Australian federal government expenditure on media consultants and market analysts exceeds three hundred million dollars per annum. For all the Taxpayer’s money that is spent only a proportion of the population adopts Howard’s cringe mentality and succumbs to the contractionist politics of fear. Announce the (remote) possibility of ‘chicken’ fever (avian flu) mutating and a percentage of the population rushes pharmacies and exhausts the supply of an anti-viral drug reputed to alleviate some of the ill effects (but not prevent) this disease. [Remember the Y2K scare and associated hysteria?] In answer to the tiniest ‘army’ in the history of warfare (a few dozen ‘terrorists’) we turn our whole existence upside down running in fear and loathing at every little alarm that our lying politicians would sound.