An Epidemic of Fear by Captain Paul Watson

The Epidemic of Fear in America
Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts …” 
- President Franklin D. Roosevelt

There is an epidemic in America, but it is not Ebola.

It is an insidious epidemic that began just after September 11th, 2001 and has grown more serious each and every year after.

It is not a physical affliction but rather a mental condition.

It’s called fear and it is completely unreasonable behavior, fabricated by politicians and the military, and disseminated by the corporate media in an effort to deny us basic rights and freedoms and to distract us from real issues and real threats.

Terrorism and disease are the two usual suspects to be paraded through the media to keep citizens scared and manipulated.

The latest is this thing called Ebola. It has millions of people literally trembling with fear and yet it is in reality completely and utterly insignificant.

All we need to do is look at the numbers.

Between 1976 when the first person (A Belgian nun in the Congo) was diagnosed with Ebola and last year there have been a total of 6,964 cases of Ebola resulting in a total of 3,964 deaths.

This year there have been 8,400 cases (4,656 laboratory confirmed cases) cases with 4,033 deaths. This could increase to 1,000 new cases per week.

Surely that sounds a little ominous.

Yet most frightening for Americans is that exactly one of those deaths was in the United States.

Yet last year alone between 300 and 500 million people were infected with malaria and one million of them died. The most common age of death was 4 years old and every 30 seconds a child dies of malaria. Thats 3,000 children each and every day. Two days of malaria deaths equals 40 years of Ebola deaths.

Even if the Ebola cases grow to 1,000 per week as some predict, that is still far short of 21,000 deaths from malaria each week.

40% of the world’s populations is at risk from malaria now but few seem concerned.
Now let’s take a look at tuberculosis. In 2012, 8.6 million people were infected with tuberculosis and 1.3 million died. 

Over 95% of TB deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, and it is among the top three causes of death for women aged 15 to 44.

Millions die each year from HIV, cancer, heart disease, respiratory disease, measeles etc.

So why the incredible fear about Ebola?

First because it is being treated by some media like a terrorist threat, an invasion out of Africa into America and Europe. Secondly because it is easily exploited as yet another means for government to strip away rights and freedoms and to justify further military expansion. Thirdly death by Ebola is horrific and swift with a very high casualty rate.

And fourtly and most importantly there is this little nugget of a fact. The vaccine being developed could be soon ordered into use with “emergency” clearance by the FDA in the United States with a compulsory vaccination program. And the patent on this “vaccine” is held by TEKMIRA, the same company that Monsanto has just invested in and Monsanto is the company that is now immune from being sued by any citizen by order of the President of the United States.

TEKMIRA Pharmaceuticals, a company working on an anti-Ebola drug, just received a large investment by Monsanto. From their media release: “Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corporation is a biopharmaceutical company focused on advancing novel RNAi therapeutics and providing its leading lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery technology to pharmaceutical partners."

The money from Monsanto is reportedly related to the company's development of RNAi technology used in agriculture. The deal is valued at up to $86.2 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

TEKMIRA has a $140 million contract with the U.S. military for Ebola treatment drugs:

Media Release from TEKMIRA: TKM-Ebola, an anti-Ebola virus RNAi therapeutic, is being developed under a $140 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense's Medical Countermeasure Systems BioDefense Therapeutics (MCS-BDTX) Joint Product Management Office.

This certainly caught my attention that Monsanto just now decided to invest in a company leading the effort to develop an Ebola vaccine or cure and they did so in the midst of the media circus now revolving around Ebola.

Monsanto is the industrial blood-hound for profits. They have this ability to sniff out and exploit basic fears based on media hype and hysteria and of course they contribute to the these fears by releasing scare campaigns either directly or indirectly.

The potential for a huge market is rapidly developing and the collusion of the U.S. military has alarm bells going off in my head.

The history of medical research has shown that drug companies, the CDC and the World Health Organization have time and time again hyped the severity of potential pandemics in order to promote sales of promising miracle cures or preventive vaccines.

It is always suspicious when profits surge as hysteria over some new disease is hyped. Vaccine manufacturers made billions off the overly-exaggerated swine flu “epidemic” that did not happen and tens of millions of dollars in stockpiled swine flu vaccines that had to be destroyed by governments that panicked and purchased them with the taxpayers loss, being the pharmaceutical companies gain.

If completed, will a fast-tracked TEKMIRA vaccine work? It may be impossible to tell because with only two cases reported in America the chances of other Americans being infected are extremely low and if they are infected, or worse, if the vaccine itself has a side effect including death, Monsanto and possibly TEKMIRA because of its link to Monsanto may well be immune from responsibility,

Prior to 2014 Ebola it was just another relatively unknown disease killing black people in Africa just like malaria and tuberculosis, which most Americans and Europeans care little about primarily because poor Africans don’t have the money to cough up for drugs despite the fact that anti-malarial drugs sometimes take up half the income of some African residents. The problem is that half their income is still the price of a dinner for two and a movie, to most Americans or Europeans.

However concern about malaria that is rapidly changing as climate change is expanding the range of the Anopheline mosquito at the same time that the Pasmodium parasite, spread by the mosquito, is developing a resistance to the drugs used to combat it.

Every year about 2,000 cases are reported in the United States and the mosquito that transmits malaria can be found in California, Texas, Michigan and around New York City. 

There were an estimated 207 million cases of malaria in 2012 (uncertainty range: 135 – 287 million) and an estimated 627 000 deaths (uncertainty range: 473 000 – 789 000). 90% of all malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa. - WHO, 2013.

Right now African nations and the international community are responding to the Ebola virus just as they respond to terrorism. When a suicide bomber strikes a crowded market and a few dozen people die, panic dictates the response with drastic measures infringing on human and civil rights as governments vow to hunt down the person or persons responsible. Yet malaria kills steadily at a pace of two victims per minute, 120 victims every hour, and it is scarcely noticed. 

Lyme disease, Dengue fever and a revival of measles and whooping cough should be of more concern than Ebola.

Influenza kills a half a million people a year and since the first outbreak of Ebola in 1976, influenza has killed nineteen million people.

The same situation with terrorism. The average American, especially the average Black American has a greater chance of being shot and killed by an American police officer than by a Middle Eastern Terrorist. 

The two easiest ways of sowing and spreading fear are through the threats of terrorism and pestilence. Thus it is relatively easy to manufacture a program of fear through sensationalizing both terrorism and disease, especially terrorism linked to an alien religion and culture, or a disease linked to dark fears out of Africa and images of zombies. 

Real threats like climate change and mass extinction of species are being denied, diseases like malaria and tuberculosis are being ignored just as radiation leaks are being ignored. Just a brief note about Fukushima, remember Fukushima? Well it’s still leaking and tons of radioactive sea-water is being dumped into the ocean each and every day. Not that anyone is actually noticing. 

Ebola is a serious concern in West Africa although it still remains a minor cause of death relative to malaria and tuberculosis. It is not however the great harbinger of doomsday that many in government and media would like us to believe.

Ebola does present us with a warning that there are viruses being hosted by other species that will be jumping to another species if their particular host species are being diminished or driven to extinction. Unfortunately for us, human beings represent a very large alternative host species.

We do know that Ebola is connected with the bush-meat trade. In1997 in Gabon, 37 people died of Ebola. A chimpanzee found dead in the forest was eaten by people hunting for food. All nineteen people who were involved in the butchery of the animal became ill, the others infected were all family members of the poachers.

Ebola has been found in bats, chimps, monkeys and pigs.

I am not dismissing the potential for Ebola and other viral infections from increasing their impact humanity but I seriously doubt that Ebola will surpass or even come close to the death tolls tallied up each year by malaria and tuberculosis or most of the other deadly viral or bacterial diseases.

Unless it can be found that the Ebola virus can be airborne or even worse, spread by mosquitos, the disease can be easily contained. So far the virus has not been found to be spread by any other means than by direct contact with bodily fluids.

Walking through a room of Ebola patients equates to an extremely small chance of contracting the disease whereas walking thorough a room of influenza patients presents a very high probability of contracting the flu. And we must not forget that the influenza pandemic of 1918 killed we

Tolstoy: On Anarchy

Leo Tolstoy, one of the most revered personalities of his era, author of classics like War and Peace and Anna Karenina, inspiration to Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., was a dedicated pacifist and anarchist who advocated non-violent resistance to all governments. In his collection of essays entitled "Government is Violence" he wrote an excellent piece called "On Anarchy" which I've posted below in it's entirety:

The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order and in the assertion that, without Authority there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that anarchy can be instituted by a violent revolution. But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental power and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.

Marxist: “The capitalistic organization will pass into the hands of workers, and then there will be no more oppression of these workers, and no unequal distribution of earnings.”

Anarchist: “But who will establish the works; who will administer them?”

Marxist: “It will go on of its own accord; the workmen themselves will arrange everything.”

Anarchist: “But the capitalistic organization was established just because, for every practical affair, there is need for administrators furnished with power. If there be work, there will be leadership, administrators with power. And when there is power, there will be abuse of it — the very thing against which you are now striving.”

To the question, how to be without a State, without courts, armies, and so on, an answer cannot be given, because the question is badly formulated. The problem is not how to arrange a State after the pattern of today, or after a new pattern. Neither I, nor any of us, is appointed to settle that question.

But, though voluntarily, yet inevitably must we answer the question, how shall I act faced with the problem which ever arises before me? Am I to submit my conscience to the acts taking place around me, am I to proclaim myself in agreement with the Government, which hangs erring men, sends soldiers to murder, demoralizes nations with opium and spirits, and so on, or am I to submit my actions to conscience, i.e., not participate in Government, the actions of which are contrary to reason?

What will be the outcome of this, what kind of a Government there will be — of all this I know nothing; not that I don’t wish to know; but that I cannot. I only know that nothing evil can result from my following the higher guidance of wisdom and love, or wise love, which is implanted in me, just as nothing evil comes of the bee following the instinct implanted in her, and flying out of the hive with the swarm, we should say, to ruin. But, I repeat, I do not wish to and cannot judge about this.

In this precisely consists the power of Christ’s teaching and that not because Christ is God or a great man, but because His teaching is irrefutable. The merit of His teaching consists in the fact that it transferred the matter from the domain of eternal doubt and conjecture on to the ground of certainty. You are a man, a being rational and kind, and you know that today or tomorrow you will die, disappear. If there be a God then you will go to Him and He will ask of you an account of your actions, whether you have acted in accordance with His law, or, at least, with the higher qualities implanted in you. If there be no God, you regard reason and love as the highest qualities, and must submit to them your other inclinations, and not let them submit to your animal nature — to the cares about the commodities of life, to the fear of annoyance and material calamities.

The question is not, I repeat, which community will be the more secure, the better — the one which is defended by arms, cannons, gallows or the one that is not so safeguarded. But there is only one question for a man, and on it is impossible to evade: “Will you, a rational and good being, having for a moment appeared in this world, and at any moment liable to disappear — will you take part in the murder of erring men or men of a different race, will you participate in the extermination of whole nations of so-called savages, will you participate in the artificial deterioration of generations of men by means of opium and spirits for the sake of profit, will you participate in all these actions, or even be in agreement with those who permit them, or will you not?”

And there can be but one answer to this question for those to whom it has presented itself. As to what the outcome will be of it, I don’t know, because it is not given to me to know. But what should be done, I do unmistakably know. And if you ask: “What will happen?”, then I reply that good will certainly happen; because, acting in the way indicated by reason and love, I am acting in accordance with the highest law known to me. The situation of the majority of men, enlightened by true brotherly enlightenment, at present crushed by the deceit and cunning of usurpers, who are forcing them to ruin their own lives — this situation is terrible and appears hopeless.

Only two issues present themselves, and both are closed. One is to destroy violence by violence, by terrorism, dynamite bombs and daggers as our Nihilists and Anarchists have attempted to do, to destroy this conspiracy of Governments against nations, from without; the other is to come to an agreement with the Government, making concessions to it, participating in it, in order gradually to disentangle the net which is binding the people, and to set them free. Both these issues are closed. Dynamite and the dagger, as experience has already shown, only cause reaction, and destroy the most valuable power, the only one at our command, that of public opinion.

The other issue is closed, because Governments have already learnt how far they may allow the participation of men wishing to reform them. They admit only that which does not infringe, which is non-essential; and they are very sensitive concerning things harmful to them — sensitive because the matter concerns their own existence. They admit men who do not share their views, and who desire reform, not only in order to satisfy the demands of these men, but also in their own interest, in that of the Government. These men are dangerous to the Governments if they remain outside them and revolt against them — opposing to the Governments the only effective instrument the Governments possess — public opinion; they must therefore render these men harmless, attracting them by means of concessions, in order to render them innocuous (like cultivated microbes), and then make them serve the aims of the Governments, i.e., oppress and exploit the masses.

Both these issues being firmly closed and impregnable, what remains to be done? To use violence is impossible; it would only cause reaction. To join the ranks of the Government is also impossible — one would only become its instrument. One course therefore remains — to fight the Government by means of thought, speech, actions, life, neither yielding to Government nor joining its ranks and thereby increasing its power. This alone is needed, will certainly be successful. And this is the will of God, the teaching of Christ. There can be only one permanent revolution — a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man.

How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.

~Leo Tolstoy (1900)

Mises Daily: How Saving Grows the Economy by Dan Sanchez

How Saving Grows the Economy

Mises Daily: Friday, October 10, 2014 by Dan Sanchez

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Back in the 1980s, Irwin Schiff, anti-tax activist, political prisoner, and father of free-market pundit Peter Schiff, wrote a marvelous comic book titled How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn’t, which teaches economic principles through a light-hearted story.

The comic starts with three islanders — Able, Baker, and Charlie — who live off of fish, which they catch in the sea. They have no tools to aid them, so they must fish with their bare hands. Fish, to the islanders, is a consumers’ good: something that is used to directly pursue their goals (in this case, the goals of satisfying hunger and not starving). But, fish can only be a consumers’ good when it is ready for consumption. The fish do the islanders no good while they are still swimming in the sea. So the islanders must engage in production. They must produce the product of “fish on a plate,” which is, to be exact, the true consumers’ good, and not simply “fish” per se.

To produce “fish on the plate,” the islanders must use productive resources, or factors of production. One factor the islanders must use is their own labor. In this case, their labor is the act of fishing: using their eyes to spot the fish, and their hands to grab them. Another factor they must use is land, or natural resources: in this case, “fish in the sea.” “Fishing labor” + “fish in the sea” = “Fish on the plate.”

Using only their bare hands, the islanders can only produce one fish per day, which is very lowproductivity.

As Schiff writes, with such low productivity, “This is survival and that’s about all.” It is a state of extreme poverty. The islanders have little time for leisure, or to produce anything else they might want to enjoy. They are also extremely vulnerable. What if they get sick, or break their hand? A single bad week of fishing could mean starvation. Life with such low productivity, is life on the brink.

Like a Disney princess, Able dreams of “something more.” He’s tired of being poor, and wants to somehow improve his living standard. He comes up with the idea of building a net to use to catch fish faster (boost his productivity).

The net is a third kind of factor: a capital good, or produced factor of production. Producing a net also requires factors, including natural materials (land), like sticks and vines, and net-building labor. Building the net would take a whole day.

That would be a whole day that Able wouldn’t be fishing. His labor is scarce; it cannot be dedicated to both fishing and net building at the same time, and so it must be economized: dedicated to one and not the other.

And if Able doesn’t fish, he goes hungry for that day. Building the net would require sacrifice:delaying consumption.

Able must decide between two different production methods. Does he stick to hand fishing, or does he switch to net fishing? He must consider the upsides and downsides of each.

The upside of hand fishing is that it has a short period of production. Able starts production, and then gets to eat later that very same day. The downside is its low productivity, and Able’s resulting chronic state of poverty.

The upside of net fishing is its higher productivity, which is two fish per day according to the comic; but for illustrative purposes, let us change the productivity of net fishing to three fish per day. The downside of net fishing is that it has a longer period of production at first. It takes one day to make the net, and then another day to use it. So, Able would start production, and only get to eat two days later.

Able is at a crossroads. He can either stay mired in primitivism, or he can rise above it. Rising above economic primitivism is often considered simply a matter of technology. However, simply having the idea of, and the know-how for, producing a net, is not an immediate, costless benefit for Able. It would be costless if it were simply a matter of choosing between “1 fish today” and “3 fish today.” Of course more is automatically better than less, other things being equal. But other things are not equal: a difference regarding time is an essential consideration here. It is not simply more vs. less; it is “more and later” vs. “less and sooner.”

So the decision for Able whether to adopt the “net fishing” technology involves a trade-off: an “exchange” he deliberates over in his mind. Will he give up the “less and sooner” yield that comes with hand fishing in exchange for the “more and later” yield that comes with net fishing?

The answer to that depends on Able’s personal time preference, or the premium he places on the immediacy with which he achieves his ends: the importance of “sooner.” The lower someone’s time preference is, the more willing someone will be to delay consumption. And the higher, the less.

For example, as the comic book later indicates, the time preferences of Baker and Charlie are too high for them to make the net. Giving up eating today is too great a sacrifice for them, even if it would mean being able to eat three times as much tomorrow. If net fishing were more productive, that might have sweetened the deal enough; i.e., if the net netted five times as much, they might have been willing to wait. Their time preferences are not infinitely high. But they are not low enough to embark on this particular capital project.

But Able’s time preference is low enough, so he is willing to delay consumption, produce the capital good, and increase his productivity.

Morevoer, the day after his first big net-aided catch, he has enough extra fish to not have to fish all day, because he can subsist on what he has already caught. Instead, he can spend the day creating even more capital goods to raise his productivity even higher. For example, he makes a rake to use to farm carrots. And he can use the additional yield from carrot farming to support even more capital accumulation. As he becomes ever more productive, he can also afford to devote more resources toward leisure and comfort as well.

Thus, Able’s low time preference puts him in the fast track of an ascending spiral: a virtuous “Cycle of Growth.” Saving (delaying consumption) supports more capital goods, which boosts productivity, which creates more to save, and around he goes.

With every lap around this loop, he becomes wealthier, as both his capital stock and living standard increases. And with every lap, he inches ever further away from the brink and toward greater security and peace-of-mind. A bad week of production becomes merely a bummer, and not a catastrophe. This Cycle of Growth, by the way, is the way living standards rise in a complex market economy as well.

But then others on the island start getting their own ideas about what Able should do with his newly abundant resources. One man says, “Divvy up.” This is an example of the envy-based egalitarian ethos that has afflicted peoples throughout history and pre-history, keeping them poor and primitive. As Murray Rothbard wrote:

In fact, the primitive community, far from being happy, harmonious, and idyllic, is much more likely to be ridden by mutual suspicion and envy of the more successful or better favored, an envy so pervasive as to cripple, by the fear of its presence, all personal or general economic development. The German sociologist Helmut Schoeck, in his important recent work on Envy, cites numerous studies of this pervasive crippling effect. Thus the anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn found among the Navaho the absence of any concept of “personal success” or “personal achievement”; and such success was automatically attributed to exploitation of others, and, therefore, the more prosperous Navaho Indian feels himself under constant social pressure to give his money away. Allan Holmberg found that the Siriono Indian of Bolivia eats alone at night because, if he eats by day, a crowd gathers around him to stare in envious hatred.

If every time someone saves more, he is pressured to relinquish his “excess wealth,” that can only discourage savings. And knocking out savings knocks people off the Cycle of Growth. It also knocks them onto a Cycle of Impoverishment. This is because low savings can lead to capital consumption. “Consuming” capital doesn’t mean “eating the net.” It means that the net eventually wears out with use, and to maintain it requires diverting possibly consumed resources away from consumption and toward repair/replacement. Without sufficient savings, capital goods enter a state of disrepair. The net eventually tears and fish start swimming through it, at which point the fisherman must resort again to low-productivity hand-fishing, and finds himself back on the brink.

Another islander waves a club at Able, and suggests, “How about this?” threatening to plunder Able’s savings. Such brigandage has also kept entire peoples poor throughout history and pre-history. Constant raids by roaming hordes will also discourage savings and break the Cycle of Growth. Sometimes the raiders settle in, and, through propaganda, transform themselves into a “state,” and their plunder into “taxation.” What is particularly devastating to the Cycle of Growth is the kind of state plunder called, “proscription.” In ancient times, when an individual managed to accumulate enough wealth, he often became a tempting one-stop shop for loot, and so the state would find some excuse to imprison or execute him so as to facilitate his total expropriation. This explains the rage for “buried treasure” in times and places where princes were particularly grasping. Of course, modern democracies plunder too, often under the cover of egalitarianism and through “progressive taxation.” The more you save, the more you’re taxed. This too is particularly inimical to the Cycle of Growth.

Then a little bird asks if Able’s penchant for accumulation is “greedy” and bad. “Bad for whom?” responds a wise owl. There are only so many fish Able can eat, and only so many uses for his nets. To maximally benefit from his tremendous productivity, he must offer his products to others in the community in exchange for goods and services. And through exchanges like investments, loans, and wages, non-savers can get access to capital goods that would have otherwise been out of reach. For example, Able rents out his nets and loans out his fish at interest. This enables higher-time-preference islanders like Baker and Charlie to increase their productivity and living standards. And since all exchanges are, by definition, projected by both willing parties to be beneficial, the more exchanges the saver makes, the more he benefits the public.

Savings and capital benefit everyone, not just the saver and capital accumulator. The Cycle of Growth lifts the entire community. And so when egalitarianism and plunder discourage saving, it keeps the entire community down, hurting not only the savers, but everyone who might have exchanged with the savers.

There is nothing “fishy” about savings, capital accumulation, productivity, and peacefully acquired wealth. But to paraphrase an old saying, fish and plundering visitors start stinking very quickly.

As Ludwig von Mises wrote:

Every single performance in this ceaseless pursuit of wealth production is based upon the saving and the preparatory work of earlier generations. We are the lucky heirs of our fathers and forefathers whose saving has accumulated the capital goods with the aid of which we are working today. We favorite children of the age of electricity still derive advantage from the original saving of the primitive fishermen who, in producing the first nets and canoes, devoted a part of their working time to provision for a remoter future. If the sons of these legendary fishermen had worn out these intermediary products — nets and canoes — without replacing them by new ones, they would have consumed capital and the process of saving and capital accumulation would have had to start afresh. We are better off than earlier generations because we are equipped with the capital goods they have accumulated for us.

Note: The views expressed in Daily Articles on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

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Image source: from How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn’t

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