Gary North's REALITY CHECK
Issue 410 January 4, 2005
DISASTER AND RESPONSE
This report is on the tsunami disaster. I take a
different view of what is going on -- not in Asia, but in
the United States.
What defines a disaster? Answer: media response --
the desire to attract viewers/readers, so that they will
buy new cars, soap, and/or Cialis.
If you're definition of a disaster is "loss of life,"
you're obviously missing something important. There are
life-destroying disasters going on all the time that dwarf
the tsunami disaster of 2004. The difference is, these
other disasters are considered politically acceptable, even
beneficial, by the media. They receive zero coverage.
Here are two of them.
Consider the number of estimated deaths directly
attributable malaria, a mosquito-borne disease. Western
governments have been major players in imposing this
holocaust because they have banned the production of DDT,
which is the most effective anti-mosquito chemical agent.
Dr. Arthur Robinson, a chemist specializing in
biochemistry, has summarized the situation.
Somewhere on the Earth, on average every 12
seconds, a child dies of DDT-preventable malaria.
The United States National Academy of Sciences
estimated that DDT saved 500 million lives before
it was banned. The discoverer of DDT was awarded
the Nobel Prize.
Then came Silent Spring -- a book filled with
deliberate falsehoods and blatantly marketed
unreasoning and unjustified fear. The burgeoning
enviro movement chose these lies for one of their
first big campaigns. This campaign coincided with
the rise of the United States Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA was in search of
a big win with which to promote itself. The EPA
studied the subject and its own scientific review
board reported that DDT is harmless to the
environment and is a very beneficial substance
that should not be banned.
Politics prevailed, however, over reason. DDT was
banned, and the U.S. government spread that ban
throughout the world by tying it to all sorts of
international programs.
The result: Malaria, which was well on the way to
control and eradication, now afflicts 250 million
adults and kills about 3 million children per
year. (http://snipurl.com/malaria)
In contrast to a deliberate, decades-long media
blackout, American media today are filled with stories of
150,000+ Asian deaths as a result of drownings. Viewers
like to see home videos of huge waves and people running
for their lives, or even better, being swept out to sea.
Videos of a child shaking uncontrollably because of malaria
is a turn-off and therefore a channel-flipper.
As to which is more important, thin egg shells or 40
to 50 million dying children in third-world countries, that
decision was made by politicians a generation ago.
President Bush, acting independently of Congress, has
pledged $350 million in aid, a Constitutionally illegal
act, since only the House of Representatives is authorized
to initiate spending bills. No media pundit mentions this,
of course. In fact, he has been criticized by Democrats
for offering too little aid initially: only $15 million.
Note: It would be nice if American school
children were assigned Davy Crockett's essay,
"Sockdolager." Crockett, as a member of
Congress, tells the story of how he was called to
account by a voter for having voted for welfare
measures. He reversed his opinion. His essay is
reprinted as "Not Yours to Give."
http:snipurl.com/crockett
Whenever a disaster makes it to prime time, the
Constitution gets ignored. The Constitution just doesn't
have the Nielsen ratings to justify using it for policy
considerations.
Another grim statistic: worldwide, pregnant women hire
specialists to abort over 45 million babies a year. Over
half of these abortions are legal.
http://snipurl.com/abortions
There are no headlines about this. There are no fund-
raisers. Most people could not tell you how many abortions
there are each year. There are no promises of taxpayer-
funded aid to victims, since the victims are dead. On the
contrary, there are calls for additional taxpayer-funded
abortion services, including foreign aid projects.
Abortion is a politically correct disaster, which the media
not only accept, they promote.
Other disasters are considered avoidable, but worth
the cost -- to the survivors, not the victims. Here is one
example.
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We
have heard that a half million children have
died. I mean, that's more children than died in
Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think
this is a very hard choice, but the price--we
think the price is worth it.
--60 Minutes (5/12/96)
Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's
quote, calmly asserting that U.S. policy
objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a
million Arab children, has been much quoted in
the Arabic press. It's also been cited in the
United States in alternative commentary on the
September 11 attacks (e.g., Alexander Cockburn,
New York Press, 9/26/01).
But a Dow Jones search of mainstream news sources
since September 11 turns up only one reference to
the quote--in an op-ed in the Orange Country
Register (9/16/01). This omission is striking,
given the major role that Iraq sanctions play in
the ideology of archenemy Osama bin Laden; his
recruitment video features pictures of Iraqi
babies wasting away from malnutrition and lack of
medicine (New York Daily News, 9/28/01).
http://snipurl.com/albright
There has been far more media coverage of the looming
oil-for-food scandal than of the real scandal: the
American-led embargo placed on Iraq after 1991. A scandal
involving money is perceived by the media as newsworthy. A
scandal involving dead Iraqi children isn't.
Similarly, the British medical magazine, "The Lancet,"
estimates that 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a
result of America's intervention since the war began in
2003. (http://snipurl.com/iraqdeaths)
There has been some coverage in the foreign media of
this statistic, but it has not received much attention in
the United States. The United States government refuses to
publish statistics regarding civilian deaths in Iraq.
There is no hue and cry from American voters that these
figures ought to be published. They prefer not to know.
In contrast, the body counts from Asia have been front-
page, lead-story news. The public wants to know the
details of one disaster, but resents the publication of
information on the other.
During World War II, military forces on both sides
killed people in the range of 30,000 per day. Every five
days, as many people died as a result of men's deliberate
actions as have died as an immediate result of the tsunamis
in Asia. This went on for five years.
So, to return to my original question and answer:
"What defines a disaster? Media response."
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DISASTERS HURT THE POOR
The United States and the developed world have their
share of geological and weather-related disasters. Think
of the four hurricanes that struck Florida in 2004. Yet in
the West, capitalism has made people wealthy enough to be
able to buy disaster-reducing technologies. We can buy
disaster insurance, too.
There is no sure-fire immunity from disasters. Almost
every area faces some threat: forest fires, earthquakes,
tornados, floods, or hurricanes. My parents live in a
region that seems to be an exception: Western Oregon. Even
a nuclear war would not get the area: there is nothing
worth bombing, and the winds blow eastward. But most
regions are not immune.
The three earthquakes in the St. Louis area (New
Madrid) in 1811-12 were so powerful than damage was
reported in Washington, D.C. and Charleston, South
Carolina. Church bells rang in Boston because of the
shocks. All three quakes have been estimated as Richter-8
quakes. The region was not heavily populated then. If
anything like them were to occur again, there would be
tremendous loss of life as well as great economic loss.
(http://snipurl.com/newmadrid) The difference today is
this: capitalism has created such wealth and opportunities
that recovery would be much more rapid than is likely in
Asia.
For comparison, the Richter-9 quake that set off
the tsunamis was ten times more powerful. The
Richter scale is a log scale: each higher number
is ten times more powerful. The quake in San
Francisco was about Richter-7.6.
There is no doubt that the Asians who lived on the
coasts were in high-risk areas, should a Richter-9 quake
take place. They chose high-risk places to live because
economic opportunities seemed higher to them. Were they
foolish? In retrospect, yes, but retrospect doesn't count.
We all do this. We choose to live in regions that
face one or another risk. We assess the expected risks.
Then we compare them to expected benefits. Then we act.
In retrospect, some of us lose. Most of us don't.
We discount the statistical threats almost to zero.
Even when we know big trouble is coming, we sit, paralyzed.
We stick with the devils we know.
PARALYSIS IN MEMPHIS
My son lives in Memphis. That city is threatened by
an earthquake comparable to the 1811-12 quakes. No one
pays any attention.
This lack of attention is a constant in human history.
In 1878, people did not know that mosquitos carried yellow
fever. The cities on the Mississippi were devastated by a
yellow fever epidemic that year. In late August of 1878,
Memphis was hit.
People had known that this killer plague was coming.
In those days, scientists did not know that this horrifying
disease was carried by mosquitos, but they could track its
course and accurately predict its arrival.
Advance reports had come of its approach up the
Mississippi River, yet Memphis residents did nothing. They
just sat there, immobile. It hit New Orleans on July 27.
It hit Grenada, Mississippi, on August 9. What did the
local newspaper say? "Keep cool! Avoid patent medicines
and bad whiskey! Go about your business as usual; be
cheerful, and laugh as much as possible." No one wants to
be accused of starting a panic. No newspaper tells its
readers to flee the region. If they fled, it would lower
the sale of newspapers.
Panic hit soon after the disease arrived. In 10 days,
25,000 people fled the city, leaving behind 21,000: 14,000
blacks and 6,000 whites. In other words, 55% of the
population fled. Most doctors and nurses stayed. They
knew what their duty was, and they performed it. (They
were also very well paid by the city.) Many of them died
alongside their patients. All 6,000 whites fell sick; over
4,000 died. Of the blacks, 946 died: a much lower
percentage. Of 41 policemen, 11 fled and 12 died. The
chief then hired 13 blacks, and they were kept on after the
pestilence died out in the October frost.
It took courage in 1878 to remain on duty after the
panic hit. Priests and nuns stayed. Half of the
Protestant pastors fled. Yet most people had just sat
there, paralyzed, until the plague could not be avoided any
longer. Then they fled. Those whites who didn't mostly
died. ("Epidemic," American Heritage Oct/Nov. 1984.)
My point is this: we all do pretty much what those
Asians did when they decided to take the risk of living in
tsunami country.
Let me get specific. Crime is a threat to all of us.
Some cities are high-crime areas. Memphis is such a city.
There are low-crime small cities within 200 yards of the
Memphis border. There is steady growth in those cities,
mainly from people who don't want to live in Memphis. But
this growth has taken place in the last decade -- not
before.
How many people choose where they will live in terms
of crime? Not many. Yet there is a free web site that
lets you make these comparisons for every city and small
town in the United States. (http://www.city-data.com)
Hardly anyone knows about it. Even if they did, they would
not move to a safer town based on its statistics.
So, we should not regard those Asians as uninformed
fools. Like us, they made estimates of risk. They decided
how much safety they were willing to pay for. They were
just like us.
REASONS TO GIVE THANKS
I'm all for sending money to the victims -- just not
other people's money. It's easy to be generous with other
people's money, extracted by threat of violence. All it
takes is the graduated income tax and the ballot box. Davy
Crockett would not believe the extent of the welfare state
today.
Americans are generous. Before the week was over,
Americans had sent tens of millions of dollars to private
relief agencies. If President Bush had gone on TV to ask
Americans to donate money, I think he would have raised
more money than what he promised to send out of taxpayer
funds. That's what he did on January 3. Why not earlier?
One of the reasons why the West is rich is that its
people are generous. They save money, work hard, and take
risks. Then, when they prosper, they give money to the
poor. Because of capitalism, they can afford to give away
more money than people who live in non-capitalist
societies. The freedom to get rich under capitalism is
also the freedom to be generous. The wealth produced by
capitalism allows generosity on a massive scale.
One of the best reasons for seeking to get rich is the
desire to give away money. We should work to become well-
informed givers. We should practice our skills of charity.
It's one thing to make a bundle of money. It's something
else -- a different set of skills -- to give money away
without causing harm, especially dependence.
Unfortunately, it takes a media-acceptable disaster
like the Asian tsunami to remind us of how rich we are, how
much we have to be thankful about. We should not ignore
the plight of the poor. By "we," I mean individuals acting
as donors, not voters acting as donors.
CONCLUSION
We cannot solve every problem. We cannot compensate
the victims who died. We can at best alleviate the
temporary problems of survivors.
The test of our commitment as a nation will be the
donations that flow into Asia after the media have lost
interest. The effects of the tsunami will remain for
years. What is needed in Asia is capitalism and a legal
system that protects private property. What is needed is
investment. Donations will get people through the
immediate crisis. Investment and the fortitude to rebuild
are what will make the difference.
Today, survivors need food, clean water, and shelter.
But, very shortly, survivors will need micro-loans to get
small businesses started. Micro-loans provide a road out
of poverty. One organization that provides both immediate
aid and micro-loans is Food for the Hungry.
http://snipurl.com/micro-loans
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