than "probability of avoidable death" for Western civilians at the hands of jihadists or Arab insurgents. However it must be noted that the relationship between "probability of avoidable death" and "intensity of fear" is not linear. Thus one might imagine that being trapped in a cage with 1 hungry Bengal tiger would induce roughly the same degree of utter terror as being trapped with 10. Nevertheless we can judge that because the UK-US Coalition is generating such a vastly greater number of avoidable deaths than the jihadists, it is also generating vastly more "intense fear" (terror).
In comparison with the UK-US Coalition, the jihadists and Middle East Arab insurgents (while undoubtedly ruthless and violent) have had a rather modest track record as "terrorists". Indeed the jihadists in ostensibly prompting 21st century UK-US state terrorism have been of immense benefit to the UK and US miltary-industrial complexes. Thus the post-9/11 EXTRA profit to the US miltary-industrial complex has been about $500 billion. Indeed the magnitude of the benefit to US militarism and US empire from jihadist violence [9] has suggested the possibility of covert US support for such activity. The UK and the US clearly supported jihadism for many years in Afghanistan and the US has had an appalling track record of support for state and non-state terrorism in Central America, South America, the Caribbean and elsewhere in the World. Thus Philip Agee in his revelatory "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" describes how the US trained and supported Ecuadorian terrorist squads to bomb Catholic churches in order to excite anti-communist sentiment [10].
Any terrorism directed against innocent people is vile. Indeed the normally rather quiet Australian Labor Leader and Leader of the Opposition, Mr Kim Beazley, denounced those responsible for the senseless and evil London atrocity in very strong terms: "These terrorists are subhuman filth and must be captured and eliminated" [11]. How then should we describe the US-led Coalition leaders with direct, criminal responsibility for horrendous avoidable mortality and infant mortality in Iraq and Afghanistan? Thus the post-invasion avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories has totalled 1.9 million and 1.5 million, respectively [1, 2, 3]. The continuing under-5 infant death toll in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories of 0.4 MILLION EACH YEAR and over 1,000 DAILY [1, 2, 3] represents an egregious war crime - and "terror" indeed for millions of Iraqi and Afghan parents.
Peace is the only way but decent people are obliged to INFORM OTHERS and to ETHICALLY ASSESS their dealings with people and countries complicit in mass murder and terrorism against mothers and children. I and others have formally written to the International Criminal Court over UK-US war crimes in Iraq (e.g. see [6]). One hopes that the wheel will eventually turn, that the World will eventually get wise to the Goebellsian Coalition lies and slies (spin-based untruths) and that the UK-US state terrorists will eventually be brought to account.
References
[1] Gideon Polya, Global Avoidable Mortality blog (see: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/)
[2] Gideon Polya website (see: website: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html)
[3] United Nations, Department of Economic & Social Affairs, Population Division, "World Population Prospects: The 2002 Revision Population Database" (for the latest 2004 Revision update see: http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?panel=1 )
[4] UNICEF report, 2005 (see: http://www.unicef.org/index2.html)
[5] Gideon Polya, Countercurrents, 11 March 2005, "Passive genocide in Iraq" (see: http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-polya110305.htm)
[6] Gideon Polya, News Central Asia, October 2004, "Coalition war crimes in Iraq - Australian scientist moves International Criminal Court" (see: http://www.newscentralasia.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1019)
[7] Wikipedia, "Car accident" (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_accident)
[8] American Cancer Society, 2005 "Cigarette smoking"
[9] Gideon Polya, Countercurrents, 19 November 2004, "US profits from jihadist terrorism" (see: http://www.countercurrents.org/us-polya191104.htm)
[10] Philip Agee "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" (Penguin, London, 1975)
[11] The Australian, 8 July 2005.
Dr Gideon Polya
Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003), and is currently writing a book on global mortality - numerous articles on this matter can be found by a simple Google search for "Gideon Polya" and on his website: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html
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In this age of self-appreciative indoctrinated narcissism that is overwhelmed only by its zealotry for faultfinding Schadenfreude. Oddly an age that is equally void in the positive and pleasures of the “Mudita,” that contrary to our obessive fashionable “schadenfreude” fantasies, ww the masses are often as not overwhelmed in indoctrination by the few elitists feigning in the opiate of relativism’s faux fidelity.
In that, we must endure these elitists indoctrinate U’s, academic doublethink’s of incestuous breeding in the Reductio ad absurdum, these expunging of Dysoptia doublethink demagoguery. That is, in substance, but an echo, asking a shadow to dance, in a soundless room, blinded by a perpetual fog of ambiguity, supported by nothing, but hope in a mythological rational relativist’s utopia, yet existence, nor ever yet remotely seen.
The problem of negation also arises from these incestuous breeders of indoctrinate U enablers. In order to support their hyperbola of Reductio ad adsurdum and dysoptia of doublethink, these indoctrinate you communalist, must fog the world with the opiate that everyone with differing opinions has to be wrong, therefore, in evidence per se, only the few elite of progressive delusions can be right. Thus, instead of saying \"all beliefs (ideas, truths and meanings) are, equally valid,\" they just say in “indoctrinate-U-ism,” \"all beliefs are equally worthless, if they are not mine or like mine.\"
In knowing wisely truth, one must first maneuver the obstacles and multi-levels of reality that truth is relative and vastly numerous, rarely non-ambiguous and often vacillating in the slippery world of Subjectivity.
Hail to Indoctrinate U!
However there are SOME moral absolutes e.g. "thou shalt not kill children" and the greatest Terror for a Mother is loss of her Child.
Accordingly the US and UK complicity in 0.5 million under-5 infant deaths EACH YEAR in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories - 1,300 per day, ONE EVERY MINUTE, 90% avoidable and largely due to gross US and UK Occupier war crimes (for data see UNICEF: UNICEF- makes these rogue states the "world's worst terrorist states".
Buddha made the observation, you need to take something to be the truth. But if you cling too strongly ,then even when the truth comes in person and knocks on your door, you may not open it.
In my state of evolution, I believe it is not o.k. for a powerful nation to preside over the deaths of millions of innocents. Are you inferring Feral that if I become liberated from my primitive belief system that it will be o.k.?
In passing, I often had to write technical procedures, they had to be exact accurate and understandable by all that would use the procedure. You know a spade was a spade, all be it a high tech spade.
I believe the best weapon against the terror and fear around the world, would be joy, happiness, kindness and compassion and so on. Not much of that coming out of the US Marine Corp, or the S.A.S; not their job.
Mike
A reductio ad absurdum is that a US or UK Terrorist takes over a plane in which, say, 250 passengers are from Afghanistan and 250 from Switzerland or some such prosperous Western country. International law expects that ALL the kidnapped people will survive the ordeal - any suggestion that it will be OK for the Afghan hostages to die like flies will be dismissed as egregious racism and advocacy of mass murder.
The latest (November 2007) estimates are that post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan total 1.5-2 million and 3.2-6 million, respectively (see "US Alliance Afghan Genocide - 6 million excess deaths?" : updated Iraq, Afghan deaths ).
In the Jewish Holocaust about 1 million of the 6 million victims died from deprivation - anyone denying these 1 million deaths or denying Nazi culpability in these 1 million deaths faces 10 years in prison in Austria and lengthy custodial sentences in other Western European countries.
The World must recognize the racist, mass paedocidal, proto-Nazi evil that is UK-US state terrorism.
Regarding, these words you wrote :-
'you need to explain where
the Occupying forces have killed the children, or denied access to medical services. Finally, you need to show that child mortality is a policy, and not a by-product of the ongoing counter-insurgency campaign.'
I saw on TV a big hole in the ground, that was a restaurant in Iraq, before it was hit by a US smart missile, the US forces there thought Saddam was dinning at the restaurant, he wasn't, all there killed, was that OK, either way?
If an occupying nation fails to supply the resources for hospitals, medicine and food. And blow up targets without thought for the innocent.
Tell me how does that make that nation, any better than the Nazi invaders of the past?
Also denying of critical resources, kills the weak.
Is there any difference between locking someone up without essentials until he/she dies, or shooting that person?
Mike
International Law says that the war criminal, mass murdering, mass paedocidal UK, US, Oz, US Alliance, NATO Bush-ite politicians complicit in the horrendpus mass murder in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories (post-invasion excess deaths now totalling 5-8 million) should be arraigned before the Internationaal Criminal Court - as indeed recommended by 2005 UK Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter.
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