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A tale of two scares
President Bush wants us to fear bin Laden; everyone else wants us to fear bird flu. We should tell both sets of apocalypse-mongers to get a grip.

First, an article slamming President Bush and his administration for their cynical terror alert in New York at the end of last week, when they claimed - on the basis of a hoax, it later transpired - that there was a 'specific threat' to the New York subway and that a terrorist attack was possible 'in the coming days'. Second, you will see an article slamming President Bush and his administration for not taking seriously enough the threat of a bird flu pandemic across the Western world, which apparently is the real 'chief bioterrorist in our midst', threatening to burst America's 'bubble of privilege', kill 100million people and leave entire cities devastated (1). So it is the birds, not bin Laden, that will bring down the United States.

In the same breath, many of a left or liberal persuasion have a pop at Bush for using the politics of fear, and then use the politics of fear to have a pop at Bush. They criticise the Bush administration for trying to ratchet up fear down New York way in a cynical bid to shore up support for the war on terror and the war in Iraq, and then criticise it for failing to warn people about what they claim is the most grievous threat facing mankind, the real 'exterminatory threat' - where 'the chicken, probably first domesticated in South-East Asia some 8,000 years ago, might prove the death of many of us'.

In this tale of two scares, both sides transform what are undoubtedly real problems - terrorism and Avian Flu - into promises of apocalypse, constantly flagging up the worst-case, 'What if?' scenarios. And if anything, the left's fearmongering over bird flu is even more poisonous, insidious and anti-human than the right's cheap terror-talk....

...The terror-talkers and the bird-flu panic merchants play the same game. But those ratcheting up fear about bird flu - and left-liberals and environmentalists are often at the forefront of this - are doing even more damage than the anti-terror brigade. Their message about humanity is even more degenerate and degraded than that spouted by the Bush administration....