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Syndicate
Apparently it's all those selfish, libidinous African men who are causing the earth's problems!
This is the kind of racist shit that characterizes much of the "overpopulation" discourse.
M. Spector.... you say social democrat like it's a dirty word. And why am I being called back from the dead?
In the first place, I am snipped, and secondly, I think this is a bogus issue. Based on the intent of our governments I am far less worried about forced sterilization than the opposite scenario.
And Unionist. I don't care about people wanting to be marxists, and I recognize that we use far more resources here. My problem is with the tactics, the sophistry, and the tunnel vision regarding clear limits to water, oil. viable climate, and land.
And although I have my own limits WRT what I can say, I should point out that whatever one is selling, the overpopulation debunking bandwagon is kind of crowded, and not all of it is progressive:
For one thing, those people at the Royal Society who make those great animated videos (the Choice one) are actually depopulation fanatics and ecofascists:
http://www.infowars.com/depopulation-fanatics-eugenicists-launch-“obje...
These guys are so slick... they don't even mention Jesus:
http://overpopulationisamyth.com/ http://pop.org/
http://www.christianpost.com/news/the-myth-of-overpopulation-51113/
http://www.overpopulationmyth.com/
And at the risk of further censure, they're even dumping on Malthus here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2734892/posts
So if we want to make an argument in favour of a specific political philosophy, perhaps we should base the arguments on its own merits, rather than something you can spin any which way. Based on the amount of mileage you might get out of this issue, I am not sure you want to be associated with that group of allies.
Inside the World Bank's Population Policy Michael Hudson
Taken from Super Imperialism(free ebook), 2nd Edition, p213 (1972)
That's a racist piece of shit quote and doesn't belong on babble.
Hudson is criticizing the very racist and imperialist policies of the U.S.-based World Bank, IMF, WTO, as well as the very racist Malthusian doctrine guiding their policies on population control in developing countries in general.
Who decides what is balanced economic development? What actually is that? What country has actually achieved that?
Arrogant First World imperialism, that's what that is.
And "what size population is desirable for them"? Again, who decides this? Some white guy who speaks English I assume. Since he knows best?
I don't see criticism, I see reiteration.
P.S. You wanna reduce population growth? Educate girls and women. There's a strong correlation between those two, Just sayin.
It's mostly superrich white guys dictating how those countries organize their economies today. The Congo is a perfect illustration of how things haven't changed a great deal since white Belgian colonialists ran roughshod over the country for too long and ended up physically eliminating 10 million of them. And with US proxies Rwanda and Uganda marauding into that country since the late 1990s, six million more Congolese have been slaughtered. The west wants access to the Congo's rich mineral deposits and untold of natural wealth in general.
Do we agree that big US agribusinesses should be dumping cheap food on these countries and undermining mostly agrarian economies? What else can they export besides raw materials and energy to rich western countries under the current neocolonialist setup?
WTO and IMF are insisting that these countries pay down their odious debts to a mostly white person dominated western banking cabal first and foremost and not spend irresponsibly on social development, health care, education etc. I can't imagine a more racist and condescendingly white-centric ideology being foisted on desperately poor third world countries today.
Hudson is saying that Africa has enough arable land to feed itself, but because of the policies of the neoliberal western institutions run mostly by rich white guys in the IMF, WTO and World Bank, they are not able to. Neocolonialism in Africa is a very racist ideology and should end for the sake of millions of Africans. It was rich white people in the west who did not want Patrice Lumumba creating a strong and united Africa in the 1960s. And so they murdered him. They've been corrupting the course of democracy and foisting neocolonialist policies on African nations ever since.
I think it's a real economic theory, and it has to do with sustainable economy and growth. And there are all kinds of ways of measuring whether a country is on the road to economic sustainability, or whether they are on the road to failed nation status.
Economists will say that there are no good reasons for African nations, like Somalia or Ethopia to be enduring famines and widespread grinding poverty that tends to keep whole nations of people down and out and striving for little more than the right to exist. And our lapdog western news media will often suggest that the reasons for famines in Africa are droughts and inclement weather in general, "civil" wars etc. And it's all lies.
Our nextdoor neighbors in Washington have, throughout the last century and this one, been seen and heard and widely publicized to donate food aid to various developing countries. It began in post-revolutionary Russia and throughout Asian countries. The U.S. has donated food and even dumped cheap food on developing countries near and afar, and economists have said that this dumping of cheap food has the effect of undermining agrarian economies. The Asian tiger economies, for instance, did not follow the Washington consensus for neoliberalism when pulling themselves up by their bootstraps post-WW II. China and Japan are two good examples of countries devasted by war, and they re-buiilt their economies from the ground up by basically doing everything the neoliberal agenda dictates not to do, like allowing farming families to stay on the land, grow produce and sell it while focusing on raising and educating their children. And every generation after them enjoyed better standards of living than their parents and grandparents. Government spending on basic health care services was key in China and Japan in creating healthy and literate populations. And now capitalists in China want to accept all of the credit for important social achievements in Mao's time.
And this is what imperialists today want to prevent happening and especially in desperately poor African countries. Imperialists here in the West have worked to maintain division among the "barbarians" in Asia and Africa. Imperialists want no rivals either economic or military. Nationalist governments of any stripe are lumped-in with communists, and all of them together in kind represent a threat to corporate-sponsored imperialism. The dirty tricks and covert interventions have worked in many countries but not all.
The Congo has been devasted by racist western policies as babblers have mentioned many times in other threads. We have observed a proliferation of militant Islam in countries on the edge of Eastern Europe, in Central Asia, and North Africa. And the good Samaritans of food aid (with political and economic strings attached) around the world have complained in recent months that the reason Somalians in Lower Shabelle, for instance, are threatened with famine is that Al Shahab imposed a ban on foreign aid agencies and NGO's in 2009. And Al Shahab is linked with Al-Qaeda, says the U.S. Therefore the U.S. has intervened covertly in order to stop the evil Al-Qaeda-linked jihaidists in order that they might bring famine relief to innocent Somalians suffering under militant Islam, "inclement weather patterns", and an overal lack of democracy in general. This is how barbarians carry on in case we didn't know. But the story is not as simple as our good neighbors and lapdog news media let on.
Lapdog news media and their corporate masters fail to mention that Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (Movement of Striving Youth) is funded by Saudi Arabia and covertly supported by Western intelligence agencies. This is part of a pattern for Western countries covertly supporting Al-Qaeda and affiliated jihadist militants in a number of other countries since the 1950s through today including Libya and Syria. And these policies are incredibly racist and imperialist and continuing today. The idea is to create imbalance and chaos as opposed to encouraging economic balance leading to healthy and sustainable economic growth in developing countries. Imperialists are able to stay on top of the heap longer this way. This is what imperialists do.
I'm not in agreement with the prognosis or the 'solution' proposed, but this shocking appraisal is right about us approaching some planetary redlines that will have to be dealt with:
The Psychology of Systemic Collapse - by Peter Goodchild
http://www.countercurrents.org/goodchild060212.htm
"Industrial society is based almost entirely on fossil fuels, and such an enormous population is not possible without these fuels. When the fuel is gone, so is the population. Because the size of the population is so closely related to the fuel supply, between now and the year 2050 about 2.5 million people will die of famine, while lost and averted births will amount to another 2.5 billion. The truly fundamental problem of understanding systemic collapse, however, is that the mind cannot assimilate it emotionally..."
Goodchild's article is dumb.
We already have the technology to live comfortably without fossil fuels. We just don't have a society that is willing to make the transition yet.
And it's not as if everyone on the planet is currently living the high life thanks to fossil fuels. The vast majority of the population of the planet consume very small amounts of fossil fuel; it is the wasteful and consumptive modes of production and living in the imperialist metropolises that are hogging the dwindling supply of fossil fuel. And most of the benefit of that fossil fuel wealth stolen from nature is concentrated in the hands of a small but powerful capitalist class.
Change the society and we can sustain far more people, in better living conditions, than capitalism has been able to.
In honour of 7 billion people day...
An appeal to some supporters of women's rights: Please stop promoting the 7 Billion scare
The rich, the poor, and the hungry - Gwynne Dyer
The demands of consumers, like the sheer number of human beings, can in theory expand indefinitely, but on a finite planet with dwindling resources and a changing climate, the cost of meeting consumer demand is going to go up very steeply. It is probably going to get very ugly out there, says Gwynne Dyer.