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The Muslim Jihadic Crusade Continues...

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What's Really Up With This New Flu?

Jan 14, 2004 (CIDRAP News) – One of the worst fears of infectious disease experts is that the H5N1 avian influenza virus now circulating in parts of Asia will combine with a human-adapted flu virus to create a deadly new flu virus that could spread around the world.

That could happen, scientists predict, if someone who is already infected with an ordinary flu virus contracts the avian virus at the same time. The avian virus has already caused at least 48 confirmed human illness cases in Asia, of which 35 have been fatal. The virus has shown little ability to spread from person to person, but the fear is that a hybrid could combine the killing power of the avian virus with the transmissibility of human flu viruses.

Now, rather than waiting to see if nature spawns such a hybrid, US scientists are planning to try to breed one themselves—in the name of preparedness.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will soon launch experiments designed to combine the H5N1 virus and human flu viruses and then see how the resulting hybrids affect animals. The goal is to assess the chances that such a "reassortant" virus will emerge and how dangerous it might be.
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Atlas Shrugged Versus Maobamaism

The Ayn Rand Renaissance

By Dr. Yaron Brook
Executive Director, The Ayn Rand Center

The U.S. economy is in shambles. Government intervention into the economy is increasing by the day. Americans are alarmed and desperate for answers: What caused the crisis? What is the solution? That might sound like a description of today’s world, but in fact it’s sketch of the world of Ayn Rand’s 1957 classic novel “Atlas Shrugged.”

“Atlas Shrugged” has exploded in popularity in recent months. Pundits talk about a widespread “Going Galt” movement inspired by the novel, book sales are higher than at any time in the novel’s 51-year history, and at virtually every anti-tax day tea party you could find protest signs referencing the novel or its author. Given the ominous parallels between the book and today’s events, none of that is surprising.

What “Atlas” shows is how our culture’s ideas–particularly its ideas about morality–are moving us step by step away from the Founding Fathers’ ideal.

The tea parties testify to the outrage that many Americans feel toward Washington’s explosive growth in the past few decades — especially under Presidents Bush and Obama. “Atlas Shrugged” not only gives voice to this outrage, it provides both a profound explanation of the cause of today’s crisis–and a positive solution to it.

“Atlas Shrugged” argues that ideas shape society. A society that values reason, the individual, and freedom creates the United States of America. A society that denounces the mind, preaches self-sacrifice, and worships the collective creates Nazi Germany. What “Atlas” shows is how our culture’s ideas–particularly its ideas about morality–are moving us step by step away from the Founding Fathers’ ideal.

Virtually no one in Rand’s time — or today — questions the precept that we are our brother’s keeper, that self-sacrificially serving others is good, and that being selfish is evil. What Rand saw was that this was irreconcilable with the vision of man as an independent, self-sufficient, sovereign being who deserves and requires freedom. If a society believes man’s duty is to sacrifice for others, then it cannot countenance capitalism — a political and economic system that enables and encourages men to pursue their own interests, their own profit, their own welfare. Such a society, necessarily, looks to the collective, to government for solutions, just as we are seeing today.

But “Atlas Shrugged” provides a way out: it provides a defense of the individual’s moral right to pursue his own happiness, which is the precondition for upholding the individual’s political right to pursue his own happiness.

To show how Rand’s ideas help make sense of today’s events, and to show how her radical new conception of morality–what she called rational selfishness–can help return us to the Founders’ ideal of limited government, the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights regularly speaks and writes on current events. Recent engagements including UCLA, American University, Duke University, University of Texas, and the University of Maryland.

Those interested in learning more about Ayn Rand and “Atlas Shrugged” can visit ARC’s Web site:
www.aynrandcenter.org
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We're Now On Our Way To Maobamaism

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