Click on a country and see your tax dollars at work!
".. The purpose of the Map of Shame is to expose the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) involvement in and sponsorship of population control programs worldwide.
Using this map, you will be able to see how much money was requested for use in various programs in every country where USAID is currently active. The three figures presented in each country represent different programs supported by USAID: 1) money requested for use in population control activities, 2) money requested for use in health activities, and 3) money requested for use in food assistance programs. In many cases, the money requested for use in population activities grossly exceeds that of money designated for use in health care or food assistance programs where the money could be used to improve the lives of the women and families everywhere. LINK
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
infanticide, Abortion Responsible for 60 Million Girls Missing in Asia..
There is a little-known battle for survival going in some parts of the world. Those at risk are baby girls, and the casualties are in the millions each year. The weapons being used against them are prenatal sex selection, abortion and female infanticide — the systematic killing of girls soon after they are born.
According to a recent United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) State of the World Population Report, these practices, combined with neglect, have resulted in at least girls in Asia, creating gender imbalances and other serious problems that experts say will have far reaching consequences for years to come.
Major personnel changes at the United Nations have just occurred, and major international events will unfold next year as President Bush pursues a new Iraq policy and all the other trouble spots of the world continue on their unmerry course. These events and top UN personnel get a lot of attention, and rightly so. But what about deeper underlying trends, the ones that drive surface events and which will do so much to determine the future of the world ten, twenty, thirty years from now? These issues--demographics, ideological shifts, slowly changing structures of power--don't get as much attention as sectarian violence in Iraq, mass murder in Darfur, or U.S. ambassadors to the UN. Yet they are more important in the long run.
Unfortunately, John Bolton is out as U.S. ambassador to the UN, deep-sixed by a loser liberal Republican senator (Lincoln Chafee) and Democratic senators angry over Bolton's opposition to Fidel Castro, still a darling of the left in his dotage, and his effectiveness in defending American interests. Bolton was also the main driving force behind efforts to reform the transparently corrupt and inefficient UN bureaucracy, a reform drive that will probably die now.
Kofi Annan is out as UN Secretary-General. It is tempting to say he was the worse UN secretary-general ever, but the competition is too stiff. His replacement sworn in, South Korea's Ban Ki-moon, doesn't seem to have a clear agenda, or a mandate to reform the UN.
Yet reforming the UN's many agencies so that they become less corrupt and more effective would not necessarily be a good thing. Of course, if UN officials and their Third World dictator friends stole less of the humanitarian aid funds meant for starving people, that would be a good thing. If UN peacekeepers spent more time keeping the peace and less time raping local women and girls, that would also be a good thing. But increasing the efficiency of much of what the UN does away from the limelight would not be beneficial.
Here is a brief reform agenda for the incoming UN Secretary-General and U.S. ambassador to the UN regarding the destructive long-term trends promoted by various UN bureaucracies, away from the razzle-dazzle of the Security Council:
1. End the promotion of population control. When will population controllers realize that they have won? Birthrates have plummeted almost everywhere in the world in the last 30 years, yet the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and other UN agencies continued to work under the assumption that there are far too many children being born, particularly if they are yellow, brown, or black.
Latin America's birthrate is down to 2.5 children per woman in her lifetime, not far above the replacement rate of 2.1, and headed further down. Mexico is already below replacement.
China, with 20% of the world's people, is at 1.7--and UNFPA is still active there. Asia as a whole is at 2.5 and dropping fast. Europe is at a suicidal 1.4. The United States is at 2.0. Only sub-Saharan Africa still has high birthrates, and they are desperately needed due to the ongoing decimation of African populations through war, famine, and disease. Does the entire human population of the world have to be on the road to extinction before the UN stops promoting population control?
2. End the promotion of feminism. One of the paramount forces destroying families, societies, and birthrates in the modern world is feminism. Feminism's denigration of positive feminine values of domesticity and child nurturance and exaltation of negative masculine values such as careerism and power-seeking is currently exterminating the Western world, in a literal sense-there are too few children being born. The UN, through all its social agencies from UNFPA to UNESCO to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), relentlessly promotes feminism, including abortion "rights." All kinds of studies as well as common sense show that two-career couples face greater stress and are more likely to divorce, and both also show that raising children outside of the traditional family leads to disastrous consequences far more often than when they are raised inside of one. CEDAW doesn't bother the United States, but has commanded small, weak nations to legalize abortion and abolish Mother's Day. When will the UN's insane project to make women into men cease?
3. End the radical environmentalist jihad. When I visited Ireland last month, I marveled at the unthinking acceptance of the global warming mythology. Of course, many interests and organs have come together to promote the fraudulent claim that we must lower our standard of living in order to avert environmental catastrophe, but the UN busies itself with spreading this secular millenarianism around the globe, including in Third World countries where people desperately need industrialization rather than economy-destroying theories of a coming apocalypse.
4. End the push for world government. We supposedly live in an age of increasing democracy. Yet here are home, so many of our most important policies--on abortion, on marriage, on criminal's rights, on religion's place in the public sphere--are decided by unelected judges. In Europe, the elites that control the elected governments there have been transferring greater and greater power to the European Union. The UN, too, has been gradually accumulating more power though none of its officials or voting delegates in the General Assembly are elected or are otherwise accountable to ordinary people. In fact, the UN is mostly a collection of dictatorships, oligarchies, and quasi-democratic regimes. This treaty organization wants to turn itself into a world government, with direct power of taxation and other marks of sovereignty. One of the newer ideological methods of expanding the UN's power is the concept of "human security," defined to include health care, employment, anti-discrimination laws, housing, etc. UNcrats use this concept to argue that security among nation-states--the UN's primary mission--can only be guaranteed if each nation-state guarantees human security,
thus giving UN potentates unlimited power to meddle in nations' internal affairs. This is a new twist on the old Communist argument about economic rights.
Notice that none of my suggestions entail the UN doing something good,only refraining from negative activities, activities that are incidental to its mission of promoting peace and international security anyway. All of these suggestions would save money, too. Few rational people believe that UN bureaucrats can be made to do much good or that these bureaucrats can be replaced with decent people. All that we can hope is that they may be prevented from doing harm. Since the United States provides 22% of the general budget of this destructive organization, using financial leverage could be a good place to start.
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
Do you ever read anything other than neo-con propoganda? Current corporate globalization is creating a one-world government that will make national governments irrelevant. Economic clout will be held by corporate empires with the power to ruin nations or grant them favors. Your own government is in the forefront of promoting this agenda.
Retired Monk "Ideology is a disease"
Posts: 3412 | Location: denver co | Registered: 17 April 2007
Your own government is in the forefront of promoting this agenda.
I agree totally, poly. Imagine that! We agree on something. GWB is a forerunner of one world order and if hillary becomes president, within 6 months it is predicted the US will be wholly consumed in the 'one world government' and no longer living the freedoms we have known.
And your race will have no heirs, poly. hillary loves abortion and she hates the military.
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
"a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason."
Posts: 1944 | Location: Beautiful New Paltz, NY | Registered: 04 July 2006
Your own government is in the forefront of promoting this agenda.
Likewise, yours has lost the sense of "holy bashfulness".
Difference being this: I don't support these right these right wing nuts that have been governing the country for the past 30 years. It's not my government of choice.
Retired Monk "Ideology is a disease"
Posts: 3412 | Location: denver co | Registered: 17 April 2007
Originally posted by BrentBozo: GG posted: "polyamnesty"
"And your race will have no heirs, poly."
I say there's a racist undercurrent to this post, as there is about a lot of the anti-immigrant rhetoric
Not at all, Brent. I've posted the reference to the current genocide often in this forum. Is this the first time you've ever heard about the 15 MILLION blacks not with us since R. v W. 1973? How tragic for us all!!
And, Brent, it's not ANTI immigrant rhetoric - it's ANTI ILLEGAL aliens/immigrants.
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
GG, I'm more concerned about the human race having heirs. My own particular branch of it is irrellevant with that understanding.
Ultimately, if humanity doesn't use "free will" to annihilate itself, there will only be once race. The physical outward differences disappear more and more every year.
Retired Monk "Ideology is a disease"
Posts: 3412 | Location: denver co | Registered: 17 April 2007
Originally posted by polycarp: GG, I'm more concerned about the human race having heirs. My own particular branch of it is irrellevant with that understanding.
Ultimately, if humanity doesn't use "free will" to annihilate itself, there will only be once race. The physical outward differences disappear more and more every year.
Retired Monk "Ideology is a disease"
How perfectly perfectly sad for you and yours. What a heart-less commentary
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
Originally posted by polycarp: GG, there will ultimately be only one race. If you think that is "sad", get over it.
Retired Monk "Ideology is a disease"
No, poly amnesty, God willing I will never get OVER IT as long as I can take a breath. You are unbelievable to not defend your own. How sad for us all. And you say you defend the poor? I don't think you do poly - ?? You are one of the very poor in spirit and that is the worst kind of "poor".
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
GG posted: "Not at all, Brent. I've posted the reference to the current genocide often in this forum. Is this the first time you've ever heard about the 15 MILLION blacks not with us since R. v W. 1973? How tragic for us all!!"
Alright, GG, thanks for the clarification.
Was thrown off by expressed desire for descendents of our race.
As for illegal immigrants: if we sent them all home, or most of them, the US economy would collapse, as the cheap and abundant labor is the base of it. Not that I would shed tears about the collapse of the capitalist economy.
I agree totally, poly. Imagine that! We agree on something. GWB is a forerunner of one world order
wait a minute GG!! you are ONLY NOW saying that gwb is for a one world order???? you supported that idiot twice. because of yours and everyone else who voted for him, we are in this situation. we warned you, yet you let your pride and ignorance blind you to the reality of the situation. only now, when the problems accumulated with this administration has grown out of control, do people like you admit that maybe something is wrong.
------------------------------------------ debating conservatives is easy. so easy, even a caveman can do it!
"if this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck lot easier, just so long as im the dictator" -GWB Dec 18,2002
Posts: 1614 | Location: ft myers florida area | Registered: 23 September 2006
ou to the reality of the situation. only now, when the problems accumulated with this administration has grown out of control, do people like you admit that maybe something is wrong.
and hillary thinks she will be a very strong candidate for the white house and btw she has never changed her postion on supporting GWB on the war in Iraq. Infact, the liberal press is priming the way for her by that very fact especially since the surge is finally being reported - OH, yes, fisherman - hillary is a proud one world order lady = HaTES the American military and will be sure to hand over freedom in exchange for nothing but misery to all Americans to the michale moores and the george soros open border society one world order. The final nail in the coffin will be socialized health care. She wants the power and she will do what ever it takes. One of yours, fisherman! Yea, I guess Joe Lieberman (who dared to be an independent thinker in the party) is not so bad after all!
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
Originally posted by BrentBozo: GG posted: "Not at all, Brent. I've posted the reference to the current genocide often in this forum. Is this the first time you've ever heard about the 15 MILLION blacks not with us since R. v W. 1973? How tragic for us all!!"
Alright, GG, thanks for the clarification.
Was thrown off by expressed desire for descendents of our race.
As for illegal immigrants: if we sent them all home, or most of them, the US economy would collapse, as the cheap and abundant labor is the base of it. Not that I would shed tears about the collapse of the capitalist economy.
You greatly UNDER estimate the resiliency and stamina of Americans. Actually, you misunderstand why illegals were allowed to enter this country to begin with.
I wish I had the time to challenge you on capitalism. It's One of the reasons we have become a strong vibrant nation; but than there are Americans who feel threatened by that and feel the need to apologize for the hard work of LEGAL immigrants. We did it before and we can continue to do what has proven to work. But than again - I keep going back to break our nation and break our government for that great surge of one world religion and one world government - dictatorship!!
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
Originally posted by polycarp: GG, there will ultimately be only one race. If you think that is "sad", get over it.
Retired Monk "Ideology is a disease"
"AGEISM" is a major culture crises in many countries including the United States (OH, if only we were united ).
The UN death culture vultures have done some fancy finagling to get people of 60 plus nations to reproduce themselves at a less than replacement rate . People were once proud of their heritage and wanted heirs to continue it. Polyamnesty has relinquished and renounced his heritage and does not want to "spiritually parent" them any longer. I plead your case for you if you cannot for yourself, Poly. The human population is one family and when one suffers we all suffer. We one falls we are called to lift them up and plead for them and with them that life is worth living and to live it with gusto, with righteousness and with truth!
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
GG posted: "You greatly UNDER estimate the resiliency and stamina of Americans. Actually, you misunderstand why illegals were allowed to enter this country to begin with.
I wish I had the time to challenge you on capitalism. It's One of the reasons we have become a strong vibrant nation; but than there are Americans who feel threatened by that and feel the need to apologize for the hard work of LEGAL immigrants. We did it before and we can continue to do what has proven to work. But than again - I keep going back to break our nation and break our government for that great surge of one world religion and one world government - dictatorship!!"
So we have approx. 15 mil. illegal immigrants in the US who are currently providing relatively cheap labor. Most native-born Americans are working long hours already. And I'd say with a little bit of training, just about any native-born Amerian could get a job such as are currently held down by the illegals (which means that either currently-employed or unemployed native-born do not want those jobs, at least not at the pay at which the illegals are willing to work).
It all adds up to: we (the US), as its economy is currently configured, NEED the illegal labor. Not saying this is a good or bad thing; am saying that profitability (which you appreciate) and labor needs dictate this, currently.
As for "one world religion": well, the probability of that doesn't even register.
It all adds up to: we (the US), as its economy is currently configured, NEED the illegal labor. Not saying this is a good or bad thing; am saying that profitability (which you appreciate) and labor needs dictate this, currently.
Our economy is built upon respect for LEGALITY for the most part. It's a sham to not enforce legal immigration laws by employers. We have a front door to enter. We need to enforce legal immigration or the economy will have no lasting value. We need to STOP encarcertaing law enforcement border patrol agents, rewarding illegals and RESPECT what has been established to keep Americans safe. Johnny Sutton needs to be fired!!
Have you not heard the many crimes by illegals. Many neighborhoods have lost any sense of protection by law enforcement. The ACLU will too quickly claim all sorts of charges when one wants to protect one's own property. Our jails are filled with illegals. They drive without licenses and without insurance. They drain our emergency care centers and our schools systems. They get first reward for many things and American citizens are now the second class citizens. The legal immigrants are highly disturbed and feel threatened. English seems to be the second language of choice.
You know that one of the root causes is to create voter blocks for the upcoming presidential election and all state elections. Those that are paving the way for illegals to have all rights as other Americans are blinded by power, desiring control and removal of our known freedom. Why don't we just make Mexico another state?
Do you know what the Mexicans do to illegals in their country? Yet Mexico h0llows holy terror when Americans attempt to enforce our laws against their illegals in our country.
Illegals are changing many things and this is only the tip of the ice berg.
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
GG posted: "Our economy is built upon respect for LEGALITY for the most part."
This statement is meaningless as regards the obvious need for the illegal labor force that is in this country. Legality is beside the point of necessity in this case.
This statement is meaningless as regards the obvious need for the illegal labor force that is in this country. Legality is beside the point of necessity in this case.
As in the making of millionaires as pelosi and friends making big bucks off the backs of illegals. As in "separation of families" as was one of the major reasons for across the board amnesty (as if they trulu cared).
I can't believe you answered that we need what is ILLegal to make our system work. YOU KNOW that is not why illegals have received protection status and allowed to break numerous laws in our great nation.
We don't even have to begin with below replacement birth rate of Americans- but it's a stark reality of the indoctrination of relativism and humanistic ideologies trying to fix what's broken.
What else do you propose will 'illegal' be necessary so that the US can function? What have you done with our Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and US Constitution?
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
quote: "YOU KNOW that is not why illegals have received protection status and allowed to break numerous laws in our great nation."
I know this? No, what I think I know is a lot of US businessmen, large & small, think they need cheap labor (and maybe they do). And a lot of Latinos need a job that pays US minimum or a bit more.
WORLD CONGRESS OF FAMILIES OUTRAGED BY UN COMMITTEE’S PRO-ABORTION BULLYING
The World Congress of Families is outraged by recent attempts of The United Nations Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to intimidate nations that protect the unborn.
At its meeting in New York this week, CEDAW Committee members browbeat diplomats from pro-life countries.
Honduras, which has a right-to-life provision in its constitution, was practically ordered to legalize abortion.
Committee member Heisoo Shin told the Honduran delegation that their government must “create a momentum, a social force that stops the crime that allows a woman to die, to risk unsafe abortion and not to have self-determination.”
When the Hondurans responded that their government emphasizes preventing early and unwanted pregnancies, Silvia Pimentel, a committee member from Brazil, insisted: “Women have their reasons to seek an abortion, which should be respected.”
Larry Jacobs, global coordinator of the World Congress of Families, called this hectoring “intolerable.”
“The CEDAW Treaty – adopted by the General Assembly in 1979 – doesn’t even mention the word ‘abortion,’” Jacobs noted. “These pressure tactics are based on the personal agendas of committee members. As such, they do not carry the weight of international law.”
Jacobs charged that the CEDAW Committee “clearly has been co-opted by radical feminists and their allies” and called on the UN to “rein-in the CEDAW Committee, which is blatantly exceeding its mandate.”
“Nations that acknowledge the humanity of the unborn child and offer it legal protection should not be subjected to these obscene pressure tactics,” Jacobs commented.
World Congress of Families IV, held in Warsaw, Poland (May 11-13, 2007), was attended by over 3,400 delegates from 64 nations. The Warsaw Declaration, adopted by delegates on the last day of the Congress, demands, “Respect for the life of every human being from conception to natural death” and opposes “discrimination against and extermination of the weakest.” To read The Warsaw Declaration in its entirety, click here:
"China Bans One-Child Family Planning Slogans Demeaning Human Life
Beijing, China (LifeNews.com) -- In a cosmetic move meant to foster better public relations in advance of next year's Summer Olympics, the government of China has banned slogans demeaning human life that are a part of its family planning regime. The nation has been criticized for decades for allowing families to bear just one child, and severely punishing offenders. The ban is a reaction to some of the violent policies of rural family planning officials, who frequently employ brutal campaigns of forced abortions and sterilizations or other forms of intimidation to enforce family planning goals.
Under the new ban, rural officials can't use public slogans such as "Raise fewer babies but more piggies," or "One more baby means one more tomb." According to the government's Xinhua news agency, the National Population and Family Planning Commission has come up with 190 acceptable slogans meant to promote the one-child policy in a more positive way.
Other prohibited slogans more directly hit on the forced abortion problems, such as "Houses toppled, cows confiscated, if abortion demand rejected." Instead, according to Xinhua, officials should use banners with sayings like "Mother Earth is too tired to sustain more children" and "Both boys and girls are parents' hearts."
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
British Media Outlet Admits Europe Experiencing Underpopulation Crisis
Pro-life advocates have been trying to make it clear to the world that many industrialized nations are not experiencing overpopulation but, rather, a birth dearth. Especially in Europe, population levels are dangerously low and under the figures needed to sustain the population. On Saturday, the BBC admitted that pro-life advocates are right and that abortion has presented problems, especially for nations in eastern Europe where it has been considered a method of birth control for so long that the population is ravaged.
"Population levels across many parts of the developed world are declining, but this is particularly noticeable in former Eastern Bloc states where the number of children being born has plummeted within a generation,' the BBC admitted in an article. The news outlet quoted Boris Vano, from the Slovak Demographic Research Centre, who said about the nation of Slovakia, "In 1974, 100,000 babies were born in Slovakia - now barely 50,000 a year." The BBC admitted that nations like Poland are experiencing worker shortages as too few people are alive to maintain the economy. London, England (LifeNews.com) --
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
CHOICE causes ageing populations and creates distortions unimaginable.
quote:
Ageing population may affect Indian economy'
Bangalore: Health issues affecting the 40-plus age group may have a direct bearing on the national economy and overall productivity, president of Indian Andropause Society D. Narayana Reddy said here on Saturday.
Presiding over the Second National Conference on Aging Male, organised by the society, he said there were 100 million men in the age group of above 50.
One reason was that the average male life expectancy that was 40 in 1950s, reached 63 years in 2003 and was close to 70 years now.
The economic shape of the country could well depend on how healthy this segment of population was, he said.
Because there was no wide social security coverage as of now, the Government had no direct financial burden. But the economic cost if middle aged and older men cannot function well could be significant, Dr Reddy said.
Demographic studies showed that 50 per cent of all men aged 65 and above might be in India and China by 2025.
This could bring down economic growth in both countries. "India is slightly better off because our younger workforce will continue to grow till 2050. Even by 2020, the average Indian will be just 29 while it would be 37 in China," Dr. Reddy said.
Dr. Reddy said: "Problems related to the health of the aging male have escaped wider attention till now because most men are in a denial mood when it comes to their overall well being and issues like sexual health. There is no reason why their health issues cannot be attended to and their acquired skills used till quite late in life." link
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
Industrialized nations are committing suicide. With birthrates averaging around 1.5 children per woman, well below replacement rate of 2.1, Western European nations are on their way out.
Despite high rate of immigration and a relatively healthy birthrate of 2.0, the US faces bankruptcy of the Social Security and Medicare programs due to the baby boomers' failure to have proportionally enough children. European countries, both Western and Eastern, and Japan face the same problem in spades.
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
..l Canadian publication ...the May 28, 2007 issue's cover story, and discusses Canada's baby deficit in great detail, as well as looking at how other western countries are battling the same problem.
The basis for the concern about the shortage of new births centers around the fact that by 2020 there will be a 1.2 million worker shortage. Long term studies have shown that while immigration is a solution for the short term, ultimately the rate will not keep up with that of those leaving the workforce. The article goes on to discuss many factors that have contributed to the falling Canadian birth rate, including: fewer established professional women are willing to give up their career, the economics of adjusting to a single income when the baby arrives, the fact that older women are more likely to have fertility issues, and that many of those who are having children are having one (we need 2.1 children per woman to replace ourselves).
If the above seems to have a glaring omission, it does. The "crisis" they are talking about isn't so much that women aren't having enough babies; it's that the right women aren't having enough babies. In an ideal situation, argues the author, mature, educated, professional, married women would be bearing multiple children. Instead, what we have today is that immature, uneducated, single women are having babies, and this is a less than ideal situation for building the next generation.
In Europe, tax breaks far superior to the meagre Canadian offerings are available (how many of us would consider having three children if the government waived all income tax in exchange?). Also, publicly funded and operated creche centers for emergency, short-term care are situated around the cities.
While there is some merit to encouraging educated professionals to have babies, the belief that this is the only solution to the problem is short sighted and self important. Post-secondary education is not publicly funded, and as tuition rates continue to rise, the percentage of those who can afford to attend drops. Just because a woman is younger and single when she has a child does not mean her genetics are inferior to her "more ideal" counterpart. Of course, her socio-economic situation is inferior for raising a child, but rather than dismissing her offspring and the idea of her breeding, why not consider mechanisms to improve her state?
The article goes on at length about measures to encourage women to have more children, but not just any women. They want professional women (in all likelihood, women like the author herself) because those women are "ready" for children. However, while they acknowledge the connundrum of older women and lower fertility rates, they never consider the idea that improving the circumstances of women who can more easily conceive, namely the younger women who are not committed to a professional career or a lifestyle that they would have to abandon in order to afford having kids, could increase the birth rate as well.
Social programs such as those implemented in Europe could be used in Canada. The issue is funding the programs. While tax breaks work because the voting population benefits directly, social programs are often considered "hand outs" or "charity", and as such are met with suspicion and resentment (the old "why can't they take care of themselves like I can?" argument).
The above argument in favour of creating social programs to improve the circumstances for younger, unwed, (and theoretically uneducated) mothers could be perceived to be promoting a breeder class, where some women are married professionals and others are birthing children (ala The Handmaid's Tale). This is not the case. It is merely a suggestion to increase the birth rate by encouraging those with higher fertility rates to have children instead of viewing them as less than desirable procreators.
Ultimately, something will have to be figured out. ....
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
In modern societies, organized around production--economic production, not the production of the next generation of human beings--and infected with the feminism that has led to two-income households as a necessity for middle-class lifestyles, people haven't the time for children. Could many more deeply critical observations of modern life be made than this?
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
And if China didn't institute that policy years ago, it would be having mass starvation today.
The genocide in Rwanda was fed mainly by economics. Most live on small subsistance farms. They ran out of land. Killing off large segments of the population opened up the means for a livelihood. Better to kill your neighbor than starve was the motive.
Haiti is so overpopulated, they've destroyed the nations environment. The forests have been removed causing rainfall to diminish to the point that rivers no longer run year 'round. Obtaining water for the day is the major budget expenditure. They can't feed themselves because a lot of the topsoil is now down to bedrock.
I suggest you look at nations that have surpassed their environments capacity to support the population. People are being born to starve-to-death. 50,000 a DAY die of hunger. Want to raise that to 100,000 a day?
The Old Testament told us to multiply and populate the earth. We did that. We can stop now. Just one dying a day from hunger would be an abomination. There isn't even a term strong enough for 50,000 dying a day.
Educate yourself about population growth and its effects. Then maybe you'll make some sense rather than encouraging more human misery.
Retired Monk "Ideology is a disease"
Posts: 3412 | Location: denver co | Registered: 17 April 2007
All one can do is cry with your responses, Poly. For such an educated man, you cannot see that rogue regimes cause the sufferings, starvations, human and environmental wreckages. God knows what He is doing in sending new life.
The religion of humanism created out of pride does not hear, nor does it see how women and children suffer.
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
I'm guessing that GG has no clue on just how many people this planet can feed and provide water for. A trip to Haiti might be in order just so she can see the results of over-population and what she is advocating as being a model on a world-wide scale.
Watching a baby starve-to-death is not a pleasant thing.
Retired Monk "Ideology is a disease"
Posts: 3412 | Location: denver co | Registered: 17 April 2007
A trip to Haiti might be in order just so she can see the results of over-population and what she is advocating as being a model on a world-wide scale.
Watching a baby starve-to-death is not a pleasant thing.
I'm quite acquainted with the trials of the Haitians and others.
It is a LIE that people starve because of over population. The US has the capacity and technology to feed the world. You know the reasons why people starve and medical needs are denied, poly. I don't have to list them over and over and over.
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
A trip to Haiti might be in order just so she can see the results of over-population and what she is advocating as being a model on a world-wide scale.
Watching a baby starve-to-death is not a pleasant thing.
I'm quite acquainted with the trials of the Haitians and others.
It is a LIE that people starve because of over population. The US has the capacity and technology to feed the world. You know the reasons why people starve and medical needs are denied, poly. I don't have to list them over and over and over.
If we have the capacity to feed the world, why are we importing food ourselves?
Colo. passed strong immigrant laws. Many left and food rotted in the fields. No one to pick it. Farmers are going broke. I threw out a package of soybeans. Didn't read the label before I bought it. Grown in China with who knows what chemicals applied to them. And you say we can feed the world? We import more and more. We can't even feed ourselves anymore.
Europeans don't deny medical needs to their people. We do. You answer the question "why". I've given the answer over and over.
Retired Monk "Ideology is a disease"
Posts: 3412 | Location: denver co | Registered: 17 April 2007
Originally posted by polycarp: GG, there will ultimately be only one race. If you think that is "sad", get over it.
Retired Monk "Ideology is a disease"
No, poly amnesty, God willing I will never get OVER IT as long as I can take a breath. You are unbelievable to not defend your own. How sad for us all. And you say you defend the poor? I don't think you do poly - ?? You are one of the very poor in spirit and that is the worst kind of "poor".
And you are extremely bigotted. Shame on you!!
Who and WHAT are your own people GG.?? Who are they??? Tell us.
As to who is poor in spirit, I think we all agree that it isn't polly but you. Look in the mirror and before you see the splinter in someone elses eye, recognize the beam in your own.
Posts: 863 | Location: West Palm Beach, FL | Registered: 21 June 2007
Originally posted by polycarp: GG, there will ultimately be only one race. If you think that is "sad", get over it.
Retired Monk "Ideology is a disease"
No, poly amnesty, God willing I will never get OVER IT as long as I can take a breath. You are unbelievable to not defend your own. How sad for us all. And you say you defend the poor? I don't think you do poly - ?? You are one of the very poor in spirit and that is the worst kind of "poor".
WHO ARE MY PEOPLE?
MY PEOPLE? Who are they?
I went into the church where the congregation
Worshiped my God. Were they my people?
I felt no kinship to them as they knelt there.
My people! Where are they?
I went into the land where I was born,
Where men spoke my language .
I was a stranger there.
“My people,” my soul cried. “Who are my people?”
Last night in the rain I met an old man
Who spoke a language I do not speak,
Which marked him as one who does not know my God.
With apologetic smile he offered me
The shelter of his patched umbrella.
I met his eyes. . . And then I knew. .
.
ROSA ZAGNONI MARINONI
Posts: 863 | Location: West Palm Beach, FL | Registered: 21 June 2007
Originally posted by Billy Bauer: There's nothing there America should be ashamed of.
Well, I don't think that's true Billy.
When we engage in foreign conflict covertly and overtly, depose democratically elected heads of state and replace them with dictators who make those people suffer endlessly, ALL for the interest of Corporate America, THAT Billy is not in the interest of this country, or our image abroad. We have engaged in over 250 of those foreign incursions, most of them covertly via the CIA. We have become the main purveyor of terrorism around the globe by our illegal actions. We have a great deal to be ashamed about. By and large Americans don't know about these things. You're not supposed to know. It is in THEIR interest that you don't know these things. That allows them to do as they see fit. When the Revolution broke out in 1979 in Iran and they took all the American hostage in the U.S. Embassy, no one asked the critical question "WHY are the Iranians so pissed at us" They didn't for one very good reason. had they asked that question they would have been told WHY. And the WHY was that in 1952 we ousted the democratically elected and very popular PM Mossadegh, and replaced him with the cruel Shah, who, with his secret Service SAVAK trained in the U.S. killed more people than Saddam Hussein ever did Iraqis. For that little CIA exercise we netted 40% of all Iran oil - basically stole it. But the Shah was our villain and that made him good. That he made his own people suffer was of no consideration to Eisenhower. We have done an awful lot of bad stuff around the globe Billy and it was done behind our backs, in secret, but now we know and unless we stand up and fight this injustice, we become equally guilty of these crimes. The Germans used to say "We didn't know" Americans didn't believe them. We are claiming the same today. The internet provides all sorts of information IF you really seek truth, whereaver it may lead you. We cannot fix it until we know and accept what we've done. Take care G
Posts: 863 | Location: West Palm Beach, FL | Registered: 21 June 2007
“Feminists of Europe take note – The safest place for women is in the natural family. The most dangerous is cohabitating couples.”
“The rise of European cohabitation leads ineluctably to increases in lone parenthood, and we know from recent social science research that lone parenthood poses a threat to the wellbeing of children in European societies such as Norway, Sweden and England.”
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
World Congress of Families expressed satisfaction that the British Broadcasting System (BBC) has finally acknowledged something the Congress has been talking about for years – that Europe is being enveloped in demographic winter.
According to a BBC report broadcast earlier this month, “Population levels across many parts of the developed world are declining, but this is particularly noticeable in former Eastern Bloc states, where the number of children being born has plummeted within a generation.” The BBC noted that “In 1974, 100,000 babies were born in Slovakia – now barely 50,000 a year.”
World Congress of Families International Secretary Allan C. Carlson observed: “Of the 10 nations with the lowest birthrates worldwide, nine are in Europe. According to the European Union, the average birthrate for the continent is 1.37 children per woman – well below replacement level (roughly 2.1)
Eastern European and the former Soviet Union are particularly hard hit. The birthrate for the Czech Republic is 1.18, for Russia 1.26 and for Belarus, 1.21. Russia’s population is contracting by three-quarters of a million a year. Absent massive immigration, it’s expected to lose half its population by the middle of this century.
But Western Europe is also experiencing serious population decline. In the next 50 years, Germany could lose the equivalent of the population of the former East Germany.
“The media is just beginning to grapple with an impending crisis that the World Congress of Families has been talking about for years,” Carlson declared. “At World Congress of Families II, in Geneva in 1999, Francisco Tatad, then a member of the Philippine Senate, warned of Europe’s coming population bust.”
“Fewer children and a graying population will create a series of crises Europeans are only beginning to discern,” Carlson disclosed, “including severe labor shortages, declining tax revenue supporting spiraling social budgets and fewer and fewer active adults to care for more and more elderly.” Carlson called on Europe’s leaders to begin exploring pro-family solutions to a looming catastrophe.
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
The Pharaoh in Ex. 1:17-22 feared the increase of the children of Israel. He created forms of oppression and ordered every male child to be slaughtered born of Hebrew women.
UNFPA, United Nation Population Fund and other UN anti life conspiracy groups are haunted by the 3rd and 4th world countries population growth to the point of imposing massive birth control programs.
These manipulated economic assistance programs are conditional on the acceptance of anti-birth policies.
Now we are witnessing the economic woes of many countries standing more often by graves than by cradles.
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
Seems to me, if you have a smaller population, you have less need for products. Less need for products means less needs for workers. Not as good for large business which relies on ever increasing populations for ever increasing profits though. Social issues become a profit/loss thing. A structural issue, not a population issue.
As the aging population dies, there is less need for social services. A temporary bump.
The less the demand on natural resources, the better the ability to maintain quality of life for those living on diminished resources.
The less the demands on food, the less the demands on depleting the soils.
Do you want population growth to diminish when we are standing shoulder to shoulder, or when we have to stand on top of one other?
Any species that reproduces beyond it's environments ability to support it quickly declines or becomes extinct.
Societies in the past that have done this have disappeared from the face of the earth. They no longer exist. They seemed to have had policies of unlimited population growth and took no steps to slow that growth even when their own survival depended upon it. Going, going, gone.
Retired Monk "Ideology is a disease"
Posts: 3412 | Location: denver co | Registered: 17 April 2007
Are you volunteering to lead the pack to go to the "happy hunting ground?" Will you sacrifice your life so that others can live?
Do you think God didn't know what He was doing when he sent us each new life?
quote:
As the aging population dies, there is less need for social services. A temporary bump.
The Muslim population does not agree with you, poly. They are VERy prolific and infact taking over alot of European nations and making quite an inroad in the US. They will rule the world as in "caliphate" - do jihad, and you will be their slave if you want your life.
Polyamnesty, some issues take priority. Abortion, immigration laws, international trade agreements, the death penalty, housing and medical care for the sick, poor & elderly are all vital issues. But no amount of calculating can make them equal proportionately.
The right to life come first. It precedes and undergirds all other social issues. In Pacem in Terris, Blessed John XXIII encyclical, explains that the first human right is the right to life.
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
Any species that reproduces beyond it's environments ability to support it quickly declines or becomes extinct.
Societies in the past that have done this have disappeared from the face of the earth. They no longer exist.
Advanced nations have the capacity to feed and care for the world. It's the United Nations controlling agencies that make it conditional to receive medical supplies and food if they but submit to sterilizations and abortions.
Make no mistake about it - UNFPA and others are the destroyers of the world's people and NOT the corporations.
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
Seems to me, if you have a smaller population, you have less need for products. Less need for products means less needs for workers.
When human beings loose the significance of their essence of their being, they begin replacing it by "having." Material acquisitions and fun pursuits become the center of their lives.
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
In accordance with U.S. law, the U.S. has refused to fund the UNFPA for the past six years.
Investigations into the practices of the UNFPA and other family planning and population control organizations have successfully led to hundreds of millions of dollars being cut from family planning programs.
* UNFPA collaborators with China’s horrendous enforcement of its one-child policy * The Tiahrt Amendment makes it illegal to use U.S. funding for targets, bribes, quotas, or even coercive practices for abortion and sterilization in family planning programs. * Human rights abuses of a coercive sterilization campaign is going on in Peru. This campaign was conducted under then President Alberto Fujimori with assistance from USAID and UNFPA. Nearly 300,000 women were sterilized, many without their knowledge or consent. * U.S. Representative Chris Smith publicly lauds PRI for handing him the information he needed to strip the International Planned Parenthood Federation of $195 million of U.S. taxpayer funding.
But U.S. refusal to fund the UNFPA could soon change as:
Lobbyists seek to restore US funding to the UNFPA
These lobbyists assure us that the UNFPA now is a force for good, working to convince China's population controllers that family planning must be freely chosen by the people, not forced on them.
Make no mistake about it, the UNFPA does work with the enforcers of the one-child policy.
Government officials terrorized an entire province in a population crackdown in the city of Baise, pregnant women, many in their ninth month of pregnancy, were rounded up like cattle, crammed into waiting vans, and taken away for forced abortions. The cries of the mothers and protests of the fathers were ignored as family planning officials systematically exterminated their nearly born children.
Along with out-and-out coercion, the crackdown included:
* exorbitant fines of up to two to three years' salary * the looting of their homes * the confiscation of all their belongings
When family members petitioned against the policy they, too, were arrested, as were those who sent out pleas for help to the outside world over the Internet.
Behaving in typical fashion, the Chinese government denies all knowledge of, and any responsibility for, these atrocities. It points to legislation, passed in 2002, outlawing forced abortions. At the same time, however, it secretly sets birth quotas that officials in Guangxi province must meet or be punished.
The People's Republic of China remains bent on population control whatever the human cost.
Abortions skyrocket in China's cities
The same callous attitude towards human life has spread to the cities. Many young women, afraid of having children, have had five, six, even seven abortions. The New York Times reports that China is well on the way to having the highest abortion rate in the world.
The UNFPA would have us believe that it is making things better in China. As forced abortions continue, and the family disappears from China's cities, one must wonder how the UNFPA defines success.
(taken from PRI)
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
Seems to me, if you have a smaller population, you have less need for products. Less need for products means less needs for workers.
When human beings loose the significance of their essence of their being, they begin replacing it by "having." Material acquisitions and fun pursuits become the center of their lives.
The Nazi's came to the same conclusion. They handled the problem with repression, war, and encouraging good Aryan women to have as many children as possible.
Of course, they had to take over the bread baskets of Europe to feed their hopefully huge population increase in the future.
Retired Monk "Ideology is a disease"
Posts: 3412 | Location: denver co | Registered: 17 April 2007
Why do so many environmentalists think that saving the earth means sacrificing the baby humans?
Green Guilt and Population Control
If asked what function the San Francisco-based Sierra Club performs, most of its 1.3 million members would probably reply "protecting the environment," or "raising awareness of endangered species," or words to that effect. Yet, in their 2007 legislative report for population control issues.
"Over 250,000 women need publicly supported contraceptive services in Minnesota," the section's first sentence urges. It goes on to complain that "the President's budget slashes funding for international family planning by $111 million, nearly one fourth of the FY 2007 funding level," and criticizes Bush’s support for abstinence education.
This disturbing attack on life and family is only one example of a larger trend. Over the past few decades, environmentalist organizations have adopted radically anti-natal stances, often with a dedication and ferocity that rivals Planned Parenthood. Here are only a few examples of organizations whose definition of environmental responsibility necessarily includes population control.
Over the past few decades, environmentalist organizations have adopted radically anti-natal stances, often with a dedication and ferocity that rivals Planned Parenthood.
The National Audubon Society recently released a 16-page document entitled "Population and Habitat: Making the Connection," in which it baldly promotes the outdated and disproven "population bomb" mentality. This document exhorts the United States to spend more money on international population control, insisting that "while the U.S. remains the richest nation on earth, we spend very, very little to help stem the tide of human population growth." It makes no mention of the fact that the tide is cresting and will relatively soon be receding....
Why do environmentalists consistently promote population control? In part this is yet another holdover from the radical sixties. Paul Ehrlich's risible "population bomb" thesis lives on in the minds of these aging activists, whose remain in thrall to doomsday scenarios of total environmental collapse caused by burgeoning human numbers. They remain oblivious to the countless demographic studies that have proven such fears baseless.
Another reason for their promotion of population control is guilt. Americans have been made to feel an enormous amount of guilt about the environment. To be sure, our consumption of natural resources is in some ways irresponsible, and a certain amount of self-control in consumption is probably in order. But the excessive "green guilt" suffered by many Americans goes well beyond the rational. It is a guilt gleefully fueled by environmental groups, which have found that inventing ever-worsening crises and stoking green guilt, is good for business. (Read Michael Crichton's new novel, State of Fear, for a good--if fictional--description of how this fundraising scam works in practice.)
This is no secret. Green guilt is openly acknowledged by these organizations, celebrated as a legitimate way to pressure people into following their agendas. A pair of environmentalist professors, Paul R. Kleindorfer, and Ulku Oktem, said as much in a series of lectures quoted in an online article entitled "Guilt is Good: A New Approach to Environmental Problems". The two professors go on lecture tours extolling the power of guilt in pushing the environmentalist agenda.
But what do those who have been made to feel guilty about the space that they take up on the planet do? They not only restrict their own fertility, they busily set about restricting the fertility--and the freedoms--of others as well. As Joseph D'Agostino so aptly put it in his Weekly Briefing of February 2nd, they want everyone to become "eunuchs for the green kingdom."
With global warming fears now in full bloom, these environmentalist organizations have been given a new lease on life. The Sierra Club, The Audubon Society, Planned Parenthood, Conservation International, and Sea Shepherds' anti-natal policies are gaining support among a guilt-ridden public. The result? A new generation of doom-politicians are seeking to expand these failed programs and policies.
Who will educate the wealthy, New York-based environmental groups, who raise money by preying on the fears of the gullible? Who will educate Al Gore and Bono, whose audiences cheer their every outdated utterance? These are the people who are behind the times—touting dated research, dated theories, and obsolete philosophies about overpopulation in a world where many countries are facing depopulation.
Environmentalists, save yourselves. The rest of us are doing just fine.
Major new mongrels will never report that there are now 59 nations -- with 44% of the world's population -- that have below-replacement fertility rates.
quote:
How to Take the Chill Out of Demographic Winter A speech by Don Feder, November Nov. 15, 2007
Population decline (also known as How to Take the Chill Out of Demographic Winter is very much a reality. But I'd like you to think about it initially in the context of a work of fiction.
In 1992, the British mystery writer P.D. James wrote a haunting novel called "The Children of Men" (that Hollywood made into a terrible movie, but never mind that).
The novel is set in Britain in the year 2021 -- 25 years after the last child on earth is born, due to a worldwide plague of infertility.
James poses an intriguing question: What would it be like to live in a world that had no future? Try to imagine a world where, for more than a decade, no one had heard a child laugh (other than on old television shows) or saw children at play -- a world where frustrated maternal love is lavished on expensive dolls, a world with baptism ceremonies for kittens, a world where mass suicides are arranged for the elderly (because there's no one to care for them), a world where people are quickly losing interest in sex because sex no longer has an ultimate meaning, a world where fatalism, boredom and ennui are universal.
The novel contains many poignant scenes. But one in particular stands out. The narrator describes old people sitting in a church listening to recordings of a boy's choir, made perhaps 20 years earlier, with tears streaming down their withered cheeks.
All over the world, life is imitating art. P.D. James' frightening vision of a world without children is becoming a reality -- not quickly, but so gradually that only demographers and a few others are able to discern it. not quickly, but so gradually that only demographers and a few others are able to discern it.
Philip Longman, who is a demographer and the author of "The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity, observes: "The ongoing global decline in human birthrates is the single most powerful force affecting the fate of nations and the future of society in the 21st century."
In weighing the fate of humanity, one number is crucial -- 2.1. That's the number of children the average woman must have during her lifetime just to achieve population stability or equilibrium -- where you're not losing people by attrition.
Why 2.1? Because a woman has to replace herself. Then she has to replace her partner. Then, because some children die before reaching their own childbearing years, there has to be a bit more -- hence the extra one-tenth. A fertility rate of more than 2.1 means population growth. Less than 2.1 equals population decline.
As Longman notes, today, we are witnessing a worldwide fall in fertility rates unprecedented in human history.
There are now 59 nations -- with 44% of the world's population -- that have below-replacement fertility rates.
Like a car in neutral, moving forward by its own momentum, for the time being, the world's population is still growing. For the time being.
Would you be surprised to learn that while the world's population increases, the number of children -- a sure sign of the future -- is declining? Worldwide, there are 6 million fewer children (6 years of age and younger) today than there were in 1990. This is the first tremor of what soon will be an earthquake.
In Europe, the number of children under 5 has fallen by a staggering 36% since 1960. The United Nations projects that, if current trends continue, by 2050 the world will hold 248 million fewer children under 5 than it does today.
Those 248 million children will never reach maturity (because they won't exist) and will never have children of their own. That means that even if the next generation reproduces at a greater rate than their parents -- we're still heading for a demographic train-wreck.
Declining fertility rates is a worldwide phenomenon. In the 1970s, the average woman in developing countries had almost 6 children. Today, the overall fertility rate in those countries is barely 4.
In terms of population replacement, Europe is going out of business. Of the 10 nations with the lowest fertility rates worldwide, 9 are in Europe. No European nation has anything approaching a replacement-level birthrate.
Overall, the European fertility rate is 1.3. (Remember, a fertility rate of 2.1 is needed just to maintain stability -- no growth and no decline). Italy's fertility rate is 1.2 -- meaning that in the not-too-distant future, absent immigration, Italy will lose almost half of its people in every generation.
The average Italian child born today won't have brothers or sisters. Most also won't have cousins, aunts or uncles. Demographic winter is a lonely, as well as a chilly, place.
By the way, Latvia's fertility rate was 1.25 this year, an improvement over 2000 (when it was 1.13), but still heading into the depths of demographic winter. Last year, 22,624 children were born in all of Latvia.
By and large, those inhabitants of Germany, Belgium and France who are having large families are immigrants from the Third World -- mostly Muslims. Europe once was called Christendom. The call that Europeans of the future will heed won't be church bells, but the muezzin's call to prayer from the neighborhood mosque. Even now, there are more mosques than churches in southern France.
In half-a-century or less, Europe will be populated by strangers -- who will wander by the continent's cathedrals, museums, statues and battlefield monuments wondering what it all meant.
This catastrophe in the making can be most clearly seen in Russia. What Lenin, Stalin and Hitler failed to accomplish, the Russian people are doing to themselves. You might call it auto-genocide.
In Russia, the fertility rate is 1.17 (down from 2.4 in 1990, a decline of over 50%). Russia is losing three-quarters of a million people a year. Its current population of 145 million is expected to be reduced by a third by 2050. In Russia today, almost as many children are aborted as are born alive (1.5 million to 1.6 million).
The Russian people occupy 17 million sq. km, the largest land mass on earth. By comparison, the United States has 9.6 million sq. km. and a population of 303 million -- in other words, a little less than half of Russia's land mass and more than twice its population.
Where will the Russia of 2050 find the soldiers to guard its frontiers? Where will it find the workers to operate its factories and mines, to grow its crops and run its hospitals and schools?
Russia is pressed from the South by Islam and from the East by China. (Chinese settlers are currently colonizing Siberia.) If it exists at all, expect the Russia of the future to be significantly downsized.
Even Vladimir Putin sees the handwriting on the wall of the nursery. The Russian Federation is paying families a bonus of 250,000 rubles (the equivalent of $9,200) for a second child and for each child thereafter -- in a nation where the average monthly wage is $330.
In the Russian region of Ulyanovsk, 550 miles East of Moscow, September 12th is Day of Conception . Families that have children 9 months later on Russia's National Day can win anything from cash prizes to cars and refrigerators.
Admittedly, this is an interesting idea. But will paying people to have children really work? I suspect not -- though governments everywhere can and should make it easier for families to raise children, out of self-interest if not fairness.
Is there a connection between economics and procreation? In Western Europe, a good economy has led to fewer children. And in Russia, a bleak economy has led to fewer children. The road out of demographic winter isn't paved with dollars -- or rubles.
Outside of Europe, the picture isn't quite as bleak. But demographic decline is still evident. In India -- fabled for its teeming masses (think of Calcutta) -- the birthrate is only 2.5. South Korea, China, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam and Sri Lanka all have sub-replacement fertility -- this in a region where baby booms were once the norm. At 0.91, Hong Kong may have achieved the world's lowest birthrate.
Many of these countries are referred to as 4-2-1 societies. In the future, 4 grandparents and 2 parents will be supported by one child.
There are many long-term consequences of demographic decline -- none of them good.
Wolfgang Lutz of Austria's International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis maintains, "While the 20th century was the century of population growth, we can already say from a demographic perspective that the 21st century will go into the history books as the century of aging." the 21st century will go into the history books as the century of aging."
By the middle of this century, 16% of the world's population will be over 65. In many nations, they will account for one-third of the total population. By 2040, there will be 400 million elderly Chinese. The question demographers ask is: Will China get rich before it gets old?
In industrialized nations, fewer and fewer workers will support pensions for more and more elderly. This will begin by severely straining national budgets, be followed by young workers repudiating social obligations, and end in the rationing of medical services and state-sponsored euthanasia.
Russia won't be the only nation trying to fill jobs with a rapidly shrinking workforce. Thanks to its one-child-per-family policy, China will have a labor shortage, sooner rather than later. The European Union estimates that it will have a shortfall of 20 million workers by 2030.
Population decline means economic decline.
Industrialized nations will be sorely tempted to import a Third World labor force -- thus trading their national identity to maintain their living standards for a few years more. These immigrants will work for pay -- but will they fight for money. If they do, remember, it was mercenary armies that contributed to the downfall of the Roman Empire.
There must be a silver-lining here somewhere. With fewer people, surely the environment will be better off -- or will it? With severely strained public budgets, developed nations will no longer be willing to shoulder the costs of cleaning up pollution or cutting carbon-dioxide emissions.
The crisis that confronts us is not only daunting, but multifaceted. The foregoing is an overview.
Is there a solution to population decline? Before we can answer that question, we first must ask another: How did we get here?
Demographic winter isn't happening in a vacuum. The factors that drive declining fertility rates are economic, cultural, political and spiritual. Since the last is the most important, we'll consider it last. Among the other trends commonly mentioned are:
· Birth Control and abortion -- Today, just under half the world's population uses some form of birth control. Worldwide, there were 42 million abortions in 2003. That means that each year, medical science, law and society conspire to destroy the equivalent of the population of Italy. Internationally, feminists work feverishly to force abortion on the dwindling number of countries where it's still illegal. In most developed nations, abortion is not only legal, but -- for the poor -- paid for by the state. Is there another instance of a people subsidizing their own destruction?
· Urbanization -- For the first time in history, we're on the threshold of a world in which half of us will be city-dwellers. Raising children in high-rise apartments is much harder than raising them on a farm or in a village.
· Delayed marriage -- Both men and women are delaying the average age of marriage. More women are in the labor force. (The hand that formerly rocked the cradle is now ringing the cash register or writing advertising copy.) Men and women both are staying in school longer, delaying family formation. After 35, it becomes progressively harder for women to conceive. Late marriage is a prescription for one-child families or childlessness.
· The entertainment media -- Hollywood propagates a live-for-the-moment ethic and an ego-driven existence. The number of movies that portray large families (today, more than three children) can almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. Hollywood tells us that satisfaction comes from careers, "relationships," travel, challenges met and overcome -- but not from having children.
· The decline of marriage -- Marriage is fading while cohabitation is increasingly popular. (In Scandinavia, almost as many couples are living together as married.) Cohabitation is not conducive to procreation or childrearing. Besides abortion, in the name of equality, the European Union goes to great lengths to promote "homosexual marriage." In this regard, I use the term "marriage" advisably. It makes sense that the EU would facilitate the one union that can not conceivably produce children.
In seeking to explain demographic winter, the factor most neglected is also the most significant. Demographic decline is a natural consequence of the loss of faith.
Europe has weekly church attendance of 5%, while in the United States, 42% attend religious services weekly. The U.S. has a fertility rate of around 2 -- just about replacement level. As noted earlier, Europe's fertility rate is 1.3, well below sustainability.
In America, there are wide variations by state. Mormon Utah has a fertility rate of 2.6, while 55% attend religious services weekly. New York State has a fertility rate of 1.86, and weekly church attendance of only 33%. New Hampshire and the District of Columbia are on the low end of the spectrum -- both in terms of fertility (1.7 and 1.5 respectively) and church attendance (33% and 24%). None of this should be surprising.
Harvard historian Steve Ozment, author of "A Mighty Fortress: A New History of The German People," writes of contemporary Germans: "One might have expected that Germans, who have been historically Europe's most theologically literate people, would have rediscovered and remembered the lessons and resources of their own Catholic and Protestant heritage in coming to terms with European Islam.... This is especially true in light of Christianity's vital historical contributions to European law, culture and polity...."
Instead, says Ozment, with notable exceptions, "Germans today have hardened their agnosticism and atheism against established religion, apparently believing, counter-intuitively, that the sermons of Luther and Bonhoffer are a less mighty fortress against Germany's gnawing problems (low native birth rates and a bleak existentialism) than the old tin drums of Gunther Grass and Jurgen Habermas."
Traditional believers -- be they Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, evangelical or charismatic -- see a world that is not centered on the individual. They believe in commitments, otherwise known as commandments. They willingly embrace a life filled with obligations -- to past and future, to progenitors and posterity, to humanity and Heaven.
And they have faith -- in their families, in their future and in their God. Fertility rates can be explained by a simple formula: Those who have faith in the future have children. Those who don't -- don't.
Recall the first commandment in the Bible: "Be fruitful and multiple and replenish the Earth." This is not an instruction to Adam and Eve alone, but a universal imperative. For those who are physically able to fulfill the commandment, it is not optional.
God is just. In Leviticus, after giving His law to the Children of Israel, as set forth in Deut. 30:19, God tells them: "I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you. I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live."
You choose life, you get life -- including descendants. You choose death -- in the form of population control, contraception, abortion, homosexuality, secularism, consumerism, unthinking environmentalism, selfishness and a live-for-the-moment ethic -- and you get death, including no descendants.
The ultimate answer to demographic winter -- if there is one -- is contained in this room and in this building -- and in churches, chapels, cathedrals and synagogues around the world.
In 2004, I was in Mexico City for World Congress of Families III and had the opportunity to see the ancient pyramids located about 30 miles outside the city.
The place is called Teotihuacan. Roughly 1,500 years ago, it was the greatest city in the Western Hemisphere. Spread over 5,000 acres, it had 125,000 inhabitants, making it the 6th largest city in the world at that time.
Teotihuacan had sophisticated irrigation, apartment complexes, art and learning, as well as magnificent pyramids -- only a third smaller than those of Giza.
Who built this civilization? No one knows. What happened to them? Archeologists can only speculate. When the Aztecs arrived, Teotihuacan had been deserted for hundreds of years.
Some believe this wondrous city was destroyed by barbarian invaders -- others think it succumbed to drought, epidemic or civil war.
Or maybe -- just maybe -- its inhabitants got tired of living. Maybe they stopped having children. Maybe they stopped believing in the future.
Hundreds of years hence, will others visit the ruins of our cities and wonder what happened to us?
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
In Latin American countries abortionists have found a dirty underhanded method around anti-abortion laws and intend to aggressively kill preborn babies.
The new killing scheme is in the privacy of a "doctor's" office where no illegal surgical abortion is involved, but an abortionist gives a pregnant woman the abortion pill, RU486 and tells her to come back when bleeding starts. The treatment she will be given is an "emergency" surgical abortion required to stop the hemorrhaging!
As we all would expect, planned baronhood is up to its eyeballs in this conniving way-around-the law method and it the tax payers of the U.S. funding these killings. Last year the New York City-based Population Council dumped over $62 million into this "improved reproductive health" and the U.S. taxpayers picked up 51% of the cost.
When will people become horrified at this organizations dastardly deeds?
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
This CG character is your typical Republican dis-information expert. All the right information to lead good Liberal citizens on a wild goose chase.
Be an angel and prove that 59 countries are not losing its most valuable resourse - its people. Even the United Nations has reported the loss of people and their cultures "literally sliding off" the face of the earth.
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
Before the Industrial Revolution (that is, before the widespread use of fossil fuels for energy to power machinery), the carrying capacity of the earth was about one billion people. People could not provide for greater than that number, without machinery to take on the burden of labor.
We now have something over 6.5 billion humans on earth.
I am not concerned about decreased fertility amongst humans, at this point.
Brent, It's a myth of over population. Beware of who spreads the lie.
Human beings are the ultimate resource, the one resource that we cannot do without. We cannot continue to consume more of this resource than we produce. Pension funds and entire economies are sure to collapse if we continually war against the family. It will begin first in Europe, then Canada, Japan and finally the U.S.
We don't need more government programs, subsidies, and daycare centers, but we need to protect married couples from the ravaging demands of government on their income.
Families need to be encouraged to have the children they desire. These families are the ones who will be providing for the future in the most fundamental way - by providing the future generation. Governments are mostly the problem. Mothers want to stay at home with their children. Families need to be provided with tax breaks allowing for the most vital and irreplaceable capital - humans.
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
and, quote: "Mothers want to stay at home with their children."
??????
The countries in the world that provide the best public support for parent(s) staying at home for the first year or two are also the strongest on *family planning* (and we all know what that means).
And, if you mean to say mothers want to stay at home, barefoot & pregnant, and never venture out in the world of personal accomplishment, WHY DON'T YOU MOVE TO WAZIRISTAN, GG? (although even there you can't watch "Leave it to Beaver" on TV).
Brent = Motherhood is a most and probably THE most honorable call.
No, Brent, not barefoot and pregnant. Get real and come into the real world. Women are beginning to recognize the deceiptfullness of the bastion of feministra commentariates which of course includes spiney-lingueeny feminist men and want to be a first and lasting influence in the raising of their children. Socialists' programs never can take the place of the mother and the father. It takes a family not a village to raise children.
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
Originally posted by BrentBoz-Hell: quote: "Brent, It's a myth of over population. Beware of who spreads the lie."
There are 6.5+ billion humans now, you know.
You think the earth could support an unlimited number?
The blood shed of the killing of babies will never achieve positive results and protection for humanity. It is not for humans to decide what number. "Responsible parenting" and never coerced abortions and sterilizations.
Starvation remains a problem because of dictorial governments who use hunger to control their people. And you don't feed starving people contraceptives.
Ehrlich's predictions that people would starve to death in the '70s never came to pass
* * * * * * * * Without traditional regular moral principles that may be consulted confidently, justice cannot long endure anywhere.
Posts: 6275 | Location: Maine | Registered: 31 December 2005
qouth: "Socialists' programs never can take the place of the mother and the father."
Uh, yeah: the "socialists'" programs merely allow both parents to take time off of work so's they can be with the newborn. They are merely trying to give the parents a chance to be parents.
Here in the hellish US of A there's no mandated parental leave.
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