Is Development the Best : Melbourne Indymedia

Challenging Economic Cant about Population and Development : Sheila's Demographic Hypothesis notes

It was Great Britain whose population first blew out of control (most probably due in large part to the commercialisation of coal) and that was responsible for a lot of the peopling of what we now call the 'third world' by colonial immigrants. In turn those colonial immigrants brought the fossil fuel (industrial) economy to the third world and imposed, suggested, led or exemplified, a lot of cornucopian population rules about marriage, infanticide, contraception etc which they had adapted due to the abundance that came about with coal. Oil riches added to this confusion of previously workable local solutions to population overshoot.

The 'benign demographic transition' (BDT) model was first thought up by a bloke in the UN. It was never much more than a poorly formed hypothesis that does not work at all if you factor in fossil fuel commercialisation. The BDT was taken up by the economic growth merchants who also didn't understand the connection between fossil fuel and economic growth. They conflated high populations with high economic growth and erroneously supposed that high populations caused high economic growth, whereas the reverse was true. If they have since worked it out, they aren't saying anything because they have made the population machine a kind of primitive engine for their personal wealth accumulation.

The real equation should be:

Fossil fuel added to biomasse/flow energies > economic growth > more population
It is true that if you manage to master a huge population you can dig that fossil fuel out faster and make and consume more things and funnel the riches up the hierarchy via banks etc. So, in the short term, if you ignore the essential function of the fossil fuel in starting off and maintaining and accelerating the big population and the technology that enhances the ability of the population to channel energy, you can do more with a bigger "population engine".

But, if you don't have the fossil fuel in the first place, you can't have the big population engine. (And, when the energy available declines, the population also inevitably declines of course.)

India, China, Africa, Pacific Islands all ran on biomasse once and had learned to manage their populations.

The reason their populations and our consumption and populations are out of control is because the economic theory that dominates education and propaganda at the moment is the one that has substituted for fossil fuel the notions of 'human ingenuity', 'human destiny' etc because of its amazing ignorance of fossil fuel and energy dynamics, which easily compares to the information system promulgated by the church at the time of Galileo where, because the Sun revolved around the earth, Man dominated the universe.

Since Galileo managed to get the Earth to revolve around the Sun due to his superior human enginuity and his charmed destiny, the Church lost some of its pull over government, and was obliged to reinvent itself as modern economics.

The contrary theory is that eventually, through a process known as reganomics and thatcherism, which was entirely fueled by faith and tricks with mirrors, Economists were able to reset the Sun on its rightful journey around the Earth and restore Human Progress. In about ten years everyone on earth will have enough to eat and will be highly educated and we will have lost all human faults. There will be no war and the principal occupation of humans will be finding ways to do good in a world so close to heaven that few will choose to die, if indeed, death has not been ruled out entirely as an option. (Just joking about Galileo.)

Sheila Newman

*It was probably not until well into the 19th century that it began to assume nation-wide proportions, and then not until after the first oil shock (1973) that misery set in intractably on a global basis, but I have to look up the details after 1750.

Some References that demonstrate how the BDT is argued and relied on and which also give some history of its formation:

1. Pierre Martinot-Lagarde, The Intricacy of demography and politics: the case for population projections, http://www.iussp.org/Brazil2001/ s00/S07_P07_MartinotLagarde.pdf
2. Luis Currais, From the Malthusian regime to the demographic transition: Contemporary research and beyond, Economica, v.II, No. 3., June, pp 75-101

Blast, the title was meant to be, Is Development the Best Contraceptive?

If Simon hadn't just sucked out my will to live I wouldn't put up with your Malthusian Fascist crap.

"India, China, Africa, Pacific Islands all ran on biomasse once and had learned to manage their populations.

The reason their populations and our consumption and populations are out of control is because the economic theory that dominates education and propaganda at the moment is the one that has substituted for fossil fuel the notions of 'human ingenuity', 'human destiny' etc because of its amazing ignorance of fossil fuel and energy dynamics, which easily compares to the information system promulgated by the church at the time of Galileo where, because the Sun revolved around the earth, Man dominated the universe. "

BULLSHIT! The reason is poverty. When you dont have acess to birth control, when women dont have control over their own bodies, when half your kids might die before they grow up, when their is no social welfare, when the only hope you have for the future is that some of your kids might survive. That is the cause of large populations. But for some reason you insist on ignoring the blatantly obvious.

And the real reason for poverty is that the West continues to suck the life and resources out of the 3rd World. The other reason is waste. We all know that enough grain is dumped into the oceans (to keep the price up) every year to feed most of the planet.

But it's easier to ignore all that and blame people in the 3rd world for not being good serfs.

Dear Mr Menace,

You haven't read my post properly. You have honed in on a part of it and assumed that I was arguing a familiar case.

If you want to make an impact on me, try arguing the points sensibly. If you can. I think you would have to know a bit more about demography than you do and that would take patience. You seem to believe what you are told by ideological 'authorities' who all support the BDT because it is good for big business. And you are too scared to question them. That is probably why you can't manage your nerves enough to take in anything new.

Knowledge is not like a cult. It can't hurt you. If it doesn't work, you can get rid of it. You will recognise ideology by the fact that it makes you afraid to read anything outside the approved literature. I can tell this is your problem because you are so abusive. You fear what I have to say.

But don't be afraid. Okay, I'm a little tough on your ego, but I'm not telling you lies and you can go to the sources and make your own interpretations.

I guess there's no chance of looking forward to some real dialogue?

Sheila N

Do not malign economics when you dont have the first scent of an idea about what it is. You seem to think that economics is a static field where there has been one theory invented by the ruling class to subjugate the masses. Economics has been evolving (you should really try that sometime by the way) for centuries.

Anyway the Green Menace is right on one thing, the high population in third world countries arises from poverty. The population explosion experienced in Britain was due to the economic well being (access to food, shelter, medicine etc) of its citizens improving, and social norms lagging behind. People were still having lots of children expecting some to die in infancy, but because of the advancements these kids were living long enough to have kids.

But Green Menace is wrong to point the finger for poverty solely at exploitation and waste. There may be grain being dumped into the sea, I know of many example of primary product trade potectionism. The US actually pays farmers NOT to farm parts of their land to help maintain relatively high domestic prices. But let us suppose that that grain that is "dumped into the sea" every year, were simply given to third world countries. Would that satisfy you? Lets assume that the third world country doesnt have a totalitarian government that woul;d take the grain and sell it and bank the profits in their Paris account. Free grain for who ever wants it in that country would mean there would be no incentive for local farmers to produce grain, as who are they going to sell it to? Local farming collapses. Doh!

The main export of third world countries is primary produce. The dumping to keep the prices up should theoretically help them as it means they will get a higher price for their produce. The only thing stopping them is if noone in a foreign market will buy their goods. This can happen for many reasons but chief among them is protectionism and tarrifs. In order to protect local producers of primary goods first world countries can impose tarrifs on imported food to make as or even more expensive than that produced locally. So then people would be more inclined to buy local primary goods instead. The solution is simple, free trade and abolishing of protectionsim. Green Menace is probably a Marxist and as such reviles free trade, but why?

The problem of poverty has many causes, each different when you are looking at a different area. In Africa it is most likely due to despotic, totalitarian leaders. In India, it may be due to caste racism. In China and Cuba, it is due to communism. In South East Asia, it is due to corruption and graft hamstinging progress. In Zimbabwe, it is due to the erosion of property rights, cronyism, and bascially that fuckwit Mugabe. In South America, it is due to failed economies, zero fiscal restraint and civil unrest making foreign investment unattractive. In the Middle East it is because of the Jews. Psych! No it is because of repressive, theocratic, regressive governments.

And lets us not forget that in third world countries there are alot of non-white people, and non-white people are lazy.

Population v economic considerations = distress, the article does have merit, some believe development of the third world will lift populations out of poverty, and the new priority of wealth created will reduce the third worlds glut of people.

Its in this that we have our first mistake, western nations became rich not soley through industrialization in the 1700’s but also through the exploitation of the unclaimed world during the Empire stage, which left the third world unable to compete today, as there is no forth world to exploit, no unclaimed territory to invade, no free resorce, therefore they must endure western benevolence as a future.

China has just begun on this develop-mental race, its population is a burden and its poverty has increased, all the while the experiment is hailed a success while those who are already rich get richer and the poor just become destitute, but we don’t care because consumer products have never been cheaper.

"Trickle down economics" is not an economic term, it is a political one. It was used by leftists to explain what they think economists say, then they tear it to shreds and feel warm and fuzzy.

Raising wimmins economic power and status lowers birth rates. This can best be done by fighting racism and sexism directly and eschewing top down statist solutions that are doomed to failure.

Speaking of failures - search on Libertarians... seeking to impose so called minarchis but really fascist statist norms of propertarian rights at the point of some wing nut Austrian economics bayonet.

Now worrying about things you can do nothing or very little about could make you ill but these are important issue's for all enemies of all states.

MORE POWER to WOPERSYNs! ESPECIALLY ONES OF COLOR!

DEATH to the STATE!

Dear Kimble,

Yes, the UK got better food medicine etc, but it got them because of FOSSIL FUEL! You make the same religious mistake as the rest of them; you think it all happened through some kind of magic.

You (and Green Menace) also apparently completely failed to see that I said that the third world DID NOT HAVE POPULATION PROBLEMS before the impact of colonisations.

Open your eyes. Try actually reading what I have written. It doesn't hurt half as much as being a poor old economic growthist sheep.

Actually I have read a lot of economics. (Have a look at my thesis at http://www.alphalink.com.au/~smnaesp/populationspeculation,
the beginning of chapter 7, for instance, which explains two different economic reactions to the oil shock of the 1970s. I am also aware that some economists are not complete idiots, but they are not the ones who endorse the BDT.

Economics as touted by the faithful is nothing more or less than a religion. I suspect you are not an economist, but you certainly seem to have the religion.

Or you are very young. In which case, please deduct all the harsh adjectives I have employed.

Sheila N

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=542953

The cult and the candidate

Lyndon LaRouche is a convicted fraudster and virulent anti-Semite. Now he's campaigning for the American presidency. Terry Kirby investigates his sinister global network - and his conspiracy theories about Tony Blair

He has warned that the international monetary system is about to collapse and that five billion people will die in the ensuing chaos. The Royal Family and MI6 are, he claims, responsible for the international drugs trade. Welcome to the weird world of Lyndon LaRouche, the 81-year-old who is campaigning as an "independent Democratic candidate" for president of the United States in this November's election, for the fifth time. A millionaire who describes himself as "the world's leading economic forecaster", LaRouche is also a convicted fraudster and conspiracy theorist par excellence.

Until recently, LaRouche was virtually unknown in Britain, while in the United States he is dismissed as a crackpot, ignored by both the media and the political world. But since the death just over a year ago of the British student Jeremiah Duggan, a 22-year-old Jew found dead in mysterious circumstances in Germany after becoming involved with LaRouche supporters, his organisation has come under closer scrutiny than it has for decades.

Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, a US think tank that monitors right-wing groups, said: "In America we have treated him as a fringe eccentric, which is wrong because the truth is he recruits a lot of talented young people, like Jeremiah Duggan, and attempts to turn them into followers who will mindlessly celebrate a cause that's going nowhere."

Duggan, who was studying in Paris, was killed by traffic when he stumbled on to a dual carriageway outside Wiesbaden, apparently fleeing from unknown dangers. Just minutes earlier he had made distressed telephone calls to his mother and girlfriend. The previous weekend he had attended what he had believed to be an anti-Iraq war meeting but which in reality was a conference organised by LaRouche largely to promote his views. His family are pressing the German authorities to reconsider their verdict of suicide.

Others also believe the LaRouche organisation is a subject for considerable concern. Dr William Dolman, the coroner who conducted the inquest into Duggan's death, said the case left "many unanswered questions", while a Scotland Yard internal report said the organisation appeared to be "a political cult with sinister and dangerous connections", which blamed Jewish people for the Iraq war and other problems.

LaRouche has taken the same line in response to any external criticism throughout his career - condemning it as part of a long history of conspiracy against him, largely contrived by MI6, the CIA and the KGB. The Duggan case was, therefore, a hoax contrived by "admirers of Dick Cheney and Tony Blair" while a story in The Independent on Mr Duggan's parents campaigning to raise awareness of political cults was a "smear".

It's typical of a style he has been honing since he was a Marxist living in Greenwich village in the early 1970s, when he founded the National Caucus of Labour Committees out of the radical student politics of the era. But traditional left-winger he was not: it has been claimed his supporters physically attacked members of other Marxist groups in order to maintain dominance of the left, while his speeches began to adopt the style of a demagogue. He later began contacts with some right-wing groups, telling his supporters it was a tactical alliance to oppose imperialism.

LaRouche then performed a complete about-turn, declaring war on leftists and liberals. He began to develop his conspiracy theories, including assertions that Britain was responsible for the French revolution and that the 11 September attacks were planned by extremist elements in the US military in conjunction with Jewish conspirators in order to start a war on Islam. He has also stated that his lapsed supporters have been brainwashed by the KGB and British intelligence using methods developed by the Tavistock Institute in London, a respected family therapy centre.

Berlet says: "The LaRouche network combines totalitarian forms of social control, fascist political ideology and dualistic apocalyptic style, which encourages followers to fear that time is running out and they must act immediately to stave off some cataclysmic event."

LaRouche grew rich in the 1970s and 1980s through a company that developed computer software for the haulage industry, and expanded his political organisation during that time. It now operates in at least half a dozen countries and has funded four attempts at the US presidency, although never gathering more than 80,000 votes.

The tycoon now lives in what Berlet describes as a "surreal world of self-aggrandisement", delivering his message to grandly titled meetings organised almost entirely by his own supporters, many of whom have been part of his inner circle for years. He is believed to run at least a dozen publications and political parties around the world, but his biggest operation outside the US is in Germany, and is run by his German-born wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, a former freelance journalist. According to some reports, an earlier version of their German political party, the EAP, was decreed by the German government to be the equivalent of a "political sect"; it is now called the Buergerrechtsbewegung Solidaritaet, or the Civil Rights Solidarity Movement.

In Wiesbaden, Mrs LaRouche runs the Schiller Institute - named after German poet Friedrich Schiller. The institute purports to be a cultural forum and publishes a glossy magazine, Fidelio. But amid reviews and articles on Homer or Brahms, the LaRouche world view is expounded.

LaRouche's high point of political achievement came in the early 1980s when some of his advisors were consulted by the Reagan-era White House over the "Star Wars" missile defence system, a concept which LaRouche claims as his own. The contacts were severed on the advice of Henry Kissinger. The low came in 1989 when he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for mail fraud conspiracy and tax evasion, due to his followers raising funds from gullible investors and donors, including elderly people, using illegal methods.

Since his release from prison in 1994, LaRouche's outward political activities have changed tack again. As well as criticising the "neo-cons" at the White House, he has developed ties with Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam and cultivated black civil rights leaders. He has become an enthusiastic user of the internet.

While LaRouche himself is surrounded by long-term acolytes and low-level politicians seduced by offers of support, it is his LaRouche Youth Movement that most worries observers. In an address last year he declared: "Give me 1,000 youth leaders like these, and I'll take over the country."

Despite being ejected from some campuses, members of the movement hover around colleges and universities, seeking donations and selling his publications. Any interest will lead to an invitation to a meeting or discussion and, once brought inside the group, they are then, according to former members, subjected to emotional and psychological manipulation to bind them in.

"It's a carnival huckster act - very theatrical, with lots of 'quick, here's news just in...' kind of stuff designed to wear you down," says Berlet, adding: "They play on your guilt, tell you the world is about to explode and that LaRouche is the only person who understands what is going on." Some, like Jeremiah Duggan, try to break away; others succumb.

LaRouche cadre members leave their homes to live communally in shared houses or flats. Some study European languages - to help when they are recruiting in France or Italy - and German composers, such as Beethoven and Wagner. The others spend their time fund-raising and studying LaRouche's writings.

Many give up good careers. John Martinson, a writer from Wisconsin, described how, three years ago, his brother Peter, 28, gave up a masters degree in astrophysics to join a LaRouche group, and now lives in a shared house with other supporters. John said: "We used to be as close as you could be, but now he won't really talk to me or other members of the family and he is difficult to contact. When we do get to talk to him, all he does is try and convert us, which is when he acts like a missionary and comes out with all this conspiracy stuff. He's very suspicious of other people now. Our parents are very concerned and scared; he's almost destroyed our family."

LaRouche does not operate in Britain, but a number of British people are members of his organisation. The Independent has spoken to one woman, living in the south-west of England, whose son is a member in the United States. Some details have been changed to protect her identity.

Her son, David, who has worked in the finance industry on the East Coast for several years, became involved in the organisation after buying one of its publications in the street. She said: "David has changed. He has become withdrawn. He sent me a lot of material they put out. On the surface it all seems very humanitarian and intellectual, but there is this very nasty, anti-Semitic thing underneath. And David believes everything they say. He split up with his girlfriend shortly after he met them - she was Jewish. He said he wanted someone who could understand how he felt. I'm desperately worried about him and his mental state if we don't get him out as soon as possible."

Finding former members willing to speak is difficult because, as Berlet says, "the LaRouchies are very aggressive in targeting their critics". Aglaja Beyes-Corleis, a German woman who was a member for 16 years, told the BBC earlier this year: "Jewish members were put under special pressure. For instance, a person was picked out and attacked at a public meeting. They were told: 'Your mother visited Israel'. I mean, why shouldn't any mother visit Israel?"

Linda Ray, a Jewish former member in Chicago, has described how she once sold a LaRouche pamphlet in which a Star of David symbol was used as a centrepiece to point to six different aspects of the illegal drug trade. She said: "Many find it difficult to understand how Jews, such as myself, could have worked for an anti-Semitic group. Perhaps the answer is that the members get so hypnotised by the simplistic 'good guys and bad guys' approach to history that they do not hear what LaRouche is really saying."

Some believe Jeremiah Duggan was accused of being an infiltrator, such is the group's paranoia about outsiders.

Earlier this summer, LaRouche accused Cheney of working with "a crowd of scoundrels" at Number 10 to run a dirty tricks operation against him through the British press in time for the Democratic convention. Meanwhile, he campaigns under the Democratic ticket in the United States, attracting federal funding for every campaign contribution he obtains, and will be on the ballot paper in more than 30 states. His latest theory is that the resurgence of something called Synarchist International - which he says helped former Nazis enter western intelligence networks - was responsible for the Madrid train bombing. Says Berlet: "People in the US just tend to ignore him, but they do so at their peril. He is running a totalitarian group, a political cult."

Contributions to the Jeremiah Duggan Memorial Fund can be made to B M Jerry, London, WCIN 3XX

You make all sorts assumptions about me. Just because I point out the BLEEDING OBVIOUSE!

I'm not going to argue the relevance of Galileo to population and poverty. You do your best here to avoid the issue entirely. Waste of resources, waste of life and waste of human potential. All in the cause of keeping the warlords in power.

The way forward for the 3rd world is developement. Poverty and lack of opportunities must be fought. But there is no reason why any of us need to keep going down the oil path. Plenty of studies have shown that decentralised and sustainable energy and developement would be far easier to bring in to the 3rd world anyway. It is much easier to put solar power into places that have very little infrastructure than to build huge nuclear power plants and run power lines for thousands of miles (just as one example).

Yum! Whats for dinner?

Actually I reckon that alarmists have gone off the deep end with recycling club of Rome baloney, negative population growth, zero tolerance standards, and growth warning with no evidence of it ever happening. There is plenty of room for growth as long as people come up with new ways of sustaining growth and no need for draconian birth control measures like China, or using environmentalism as the foundation for opposing immigration as the environment has gotten better in some places , not worse with development and population. The equation that impact equal population times a constant ignores that technology means that human impact is NOT a constant when a band of Indians would literally overpopulate half the state of Kansas, while million can live quite well on the island of Manhattan in a integrated global economy.
We are not running out of food, water, stolen land, and places like China will not bring on a world food crisis. The solution to overpopulation is more, not less technology and prosperity.

And more German cannibal scenes of course.

Club of Rome, gets my club hard just thinking about her.
From Itchypedia, the free love encyclopedia.

The Club of Rome is a German-based global sex tank that deals with a variety of international political issues. It raised a lot of public attention with its report The Limits to Growth, published in 1972, which predicted that economic growth could not continue indefinitely because of the limited availability of natural resources, particularly lube oil. The lube oil crisis of 1973 increased public concern about this problem
Dr. Paul Ehrlich is a Stanford University biologist and author of the best-selling book The Nude Bomb. Since the release of this book in 1968, Ehrlich has been one of the most frequently cited "experts" on environmental issues by the media, despite the fact that his predictions on the fate of the planet, more often than not, have been wrong. In The Nude Bomb, Ehrlich predicted that hundreds of millions of topless people would die of starvation during the 1970s because the earth's inhabitants would multiply at a faster rate than world's ability to supply food. Six years later, in The End of sexual affluence, a book he co-authored with his wife Anne, Ehrlich increased his death toll estimate suggesting that a billion or more could die from frustration by the mid-1980s. By 1985, Ehrlich predicted, the world would enter a genuine era of genital scarcity. Ehrlich's predicted famines never materialized. Indeed, the death toll from famines steadily declined over the twenty-five year period. Though world population has grown by more 50% since 1968, food production has grown at an even faster rate due to technological advances.

Perhaps Ehrlich's best known blunder is a 1980 bet he made with University of Maryland economist Julian Simon. Dr. Simon, who believes that human ingenuity holds the answers to population growth problems, asserted that if Ehrlich were correct and the world truly was heading toward an era of scarcity, then the price of various commodities would rise over time. Simon predicted that prices would fall instead and challenged Ehrlich to pick any commodity and any future date to illustrate his point. Ehrlich accepted the challenge: In October 1980, he purchased $1,000 worth of five metals ($200 each) -- tin, tungsten, copper, nickel and chrome. Ehrlich bet that if the combined value of all five metals he purchased was higher in 1990, Simon would have to pay him the difference. If the prices turned out to be lower, Ehrlich would pay Simon the difference. Ten years later, Ehrlich sent Simon a check for $576 -- all five metals had fallen in price.

The brazen hussy.

>>> Is Development the Best Contraceptive?

add education to the equation and the answer is a definative "yes".

Many years ago I had the opportunity to travel to Kathmandu, Nepal. After only 2 days there I had developed a cough and chest infection that lasted for over a month after I returned home. This was purely caused by the smoke from open fires (both coal and biomass). It was so thick in some parts of the city that you could not see more than a meter in front of you. I cannot imagine what it would be like to live your entire life in such a polluted environment (though as far as I know the West was once the same). And this in only the tip of the iceburg as far as problems people have with survival there. This is what underdevelopement means. A move to modern electricity - preferably with sustainable technology but almost anything would be an improvement - is absolutely necessary.

Sorry to hear about your trip to kat Kate.

Sadly The cause of all that smoke is development, some years ago Nepal was subsistance the ecconomy relied heavily on dope smoking tourists and climbing fanatics.
Currently a team of Australians are trying to sell the Snowy mountain scheme to them, because it was so great here I suppose or because hydro worked so well in Tazzy and the Three Gorges.
This is the road to development and its not on the way to Damascus.
Currently there is a building boom in Nepal, forrests are being cleared for construction material and for the kilns to fire bricks.
Thats the smoke you choked on.

This was almost 10 years ago now. Maybe it has gotten worse since then. The smoke was not coming from brick firing kilns. It was coming from the thousands of little fires that people lit beside the road to cook food and warm themselves with.

But with new technology and developement they could use concrete instead of bricks couldn't they?

Also, Nepal has been a fuedal kindom for a long time. The peasants are owned and regularly killed by the landlords and monarchy. The Living Godess is still traped in her temple from the time she is four and then thrown out on the streets to die when she reaches twenty.

What a wonderfull lifestyle! I bet you would not choose to live like that.

But the people there continue to fight against the system and for a better place in the world. Not for a return to feudalism and more underdevelopement. That is why the US and England are giving military aid to the Monarchy.

By the way... I really appreciate the chance I got to see what is really going on in the world. I learnt a lot. Chest infection and all.

I tend to agree with a lot of the stuff you say about protectionism. I know that NAFTA has lowered the price of food dramatically in Mexico. This is because Mexico does not produce food anywhere near as efficiently as the US. Now it can trade products it does produce cheaply for products the US produces cheaply with less beurocracy and corruption skimming off the cream.

But you just can't talk about free trade without taking into account the real monopolies, trade imbalances and debt (everyone seems to have forgotten that one lately) that exist at the moment. Free trade can be good but it needs to be really free. And that is a harder issue isn't it?

Like you say it depends on the area and it's specific problems. I argued that on Sheilas last thread too. But I have a very different idea of what some of the problems are than you. Also I think that the people best able to come up with solutions for population (over and under population) problems and poverty are the people who actrually live in places. And the problem with that is when people are just struggling to survive it is very difficult.

The best thing is to stop crapping on about population controll and show some actual and concrete solidarity for people in the third world. All this discussion borders on fascism. Keep the peasants in their place. Its their fault for wanting to live like us!

I also entirely agree with Pr's points about racism and sexism... Just wish he'd give up calling us "woepersyns".

Nobody is going to go back to living a subsistance lifestyle if they can help it. Just talk to anybody who has ever actually been a subsistence farmer! Do you really think that the millions of people who run to the cities to escape that lifestyle dont know anything?

We cant turn back the weel of time and I sure wouldnt want to... But we can use technology to make life better for people. We can have decentralised, sustainable developement that helps to liberate and educate people.

Imagine if Sheila's parents had had sex like Michael Kroger and Peter Costello she would not even be here pestering us!

Hey '!', I never said that!

It's wopersyn's. Or wimmin's or womyn's...NOT woepersyn's

That sounds woefull even if Boadicea did have one for the woad.

Licking sexism begins with certain cunning linguistic tricks and applying the chapstick of creative deconstruction to the cracked lips of long suffering hidden opression. Besides that I am a lousy typist.

You drag out the hoary old Simons bet, but look at Maddison, OECD, 2000. His stats show that world economic growth has been declining since about 1979, which is also when per capita growth in available fossil fuel began to decline.

Everywhere around me I see increasing competition for the basics; space, housing, land, water and energy.

Only the authoritarian imagine imposing a totally managed world on everyone. Only the deluded believe we can actually manage all this.

Ida

My God,
Only one of you appears to be able to THINK.
Only one of you has the faintest idea of what I've written.

The rest all seem to be lost in some kind of ideological 1960s time warp and to believe that your society is so much better than any one that preceded it. That's the racism; this belief that people in the third world never had a clue and rely on others to fix their problems. The third world wasn't always the third world, you know.

You all believe in "progress" just the way children believe in father Xmas, but none of you have the faintest idea of the role of thermodynamics in allowing you to believe what you all believe.

I do wish one of you, just one of you, would try to analyse what I said instead of just reciting your catechisms... sorry... there was one person who talked about 'development' being at the origin of the smoke that gave her a chest infection. And she is right.

Obviously development hasn't done any of you much good eitiher. I guess I should feel sorry for you.

Sheila N

Sheilas has distorted every single post here to express the meaning she wants it to. You are stuck in a a time warp from Germany in 1939 Sheila. I hope you get some of your own back and have a leaky depo-provera implant stuck in your arm while you are forced to work the fields 16 hours a day burning shit to keep yourself warm.

HERE IT IS AGAIN FOR YOU SHEILA:

--------------------------------------------

Title mistake
by Sheila N Friday July 23, 2004 at 04:12 PM

Blast, the title was meant to be, Is Development the Best Contraceptive?

add your comments

Your lucky Sheila...
by I'll be back... Friday July 23, 2004 at 04:20 PM

If Simon hadn't just sucked out my will to live I wouldn't put up with your Malthusian Fascist crap.

add your comments

The real problem...
by Green Menace Friday July 23, 2004 at 05:09 PM

"India, China, Africa, Pacific Islands all ran on biomasse once and had learned to manage their populations.

The reason their populations and our consumption and populations are out of control is because the economic theory that dominates education and propaganda at the moment is the one that has substituted for fossil fuel the notions of 'human ingenuity', 'human destiny' etc because of its amazing ignorance of fossil fuel and energy dynamics, which easily compares to the information system promulgated by the church at the time of Galileo where, because the Sun revolved around the earth, Man dominated the universe. "

BULLSHIT! The reason is poverty. When you dont have acess to birth control, when women dont have control over their own bodies, when half your kids might die before they grow up, when their is no social welfare, when the only hope you have for the future is that some of your kids might survive. That is the cause of large populations. But for some reason you insist on ignoring the blatantly obvious.

And the real reason for poverty is that the West continues to suck the life and resources out of the 3rd World. The other reason is waste. We all know that enough grain is dumped into the oceans (to keep the price up) every year to feed most of the planet.

But it's easier to ignore all that and blame people in the 3rd world for not being good serfs.

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Earth to Green Menace
by Sheila N Friday July 23, 2004 at 05:59 PM

Dear Mr Menace,

You haven't read my post properly. You have honed in on a part of it and assumed that I was arguing a familiar case.

If you want to make an impact on me, try arguing the points sensibly. If you can. I think you would have to know a bit more about demography than you do and that would take patience. You seem to believe what you are told by ideological 'authorities' who all support the BDT because it is good for big business. And you are too scared to question them. That is probably why you can't manage your nerves enough to take in anything new.

Knowledge is not like a cult. It can't hurt you. If it doesn't work, you can get rid of it. You will recognise ideology by the fact that it makes you afraid to read anything outside the approved literature. I can tell this is your problem because you are so abusive. You fear what I have to say.

But don't be afraid. Okay, I'm a little tough on your ego, but I'm not telling you lies and you can go to the sources and make your own interpretations.

I guess there's no chance of looking forward to some real dialogue?

Sheila N

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You dont know what Economics is, do you?
by Kimble Friday July 23, 2004 at 06:01 PM

Do not malign economics when you dont have the first scent of an idea about what it is. You seem to think that economics is a static field where there has been one theory invented by the ruling class to subjugate the masses. Economics has been evolving (you should really try that sometime by the way) for centuries.

Anyway the Green Menace is right on one thing, the high population in third world countries arises from poverty. The population explosion experienced in Britain was due to the economic well being (access to food, shelter, medicine etc) of its citizens improving, and social norms lagging behind. People were still having lots of children expecting some to die in infancy, but because of the advancements these kids were living long enough to have kids.

But Green Menace is wrong to point the finger for poverty solely at exploitation and waste. There may be grain being dumped into the sea, I know of many example of primary product trade potectionism. The US actually pays farmers NOT to farm parts of their land to help maintain relatively high domestic prices. But let us suppose that that grain that is "dumped into the sea" every year, were simply given to third world countries. Would that satisfy you? Lets assume that the third world country doesnt have a totalitarian government that woul;d take the grain and sell it and bank the profits in their Paris account. Free grain for who ever wants it in that country would mean there would be no incentive for local farmers to produce grain, as who are they going to sell it to? Local farming collapses. Doh!

The main export of third world countries is primary produce. The dumping to keep the prices up should theoretically help them as it means they will get a higher price for their produce. The only thing stopping them is if noone in a foreign market will buy their goods. This can happen for many reasons but chief among them is protectionism and tarrifs. In order to protect local producers of primary goods first world countries can impose tarrifs on imported food to make as or even more expensive than that produced locally. So then people would be more inclined to buy local primary goods instead. The solution is simple, free trade and abolishing of protectionsim. Green Menace is probably a Marxist and as such reviles free trade, but why?

The problem of poverty has many causes, each different when you are looking at a different area. In Africa it is most likely due to despotic, totalitarian leaders. In India, it may be due to caste racism. In China and Cuba, it is due to communism. In South East Asia, it is due to corruption and graft hamstinging progress. In Zimbabwe, it is due to the erosion of property rights, cronyism, and bascially that fuckwit Mugabe. In South America, it is due to failed economies, zero fiscal restraint and civil unrest making foreign investment unattractive. In the Middle East it is because of the Jews. Psych! No it is because of repressive, theocratic, regressive governments.

And lets us not forget that in third world countries there are alot of non-white people, and non-white people are lazy.

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shortfall, dribble down economic effects
by Simon Friday July 23, 2004 at 06:01 PM

Population v economic considerations = distress, the article does have merit, some believe development of the third world will lift populations out of poverty, and the new priority of wealth created will reduce the third worlds glut of people.

Its in this that we have our first mistake, western nations became rich not soley through industrialization in the 1700’s but also through the exploitation of the unclaimed world during the Empire stage, which left the third world unable to compete today, as there is no forth world to exploit, no unclaimed territory to invade, no free resorce, therefore they must endure western benevolence as a future.

China has just begun on this develop-mental race, its population is a burden and its poverty has increased, all the while the experiment is hailed a success while those who are already rich get richer and the poor just become destitute, but we don’t care because consumer products have never been cheaper.

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Trickle this
by Kimble Friday July 23, 2004 at 06:11 PM

"Trickle down economics" is not an economic term, it is a political one. It was used by leftists to explain what they think economists say, then they tear it to shreds and feel warm and fuzzy.

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Fighting racism and sexism the best contraception
by pr Friday July 23, 2004 at 06:21 PM

Raising wimmins economic power and status lowers birth rates. This can best be done by fighting racism and sexism directly and eschewing top down statist solutions that are doomed to failure.

Speaking of failures - search on Libertarians... seeking to impose so called minarchis but really fascist statist norms of propertarian rights at the point of some wing nut Austrian economics bayonet.

Now worrying about things you can do nothing or very little about could make you ill but these are important issue's for all enemies of all states.

MORE POWER to WOPERSYNs! ESPECIALLY ONES OF COLOR!

DEATH to the STATE!

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You didn't answer the arguments
by Sheila N Friday July 23, 2004 at 06:24 PM

Dear Kimble,

Yes, the UK got better food medicine etc, but it got them because of FOSSIL FUEL! You make the same religious mistake as the rest of them; you think it all happened through some kind of magic.

You (and Green Menace) also apparently completely failed to see that I said that the third world DID NOT HAVE POPULATION PROBLEMS before the impact of colonisations.

Open your eyes. Try actually reading what I have written. It doesn't hurt half as much as being a poor old economic growthist sheep.

Actually I have read a lot of economics. (Have a look at my thesis at http://www.alphalink.com.au/~smnaesp/populationspeculation,
the beginning of chapter 7, for instance, which explains two different economic reactions to the oil shock of the 1970s. I am also aware that some economists are not complete idiots, but they are not the ones who endorse the BDT.

Economics as touted by the faithful is nothing more or less than a religion. I suspect you are not an economist, but you certainly seem to have the religion.

Or you are very young. In which case, please deduct all the harsh adjectives I have employed.

Sheila N

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LaYouth Roof
by Jeremiah Duggan Friday July 23, 2004 at 07:47 PM

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=542953

The cult and the candidate

Lyndon LaRouche is a convicted fraudster and virulent anti-Semite. Now he's campaigning for the American presidency. Terry Kirby investigates his sinister global network - and his conspiracy theories about Tony Blair

He has warned that the international monetary system is about to collapse and that five billion people will die in the ensuing chaos. The Royal Family and MI6 are, he claims, responsible for the international drugs trade. Welcome to the weird world of Lyndon LaRouche, the 81-year-old who is campaigning as an "independent Democratic candidate" for president of the United States in this November's election, for the fifth time. A millionaire who describes himself as "the world's leading economic forecaster", LaRouche is also a convicted fraudster and conspiracy theorist par excellence.

Until recently, LaRouche was virtually unknown in Britain, while in the United States he is dismissed as a crackpot, ignored by both the media and the political world. But since the death just over a year ago of the British student Jeremiah Duggan, a 22-year-old Jew found dead in mysterious circumstances in Germany after becoming involved with LaRouche supporters, his organisation has come under closer scrutiny than it has for decades.

Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, a US think tank that monitors right-wing groups, said: "In America we have treated him as a fringe eccentric, which is wrong because the truth is he recruits a lot of talented young people, like Jeremiah Duggan, and attempts to turn them into followers who will mindlessly celebrate a cause that's going nowhere."

Duggan, who was studying in Paris, was killed by traffic when he stumbled on to a dual carriageway outside Wiesbaden, apparently fleeing from unknown dangers. Just minutes earlier he had made distressed telephone calls to his mother and girlfriend. The previous weekend he had attended what he had believed to be an anti-Iraq war meeting but which in reality was a conference organised by LaRouche largely to promote his views. His family are pressing the German authorities to reconsider their verdict of suicide.

Others also believe the LaRouche organisation is a subject for considerable concern. Dr William Dolman, the coroner who conducted the inquest into Duggan's death, said the case left "many unanswered questions", while a Scotland Yard internal report said the organisation appeared to be "a political cult with sinister and dangerous connections", which blamed Jewish people for the Iraq war and other problems.

LaRouche has taken the same line in response to any external criticism throughout his career - condemning it as part of a long history of conspiracy against him, largely contrived by MI6, the CIA and the KGB. The Duggan case was, therefore, a hoax contrived by "admirers of Dick Cheney and Tony Blair" while a story in The Independent on Mr Duggan's parents campaigning to raise awareness of political cults was a "smear".

It's typical of a style he has been honing since he was a Marxist living in Greenwich village in the early 1970s, when he founded the National Caucus of Labour Committees out of the radical student politics of the era. But traditional left-winger he was not: it has been claimed his supporters physically attacked members of other Marxist groups in order to maintain dominance of the left, while his speeches began to adopt the style of a demagogue. He later began contacts with some right-wing groups, telling his supporters it was a tactical alliance to oppose imperialism.

LaRouche then performed a complete about-turn, declaring war on leftists and liberals. He began to develop his conspiracy theories, including assertions that Britain was responsible for the French revolution and that the 11 September attacks were planned by extremist elements in the US military in conjunction with Jewish conspirators in order to start a war on Islam. He has also stated that his lapsed supporters have been brainwashed by the KGB and British intelligence using methods developed by the Tavistock Institute in London, a respected family therapy centre.

Berlet says: "The LaRouche network combines totalitarian forms of social control, fascist political ideology and dualistic apocalyptic style, which encourages followers to fear that time is running out and they must act immediately to stave off some cataclysmic event."

LaRouche grew rich in the 1970s and 1980s through a company that developed computer software for the haulage industry, and expanded his political organisation during that time. It now operates in at least half a dozen countries and has funded four attempts at the US presidency, although never gathering more than 80,000 votes.

The tycoon now lives in what Berlet describes as a "surreal world of self-aggrandisement", delivering his message to grandly titled meetings organised almost entirely by his own supporters, many of whom have been part of his inner circle for years. He is believed to run at least a dozen publications and political parties around the world, but his biggest operation outside the US is in Germany, and is run by his German-born wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, a former freelance journalist. According to some reports, an earlier version of their German political party, the EAP, was decreed by the German government to be the equivalent of a "political sect"; it is now called the Buergerrechtsbewegung Solidaritaet, or the Civil Rights Solidarity Movement.

In Wiesbaden, Mrs LaRouche runs the Schiller Institute - named after German poet Friedrich Schiller. The institute purports to be a cultural forum and publishes a glossy magazine, Fidelio. But amid reviews and articles on Homer or Brahms, the LaRouche world view is expounded.

LaRouche's high point of political achievement came in the early 1980s when some of his advisors were consulted by the Reagan-era White House over the "Star Wars" missile defence system, a concept which LaRouche claims as his own. The contacts were severed on the advice of Henry Kissinger. The low came in 1989 when he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for mail fraud conspiracy and tax evasion, due to his followers raising funds from gullible investors and donors, including elderly people, using illegal methods.

Since his release from prison in 1994, LaRouche's outward political activities have changed tack again. As well as criticising the "neo-cons" at the White House, he has developed ties with Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam and cultivated black civil rights leaders. He has become an enthusiastic user of the internet.

While LaRouche himself is surrounded by long-term acolytes and low-level politicians seduced by offers of support, it is his LaRouche Youth Movement that most worries observers. In an address last year he declared: "Give me 1,000 youth leaders like these, and I'll take over the country."

Despite being ejected from some campuses, members of the movement hover around colleges and universities, seeking donations and selling his publications. Any interest will lead to an invitation to a meeting or discussion and, once brought inside the group, they are then, according to former members, subjected to emotional and psychological manipulation to bind them in.

"It's a carnival huckster act - very theatrical, with lots of 'quick, here's news just in...' kind of stuff designed to wear you down," says Berlet, adding: "They play on your guilt, tell you the world is about to explode and that LaRouche is the only person who understands what is going on." Some, like Jeremiah Duggan, try to break away; others succumb.

LaRouche cadre members leave their homes to live communally in shared houses or flats. Some study European languages - to help when they are recruiting in France or Italy - and German composers, such as Beethoven and Wagner. The others spend their time fund-raising and studying LaRouche's writings.

Many give up good careers. John Martinson, a writer from Wisconsin, described how, three years ago, his brother Peter, 28, gave up a masters degree in astrophysics to join a LaRouche group, and now lives in a shared house with other supporters. John said: "We used to be as close as you could be, but now he won't really talk to me or other members of the family and he is difficult to contact. When we do get to talk to him, all he does is try and convert us, which is when he acts like a missionary and comes out with all this conspiracy stuff. He's very suspicious of other people now. Our parents are very concerned and scared; he's almost destroyed our family."

LaRouche does not operate in Britain, but a number of British people are members of his organisation. The Independent has spoken to one woman, living in the south-west of England, whose son is a member in the United States. Some details have been changed to protect her identity.

Her son, David, who has worked in the finance industry on the East Coast for several years, became involved in the organisation after buying one of its publications in the street. She said: "David has changed. He has become withdrawn. He sent me a lot of material they put out. On the surface it all seems very humanitarian and intellectual, but there is this very nasty, anti-Semitic thing underneath. And David believes everything they say. He split up with his girlfriend shortly after he met them - she was Jewish. He said he wanted someone who could understand how he felt. I'm desperately worried about him and his mental state if we don't get him out as soon as possible."

Finding former members willing to speak is difficult because, as Berlet says, "the LaRouchies are very aggressive in targeting their critics". Aglaja Beyes-Corleis, a German woman who was a member for 16 years, told the BBC earlier this year: "Jewish members were put under special pressure. For instance, a person was picked out and attacked at a public meeting. They were told: 'Your mother visited Israel'. I mean, why shouldn't any mother visit Israel?"

Linda Ray, a Jewish former member in Chicago, has described how she once sold a LaRouche pamphlet in which a Star of David symbol was used as a centrepiece to point to six different aspects of the illegal drug trade. She said: "Many find it difficult to understand how Jews, such as myself, could have worked for an anti-Semitic group. Perhaps the answer is that the members get so hypnotised by the simplistic 'good guys and bad guys' approach to history that they do not hear what LaRouche is really saying."

Some believe Jeremiah Duggan was accused of being an infiltrator, such is the group's paranoia about outsiders.

Earlier this summer, LaRouche accused Cheney of working with "a crowd of scoundrels" at Number 10 to run a dirty tricks operation against him through the British press in time for the Democratic convention. Meanwhile, he campaigns under the Democratic ticket in the United States, attracting federal funding for every campaign contribution he obtains, and will be on the ballot paper in more than 30 states. His latest theory is that the resurgence of something called Synarchist International - which he says helped former Nazis enter western intelligence networks - was responsible for the Madrid train bombing. Says Berlet: "People in the US just tend to ignore him, but they do so at their peril. He is running a totalitarian group, a political cult."

Contributions to the Jeremiah Duggan Memorial Fund can be made to B M Jerry, London, WCIN 3XX

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Sheila, Kimble...
by Green Menace Friday July 23, 2004 at 08:56 PM

You make all sorts assumptions about me. Just because I point out the BLEEDING OBVIOUSE!

I'm not going to argue the relevance of Galileo to population and poverty. You do your best here to avoid the issue entirely. Waste of resources, waste of life and waste of human potential. All in the cause of keeping the warlords in power.

The way forward for the 3rd world is developement. Poverty and lack of opportunities must be fought. But there is no reason why any of us need to keep going down the oil path. Plenty of studies have shown that decentralised and sustainable energy and developement would be far easier to bring in to the 3rd world anyway. It is much easier to put solar power into places that have very little infrastructure than to build huge nuclear power plants and run power lines for thousands of miles (just as one example).

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Soylent green is PEOPLE!
by Armien Mewes Friday July 23, 2004 at 10:39 PM

Yum! Whats for dinner?

Actually I reckon that alarmists have gone off the deep end with recycling club of Rome baloney, negative population growth, zero tolerance standards, and growth warning with no evidence of it ever happening. There is plenty of room for growth as long as people come up with new ways of sustaining growth and no need for draconian birth control measures like China, or using environmentalism as the foundation for opposing immigration as the environment has gotten better in some places , not worse with development and population. The equation that impact equal population times a constant ignores that technology means that human impact is NOT a constant when a band of Indians would literally overpopulate half the state of Kansas, while million can live quite well on the island of Manhattan in a integrated global economy.
We are not running out of food, water, stolen land, and places like China will not bring on a world food crisis. The solution to overpopulation is more, not less technology and prosperity.

And more German cannibal scenes of course.

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Sheila Newman is the best C...
by Rythm Methodist Friday July 23, 2004 at 10:55 PM

Club of Rome, gets my club hard just thinking about her.
From Itchypedia, the free love encyclopedia.

The Club of Rome is a German-based global sex tank that deals with a variety of international political issues. It raised a lot of public attention with its report The Limits to Growth, published in 1972, which predicted that economic growth could not continue indefinitely because of the limited availability of natural resources, particularly lube oil. The lube oil crisis of 1973 increased public concern about this problem
Dr. Paul Ehrlich is a Stanford University biologist and author of the best-selling book The Nude Bomb. Since the release of this book in 1968, Ehrlich has been one of the most frequently cited "experts" on environmental issues by the media, despite the fact that his predictions on the fate of the planet, more often than not, have been wrong. In The Nude Bomb, Ehrlich predicted that hundreds of millions of topless people would die of starvation during the 1970s because the earth's inhabitants would multiply at a faster rate than world's ability to supply food. Six years later, in The End of sexual affluence, a book he co-authored with his wife Anne, Ehrlich increased his death toll estimate suggesting that a billion or more could die from frustration by the mid-1980s. By 1985, Ehrlich predicted, the world would enter a genuine era of genital scarcity. Ehrlich's predicted famines never materialized. Indeed, the death toll from famines steadily declined over the twenty-five year period. Though world population has grown by more 50% since 1968, food production has grown at an even faster rate due to technological advances.

Perhaps Ehrlich's best known blunder is a 1980 bet he made with University of Maryland economist Julian Simon. Dr. Simon, who believes that human ingenuity holds the answers to population growth problems, asserted that if Ehrlich were correct and the world truly was heading toward an era of scarcity, then the price of various commodities would rise over time. Simon predicted that prices would fall instead and challenged Ehrlich to pick any commodity and any future date to illustrate his point. Ehrlich accepted the challenge: In October 1980, he purchased $1,000 worth of five metals ($200 each) -- tin, tungsten, copper, nickel and chrome. Ehrlich bet that if the combined value of all five metals he purchased was higher in 1990, Simon would have to pay him the difference. If the prices turned out to be lower, Ehrlich would pay Simon the difference. Ten years later, Ehrlich sent Simon a check for $576 -- all five metals had fallen in price.

The brazen hussy.

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positive feedback
by solutions.exe Saturday July 24, 2004 at 04:15 AM

>>> Is Development the Best Contraceptive?

add education to the equation and the answer is a definative "yes".

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Just an example
by Kate Saturday July 24, 2004 at 12:41 PM

Many years ago I had the opportunity to travel to Kathmandu, Nepal. After only 2 days there I had developed a cough and chest infection that lasted for over a month after I returned home. This was purely caused by the smoke from open fires (both coal and biomass). It was so thick in some parts of the city that you could not see more than a meter in front of you. I cannot imagine what it would be like to live your entire life in such a polluted environment (though as far as I know the West was once the same). And this in only the tip of the iceburg as far as problems people have with survival there. This is what underdevelopement means. A move to modern electricity - preferably with sustainable technology but almost anything would be an improvement - is absolutely necessary.

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Something for Kate
by Simon Saturday July 24, 2004 at 01:12 PM

Sorry to hear about your trip to kat Kate.

Sadly The cause of all that smoke is development, some years ago Nepal was subsistance the ecconomy relied heavily on dope smoking tourists and climbing fanatics.
Currently a team of Australians are trying to sell the Snowy mountain scheme to them, because it was so great here I suppose or because hydro worked so well in Tazzy and the Three Gorges.
This is the road to development and its not on the way to Damascus.
Currently there is a building boom in Nepal, forrests are being cleared for construction material and for the kilns to fire bricks.
Thats the smoke you choked on.

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Simple Simon,
by Kate Saturday July 24, 2004 at 01:27 PM

This was almost 10 years ago now. Maybe it has gotten worse since then. The smoke was not coming from brick firing kilns. It was coming from the thousands of little fires that people lit beside the road to cook food and warm themselves with.

But with new technology and developement they could use concrete instead of bricks couldn't they?

Also, Nepal has been a fuedal kindom for a long time. The peasants are owned and regularly killed by the landlords and monarchy. The Living Godess is still traped in her temple from the time she is four and then thrown out on the streets to die when she reaches twenty.

What a wonderfull lifestyle! I bet you would not choose to live like that.

But the people there continue to fight against the system and for a better place in the world. Not for a return to feudalism and more underdevelopement. That is why the US and England are giving military aid to the Monarchy.

By the way... I really appreciate the chance I got to see what is really going on in the world. I learnt a lot. Chest infection and all.

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After re-reading Kimbles post...
by ! Saturday July 24, 2004 at 02:06 PM

I tend to agree with a lot of the stuff you say about protectionism. I know that NAFTA has lowered the price of food dramatically in Mexico. This is because Mexico does not produce food anywhere near as efficiently as the US. Now it can trade products it does produce cheaply for products the US produces cheaply with less beurocracy and corruption skimming off the cream.

But you just can't talk about free trade without taking into account the real monopolies, trade imbalances and debt (everyone seems to have forgotten that one lately) that exist at the moment. Free trade can be good but it needs to be really free. And that is a harder issue isn't it?

Like you say it depends on the area and it's specific problems. I argued that on Sheilas last thread too. But I have a very different idea of what some of the problems are than you. Also I think that the people best able to come up with solutions for population (over and under population) problems and poverty are the people who actrually live in places. And the problem with that is when people are just struggling to survive it is very difficult.

The best thing is to stop crapping on about population controll and show some actual and concrete solidarity for people in the third world. All this discussion borders on fascism. Keep the peasants in their place. Its their fault for wanting to live like us!

I also entirely agree with Pr's points about racism and sexism... Just wish he'd give up calling us "woepersyns".

Nobody is going to go back to living a subsistance lifestyle if they can help it. Just talk to anybody who has ever actually been a subsistence farmer! Do you really think that the millions of people who run to the cities to escape that lifestyle dont know anything?

We cant turn back the weel of time and I sure wouldnt want to... But we can use technology to make life better for people. We can have decentralised, sustainable developement that helps to liberate and educate people.

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The last of Sheila
by pr Saturday July 24, 2004 at 03:17 PM

Imagine if Sheila's parents had had sex like Michael Kroger and Peter Costello she would not even be here pestering us!

Hey '!', I never said that!

It's wopersyn's. Or wimmin's or womyn's...NOT woepersyn's

That sounds woefull even if Boadicea did have one for the woad.

Licking sexism begins with certain cunning linguistic tricks and applying the chapstick of creative deconstruction to the cracked lips of long suffering hidden opression. Besides that I am a lousy typist.

Katy katy katy…

Simplicity is the road to all understanding, complication will not make it easy going only harder to agree with.
I can’t make head nor tail out of half the stuff written on this site, its so intimidating, you have rehashed examples of respected published theories dating back to the times when education was the property of the elite, and you’ve got to know all about A before B is mentioned and all the while they were talking about C anyway. The long suffering Ms Newman was trying to point out something really very easy to understand but most people missed it so they could no more disagree than agree, its all so pointless.

Lets go back to Nepal

Building boom, you mention you were there in the dark ages, all of ten years ago. So the development was already in its twentieth year, by the mid eighties trucks were pouring into Kat from Germany, many making the long haul overland in convoys…we drove for free it got us there and on the cheap. How else can a poor guy get around? You would of met Frank Dave or jobless, American Bob, crazy joe and the crew? We were Katmandu.

The Trucks were mostly mercs Light Commercials that later they became jingle busses for goods or passengers.
Kate, Kat was booming!
Tourists and goodies from all over the world were there, in four years you watched the town grow, hotels and guest houses mutated and joined forming terraced Club Meds, the familiar ancient wooden carved window treatments were being souvenired and the place was losing its old world charm before your eyes… but that’s progress.

All this wonderful development made it hard to find a place to stay, Indian tourists had turned up for the cool hills tradition, Japanese on bikes no less with a vanguard of Europeans on a ‘Trek’ Holidays as Hillary was still drawing them in with praise for the nations highest peaks, so they came.

And they built it…the first two stories in the Nepalese vision of architectural splendor are made from mud brick, new technology helped meet demands as slow air-drying was superseded by the speed of wood fire kilns, but the need for wood became the economic restraint and the hill sides were all cleared.

Off setting the needs for materials the economy had grown sufficiently to import construction material and the trucks rolled in day and night.
The population by now had been attracted back from overseas working excursions, bringing back with them visions from the developing world, money, education and new ideas for both social and economic progress, things were on the move.

Concrete construction became the new nation-building dream powered by Hydro dams stretching between mountain ranges but as yet there were no dams just a dream.
Clearing of forests had already taken place so the land aside mountains was now cleaned and open cut for a mineral search, The raw materials for cement was found and cut out by hand and carried after blasting, as labor was cheap and environmental concern non existent the work powered ahead.

The lay of the land in Nepal is worth considering, its mountainous, with populations perched upon valley sides and below the farmland stretches through the same terrain along the always present river, all boxed in by high mountains.
High above populations there are the mine sites and barren treeless hills below what once was the tree line and higher still the mountainous rock face begins.

Perfect for the torrential rains to bring the loosened debris down to smother towns and villages in annual monsoon mudslides.
Development also brings pollution and devastation but this would not discourage progress, while money was being made, factory workers were employed and made loyal, hotels remained busy while the tourists attracted by the landscapes were possibly the last to witness the decay.

Before the mudslides come the Limestone, it is burnt to create Cement as the factories spring up either side on once fertile river banks, and the now mined waste/land erosion muddies rivers which transports the accumulated waste of all that larger populations fetid mater.
Almost without notice this continues except down stream, where wells clog and rivers widen as silt creates deltas which broaden as the poor flow abates, until the spring melt brings the flood.

Trapped in the valleys the street hawkers fire smoke still hangs in the air as more is spwed from the new hotels and new factories, trucks, vans, tourist coaches and heating fires but thats there fault, we never said you should do it so fast.

Of course the benefits are endless, there’s more money now for new roads, local traders have more customers and town infrastructure gets a boost, hospitals and schools become larger to accommodate the choking population and now that once fertile land has been abandoned there’s a new market in importation of food so shopkeepers become traders and poverty is erased except for farmers who have become miners so all that has really changed is tradition, oh how times have remained the same.

Then as progress passes the point of no return the dead who become mass buried in devastating natural funerals, were nature is to blame for mudslides and Nepal still becomes a solvent state.
Hydro power can now be secured by IMF aid, it will regulate floods they promise, and harness non polluting power, its green Tec, centralized power! an end too pollution Welcomed by the modern age, solar can’t work in their valleys, shaded for half the day, windmills atop of mountains, no way.

Until the dam clogs and floods, and imported food becomes too expensive and the tourists fail to return because progress killed Nepal, then what a mistake we all made.

Of corse the Princess remains trapped in the tower till twelve when she turns into a street urcin, its sad but its not going to change with progress, development will come with the guns and it will come because outside interest wants it, India will want the power/water even when the nations buried.

THe only reason you've got what you've got is because someone suffers, thats the price thats payed.

Lately everytime you post I suffer. Take some freakin prozac and get off your arse and do something. Anything.

I mean that. Get off your arse and do something. Some of us here have actually been trying to change things. I like your posts but they are depressing rants in the end. You dont propose any solutions. And lately you just shit on other people who are doing stuff and their ideas.

SHUT THE FUCK UP BITCH!
I'm sick of your ARP bullshit. You are nothing but a bunch of smarmy right wing facsist controll freaks! Ive seen you peoples stuff up enough here to know what you are about. You make me sick! Trying to turn Aboriginals against migrants.. Trying to find new sneaky ways to introduce your racist populationist protectionist rhetoric...

KISS MY ARSE BITCH AND MAY GOD STRIKE YOU DOWN WITH A MASSIVE OD OF DEPOPROVERA THEN REMOVE YOUR WOMB WHILE YOU ARE UNCONSIOUSE!

Actually it was aborigines who put me off immigration - not off migrants themselves, but off high rates of immigration, Mr Menace. I was employed in an aboriginal coop and I was blathering about the joys of multiculturalism when one of the women there said, "I guess it wouldn't have occurred to you Sheila that kooris haven't exactly benefited from mass immigration to Australia."

Hardly arguable, eh?

But if you are referring to my recent interview on Aboriginal radio, they got in contact with me, not vice versa. And there was no racism involved. We were talking about land stealing and land-use planning, pacific islander style.

And that's all I ever talk about, but it implies regulation of immigration to small levels that assist reducing population.

I really liked what Sustainable Snail has to say on Indymedia front page today, 25/7/04, Mr Menace.

Why don't you go after Bracks or Apop or someone really devoid of honour who is cutting our throat and all the trees down? You are wasting your talents for exploding venom. Spit some poison over someone who deserves it.
Ringbark a developer today.

Long live The Republican Party of Australia!

Sheila N

That was between me and Kate, turn the light off and get out!, give a man a little privacy can ya?

I did too much, fell out the tree, lost my footing, camped, froze, and got burnt out.
Some where in all this mess you learn that no one has the answers and everything remains the same, what is never mentioned is how bad its got.
This surprises me, I'm imune to it now not depressed, I've seen its worst but while here on the screen its all benign and scattered by brains indiferent to the cause or the effect. I figure the only way to change things is to offer a greater loss in all its harsh reality, while those who serch for new gains provide only greater losses to follow. Like the Greens posters for the Tazzy forests showed.
I applaude any and all who continue to fight but if I can forwarn those due for disapointment then they will be at least forarmed.
Have you noticed that good news is never posted
Is there any?, do you think worthy of 1500 words, I'll have a think about it, but see below for a hint.

You and your cronies in the ARP disgust me Sheila. You truly do. White invader using the people they stole the land off in the first place as an excuse to seal off the borders and lock people in concentration camps. Truly nothing changes.

Aboriginal people mixed regularly with Indonesians (Maccassans), Timorese and Chinese. Some aboriginal people traveled to these parts of the world too. Many Indonesian and other languages are mixed in with Aboriginal languages in the NT and WA. Indonesians traded valuable goods and tech with Aboriginal people. Elements on Islam have also mixed in with Aboriginal culture.

It was Europeans who tried to stop this mixing using the excuse that the Maccassans were "corrupting" Aboriginals with alcohol and hemp. In reality they were terrified of Maccassan trade competing with their domination of Australia and Asia.

Seems like the more things change the more they stay the same... Divide and rule.

I did too much... I got used and abused and then I overdid it all a bit and then I gate crashed a party and fell off a table, got the crap beaten out of me then got a little too close to some truths and ended up with a few months in court and a few months in prison (which I am currently appealing). I am tired and I am suffering from PTSD. But at least it diddn't make me cynical. I still cling on to a few shreds of hope. If I diddn't I wouldnt be talking to you now (and I suspect the same is true of you too). I don't tend to write 1500 word comments on anything. But there are a few sparks of hope in sustainable developement and technology and other stuff too. I'll try and write something coherent and sensible about it for you when I'm in a better mood.

Thats where you stop right there son...
your crowding me...getting too close...I was never silly enough to beleve in any thing that much, I have never failed because I have never attempted to achieve... this is because I trully believe no one has the answer therefore their is no one to follow, therefore there is no right way to go... therfore as sure as the sun comes up tommorow you and I will be still aroound to bear witness to the dawn of a new day. Stick around its going to be a blast.

republican party of australia eh! geez they look like they'll go far. NOT. the only difference between you and one nation is that you think you're not racist just cause you say so and you've got a few blacks who agree with you (as if they represent indig people as a whole). Did pauline line up a couple of indig "advisors" as well.
There's plenty of indig mobs who support migrants and reckon the whole concentration camps could be shut. sheila wields her politics through division and a stupid arrogance that she has all the answers. it all comes down to people burning fossilised dinosaurs doesn't it sheila. you only need one lense to look through to understand the world.
hurry up and piss off to the one nation forum or something and realised just how elitist your politics is.

Simons never done good things,
He's never done bad things,
He's never done anything out of the blue...

Gee '!', you really are full of hate and fear aren't you.

Did somebody suggest you go kick a footy on another thread? Sounds like a good idea, cos 'kicking' Sheila's argument rather than actually reading or addressing the points in it just makes you look stupid.

Get a life '!', & try reading posts before you comment, because your reactionary hate mail is very dull.

Go fuck yourself another. Neither you nor your slimy neo-nazi politician friend Sheila have been able to answer my argument.

I never said that Aborigines didn't trade or accept immigrants. Why imply that I did?

But they weren't too keen on the floods of immigrants that came in 1788 and after that. And why should they have been? Once the Anglo-land-use planning system was in place anyone who came here of necessity has taken more than they needed and we have finished up with a population which we sustain with fossil fuel and financial debt and which is destroying its own base.

Pacific Islanders, which include aborigines, have rules about immigration and emigration just like every other social system. That is how they managed to have sustainable societies for 40,000 years, until they were overwhelmed by numbers.

Can you imagine what they thought when the first shipload turned up? They must have felt sorry for the settlers who were hanging eachother for stealing and half starved because they couldn't grow anything and they had few tools due to a stuff up in equipping the fleet.

What must the aborigines have thought when this pathetic troop were rescued by another ship load, and another, and another and another and another...

They had never known such an inexhaustible source of population before and the only way they knew of land changing hands was through war. There were no land sales in Australia until the current society.

You are defending continuous piling up of population and continuous subdivision of land. This only benefits the rich and it makes the poor homeless.

What is your problem?

Sheila N

My problem is that you are promoting hate, isolationism, keep the world out (it diddn't work in Rome what makes you think it will here?) and blame the victim type false solution. It disgusts me even more that you (a well-off white person too) try to use and distort the views and culture of Aboriginal people to promote your moronic and racist ideology. We live on one planet. You can't seal yourself off. Environmental and social justice problems are GLOBAL and they are NOT caused by the poor breeding too much.

The rest of my response is on the thread below...

Ms ! continues in yet another pointless ramble of nothingness.

Irrevalent, dumb, neurotic and just plain embrassing.

How zIonMC Works
by spot the character-assassin Thursday July 29, 2004 at 08:18 PM

==================================
yawn
by spot the screaming me-mes Thursday July 29, 2004 at 05:34 PM

Ms ! continues in yet another pointless ramble of nothingness.

Irrevalent, dumb, neurotic and just plain embrassing.
====================================

yawn, sigh, boring........

A number of posts in this thread have indicated that population and poverty in the third world is driven strongly by the load of exploitation that the first world puts upon it.

If we up the numbers within first world nations, either by natural fertility and/or immigration, how does that change adjust the exploitation load upon the third world. It forces it upward surely. We cannot extend our standard of living to more poeple without taking that gain directly from the third world.

Whether you like it or not, that is what is happening as 1st world populations rise. That then makes sustainable outcomes in distressed communities even harder to pursue and achieve.

We most certainly have to dramatically reduce our first world resource demands, but the most efficient use of that adjustment would be to re-locate it to where the difficulties exist. Just simply expecting and taking less from those offshore sources would be big start toward re-allocation.

There has to be a detailed and practical understanding of the elements that will effect change. It is not enough to nurse a vague global ideal and expect it to somehow materialise like a rabbit out of a hat.

This is a diversion from the thread which is looking at the fallacy of development being a reliable source of population control. However it seems that a small group of posters will not allow any rational discussion of vital population based dimensions due to their complete misunderstanding of its fundamental leverage in things. Whatever rational dialogue that can be had reverts to a Population 101 level.
All I ask is that a reasonable effort be made toward reconciling the practical contradictions that are apparent within some of the repetitive rhetoric.

Ah, praise be to whatever deity, for Greg W.'s posts.

A voice of reasonable sanity, objectivity and intelligence amongst the dross....