Globalization and the World’s Rising Living Standards June 5, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : culture, Ethnicity, Government , add a commentDespite the conclusions one might draw from the constant barrage of media negativity, never before have people lived longer, healthier, and wealthier lives with lower risks of malnourishment, illiteracy, or death by war or natural disaster. In a recent report for the Swedish government, Cato senior fellow Johan Norberg has documented the largest, most rapid rise in human living standards ever, which occurred over the last four decades. He reviews the factors that generated these advances and explain how even more economic liberty, free trade, and globalization are necessary to sustain them.
In many ways this is going to be a core contrast in this election and a major difference between the candidates-protectionism or free trade? How you vote in November may well determine our economic future in the world market place.
Agree or Disagree?
Wave good-bye to free speech and diversity June 5, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : culture, Ethnicity, Government , add a commentMinnesota Teens Barred From Graduation for Displaying Confederate Flags on Pick-Ups
video link-So much for free speech and diversity
“I’m just a country type of person, country music, big trucks and everything, that’s basically all it means to me.”
A foretaste of an Obamanation?
Fact or Farm Waste? May 2, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Church/State, culture, Ethnicity , add a commentAs I have pointed out this week, you can’t always trust a sound bite to be entirely accurate and that there are both similarities and differences in between Rev. Dr. Wright and Manning. I read this article yesterday and will share some excerpts here. For the entire article click here
The Real Reason Why Rev Wright Dissed Obama (excerpted)
‘Newt Gingrich said on ABC’s Good Morning America that Rev.Wright “went out of his way to weaken Obama…I think Reverend Wright has a greater interest in his self-importance”. Indeed Rev Wright is deliberately damaging Barack Obama-but for a more cynical reason than ego preservation’
… Rev. Wright’s real purpose — keeping the pledge payments flowing and collection plates full. Wright’s root agenda,… has been to capitalize on the misfortunes of others, to stoke both race and class resentment, offer a platform and voice pipe for the permanently aggrieved all to fill his own coffers. Rev Wright has amassed the equivalent of a small fortune not by finding solutions but by recycling a permanent state of self-inflicted misery, despair and bitterness. His appeals to the perpetually aggrieved have been rewarded by their willingness to part with their treasure to hear their complaints, some imaginary the remainder of their own making, resonate from the pulpit and center stage at Trinity Church.
As a grievance monger, instead of problem solver, Wright never promises — and would never promise — actual solutions. Why would he? Solutions would dry up the money pipe. Why would the permanently aggrieved willingly part with their treasure to hear that their complaints have been fixed? They wouldn’t. How could the politics of indignation be sustained when one of their own became the president of the United States? It couldn’t.
Rev Jeremiah Wright’s worst nightmare would be Barack Obama as president.
Do you Agree or Disagree with Mr. Hunt’s premise?
“It is customary and appropriate in many Christian denominations, including the United Church of Christ, for local churches to offer housing provisions for retiring clergy, especially in cases where pastors have served long-term pastorates,”
according to the democratic underground:
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Wright’s church (Trinity United Church for Christ) has built ex pastor Jeremiah Wright a mansion worth $1 million dollars in the Tinsley Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois.
Trinity United Church of Christ is building Barack Obama’s controversial former pastor a million-dollar Tinley Park home complete with an elevator, whirlpool, butler’s pantry, circular driveway and four-car garage, building plans show.
A wikipedia search turned out the following demographics data from Tinsley Park:
As of the 2000 census<4>, there were 48,401 people, 17,478 households, and 12,793 families residing in the village. The population density was 3,236.9 people per square mile (1,250.0/km²). There were 18,037 housing units at an average density of 1,206.2/sq mi (465.8/km²). The racial makeup of the village was 93.16% White, 1.92% African American, 0.13% Native American, 2.38% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 1.11% from other races, and 1.27% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 4.13% of the population.
In defense of his position May 1, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : culture, Ethnicity, Media, Theology , add a comment|
Dr. Manning defends his position distorted by soundbites. Notice a pattern? |
http://nofishleftbehind.blogspot.com/2008/05/pastor-manning-explains-his-position.html
Ted Turner’s elitist selectivism April 3, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : culture, Ethnicity, Media , add a commentIf anyone should be given a cup to have their urine checked, it is Ted Turner. Another example of elitist selectivism. This reminds me of the World Health Organization (the irony of that name!) in the 1960’s banning DDT because we were becoming overpopulated, and we would run out of food from all those africans.
Ok, Ted tell us, how are your five kids doing? Which three do you want to sacrifice on the altar of global warming first? And how about grandkids, dont have more than four do you? This disgusts me.
Ted Turner: Global warming could lead to cannibalism
Billionaire environmentalist says world has too many people
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/news/stories/2008/04/03/turner_0404.html
By MIKE MORRIS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/03/08
Failure to address global warming will have us all dead or eating each other by mid-century.
So says Ted Turner, the restaurateur, environmentalist and former media mogul whose controversial comments have earned him the nickname “Mouth of the South.”
If steps aren’t taken to stem global warming, “We’ll be eight degrees hotter in 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow,” Turner said during a wide-ranging, hour-long interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose that aired Tuesday.
“Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals,” said Turner, 69. “Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state — like Somalia or Sudan — and living conditions will be intolerable.”
One way to combat global warming, Turner said, is to stabilize the population.
“We’re too many people; that’s why we have global warming,” he said. “Too many people are using too much stuff.”
Turner suggested that “on a voluntary basis, everybody in the world’s got to pledge to themselves that one or two children is it.”
Admitting that he’s “always suffered from foot-in-the-mouth disease,” Turner added, “I’ve gotten a lot better, though. It’s been a long time since anybody caught me saying something stupid.”
Turner went on to say that military budgets need to be cut “way back.”
“Right now, the U.S. is spending $500 billion a year on the military, which is more than all 190 countries in the world put together,” he said.
“The two countries that the military industrial complex and some of our politicians would like to demonize and make enemies are Russia and China,” Turner said. “China just wants to sell us shoes. They’re not building landing craft to attack the United States, and Russia wants to be our friends, too.”
He said that despite the United States’ huge military budget, “we can’t win in Iraq.”
“We’re being beaten by insurgents who don’t even have any tanks, they don’t have a headquarters, they don’t have a Pentagon, we don’t even know if they have any generals,” Turner told Rose.
Turner called the Iraqi insurgents “patriots” who “don’t like us because we invaded their country and occupied it. Nobody likes to be invaded.”
The CNN founder also said he thinks his old network has veered too far away from serious news, instead favoring lighter stories delivered by attractive female “chickies” and opinion-based news such as Lou Dobbs’ show.
Once a mistake, twice a rank idiot March 21, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Church/State, culture, Ethnicity, Government, Media , add a commentDr. Jeremiah Wright told us a year ago who shaped his worldview and his theology. If any of the “news people” had bothered to simply check out who Dr. Wright named there would be no ‘real shock’ at the rhetoric of Dr. Wright. Mind you, “no shock” does not equal agreement with a statement, rather it means you understand a state of an existence of a theology being taught in our seminaries and in some churches.
Lets do for ourselves what the paid MSM failed to do. James H. Cone, is a Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary. First, Union Theological is not some backwater , obscure institution, but rather has been in existence since 1836. But many are not quite aware of the fact they proudly state:
“Our ecumenical, interfaith commitment grows and strengthens through programs of exchange with churches and seminaries throughout the world. Informed by the insights of liberation theologians, the Seminary embraces and addresses the richness and realities of religious pluralism. “
If people grasped religious pluralism then Wrights rhetoric would be no surprise.James Cone has been featured in PBS’s This Far by Faith Series
A CRISIS IN FAITH
It was the voice of Malcolm X that first made James Cone question his theology. Malcolm X proclaimed loudly that “Christianity is a white man’s religion,” and said that blacks should adopt an understanding of God that grew out of their own history and experience. He railed against a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus and a belief in the delayed rewards of heaven.
Still, Cone, then on the faculty of Adrian College in Michigan, continued to believe in the nonviolent, Christian love of Martin Luther King, Jr.
It was the northern riots and Stokely Carmichael’s call for “Black Power!” during the Meredith March in Mississippi that led him to a crisis in faith.
CHRISTIANITY AND BLACK POWER: REINTERPRETING HIS FAITH
“For me, the burning theological question was, how can I reconcile Christianity and Black Power, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s idea of nonviolence, and Malcolm X’s ‘by any means necessary philosophy?’” (Preface to Black Theology and Black Power, p. viii.)
Christianity, as he understood it, no longer explained or held meaning in the turbulent years of the late 1960s. “I was within inches of leaving the Christian faith.” If he were to remain a Christian, Cone would have to reinterpret his faith to respond to such demanding times.
Not exactly what most of us would find to be common in church on Sunday Morning, but how can the informed Christian be ignorant of the existence of this? Corruption of the seminary has ahistorically been the beginning of the theological shifts in denominations to a more liberal stance.
It would be good to note, both Dr. Wright and James Cone comes from the generation prior to the American Civil Rights Movement and their experiences shaped a worldview of resentment towards the treatment blacks had received in that area. That their rhetoric reflects that should no more surprise us then the rhetoric of the colonial pastors inspired the American Revolution.
Dr. Wright also mentions , Dr. Dwight N. Hopkins, whose works include: Being Human: Race, Culture, and Religion; Walk Together Children: black and womanist theologies, church and theological education; Another World Is Possible: Spiritualities and Religions of Global Darker Peoples; Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic (coeditor); Heart and Head: Black Theology-Past, Present, and Future; Introducing Black Theology of Liberation; Down, Up and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology; and Black Faith and Public Talk: Essays in Honor of James Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power (editor). His previous texts include Black Theology USA and South Africa: Politics, Culture, and Liberation; Shoes That Fit Our Feet: Sources for a Constructive Black Theology; and We Are One Voice: Essays on Black Theology in South Africa and the USA (coeditor). He is an editor of Religions/Globalizations: Theories and Cases; Changing Conversations: Religious Reflection and Cultural Analysis; and Liberation Theologies, Postmodernity and the Americas.
Dr. Hopkins is a Professor of Theology in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. This school is well known and respected for it’s scholarship in the study of religion and religious tradition.
Chicago reflects only one orthodoxy: that the rules of evidence and argument must discipline conversation, and that such rules are especially important when the topic is religion. Our faculty and students present a remarkable range of attitudes about religion as a force for good and for ill in the world. These attitudes bespeak the shared view that religion is one of our most fascinating and enduring windows into central truths about human life and being. The School aims to develop out of that conviction the richest possible conversation, and direct it to the central, complementary ends of scholarly excellence and moral engagement.
Dr. Hopkins is more of an academic than James Cone, but whose worldview is certainly shaped by the James Cones and the Jeremiah Wrights he grew up under. Dr. Hopkins , an American Baptist minister believes,
The descendants of American slaves are due reparations. Their foremothers suffered oppression because of the slaveholding structure of American society, and they suffered injustice at the hands of individual Americans, both those who owned them and those who acted like they owned them. White Americans forced these women to work as house and field laborers, and white American men treated these women as objects, not humans, when they raped them. The ancestors of today’s Americans even suffered the additional outrage of rape as a form of profit maximization: If an enslaved woman gave birth, her child would increase her owner’s wealth and provide him with yet more free labor. The psychological damage that these women and their families suffered is incalculable. Yet enslaved American black women did not retreat into passivity. They forged a theological understanding of their relationship with a God who would one day pass judgment on the slaveholders and compensate the enslaved-In Heaven and on Earth. What we need now is a discussion of how we can best compensate the descendants of these women and thus strengthen our society today.
None of this is secretive information, but rather readily available in a google search, yet people are “shocked”. Some will even say, well that is racist and I won’t even acknowledge racism . That is like not talking about sex, 
STD’s , drugs or alcohol with our children will make it go away. It has the same effect, you leave people unprepared. And “shoocked” it even exists, instead of armed and prepared.
In all probablity this type of theology and the black experience had more effect on shaping Michelle’s worldview than it did Barack’s. This is reflected in her Princeton thesis which you can read here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
Barack on the other hand was raised in a mixed cultural environment that was not walled in by the black experience (which why many claim he is not black enough). He was taught Islam, but from a political more than a religious standpoint in his home in Indonesia as a child. But Barack has more of a antropological view and reaction to society than his wife Michelle does.
I am much less concerned about Dr. Wright’s view than most, it is what it is. I tend to believe the social political aspect of Trinity UC church is part of the political reality of a Chicago politician more than a true indicator of Barack Obama’s belief system. I believe even though Dr. Wright had a lot of influence on Barack and is loved and respected by Barack as a fatherly type figure, he is intelligent enough to hold Wright’s radical (to us) views in tension and keep them in perspective.
Why? Because of his mother. HIs mother and his grandmother and his wife are powerful influences in his life. But not so much that he married a white woman. He married a true black woman-nobody will ever question if Michelle is black enough. Barack loves and respects her and she runs the house.Never underestimate the influence of a wife who b-slaps her husband in public. Early in Obama’s campaign, Michelle Obama could not restrain herself from belittling the senator.
”I have some difficulty reconciling the two images I have of Barack Obama. There’s Barack Obama the phenomenon. He’s an amazing orator, Harvard Law Review, or whatever it was, law professor, best-selling author, Grammy winner. Pretty amazing, right? And then there’s the Barack Obama that lives with me in my house, and that guy’s a little less impressive,” she told a fundraiser in February 2007.
“For some reason this guy still can’t manage to put the butter up when he makes toast, secure the bread so that it doesn’t get stale, and his five-year-old is still better at making the bed than he is.” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported at the time, “She added that the TV version of Barack Obama sounded really interesting and that she’d like to meet him sometime.” Her handlers have convinced her to be more tactful since then.
Michelle Obama speaks with great warmth of her mother-in-law . “She was kind of a dreamer, his mother,” Michelle Obama was quoted in the January 25 Boston Globe. “She wanted the world to be open to her and her children. And as a result of her naivete, sometimes they lived on food stamps, because sometimes dreams don’t pay the rent. But as a result of her naivete, Barack got to see the world like most of us don’t in this country.” How strong the ideological motivation must be of a mother to raise her children on the thin fair in pursuit of a political agenda.
I think time has come to put this whole Trinity church affair in perspective and realize it is what it is. However, lets learn the lesson from it. Let’s not wake up a year from now and realize someone told us something and we missed it.Words have meanings and do not trust the Sean Hannity’s and the Fox’s and the CNN’s to do their research, do your own.
I would be much more concerned about the effect Michelles worldview has on Obama than Jeremiah’s.
Annie has shown her fanny March 3, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : culture, Ethnicity, Government , add a comment
Nixonian Republicans for Hillary Clinton February 26, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : culture, Ethnicity, Government , 2commentsWhen doing research for a past article I was taken back at the similarities in between Hillary Rodham’s positions and life and that of former President Richard M. Nixon. For those disenchanted with the Republican presumptive nominee, perhaps they should seriously consider Mrs. Clinton for President. Who knows maybe they could get on the Coulter Conservative Express for Hillary!
Conservative values and roots
Raised in a politically conservative household at age thirteen she helped canvass South Side Chicago following the very close 1960 U.S. presidential election, finding evidence of electoral fraud against Republican candidate Richard Nixon, and volunteered for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in the U.S. presidential election of 1964. Her early political development was shaped most strongly by her energizing high school history teacher, who got her to read Goldwater’s classic The Conscience of a Conservative.
She attended the “Wellesley in Washington” summer program at the urging of Professor Alan Schechter, who assigned Rodham to intern at the House Republican Conference so she could better understand her changing political views. Rodham was invited by Representative Charles Goodell, a moderate New York Republican, to help Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s late-entry campaign for the Republican nomination. Rodham attended the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami
While Senator Mc Cain was a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution, Seantor Clinton beat him to the punch as was one in the Goldwater revolution. Incidentally, John Mc Cain is serving in Barry Goldwater’s congressional seat today. Both Attorneys, But Hillary More Successful
There is no comparison in between the law careers of Nixon and Clinton. Nixon settled for a mundane family law practice after graduating third in his class from Duke , marrying Pat three years after graduation.
Senator Clinton became high profile and started earning a reputation for herself before she even entered Yale. During her senior year she based her thesis on the radical tactics of community organizer Saul Alinsky under Professor Schechter. Hillary had also earned a reputation as a student organizer and leader at Wellesley College, being the first student to deliver the commencement speech. Both started in Family Law, But Hillary was higher profile
In the late spring of 1971, she began dating Bill Clinton, who was also a law student at Yale. That summer, she interned on child custody cases at the Oakland, California, law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, which was well-known for its support of constitutional rights, civil liberties, and radical causes; two of its four partners were current or former communist party members.President Clinton canceled his original summer plans in order to live with her in an apartment in Berkeley, California, later writing, “I told her I’d have the rest of my life for my work and my ambition, but I loved her and I wanted to see if it could work out for us.” The romance did develop, and the couple continued living together in New Haven when they returned to law school.
In 1979, she became the first woman to be made a full partner of Rose Law Firm. From 1978 until they entered the White House, she had a higher salary than her husband. During 1978 and 1979, while looking to supplement their income, Rodham made a spectacular profit from trading cattle futures contracts;her initial $1,000 investment generated nearly $100,000 when she stopped trading after ten months. The court also began their ill-fated investment in the Whitewater Development Corporation real estate venture with Jim and Susan McDougal at this time.
Considered a “rainmaker” at the firm for bringing in clients, partly due to the prestige she lent the firm and to her corporate board connections. She was also very influential in the appointment of state judges. Bill Clinton’s Republican opponent in his 1986 gubernatorial re-election campaign accused the
Clintons of conflict of interest, because Rose Law did state business; the
Clintons deflected the charge by saying that state fees were walled off by the firm before her profits were calculated. From 1987 to 1991 she chaired the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession, which addressed gender bias in the law profession and induced the association to adopt measures to combat it. She was twice named by the National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America, in 1988 and in 1991. When Bill Clinton thought about not running again for governor in 1990, Hillary Clinton considered running herself, but private polls were unfavorable and in the end he ran and was re-elected for the final time.
Clinton served on the boards of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Legal Services (1988–1992) and the Children’s Defense Fund (as chair, 1986–1992).In addition to her positions with non-profit organizations, she also held positions on the corporate board of directors of TCBY (1985–1992), Wal-Mart Stores (1986–1992) and Lafarge (1990–1992).TCBY and Wal-Mart were Arkansas-based companies that were also clients of Rose Law. Clinton was the first female member on Wal-Mart’s board, added when chairman Sam Walton was pressured to name one; once there was silent about the company’s famously anti-labor union practices.
Watergate The House Judiciary Committee controlled by Democrats opened formal and public impeachment hearings against Nixon on May 9, 1974. Despite his efforts, one of the secret recordings, known as the “smoking gun” tape, was released on August 5, 1974, and revealed that Nixon authorized hush money to Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt, and also revealed that Nixon ordered the CIA to tell the FBI to stop investigating certain topics because of “the
Bay of Pigs thing.” In light of his loss of political support and the near certainty of both his impeachment by the House of Representatives and his probable conviction by the Senate, he resigned on August 9, 1974, after addressing the nation on television the previous evening. He never admitted to criminal wrongdoing, although he later conceded errors of judgment.
On September 8, 1974, a blanket pardon from President Ford, who served as Nixon’s second Vice President, ended any possibility of indictment. The pardon was highly controversial and Nixon’s critics claimed that the blanket pardon was quid pro quo for his resignation. No evidence of this “corrupt bargain” has ever been proven, and many modern historians dismiss any claims of overt collusion between the two men concerning the pardon.
Hillary was also involved in the Watergate investigation as Democrat Jeffery Zeifman recounts:
“her erroneous legal opinions and efforts to deny Nixon representation by counsel-as well as an unwillingness to investigate Nixon. In my diary of August 12, 1974 I noted the following:
John Labovitz apologized to me for the fact that months ago he and Hillary had lied to me [to conceal rules changes and dilatory tactics.] Labovitz said, “That came from Yale.” I said, “You mean Burke Marshall [Senator Ted Kennedy’s chief political strategist, with whom Hillary regularly consulted in violation of House rules.] Labovitz said, “Yes.” His apology was significant to me, not because it was a revelation but because of his contrition.”At that time Hillary Rodham was 27 years old. She had obtained a position on our committee staff through the political patronage of her former Yale law school professor Burke Marshall and Senator Ted Kennedy. Eventually, because of a number of her unethical practices I decided that I could not recommend her for any subsequent position of public or private trust.”
Healthcare
In his 1974 State of the Union address, Nixon called for comprehensive health insurance with the following remarks:
“Turning now to the rest of the agenda for 1974, the time is at hand this year to bring comprehensive, high quality health care within the reach of every American. I shall propose a sweeping new program that will assure comprehensive health insurance protection to millions of Americans who cannot now obtain it or afford it, with vastly improved protection against catastrophic illnesses. This will be a plan that maintains the high standards of quality in
America’s health care. And it will not require additional taxes.”
On February 6, 1974, he introduced the Comprehensive Health Insurance Act. Nixon’s plan would have mandated employers to purchase health insurance for their employees, and in addition provided a federal health plan like Medicaid that any American could join by paying on a sliding scale based on income.
The AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers lobbied to kill the plan, not because they were fundamentally opposed to universal health care, but because they hoped for an even better plan after the next election. With the collapse of the Nixon presidency, however, followed by his successor Ford’s overarching concerns with the economy and government spending, the plan was put on the back burner and forgotten for a generation. Hillary Clinton has proposed a very similar plan in her run for for president.
Domestic policy
Nixon’s domestic policies often appear close to Hillary Clintons As President, Nixon imposed wage and price controls, as Hillary is suggesting freezing interest rates on adjustable rate mortgage loans.
Nixon also indexed Social Security for inflation, and created Supplemental Security Income (SSI). The number of pages added to the Federal Register each year doubled under Nixon. He eradicated the last remnants of the gold standard.
Green and for the worker
President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), promoted the Legacy of parks program and implemented the Philadelphia Plan, the first significant federal affirmative action program, and dramatically improved salaries for US federal employees worldwide. In the wake of racial tensions that had sometimes erupted into urban violence before he assumed the Presidency, Nixon’s policy on race relations and civil rights was perceived to be influenced by a doctrine commonly referred to as “benign neglect.” As a party leader, Nixon helped build the Republican Party (GOP), but he ran his 1972 campaign separately from the party, which perhaps helped the GOP escape some of the damage from Watergate. The Nixon White House was the first to organize a daily press event and daily message for the media, a practice that all subsequent staffs have performed.
What drove Hillary away?
1968 Republican National Convention in Miami, where she decided to leave the Republican Party for good; she was upset over how Richard Nixon’s campaign had portrayed Rockefeller and what Rodham perceived as the “veiled” racist messages of the convention.
Ironic as it may seem, as Hillary has matured she may be closer than ever to Richard Nixon. What she once found as republsive and drove her from the republican party, she has allowed her own campaign to do in even more overt terms with Seanator Barack Obama, protraying him in traditional African garb with a leak to the Drudge Report. So, if you are a Nixonian Republican, you can vote with confidence for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Nixonians for Clinton Unite!
Population Control and DDT February 18, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : culture, Ethnicity, Government, Media , add a commentToday’s headlines from Reuters tell us President Bush is making a commitment to bring malaria under control in Africa. Good heart but terrible methodology.One must remember the true history of this to understand if President Bush wants to end the genocide or just appear compassionate and line some pockets. Lets remember the history:
In the 1960’s the World Health Organization sentenced children in African to death by malaria in the name of population control. Intentional Calculated Genocide . Population control advocates blamed DDT for increasing third world population. In the 1960s, World Health Organization authorities believed there was no alternative to the overpopulation problem but to assure than up to 40 percent of the children in poor nations would die of malaria. As an official of the Agency for International Development stated, “Rather dead than alive and riotously reproducing.“
Zero Population Growth
In effect, banning DDT was a zero population growth tool used on third world
Africa by the World Health Organization in the name of environmentalism. Lapkin sees these questions through the prism of a new form of First World vanity. “The anti-DDT crusade is made all the more outrageous by the distinct taint of neo-colonialism that is its indelible accompaniment. In a way, the push to ban this insecticide represents the ultimate in modern Eurocentric arrogance, the newest form of imperialism.”
He likens it to the “we know what’s best” Kipling version of taking up the white man’s burden imposing a green, insecticide-free colonial ideology of primal, untainted nature. Given the Herodian consequences, it seems to me that the more fitting analogy is with the Belgian than theBritish empire, and with Joseph Conrad’s Mister Kurtz. Still there can be no doubting his conclusion that “hubris, folly and ethnocentrism…spawned this unnecessary tragedy”.
Crichton says the most imperative of contemporary challenges is to retrieve responsible environmentalism from the clutches of those zealots for whom it has become a substitute faith and return to scientific discipline. He said, “I am thoroughly sick of politicised so-called facts that simply aren’t true. It isn’t that these ‘facts’ are exaggerations of an underlying truth. Nor is it that certain organisations are spinning their case… in the strongest way. Not at all — what more and more groups are doing is putting out lies, pure and simple. Falsehoods that they know to be false. This trend began with the DDT campaign and persists to this day.”
False Concern for cancer
According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a division of the World Health Organization (WHO), DDT is classified as Group 2B carcinogenicity; that is, there is an admitted insufficient evidence of carcinogenicity. On the other hand, a report issued by the IARC classified combined estrogen-progestogen oral contraceptives, the most widely prescribed contraceptive on the market, as Group 1 carcinogenicity.In other words, oral contraceptives, which the WHO claims over 100 million women worldwide regularly ingest, are by this classification defined as definitely carcinogenic. The WHO therefore justifies downplaying the immediate risk to hundreds of millions of women worldwide because “it is possible that the overall net public health outcome may be beneficial.” No again, population control is at the core.DDT has saved millions of lives, and the ban, based upon long disproved claims of carcinogenicity, is perpetuating the annual death of millions. Talk about a beneficial “overall net public health outcome”! “To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT… In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable.” *According to
Africa News, January 27. 1999, “It is believed that [malaria] afflicts between 300 and 500 million every year, causing up to 2.7 million deaths, mainly among children under five years”. False Solutions are diversions
What Africa needs is water and DDT, not bed blankets and vaccines.
In Graham Greene’s 1949 thriller classic, The Third Man, Harry Lime — “the dirtiest racketeer who ever made a dirty living” — peddles diluted penicillin through the sewers of occupiedVienna.
During the film’s famous scene atop the city’s Great Wheel, Harry’s friend Holly Martins, played by Joseph Cotten, asks, “Have you ever visited the children’s hospital? Have you ever seen any of your victims?” “Victims?” replies Orson Welles as Harry, pointing to the tiny figures moving far below them. “Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving — forever? If I said you can have £20,000 for every dot that stops, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money — without hesitation?”
Africa needs clean water, food and drugs for diseases like malaria and cholera, yet Bill Gates and Gordon Brown want to vaccinate them all, while the WHO wants to give them AZT & Viramune (nevirapine). Go figure
Environmentalism as a Religion
Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western world is environmentalism. Environmentalist many times have convictions immune to rational scrutiny. The question becomes whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.
Environmentalists must be so proud. They are. Their heroine’s propaganda material and their own efforts managed to kill more people than Hitler and Stalin combined.The Green having long ago bested the Red’s murder of innocents high score, they now turn their attention to the biggest achievement of all: eliminate humans.
No, the time for bolder self-sacrifice has arrived. The only real, long term hope for the eco-sphere is a massive human population collapse, hopefully leading to the voluntary extinction of the human race. Already, a new urgency and groundswell of support is building for the idea that humans are a type of super toxin which the planet cannot sustain or support in the longterm. Cogent support for the voluntary extinction of the human race is well-articulated in all its ramifications and implications here : www.vhemt.org.
It is ironic that the industrialized world has eradicated malaria at home, and got the benefits of DDT, before we banned it and then campaigning to have it banned everywhere else. The leadership of Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund unconscionably turned a blind eye to an African malaria catastrophe that was a direct outgrowth of their own advocacy which costs millions of human lives each year in a completely preventable epidemic.
Smoke and Mirrors
Paul Driessen, (Green Power, Black Death) remarks, They show incredible disregard for the rights, aspirations, and even lives of the world’s poorest people. They constantly hammer on the supposed risks of using chemicals, fossil fuels, and biotechnology—and never mention the far greater risks that those technologies would reduce, or the lives they can save. And they have tax-exempt status, and get literally billions of dollars a year from foundations, and even government agencies, to promote their agendas and lies, despite their lethal consequences.
Their disregard for the poor, especially dark-skinned people in developing countries, is frightening. They’ve never apologized once for the deaths their anti-DDT policies have caused, never even admitted they were wrong, never offered any form of aid or compensation to victims or their families, and certainly they’ve never been held accountable.
During the World Trade Organization conference in Cancun a few years ago, the head of a major Mexican environmental group told a friend of mine: “We don’t care at all about the poor. We don’t want them to become rich or middle class, because then they will become consumers and that means you have to take more resources out of the ground to meet their demands, and that’s bad for the Earth. It’s better to keep them poor.”My Zero Population Growth days involved a lot of concern about the supposed population bomb, and then I started reading things from Julian Simon and other people, who raised questions that Paul Ehrlich [author of The Population Bomb and other environmentalists just couldn’t answer.
It became apparent that there was an environmental agenda that I was very uncomfortable with: keeping poor people poor, being so concerned about population that they were promoting anti-DDT, anti-biotechnology, anti-fossil fuel development, anti-economic development policies, that ultimately meant the poor were going to be kept poor, diseased, and dying prematurely.
Jacques Cousteau said we have to find a way to “eliminate” 350,000 people a day to stabilize global populations. And Prince Philip said he wanted to come back as a particularly deadly virus, and take out large segments of the Earth’s population. Club ofRome co-founder Alexander King wrote, “My chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it greatly added to the population problem.” And former Sierra Club president Mike McCloskey said, “by using DDT, we reduce mortality rates in underdeveloped countries without considering how to support the increase in populations.”
Offer Real Hope
I am all for offering Africa real hope and real help and ending the genocide in
Africa. Lets start a malaria eradication program with spraying DDT and killing the malaria at its source. Constant pressure from concerned scientists and public interest groups appears to be paying off for the people of Africa, as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has endorsed the indoor spraying of DDT to battle malaria in sub-Saharan Africa.
Let’s help them drill wells so they can drink clean water. You start by helping people with the basics.I would encourage you personally to support charities like Blood Water Mission : http://www.bloodwatermission.com/ and to urge congress to lift the ban on DDT.
************
Edit: I am for environmental responsibility. I have lived in Estes Park, CO (Rocky Mountain National Park), I have lived in Old Florida in fragile areas (Homosassa, Crystal River and Ocala) and I live a couple miles from the Eastern Continental Divide in the mountains of Pennsylvania because of my affinity for nature. Respecting , enjoying and admiring God’s creation in nature does not mean you accept everyones solution to perceived problems. I do not accept that the solution to third world country populations is death by malaria by removing products that fight malaria. I do find pantheism is dangerous and misleading and many fall victim to the misinformation given to the well meaning.
More on the subject:
1.Kenney, Richard, “What Kills More: Ideology or Religion?” http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1411041/posts, 2005.
2. Kristof, Nicholas, “It’s Time To Spray DDT” http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D12FE355D0…“>http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D12FE355D0…, 2005.
3. Seavey, Todd, “The DDT Ban Turns 30 — Millions Dead of Malaria Because of Ban, More Deaths Likely” http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsID.442/healthissue_deta…, 2002.
4. Makson, Lisa, “Rachel Carson’s Ecological Genocide” http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9169“>http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9169, 2003.
5. Crichton, Michael, State of Fear, (Harper Collins, 2004) Pg. 487
6. Edwards, J. Gordon, “DDT: A Case Study In Scientific Fraud” http://www.fightingmalaria.org/pdfs/Edwards%20-%20DDT%20Frau…, 2004.
7. Hayes, W. 1956. JAMA 162:890-897.
8. Cashill, Jack, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=450…“>http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=450…, 2005.
9. IARC, “DDT and Associated Compounds” , http://www-cie.iarc.fr/htdocs/monographs/vol53/04-ddt.htm, 1997.
10. IARC, “IARC Monographs Programme Finds Combined Estrogen-Progestogen Contraceptives and Menopausal Therapy are Carcinogenic to Humans”, http://www.iarc.fr/ENG/Press_Releases/pr167a.html, 2005.
11. Tren, Richard and Bate, Roger, “Malaria and the DDT Story” . IEA Research Paper No. OP 117. http://ssrn.com/abstract=677448.
12. Cashill, Jack, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=450…“>http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=450…, 2005.
13. Foreman, Dave. Confessions of an Eco-Warrior. (New York: Harmony Books), 1991.
14. Shellenberger, Michael and Nordhaus, Ted. “The Death of Environmentalism” http://www.thebreakthrough.org/images/Death_of_Environmental…, 2004.
15. Galton, Francis, Memories Of My Life, http://www.mugu.com/galton/books/memories/galton-memories-1u…, 1908. (Emphasis mine)
16. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/1/9/173940/4293
17. http://www.junkscience.com/malaria_clock.htm
18. What the World Needs Now is DDT http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9F0DEEDA1738F932A25757C0A9629C8B63
Is self-loathing affecting Christianity ? January 22, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : culture, Ethnicity, Theology , add a commentCultural self hatred is a real danger.