Government shills setting us up for destruction of freedom
using avian influenza hysteria
http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/printer_2713.shtml
Health / Health Care Last Updated:
Nov 29th, 2005 - 15:11:43
---------------------------------
Bird Flu (Excerpt)
by William Norman Grigg
December 12, 2005
The Bush administration has been creating irrational fear about the dangers of
avian influenza just so that they can "save" us from it through restrictive
governmental powers. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the
populace alarmed [and hence clamorous to be led to safety] by menacing it with
an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-- H.L. Mencken
Though the H5N1 virus, better known as Avian Influenza or the bird flu, is a
tangible reality and a potential threat, conjuring the prospect of the disease
mutating into a planet-menacing pandemic involves a considerable amount of
imagination. At present, roughly 60 people out of a global population of more
than six billion have succumbed to the bird flu, and nearly all of them have
contracted it under conditions very difficult to duplicate. No evidence has
emerged to indicate that the virus can be transmitted from one human being to
another -- although it's possible that such a dire mutation could occur.
Nonetheless, the Bush administration and the UN's World Health Organization
are prepared to spend billions of dollars to regiment human society just in
case this isolated and relatively obscure affliction somehow morphs into a
global plague. Their actions are rooted in a version of the "precautionary
principle" encoded into UN-aligned radical environmentalism: supposedly to
avoid a catastrophe, people are expected to live with the same privations and
impositions that would occur had the envisioned catastrophe actually taken
place.
Apocalypse Now?
Modern politics is built on the cult of the all-powerful, all-benevolent
state. Unlike the modest and limited entity envisioned by the Framers of our
Constitution, which was intended to protect individual rights and property, the
contemporary state is depicted, by those who worship it, as a secular savior
endowed with the power to rectify all injustices and protect its subjects from
every conceivable hardship or danger.
Adherents of the state-cult thus constantly seek to convince a critical
portion of the public that at least three of the apocalyptic horsemen are
saddled up and digging spurs into their mounts, while the fourth is getting his
riding tack in order.
The preferred apocalyptic scenarios generally involve large-scale disasters,
such as global environmental collapse or universal nuclear annihilation. Since
9/11, mass terrorism has been added to that list. These potential crises,
however, tend to be too abstract to generate the required panic. Environmental
scare scenarios dissipate quickly when exposed to rational science. During the
Cold War, the vision of global nuclear holocaust was a potent mobilizing force,
but that threat has lost much of its potency since the apparent collapse of
communism. Post 9/11, that threat has recovered some of its urgency in the form
of exploitable fears of mass terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction,
as the Bush administration's success in deceiving our nation into the Iraq war
illustrates.
But 9/11, horrific and destructive as it was, actually illustrates the
limited usefulness of terrorism as a foil for authoritarian reforms. While the
Black Tuesday attacks killed thousands and inflicted billions of dollars in
damage to our economy, it was hardly a civilization-threatening event affecting
the interests and well-being of most Americans.
This is why plague-related scenarios, particularly those involving
bioterrorism, are so promising to those seeking to scare the public into
submission. Most people find it difficult to imagine the collapse of the
biosphere, or a cataclysmic nuclear assault. But everybody knows what it's like
to be sick, vulnerable, and helpless. And since influenza is a seasonal
affliction experienced by millions, the conceptual link between one's sniffles
and aching joints and a global pandemic seems more plausible. Thus the
potential threat of unseen microbes....To continue reading the complete
article, place an online order for a PDF version of the December 12th issue of
The New American, and get instant access to the full-text of this article along
with the full-text of all the other articles in the same issue. Similarly, if
you place an online order for one or more copies of the print version of the
December 12th issue, you'll receive a complimentary link to the PDF version of
that issue, also
giving you instant access to the full-text of the "Bird Flu" article and all
of the other articles in that issue.
---------------------------------
© Copyright 2005 American Opinion Publishing Incorporated
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs. Try it free.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
1.2 million kids a year are victims of human trafficking. Stop slavery.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/U6CDDD/izNLAA/cUmLAA/KlSolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
ForumWebSiteAt http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
