Hardin

Novinkou na našom blogu bude séria článkov, ktoré sa nebudú priamo zaoberať myšlienkami fínskeho ekológa Penttiho Linkolu. Ich úlohou bude predstaviť názory iných ekologicky zameraných mysliteľov, často rovnako kontroverzných ako tvrdohlavý fínsky ornitológ. Našim cieľom je konfrontovať Linkolove tézy s ich myšlienkami a ukázať Linkolove názory v širších súvislostiach, aby sme zabránili dojmu, že v jeho prípade ide len o zbytočne hysterické reakcie akéhosi pomýleného blázna. Prvý z týchto príspevkov sa bude venovať americkému ekológovi a mikrobiológovi, Garrettovi Hardinovi (1915-2003).

Jeho životná dráha sa v mnohom líši od Linkolovej, keďže Hardin mnoho rokov svojho života venoval vedeckej kariére. Pracoval viac než tridsať rokov na Kalifornskej univerzite ako profesor humánnej ekológie, no podobne ako Linkola sa nevyhýbal mnohým nepopulárnym témam ako potraty, populačná kontrola, zahraničná pomoc, nukleárna energia či imigrácia. Roku 1978 zanechal profesorský post a odvtedy sa venoval prednášaniu a písaniu. Napísal viac než 350 článkov a 27 kníh. Medzi nimi sú tituly ako “Pštrosí faktor – krátkozrakosť našej populácie,” “Príroda a osud človeka,” “Život medzi limitmi: Ekológia, ekonomika a populačné tabu,” no snáď najznámejšia je jeho esej “Tragédia spoločných zdrojov,” z ktorej v blízkej budúcnosti prinesieme preložené ukážky. Kľúčovým prvkom jeho prác je bioetika. Tá má podľa jeho názoru obnášať viac než len etiku použitú v otázkach biologických problémov. Svoju etiku nazýval “etikou tvrdej lásky,” kde etika je podložená biologickými faktmi. Základnými súčasťami takejto etiky sú relatívne množstvá, proces spätnej väzbe a zmeny, ktoré prináša čas ako nepredvídané dôsledky vykonaných činov. V knihe “Tri filtre proti šialenstvu” z roku 1985 predkladá myšlienku, že zmysluplná etická teória musí byť preverená troma filtrami: gramotnosťou, čiže správnym používaním termínov, znalosťou počtov, čiže schopnosťou kalkulovať s objektívnymi množstvami a ekoláciou, štúdiom zmien, ktoré sa postupom času objavujú. Na záver tohto krátkeho medailónu pridávame niektoré z najkontroverznejších a najzaujímavejších Hardinových myšlienok:

“Vidíme len to, pre čo máme mená.”

“Obvykle zhrňujeme situáciu tak, že vravíme: “máme nedostatok potravy.” Prečo nepovieme, že máme prebytok ľudí?”

“Ktoré súčasti Vášho každodenného života sa podľa Vás zlepšia zvýšením populácie?”

“Príslušníkom západnej civilizácie s ich milovanou tradíciou slobody slova a otvorenej diskusie by prišlo trápne priznať…: “Nebudeme diskutovať o popuácii, pretože je to tabu.”

“Prečo je tak ťažké pre politikov sústrediť sa na dlhodobé výhliadky? Volebné obdobie väčšiny politikov nie je viac než päť rokov. Blízke ciele odsúvajú vzdialené ciele do ústrania.”

“Sme limitovaní základnou teorémou ekológie: nikdy nemôžeme urobiť len jednu vec.”

“Maximum nie je optimum.”

“Slovné spojenie udržateľný rozvoj je oxymoron.”

“Po každom dobre mienenom návrhu sa ekológovia spýtajú: “A čo potom?” “

“Keď dnes ľudia vravia: “Nemôžete zastaviť pokrok,” obvykle myslia materiálny pokrok.”

“Samotné vedomosti nepohnú národmi, obrovské a nepredvídané udalosti sú potrebné na to, aby sa ľudstvo poučilo.”

“Každý návrh na vybudovanie novej priehrady, na rozšírenie diaľnice, na vysušenie mokradí pre vznik nových stavebných pozemkov alebo na zakopanie neželaného odpadu s určitosťou prinesie nepredvídané následky.”

“Je chybou domnievať sa, že dlhodobo dokážeme kontrolovať množenie ľudí len samotným apelovaním na ich svedomie.”

“Mýtus o svete bez limitov nie je nič viac než jeden z mnohých mýtov, ktoré vyrástli v ochrannom tieni nedostatočne preverenej idey pokroku.”

“Aby národ mohol dlhodobo fungovať v dobrom stave musí si ako svojich poradcov vybrať ľudí, ktorí vidia ďalej než investiční bankári.”

Zdroj: http://www.garretthardinsociety.org

The Huntington West Virginia, Hearld Dispatch published this article: Mark Caserta: Planned Parenthood fulfilling founder’s vision
November 19, 2009 @ 12:00 AM

When Margaret Sanger, famous birth control activist, founded Planned Parenthood in 1916, her vision for society was not unlike another notable historical figure of the past who believed in the self-direction of human evolution.
Adolph Hitler.

A controversial eugenicist, Margaret Sanger believed, “The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
The following quote appeared in the introduction to Margaret Sanger’s 1922 book, “The Pivot of Civilization”:

“We want fewer and better children who can be reared up to their full possibilities in unencumbered homes, and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict upon us.”

In her book, Sanger went on to refer to blacks, immigrants and indigents as “… human weeds,’ reckless breeders,’ and ’spawning … human beings who never should have been born.”

Sanger’s vision has in large part come to fruition with the institution of Planned Parenthood.

According to its recently released annual report for 2007-2008, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), the largest abortion provider in the United States, was responsible for performing 305,310 abortions in 2007, an increase from 289,750 the previous year, coinciding with an increase in government funding, from $337 million to $350 million.

Sanger, who was officially endorsed by the American Eugenic Society (AES) in 1932, was also recognized “under the radar” by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a Planned Parenthood function.

“The 20th century reproductive rights movement, really embodied in the life and leadership of Margaret Sanger, was one of the most transformational in the entire history of the human race,” Clinton stated upon receiving an award from the organization that Sanger founded.
Clinton dubiously acknowledged she was in “awe” of Sanger.

Others stand in “awe” of creation.

In September, a former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas, Abby Johnson, quit her job after watching an ultrasound of an abortion in which she witnessed a fetus “crumple” as it was vacuumed out of a patient’s uterus.

“When I was working at Planned Parenthood, I was extremely pro-choice,” Johnson told FoxNews.com. But after seeing the procedure for the first time on an ultrasound monitor she said, “I would say there was a definite conversion in my heart … a spiritual conversion.”

In an interview with World Net Daily, Johnson revealed it became all about the numbers at her workplace.

“Every meeting that we had was, “We don’t have enough money … we’ve got to keep these abortions coming,” she said.

Since the clinic offered surgical abortions only every other Saturday, they sought to increase the availability of abortions by offering RU-486 chemical abortions throughout the week, according to Johnson.

RU-486 chemical abortions kill the lining of the uterus, cutting off oxygen and nutrients, resulting in the death of the unborn baby.

In Sanger’s dream of ridding society of “human weeds” and “reckless breeders,” Planned Parenthood, no doubt, has helped facilitate the murder of some beautifully created children with the potential to become real champions in life.

Mark Caserta is a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald- Dispatch editorial page.

http://www.herald-dispatch.com/opinions/x459219203/Planned-Parenthood-fulfilling-founders-vision

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To Mark and the Dispatch I say -HERE HERE !!!!!!!!!!!

I would like to add that they recommend a powerful documentary about the racist roots of abortion and the eugenic connections of Planned Parenthood , called Maafa21. ( Clip Below)

The recent uproar about Obama’s plan to nationalize health care has spurred much controversy. Hidden within the thousands of pages in the Bill is language that most scholars and lawyers can barely understand and includes legislation which, has scared many citizens. The mere suggestion that an elderly or dying patient would be required to appear before a GOVERNMENT employee to help them with “end of life issues” has sent Obama’s “Plan” into a tailspin.

What I would like to examine here is not the actual language, or whether the bill is really suggesting some sort of a “death panel” for euthanasia or rationing, but whether this type of idea is possible.

To understand some of what drives the fears, we need not look to far beyond the President’s own pick for his Science Czar, Paul Holdren. In the 1970’s Holdren published many books, several which were co-authored with radical population control guru, Paul Ehrlich. Although Holdren may not have absolutely stated that he wanted to add sterilizing agents to the nation’s water supplies to keep the population down, he did say that if the population did not “voluntarily” decrease, this could be one option. And Holdren should know, because he was on panels and in touch with high level government officials, birth control pushers, pro-abortion enthusiasts, and Zero Population Growth experts who were, in fact, espousing this type of coercion. Holdren stated officially that one of his mentors was a Professor he had by the name of Paul Harrison.

Harrison suggested that infanticide was a legitimate form of population control when he wrote this in his book, The Challenge of Man’s Future, from page 87 . ” In the absence of restraint abortion, sterilization, coitus interruptus, or artificial fertility control, the resultant high birth rate would have to be matched at equilibrium by an equally high death rate. A major contribution to the high death rate could be infanticide, as has been the situation in cultures of the past.“

Holdren asked this question in an article authored by him, which was published a book entitled, No Growth Society,

” Why, then, should we compound our plight by permitting population growth to continue?” He stated clearly that in the 1970’s the US had already exceeded its “optimum population size of 210 million” (pg. 41) and concluded that , ” it should be obvious that the optimum rate of population growth is zero or negative…“

Many people are not aware of the fact that State GOVERNMENTS within the United States openly supported Eugenics. In fact, as early as 1907 Indiana had established the first GOVERNMENT “eugenics court” and the last GOVERNMENT Eugenics court was not closed until 1984, that was in Oregon. These Eugenics Courts, were GOVERNMENT Boards and they required the poor, the infirmed, “feebleminded” and minorities, which, included a large population of black people to appear before them to decide who could and could not pro-create. Remember, Eugenics Boards and GOVERNMENT Boards – were one in the same. Many of these underrepresented people groups were forcibly sterilized and coerced into birth control clinics in order to keep their GOVERNMENT welfare! Recently a well-documented film, called, Maafa21, produced by Life Dynamics in Denton, Texas, has exposed much of this abuse. You can get a copy here: www.maafa21.com. You can also google Eugenics in North Carolina, and read the GOVERNMENT documents which that state has opened up and get just a sneak peak of what a run-away GOVERNMENT board with this kind of power can do to people.

Preview of Maafa21:

One other important fact you may not be aware of is the history of the founding of the first group who fought for the legalization of Euthanasia. Most people are not aware that many of the exact same people who originally founded the idea of legalized euthanasia in the US, were the same ones who were on the Board of Planned Parenthood Founder, Margaret Sanger’s American Birth Control League (ABCL). To examine this closer – all you have to do is get a copy of the New York Times from January 17,1938.

In 1938, just a few years prior to the American Birth Control League (ABCL) changing it’s name to Planned Parenthood, which today is the largest abortion provider in the nation, a group of American Eugenics Society Members and Sanger’s American Birth Control League (ABCL) members got together and formed the National Society for the Legalization of Euthanasia. Heading this pro-euthanasia panel was a man by the name of Charles F. Potter who, in 1938 was also on the ABCL Committee for Planned Parenthood according to a February 1938, New York Times story. Potter was the leader of the First Humanist Society and organized this entire pro-euthanasia group.

Also on this pro-euthanasia board was: Sidney Goldstein who sat on the American Birth Control League’s National Council and later was on Planned Parenthood’s Board of Directors. Another member was Frank H. Hankins who was a managing editor for Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger’s newsletter called the Birth Control Review. Hankins was also an American Eugenics Society member. Another more famous name who was sat on the advisory board of this pro-euthanasia panel, was Julian Huxley, who was a later recipient of a Planned Parenthood award.

Mrs. F. Robertson Jones was also on this panel, she was an ABCL President, wrote for Sanger’s Birth Control Review , was an honorary board member of Planned Parenthood-World Population and a Board of Director of Planned Parenthood. ABCL Citizen’s Committee for Planned Parenthood member, Dr. Foster Kennedy, was also on the pro-euthanasia panel. American Eugenics Society Member, Clarence Cook Little, who was the President of Margaret Sanger’s American Birth Control League (ABCL), at the same time he was on this pro-euthanasia panel. American Eugenics Society founder and friend to Margaret Sanger, Leon Whitney, also sat on this panel. Whitney advocated forced sterilization, was published in Sanger’s Birth Control Review, and openly praised Adolf Hitler for his Nazi effort. Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger was not on this panel, but she was a member of the American Eugenics Society and many of their members were on this panel. Sanger admitted that she gave a speech to the Klu Klu Klan and in her autobiography , she bragged that she received a dozen invites from the Klan for further speeches. Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest Population Control and some would say “Eugenics Control” organization and they receive millions of dollars from the US GOVERNMENT. Care to ask why????

It is important to know this because the “population Control” , “Zero Population Growth”, “Planned Parenthood” crowds are buzzing around this administration and have been heavily involved in government decision making for years. In fact, Sanger’s Planned Parenthood organization receives over $1 million dollars a day from the Government to sterilize and abort this so-called over-populated society. Planned Parenthood’s own research arm, the Alan Guttmacher Institute , reports that Black Minorities receive 5 abortions to every 1 white baby aborted in this nation. Is this coincidence or a form of racist and eugenic targeting? ( Special Note: Alan Guttmacher was a Planned Parenthood President and was also a Vice President of the American Eugenics Society. ) Remember that when they removed the GOVERNMENT Eugenics Courts, they appear to have replaced them with Federal Funding of Population Control Groups, like Planned Parenthood.

So , could we see potential “Death Panels” in Nationalized Health Care, or Co-op Health Care? You Bet! Look at those who have been advocating for euthanasia and abortion for many years and you will see that they receive large amounts of funding from the GOVERNMENT already. Do you really believe that if we can form GOVERNMENT Eugenics Boards which forcibly sterilized thousand of Americans, murder 50 million unborn children through abortion with the blessing and funding of the GOVERNMENT to the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, and form euthanasia panels to legalize the act, that we would never have GOVERNMENT death panels? Then…think again !

Just Sayn !

Also View: Robert Reich: Honest about Death Panels? “If you are very old – we’re gonna let you die !”

Elaine Riddick- Forcefully sterilized at the age of 14, full interview from the film: Maafa21:

Abortion killed at least 203,991 blacks in the 36 states and two cities (New York City and the District of Columbia) that reported abortions by race in 2005, according to the CDC. During that same year, according to the CDC, a total of 198,385 blacks nationwide died from heart disease, cancer, strokes, accidents, diabetes, homicide, and chronic lower respiratory diseases combined. Of these 36 states, Georgia reported the largest number of abortions–18,325–among African Americans

Data as reported in “Health, United States, 2008,” by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, March 2009.

Page 214 lists the leading causes of death for African Americans in 2005. The top seven causes of death are listed below, totaling 198,385 fatalities.

1……….Diseases of heart—74,159
2……….Malignant neoplasms—63,165
3……….Cerebrovascular diseases—17,541
4……….Unintentional injuries—13,652
5……….Diabetes mellitus—12,970
6……….Homicide—8,669
7……….Chronic lower respiratory diseases—8,229

Total: 198, 385

Link to report.

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute( The research arm of Planned Parenthood )
NOTE: Alan Guttmacher was the former Vice President of teh American Eugenics Society and then became a president of Planned Parenthood:

Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States
WHO HAS ABORTIONS?
• Fifty percent of U.S. women obtaining abortions are younger than 25:
Women aged 20–24 obtain 33% of all abortions, and teenagers obtain 17%.[7]
• Thirty-seven percent of abortions occur to black women, 34% to non-
Hispanic white women, 22% to Hispanic women and 8% to women of other
races.**
• Forty-three percent of women obtaining abortions identify themselves as
Protestant, and 27% as Catholic.[3]
• Women who have never married obtain two-thirds of all abortions.[3]
• About 60% of abortions are obtained by women who have one or more

Surprised? Watch a film called: Maafa21 to see just how abortion is targeting African Americans for BLACK GENOCIDE.

Short Clip here:

INTERNATIONAL cooperation is vital if we are to agree a new deal on climate change at the Copenhagen talks in December. But will non-cooperation be the dominant strategy adopted by world leaders?

The problem with the atmosphere is that is a free resource with no ownership. As a consequence it has been overused as a dumping ground for polluting gases which have contributed to levels of atmospheric pollution and climate change. China is now the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions followed by the United States.

International agreements have established an institutional structure for the global communal management of the atmosphere. The United Nation’s Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol attempts to do this with regard to taking actions to reduce greenhouse gases and the effects of global climate change.

In the 1960s Garrett Hardin developed the notion of the ‘Freedom of the Tragedy of the Commons’ where he used the analogy of a common grazing land to illustrate that sharing common resources leads to overuse. Each herdsman as a rational individual seeks to maximise his gain. By adding one more animal to the common land he will gain, however, the overgrazing caused by the additional one will be shared by all herdsmen.

The rational herdsman concludes that he would benefit from adding another animal to the common land. However, this is the conclusion of all the herdsmen which ultimately leads to the ‘tragedy’ as each herdsmen is locked into a system which compels him to increase his herd without limit.

Hardin uses the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ to explain the problem of pollution, which results in emitting polluting emissions into the natural environment. The polluter as a ‘rational man’ will come to the same conclusion as the herdsmen, that the cost of polluting can be less than the treatment or abatement of polluting emissions.

Hardin concludes that “Freedom on the commons brings ruin to all” and that “… we are locked into a system of “fouling our own nest” so long as we behave as independent rational, free-enterprises”. His solution was “mutual coercion mutually agreed upon”.

Hardin’s analogy has been criticised as being a false analogy because it ignores the powerful sense of community obligation which could exist and act as a deterrent for abuse of such a common grazing land.

Communal management can be effective if there is an agreement to cooperate to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the case of climate change. However, there is a risk that one nation will ‘free ride’ and not fulfil its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

International negotiations can be viewed as a game which results in a “Prisoner’s Dilemma”.
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The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies (defects from the other) for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent (cooperates with the other), the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In the case of climate change the developed and developing nations are the prisoners. If each co-operate then we would be spared from runaway climate change and global temperatures exceeding 2 degrees centigrade. However, non-cooperation gives one nation a greater payoff.

For non-cooperation would result in one of the nations saving investing billion of dollars in technology to reduce emissions. In this case the nation that does not cooperate would be a free-rider and enjoy any benefits from the other nations which reduce GHGs without having to bear the cost. The dominant strategy for each nation would be one of non-cooperation.

Unlike the Prisoners Dilemma, the climate crisis will means that in the long-term there will be no winners. Europe Is attempting to reassert its international leadership by offering to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by up to 95% by 2050 and by 30% by 2020 if a climate change pact is agreed in Copenhagen. However, US, China, and India have yet to unveil targets or specific figures for a new deal on climate change.

We are already perilously close to the brink of climate catastrophe and developing nations have little room to grow out of poverty. If we fail to produce a new deal climate deal then it will truly be a tragedy of the commons.

© Gary Haq 2009
To comment click on the title.
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President Obama has requested that Americans volunteer their “Service” to worthy organizations. One such organization the Government finds worthy is Planned Parenthood. On the website service.gov you can locate Planned Parenthood asking for your “service” to fight all those nasty pro-lifers who just want to participate in the 40 days for Life prayer campaign.

UPDATE:

(LifeNews.com) Reports that after hearing this news, The director of the 40 Days for Life, David Bereit, grassroots pro-life campaign is not happy about the new volunteerism web site, Serve.gov, that the Obama administration has put together that promotes pro-abortion groups.

“This past Friday, President Obama spoke at a forum on volunteerism at Texas A&M University in College Station — the same community where 40 Days for Life began,” he said in an email to LifeNews.com. “His speech was delivered just over one mile away from the site of the first-ever 40 Days for Life campaign back in 2004.”

“During his remarks, President Obama promoted a government web site that identifies various volunteer opportunities for people,” Bereit continued.

“While that web site does include information about some pro-life organizations, I was more than a bit miffed to learn that one of the posted ‘volunteer opportunities’ comes from the Houston-based Planned Parenthood operation that runs the abortion facility in College Station,” he said.

The recruitment post asks young people to do “public service” work for the abortion business and pleads, “We need your help with a very simple but honorable job.”

Bereit responds: “The so-called honorable job? Abortion escorts — specifically to counter the effectiveness of 40 Days for Life.“

“Planned Parenthood describes 40 Days for Life vigil participants as people who ‘want to deceive our clients with misinformation and lies then prevent them from entering our health center for care,’” he noted. “That in itself, of course, is an extreme example of misinformation.”

“But this shows why 40 Days for Life needs more faithful volunteers for the simple and truly honorable task of praying for an end to abortion outside the very places where this evil is practiced,” he concluded.

Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider in this nation. They have been accused of covering statutory rape Here or Here

and below:

Here is an explanation of “service” according to the website: Serve.gov:

The President has said that the challenges America faces are unprecedented, and that we need to build a new foundation for economic growth in America. The Administration has begun this work with dramatic new investments in education, health care and clean energy, but we cannot do this alone here in Washington. Economic recovery is as much about what you’re doing in your communities as what we’re doing in Washington – and it’s going to take all of us, working together.

Serve.gov is your online resource for not only finding volunteer opportunities in your community, but also creating your own. Use Serve.gov to help you do your part. America’s foundation will be built one community at a time – and it starts with you.

Planned Parenthood has also been accused of accepting donations for racist motives:

Serve.gov is managed by the Corporation for National and Community Service.

So I did a quick peak as to who is on their Board and now it all makes sense:

Stephen Goldsmith served on The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancywith Planned Parenthood

Julie Fisher Cummings was a board member of this organization Michigan Women’s Foundation, and received funds from Planned Parenthood

Laysha Ward, in 2000 Ward was appointed director of the Target Foundation, also known as Dayton Hudson, a huge contributor to Planned Parenthood for many years . The Target Foundation historically provided an annual grant of $18,000 to Planned Parenthood in Minnesota .

In addition, A press release from New York’s Mayor’s Office also validates that volunterring at a Planned Parenthood Office will win your brownie “Service” points. That release reads:
MAYOR BLOOMBERG LAUNCHES NYC CIVIC CORPS TO MOBILIZE NEW YORKERS TO VOLUNTEER AND ADDRESS THE CITY’S GREATEST CHALLENGES ..“Today we launch the NYC Civic Corps – a group of nearly 200 caring, dynamic people who will lead our efforts to help more nonprofits and public agencies tap more volunteers to produce more results for our neighbors in need. That’s the promise of NYC Service,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “With the launch of this exciting new initiative, we take another major step forward in our efforts to answer President Obama’s call for a ‘new era of service.’ I want to thank the Corporation for National and Community Service for its extraordinary partnership, the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund and the Lizzie and Jonathan M. Tisch Foundation for their generosity, and the nearly 200 NYC Civic Corps members here today for their willingness to step up and serve this City.”
The 57 public and nonprofit organizations receiving assistance this year are:Planned Parenthood of New York City, Inc.

A new documentary about Planned Parenthood claims that Planned Parenthood targets African Americans with BLACK GENOCIDE:

It is called: Maafa21 and this is just a clip of the full 2 hour film:

Maafa 21 exposes a plan to create “racial purity” that began 150 years ago and is still being carried out right now.

It’s about the ties between the Nazis, the American eugenics movement and today’s “family planning” cartel.

It’s about elitism, secret agendas, treachery and corruption at the highest levels of political and corporate America.

Maafa 21 will show you things the media has been hiding and politicians don’t want you to know.

So if you’re ready to see the real agenda behind “choice,” fasten your seatbelts …IT’S SHOCK AND AWE TIME!

Shocking fact:

In a recent New York Times interview , Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told Emily Bazelon that,

“…I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth

in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

Makes you wonder how this government could be allowing Planned Parenthood to be listed as a legitimate organization which one should “volunteer” for. Take a look at the abortion stats and the fact that Planned Parenthood locates in African American communities and then watch Maafa21 in full, and you will be outraged that our government would be doing this. But, then perhaps that is exactly why they are doing this. Hmmm- Just Sayn

Here is another story worth a read: Part II: Obama Controls Your Televison Set — Search and Ye Shall Find…Left-Wing Advocacy

Gloria Feldt, former president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America recognizes Sanger’s involvement with eugenics as “the most difficult stain” to remove from Sanger’s legacy.

In a recent lecture, titled “Convictions to Action: Margaret Sanger’s Legacy and Leadership Lessons”, Feldt stated “.

Those opposed to women’s equality in any form will always use it against her and the movement she founded, even though she more than redeemed herself and was among the first U.S leaders to denounce Hitler.”The lecture took place at the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum on September 13.

Feldt continued the lecture by failing to show Sanger’s connections to both Eugenics Members and Thinkers as well as racists. She failed to show how Sanger tried to merge her “Birth Control Review” with the publication of the American Eugenics Society. She failed to show how many of Sanger’s Board members with the American Birth Control League which later became known as Planned Parenthood were official members and presidents of the American Eugenics Society and some had made racist statements. She failed to mention that the dearly beloved former Planned Parenthood President, Alan Guttmacher was the Vice President of the American Eugenics Society.

She failed to mention how muddied up Sanger and Planned Parenthood were with Eugenics.

But- A new documentary called: Maafa21 does state these things and MORE ! Maafa 21 fully documents Planned Parenthood’s eugenic past and points to Black Genocide through abortion as racism. To get the FULL Story about Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood with regard to Eugenics, get a coy of Maafa21 here: www.maafa21.com

( Preview of Maafa21)

Maafa 21 Rocks!
by producer Mark Crutcher

October 6, 2009

By any measure, the response to Maafa 21 has been astonishing.

It is routinely being called “stunning,” “breathtaking,” and “jaw-dropping.” Many viewers have said they were left “speechless” by what they saw and several have told us that it filled them with anger. One African-American pastor and 1960’s civil rights activist said, “I had always been suspicious about some of this stuff, but this film connects the dots in a way I never really understood before.” Another described it as “lightening in a bottle” and said that for the first time in his life has a tool to educate the African-American community about the abortion lobby’s real agenda.

It has never been a secret that one of the pro-life movement’s biggest frustrations has been its inability to effectively recruit the African-American community. Despite the fact that polls consistently show that blacks are more pro-life than whites, that reality has not translated into them joining the battle in significant numbers.

But with the launch of Maafa 21, that is changing and even though we are just getting started the message is spreading like wildfire. The internet and YouTube are buzzing with Maafa 21; one conservative radio talk show purchased 750 copies for his audience and it has been shown twice in the Capitol Visitor Center Theater in Washington. This was done through the help of Congressman Trent Franks and, after the showing, one African-American woman who works as an aid to a pro-choice member of the Congressional Black Caucus said, “I was moved to tears. I came in here with an opposite mindset and I am leaving with another. My life has been changed forever.”

Another example of the power of Maafa 21 was seen when Rev. Clenard Childress assembled a team of black street activists who gave out 400 copies of Maafa 21 to credentialed members of the NAACP at their recent four-day national convention. The response was incredible with many people taking the DVD back to their hotel room to watch at night and then returning the next day to ask what they could do to help. In fact, one of those who did exactly that was an NAACP attorney. Clenard also found strong support among the younger convention goers and one professor at a historically black college said he was going to make Maafa 21 part of his curriculum.

One thing that made Clenard’s NAACP effort so successful was a statement by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Just days before the convention began, she was quoted in the New York Times saying, “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

Think about that for a moment. Here is the most radically pro-abortion member of the United States Supreme Court admitting that the driving force behind the legalization of abortion was not “women’s rights” or “privacy” or “reproductive freedom” as we’ve been told. She says that the motivation for it was EUGENICS, which is precisely what Maafa 21 documents! We could not have bought a public relations victory like that for a billion dollars and here it was being given to us for free. Clenard told me that whenever his team repeated that quote to the convention participants, even those who were the most skeptical about Maafa 21 were suddenly quite interested. It seems they were aware of who the “population” was that Ginsburg and her cronies did not “want to have too many of.”

We are especially excited about how Maafa 21 is opening doors for us into areas where the pro-life message has seldom been heard and often unwelcomed. Liberal “peace and justice” groups are starting to have Maafa 21 showings on college campuses. And some “Afro-Centric” groups who are not necessarily Christian and have generally been disinterested in the abortion issue, are now actively promoting Maafa 21.

An example of this is a California man named Keidi Obi Awadu. Keidi is the founder of Black Star Media and the Living in Black Radio Network and he has an international audience. Already, he has personally bought over 100 copies of Maafa 21 and has helped us secure someone to distribute the film in England. Keidi has also become instrumental in an effort to have it shown at predominately black colleges and universities across America. To put it mildly, Keidi and his people are on fire for Maafa 21.

Another thing we are finding is that Maafa 21 is not simply impacting the African-American community. We are already seeing whites–especially those who are high school and college aged–becoming outraged and then activated by what it documents.

Those who are familiar with Life Dynamics know that we have been responsible for some of the most explosive revelations about the abortion industry in the history of this battle. In just two high-profile examples, we uncovered the lucrative trade in baby body parts and we later exposed the abortion industry’s nationwide pedophile protection racket. But as enormous as those stories were, I can honestly tell you that I have never seen anything have the impact of Maafa 21. Although we are only at the beginning, it is clear that this film is going to grow our movement and change our image for the better. It is also bringing a fresh level of energy and excitement by recruiting the reinforcements our battle-weary troops have desperately needed for years.

So stay tuned. Like I said, we’re just getting started. By the way, if you haven’t seen Maafa 21 yet, check out the two-minute trailer for it at Maafa21.com. That website also contains some insightful comments from previous viewers.

Too Many (Other) People

by William Norman Grigg
July 20,2009

As a left-leaning Rutgers law professor in the early 1970s, Ruth Bader Ginsburg thought that the Roe v. Wade abortion decision was the product of “concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations we don’t want too many of,” she recalled in a recent New York Times Magazine interview.

Her expectation was that the purported right to abortion created in Roe “was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them.”

Ginsburg doesn’t specify which parts of the human population “we” should cull, or how the creation of an abortion “right” would necessarily be a prelude to creation of a system in which abortion would be required in some circumstances. She told the Times that the question was effectively rendered moot by the Supreme Court’s Harris v. McRae decision, which upheld a ban on Medicaid funding of abortion. That decision, handed down in 1980, indicated that her “perception” of the issue “had been altogether wrong,” Ginsburg concludes.

But this means that there was an interval of roughly seven years during which Ginsburg, a well-informed and influential academic, believed that America was creating a eugenicist system in which abortion would help reduce “undesirable” populations – however those populations would be defined. This was what Roe had wrought, Ginsburg believed for several years, and if she ever experienced misgivings about it, she managed to keep them private.

Another question worth examining is this: Where did Ginsburg – a rising star in academe long before being tapped to fill the Rosa Klebb seat on the Supreme Court – get the impression that American policy-making elites were discussing the use of welfare subsidies to bring about the attrition of “undesirable” populations?

If I may be permitted a modest venture in speculation, I’d suggest that Ginsburg, sometime in the 1960s or 1970s, became at least superficially acquainted with the writings of John Holdren or of like-minded people in the most militant branch of the population control movement.

In 1977, Mr. Holdren was a young academic who helped anti-natalist guru Paul Ehrlich and his wife Anne write an arrestingly horrible book entitled Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment. Today, Holdren is Barack Obama’s “Science Czar,” in which capacity he counsels the president regarding the role of science in public policy. This relationship has a certain Strangelovian undercurrent, given Holdren’s enthusiasm for eugenicist and totalitarian methods of population “management.”

In a passage that reads eerily like the direct counterpoint to Ginsburg’s musings about the reduction of undesirable populations, Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote:

“If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility – just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns….“

The book offers similarly casual endorsements of “involuntary” and “coercive” fertility control,” including the mandatory implantation of a Norplant-style capsule that “might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.”

The authors endorse the creation of “a Planetary regime” in charge of regulating all human economic activity and interactions with the environment and the “power to enforce the agreed limits” on human population growth through whatever means might be necessary – including compelled abortion, involuntary individual sterilization, or even mass involuntary sterilization through the infiltration of sterilizing agents into public water supplies.

That last deranged suggestion appears in several of Paul Ehrlich’s other books, including his (if you will excuse the expression) seminal 1967 alarmist tract The Population Bomb.

As someone who shared a full authorial credit on the book, Holdren bears full responsibility for the content of Ecoscience. His militantly anti-natalist views are easily as repulsive as anything promoted by white supremacist groups, albeit all the more dangerous for being more inclusive in their misanthropy. His writings would have been uncovered in the routine vetting process following his nomination, but they never came up during his confirmation hearing.

What is genuinely unsettling, however, is this: The totalitarian prescriptions offered in Ecoscience were squarely in the mainstream of the Stygian sewer called the population control movement.

In 1967, sociologist, demographer, and population control heavyweight Kingsley Davis published an essay in Science magazine observing that “the social structure and economy must be changed before a deliberate reduction in the birthrate can be achieved” in the West. He urged governments to subsidize voluntary abortion and sterilization and restructure their tax systems to discourage both marriage and childbirth.

Davis’s recommendations apparently inspired Frederick Jaffe, Vice President of Planned Parenthood, when he composed a 1969 memorandum intended for use as a template for anti-natalist efforts.

Jaffe’s memorandum, a version of which was published in the October 1970 issue of Family Planning Perspectives, organized recommended social policies under four headings: “Social Constraints,” “Economic Deterrents/Incentives,” “Social Controls,” and “Housing Policies.”

Like Paul Ehrlich, Jaffe suggested the placement of “fertility control agents in [the] water supply“; this recommendation was filed, oddly enough, under “Social Constraints.” “Social Controls,” on the other hand, included such measures as “compulsory abortion of all out-of-wedlock pregnancies,” “compulsory sterilization of all who have two children except for a few who would be allowed three,” and the issuance of “stock certificate-type permits for children.” (Nearly every radical population control system is built around the idea of a government-issued “permit” or “license” to have children.)

These totalitarian measures were widely and unabashedly promoted in the literature of the population control movement at precisely the time that the Roe decision was (if, once again, you’ll excuse the expression) gestating in the court system.

“How can we reduce reproduction?” wrote Garrett Hardin in a 1970 Science magazine article entitled “Parenthood: Right or Privilege?” “Persuasion must be tried first…. Mild coercion may soon be accepted – for example, tax rewards for reproductive non-proliferation. But in the long run, a purely voluntary system selects for its own failure: noncooperators out-breed cooperators. So what restraints shall we employ? A policeman under every bed? Jail sentences? Compulsory abortion? Infanticide?… Memories of Nazi Germany rise and obscure our vision.”

Oh, those dreadful Nazis: If only they hadn’t given totalitarian eugenics such a bad name….

Hardin was one of many anti-natalist luminaries – the list included Kingsley Davis, Margaret Mead, Paul Ehrlich, and sundry Planned Parenthood leaders – who endorsed the 1971 manifesto The Case for Compulsory Birth Control by Edgar R. Chasteen. That book offered one-stop shopping for policy-makers seeking draconian population management methods.

Chasteen was emphatic on two points: First, ruling elites had to indoctrinate the public into accepting the idea that “parenthood [is] a privilege extended by society, rather than a right“; and second, that in the interests of public relations, supporters of that totalitarian perspective needed to settle on “a name other than compulsory birth control.”

Essentially the same program was endorsed by Dr. Norman Myers, an adviser to the World Bank and various UN agencies, in his peculiar 1990 volume The Gaia Atlas of Future Worlds.

“Government population-control policies using strong economic and social incentives have been effective in China and Singapore,” wrote Myers, who commended China in particular for using “strong social pressure” to control its population. Myers didn’t to dwell on the fact that the Chinese government employs severe punishments – prison time, destruction of homes, retaliation against family members and co-workers – for women who have “unauthorized” children.

Myers suggested a variation on the same concept behind the “cap-and-trade” carbon credit system employing government-issued birth permits. Under his plan, couples would “be issued with a warrant entitling them to have a single child…. This warrant might even carry commercial value, allowing individuals to decide not to have children at all and to sell their entitlements to others wanting larger families.“

Arguably the most astonishing variant on this approach was proposed in 1994, just prior to the UN’s International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt.

In a book entitled Too Many People, Sir Roy Calne, a noted British physician, proposed a universal minimum childbearing age of 25, and a strict two-child quota. Those seeking the government-dispensed “privilege” of having children would have to pass a state-mandated parenting class and receive the appropriate “reproduction license.” Those who violate those restrictions would lose their children and face Chinese-style economic sanctions and criminal punishments.

Calne also suggested the development of an engineered sterility pathogen – he called it the “O virus” – that could be administered to women world-wide as a vaccine.

These malignant proposals are not just flatulent thought-bubbles blown in languid speculation by fringe eccentrics in the academic realm: With the exception – as far as we know – of mass involuntary sterilization through covert chemical or biological warfare, every method of coercive population control described above has been implemented somewhere with the material aid of the United Nations and its affiliates, and the practical support of organizations such as Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes International.

Every argument on behalf of state-imposed population control rejects the concept of individual self-ownership and assumes that human lives – individually and in the aggregate – are a resource to be managed by society’s supervisors on behalf of the “common good.” And, as Ruth Bader Ginsburg correctly intuited in 1973, the Roe vs. Wade decision was a triumph, albeit an incomplete one, for the cause of eugenicist population control.

Although it was swaddled in the language of individual empowerment, the Roe decision was a dramatic victory for collectivism: It enshrined, in what our rulers are pleased to call the “law,” the assumption that a human individual is a “person” only when that status is conferred by the government.

While Harry Blackmun’s opinion in Roe pointedly avoided the question of when “personhood” begins, it emphatically made it clear that, for purposes of “law,” that the term doesn’t apply to any human individual in his or her pre-natal stage of development. This, not the liberty to procure an abortion, is the real gravamen, or central legal finding, in the Roe decision: It put the government in charge of defining who is, and isn’t a person.

As judges like to say, the matter of reducing “undesirable” populations is reaching “ripeness” now. Barack Obama’s administration is eagerly expanding the government-dependent population and preparing to impose centralized “universal” health care on our society. And while all of this is going on, John Holdren, unabashed advocate of totalitarian population control, is in a position to whisper unthinkable thoughts into Obama’s ear.

Author: William Norman Grigg publishes the Pro Libertate blog and hosts the Pro Libertate radio program.

To learn more on this issue watch this film: Maafa21 . Here are some clips, trust me that the entire 2hour film will motivate you and educate you on how racist these people are and who they are targeting:

Most people think eugenics is something that happened in the past with Hitler. But the US is loaded with Eugenic elitists who want to dictate to the rest of us who should be allowed to procreate. After viewing a dynamic film on this topic: Maafa21, I recently came across some interesting posts online that prove this point:

From The Examiner in an article entitled: What IF abortion were outlawed in Alabama tomorrow?

Author Whitney Bell, quotes known eugenic supporter and Planned Parenthood award winner: Garrett Hardin as stating, “Society does not need more children; but it does need more loved children. Quite literally, we cannot afford unloved children – but we pay heavily for them every day. There should not be the slightest communal concern when a woman elects to destroy the life of her thousandth-of-an-ounce embryo. But all society should rise up in alarm when it hears that a baby that is not wanted is about to be born.“

Emphasizing the fact that the majority of abortions are performed on BLACK WOMEN Bell makes this alarming prediction, “My prediction is that a high percentage of the children who would’ve been aborted would be unwanted and wind up in the already overcrowded foster care system, where a lot of them would grow up to be criminals. Come on, tell me I’m wrong.”

CRIMINALS:??? Come On ! In fact, that was a ‘code word” used by Margaret Sanger and her Eugenics Buddies. “Idiots, Criminals, Inferior, Weeds“. An elitist point of view states that they are the only ones who should have ANY rights to procreate and they (elitists) should dictate to the rest of how how many kids we can have.

In the documentary: Maafa21 they show proof that the eugenics leadership in this nation as late as the 60’s were developing a plot to lace our food and water supplies with sterilization drugs so they could control population. Their target: URBAN NEIGHBORHOODS…surprised?

In another outrageous post, “Should everyone be able to have a child?” , responders said this:

Lord no. People should be required to be licensed before they breed. There simply are so many stupid, mentally ill people that have absolutely no business passing on their genes simply because they have the selfish desire to reproduce.

Steve:
You echoed my thoughts on this item totally, that certain segments of society should not be able to have children…

~Dennis Junior~

…you imply the concept of eugenics is all bad. Yes Hitler was a very intelligent nut case with a twisted goal using enforced eugenics. But the real world purpose of eugenics is all good.

I would want people to be forced to take the birth control shot in the US before people are allowed to pick up their welfare check. Also, if you’re on probation, I feel you should need to show up for the shot. Basically, people already in trouble in the US shouldn’t be allowed to have kids until they “fix” themslves.

-Anthony, LA, CA

Anthony, I agree with you. The injection is good idea–wish it could be put into legislation!

If you look at the global population problem, no one should be having any children, at least for a decade. Additionally, affluent countries where litters of children are encouraged, should limit the number of children per person and those who carry a high risk of complicated pregnancy should be discouraged. However, I will not go as far to say that rights to have children should be controlled by the gov’t, any more than the right to a safe abortion should be.

My I suggest two reasonably fair options.
The first could be a nanny society where only those suitable can have kids but everyone including the less productive members are looked after…The real problem is that taxpayers are currently forced to pay the child benefit for those unsuitable parents.

I have to say I am NOT surprised by these comments. The Eugenics Societies and the Margaret Sanger/ Planned Parenthood types have educated their dupes well on this issue. Maafa21 documents how the American Eugenic Society paid ministers to preach EUGENIC SERMONS in churches and many of them did this. SHOCKING!

Maafa21 also documents how so-called “Pro-Choice” Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger, called for parents to have a QUOTE: LICENSE TO BREED. She wanted all would be parents to go before her eugenic boards to request a “PERMIT TO BREED“. So much for Choice , huh?

Sanger also called for those who were poor and what she considered to be “morons‘ , etc to be shipped to colonies where they would live in “Farms and Open Spaces” dedicated to brainwashing these so-called “inferior types” into having what Sanger called, “Better moral conduct”. MORE SHOCKING!

These eugenic attitudes come from those who promote “CHOICE” . They bury their racism under words like “planning” and “Choice” and they get away with that kind of deceptive language because the elitists know that Planned Parenthood is accomplishing what EUGENICS alone could not. They have eliminated over 35% of the African American community. Sanger’s “NEGRO PROJECT” laid out the plan that we still see in effect through Planned Parenthood today!

Get the documentary MAAFA21, watch it and re-read the ignorant quotes I posted above, and you will see that what Maafa 21 says about Eugenics is still happening in America.

If you think that EUGENICS and RACISM are history – THINK AGAIN: Watch this: Maafa21.

A key phrase for those interested in economy and ecology, coined by Garrett Hardin in 1968 – refers to the fact that when people act in rational economic (private) self-interest with respect to common (public) resources, the common resources are quickly exhausted, leaving everyone resourceless. Teaches us that consumption for private gain and ensuring access to public resources require thinking about sustainability and responsible consumption.

see: Wikipedia and Fred Pearce’s recent book When the Rivers Run Dry, which applies the idea to today’s global water crisis.

Those suffering from the Malthusian mentality never seem to give up. Today’s “Subverse” is proof of that-

At the time of our independence, our population was 350 million. Today, it is almost 1.2 billion. Fortunately, food production has more than tripled in the same period thanks mainly to the Green Revolution; hence there have been no mass famines. Though fertility rates have admittedly come down from over six children per woman to around three, there are still about 18 million people added to our population every year. They have to be fed, educated and housed. This is an unsustainable burden on the Indian economy. It has led to massive environmental damage. Our exploding cities and a growing culture of violence can also be largely traced to our increasing numbers. A major priority of whichever government comes to power must be to make greater efforts towards stabilising our population growth and promoting family planning. It would be a great pity if the next government thought otherwise.

There are some people for whom man is not man – a living entity with free will, intellect, productive ability etc – but some kind of animal. Man for them is a sub-human species who has to be controlled, fed, educated, clothed, his ass wiped, neutered… Others exist who know that such a view will not be palatable to many, and so they airbrush it and claim that man is indeed human and free and productive etc, but he’s not “really free”, and to make sure that he’s “really free”, he should be controlled. I am describing control freaks of the “positive liberty” type, but I won’t write about them today. This quote from Adam Smith that I borrowed from one of many Cafe Hayek posts applies to them however-

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.

What I will be writing about is Garrett Hardin’s essay – “The Tragedy of the Commons” – because he too is a Malthusian. While his essay is more famous for its economic thought experiment which gave the essay its title, its his thesis which should be attacked. He writes-

[T]he concern here is with the important concept of a class of human problems which can be called “no technical solution problems,” and, more specifically, with the identification and discussion of one of these.

It is easy to show that the class is not a null class. Recall the game of tick-tack-toe. Consider the problem, “How can I win the game of tick-tack-toe?” It is well known that I cannot, if I assume (in keeping with the conventions of game theory) that my opponent understands the game perfectly. Put another way, there is no “technical solution” to the problem. I can win only by giving a radical meaning to the word “win.” I can hit my opponent over the head; or I can drug him; or I can falsify the records. Every way in which I “win” involves, in some sense, an abandonment of the game, as we intuitively understand it. (I can also, of course, openly abandon the game–refuse to play it. This is what most adults do.)

The class of “No technical solution problems” has members. My thesis is that the “population problem,” as conventionally conceived, is a member of this class. How it is conventionally conceived needs some comment. It is fair to say that most people who anguish over the population problem are trying to find a way to avoid the evils of overpopulation without relinquishing any of the privileges they now enjoy. They think that farming the seas or developing new strains of wheat will solve the problem–technologically. I try to show here that the solution they seek cannot be found. The population problem cannot be solved in a technical way, any more than can the problem of winning the game of tick-tack-toe.

When I mentioned him in brief last time, I called his essay “chilling.” And its not just because of his conclusions, but the way he approaches them-

We can make little progress in working toward optimum population size until we explicitly exorcize the spirit of Adam Smith in the field of practical demography. In economic affairs, The Wealth of Nations (1776) popularized the “invisible hand,” the idea that an individual who “intends only his own gain,” is, as it were, “led by an invisible hand to promote . . . the public interest” (5). Adam Smith did not assert that this was invariably true, and perhaps neither did any of his followers. But he contributed to a dominant tendency of thought that has ever since interfered with positive action based on rational analysis, namely, the tendency to assume that decisions reached individually will, in fact, be the best decisions for an entire society. If this assumption is correct it justifies the continuance of our present policy of laissez-faire in reproduction. If it is correct we can assume that men will control their individual fecundity so as to produce the optimum population. If the assumption is not correct, we need to reexamine our individual freedoms to see which ones are defensible.

Here’s how he does it-

1. The “population problem,” as “conventionally conceived,” has no technical solution; the world we live in is finite – forget space – and such a world can only support a finite population.
2. The “tragedy of the commons” applies to population just like it does to property – people breed without paying the full costs of their actions.
3. “The morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.” Morality has nothing to do with the nature of man per se – it depends on the “system” – the when and the where.
4. We live in a “welfare state” where the following is not the case-
   

   If each human family were dependent only on its own resources; if the children of improvident parents starved to death; if, thus, overbreeding brought its own “punishment” to the germ line–then there would be no public interest in controlling the breeding of families.

5. We cannot appeal to people’s conscience – tell them to control breeding for the common good. It can have a strange effect on the cycle – “to make such an appeal is to set up a selective system that works toward the elimination of conscience from the race.” Further, in the short term, it has “pathogenic effects.”
6. His solution – “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon.” If people are not willing to control themselves, their right to breed will have to be controlled. That’s how the “problem” can be solved – by redefining it. By redefining “freedom.”

His chilling conclusion-

Every new enclosure of the commons involves the infringement of somebody’s personal liberty. Infringements made in the distant past are accepted because no contemporary complains of a loss. It is the newly proposed infringements that we vigorously oppose; cries of “rights” and “freedom” fill the air. But what does “freedom” mean? When men mutually agreed to pass laws against robbing, mankind became more free, not less so. Individuals locked into the logic of the commons are free only to bring on universal ruin; once they see the necessity of mutual coercion, they become free to pursue other goals. I believe it was Hegel who said, “Freedom is the recognition of necessity.”

The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize, is the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all. At the moment, to avoid hard decisions many of us are tempted to propagandize for conscience and responsible parenthood. The temptation must be resisted, because an appeal to independently acting consciences selects for the disappearance of all conscience in the long run, and an increase in anxiety in the short.

The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon. “Freedom is the recognition of necessity”–and it is the role of education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning the freedom to breed. Only so, can we put an end to this aspect of the tragedy of the commons.

There are many ways Hardin’s thesis can be attacked. The first thing to do would be to question the existence of a “problem.” Why is population a problem and to whom? If the “tragedy of the commons” does apply due to “over population”, the problem would not be the population per se but the system of government that lets it happen. And here I think he’s right about the welfare state. I am not talking about letting kids die, like animals do, but most families do consider the costs of bringing a new child into the world; its only in a welfare state where they don’t have to bear the related costs. The collapse of the welfare state and the creation of a rights-based one would fix the “problem”, or at least reduce its size.

Then, there’s his definition of ethics. You cannot divorce morality from the nature of man. And you cannot bring in a deontological theory of ethics and convert it into “administrative law.” The final attack would be on his definition of “rights.” He assumes that rights come and go as time passes on – this view is a consequence of his ethical outlook. Nothing of that sort happens. The concept of rights – its definition – is immutable. Its just that we have been paying more attention to it now than before. The rights of two people do not clash. The statement – “every new enclosure of the commons involves the infringement of somebody’s personal liberty” – is completely wrong. The fact that you used something for free because the person owning it didn’t mind, or wasn’t allowed to assert his ownership rights, doesn’t mean that when the person does become careful about his rights, he’s infringing on your personal liberty. But this does not apply to population – you or your child are not living at someone else’s expense by the very fact of your being alive. You are not a burden on anyone. Thus the question of applying “mutual coercion” – “abandoning the freedom to breed” – does not arise.

To those who accept the Welfare State as a political axiom, Hardin’s essay might be an unwelcome reality check – actions do have costs. But it would not surprise me if they adopted his thesis without questioning it, if not now then in a few decades. Like Hardin, their theory of justice and that of rights is a warped one. And they would see it as the only way freedom can be saved – “curtail freedom to save it.” That its illogical – contradictory – wouldn’t bother them. This, is a problem.

“Freedom is the recognition of necessity” – it does seem like something Hegel, the irrational worshiper of the State, would say. Freedom is the recognition of the nature of man.

When I started this blog last May, I was a blog virgin. I had never blogged let alone read many blogs.

A woman near and dear to me had suggested I start a blog on a whim, noting that as I love to write so much, and academic writing is such a slow, cumbersome, rule-bound process, I should give blogging a try. With visions of pornified MySpace pages in my head, I was wary of the virtual style of communication. I wondered if my convictions that writing can serve as an important form of feminist activism and that theorizing (a la hooks) is a libratory practice could translate to the online universe.

I didn’t realize until diving into the blog waters how rich, vibrant, and diverse the blogosphere is. Being a feminist, I gravitated towards the deep pool of feminist blogs. However, I soon hit some rocks as I swam through the sometimes murky sometimes far too facile waters. I was variously buoyed up and drowned, wondering when and if feminism might serve as a floating device rather than an anchor. Among exhilarating surfs through intellectually critical prose, I was dismayed to find some serious pollution in the waters. White privilege clogged the atmosphere. Cisgender perspectives, transphobia, and heteronormanativty seeped into the discourse. Attacks and vehemence flowed, sometimes in a trickle, sometimes in torrents (and not only from foul trolls, but from feminist bloggers themselves).

As I kept writing and kept reading, I found myself variously exhilarated and depressed. The new ideas, the critical work being done in virtual spaces, the sense of community – all these were akin to a thrilling white water ride. But, the in-fighting, the ‘waves’ attacking one another, the highlighting of some voices and the silencing of others, these were like drowning yet again in all the problems that have plagued feminism for so long.

From the start, I had intended to invite both bloggers and non-bloggers to write at Professor, What if. Motivated both at a practical level and a theoretical one, I hoped to be able to keep my blog chugging along during the heat of the semester and full-time teaching AND to open up my little space to a diversity of voices. However, thanks to my communication with other feminist bloggers, I have come to see that the guest blogging paradigm can be exploitive. Further, it can serve to keep the ‘big fish’ firmly at the top of the food chain as the little minnows struggle not to be swallowed up.

I still have hope that sharing our virtual spaces and voices can be productive and transformative, but I realize now that these waters require very careful navigation if the intention is to keep everyone afloat. This concern brings the infamous essay “Lifeboat Ethics” to mind with its chilling premise there is not enough room in the boat for everyone. As its subtitle, “The Case against Helping the Poor,” indicates, the thesis purports we must govern our actions by the ethics of the lifeboat and realize there is not resources for everyone in the world to thrive.

As feminist bloggers, we must work against such a paradigm and endeavor to keep everyone afloat. Both those that request guest posts and those who agree to be guest bloggers should aim to keep everyone in feminist blog waters alive and well. Unlike that final sinking scene in the Titanic where those in the water are frantically pushing others down into the water to save themselves, I hope we can find a way to swim, rather than sink, together.

The first guest post will speak to some of these concerns, addressing the worrisome ways the feminist blogosphere functions as an empire, or lifeboat, rather than a flotation device. Do we want to be the colonizers, the colonized, or do away with the imperial process altogether? Do we want to launch a select few to safe land while letting others drown? While most feminists would immediately voice disdain for imperialist practices that exploit and oppress, I think we need to think very carefully about how our own actions sometimes further entrench, rather than erode, systems of power and privilege.

In a way, can the run amuck free market system and American consumption be applied to the tragedy of the commons?  Nonetheless, I believe this is an important quote from Garrett Hardin in his The Tragedy of the Commons:

Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all….

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A human being is naturally greedy, looking after his own interests before those of others. According to Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons, humans would rather seek temporary gain with long-term disadvantages than suffer little inconveniences for long-term gain. But unfortunately, the majority who contribute to this tragedy are not aware of what they are doing. Before reading this paper, I myself was not aware of this problem, and honestly, I still do not know how to avert this tragedy.

Our population problem is not diminishing. Instead, it continues to grow and grow. But our world is finite and our resources limited. Therefore, each person’s share in this world must lessen with the increase in human number. But what is happening now? Each person grabs whatever resources he can for himself and his family. As a result, imbalance is gradually becoming evident in our society, and soon, in our world. We, as human beings, keep doing what we want instead of what we need: reproducing and satisfying our own needs. We increase our demand from this earth’s resources yet we refuse to sacrifice even the most unnecessary inconveniences. Basically, human population continues to increase while the world’s resources continue to decrease. This is tragedy in itself when we think of the generations that will follow.

Illegal logging is one of this topic’s most relevant environmental issues. Illegal loggers only wish to retrieve lumber to sell. They don’t have the slightest regard for the future of this earth. These are the people who don’t look at what will benefit the world and the people around them in the long-run. When the time will come that they realize their mistake, it might be too late. By “too late” I mean that we will barely see green pastures surrounding us, that more animals will become extinct due to their homelessness, that many, many people will die because in the past years, pollution was slowly but surely killing their health. Aren’t we seeing the effects of people’s carelessness now? How much more will our children and our children’s children? That is if they will live to see this world as we see it now. That is if pollution will not kill them before they reach an age of maturity to see what our world has become, or rather, what their fathers and their father’s fathers have done to their world.

Chemical wastes are being dumped into rivers and seas, killing underwater creatures. Sure, this won’t take immediate effect on our water resources, but it eventually will. Imagine if all factories start dumping their wastes in rivers and seas just because “the rest are doing the same.” This will kill fish, turtles, and the rest of the marine life, and then we will lose our food supply from freshwater and seawater. Not only this, but we will lose our water supply as well. What will we do then? Can these factories supply us with water that is safe to drink, safe to bath in? Or will they sell us overpriced water artificially manufactured with chemicals? When that time will come, we won’t have the heart to complain, we won’t even have the choice to refuse them.

Air-conditioners and heaters have become a necessity. When it is cold, we want it hot. When it is hot, we want it cold. Human beings cannot be content, can they? When can we start looking at the “bright side of life” instead of focusing on what we don’t have or what we want to have? We were blessed with a world so abundant with resources, so full of life, so generous. But what have we made of it? We, the “stewards of God’s creation,” have abused it, disregarded its needs, its fragility and want for care. Yes, I am saying all of these while my air-conditioner is running. Yes, I am saying all of these yet I can’t use the shower without a heater. Many of us are doing the same. What I am really trying to say is that many of us want change. Garrett Hardin wanted change. But how can we change a world inhabited by human beings who seek their own comfort, who seek to have the earth’s resources all for themselves? It is all too tragic and true.

Many more examples can be cited regarding this tragedy. I can go on and on about the selfishness of the human race and their inconsiderate behavior towards Mother Earth. I can continue to tap on my keyboard and express my disgust over what has become of this world, to condemn myself for what I have done to this world. But instead of looking at all the mistakes that were made and are still being made, maybe, just maybe, it is time we ask ourselves and the people around us this question, “What can really be done?”

( written~ June 10, 2008 )

Until recently I thought little about what happens when my dog poops. We live outside the city so when she poops by a pasture I let it sit there. What’s one little pile o’ poop in the grand natural scheme?

Then I did the math. If my dog’s daily pile is multiplied by the daily piles generated by the 72 million other dogs in America (= 274 pounds per pooch annually) that’s 19.7 BILLION steaming pounds of poop a year.

If we don’t scoop, it gets into our streams, ponds and rivers, causing sickening levels of fecal coliform bacteria, feeding weeds and algae that choke the waterways and deprive the water of oxygen.

Dog poop carries a variety of other pathogens and parasites that can live on in our lawns for years and infect children who play there and adults who cultivate it. And these pathogens and parasites won’t die in your compost pile.

So now I’m a believer – I scoop.

For now I collect it in the plastic bag my newspaper comes in, then flush it down the toilet where it will be joined at a treatment plant with I hate to think how much people poop. (Cat poop and disposable diapers are a topic for another day…)

But whether or not you’ve got a pooping pet, there’s a much larger lesson here.

We think of ourselves as single players whose actions and inactions are just drops in the national, global or universal bucket. Until we do the multiplication we are unaware of how our individual acts add up.

Even then, we don’t want to conserve at our end if everyone else isn’t also doing their part… why should we suffer alone?

Garrett Hardin wrote a famous essay for the journal Science back in 1968 called the “Tragedy of the Commons” to describe this phenomenon.

The commons is a resource shared by a group or society – like rivers, oceans, the atmosphere, fish stocks, the national parks. In Britain, shepherds often shared local pastureland, which is the example Hardin used. Each shepherd wants to get the most out of this shared resource so he will add sheep if he has the means to do so. Each herder notes that the other herders are adding sheep, so why shouldn’t he? But with each sheep added, the quality of the pasture for all is reduced. No ONE takes responsibility. Ultimately, this leads to overgrazing and the degradation of the resource.

It’s time for each of us to do our part. Our children’s future depends on it.

I want to touch briefly on a topic which came up in discussion with Verdurous two articles ago. It’s the issue of what actions might help address the problem of population growth. I’ll merely touch on the subject in this entry, examining it in more detail in subsequent posts.

Indignation

Occasionally, when I’ve mentioned to someone the need to address population growth, they’ve reacted with indignation. They assume I’m suggesting some sort of forced sterilization program or other draconian measure. Admittedly, this has occurred in Web based discussion in which some participants’ civility and impulse control often leaves something to be desired. (Okay, a lot to be desired!) Still, I’m not sure why they jump to this assumption. (Does it say something about how the topic of population growth has become taboo in many circles? That’s a fascinating topic for an upcoming post.)

Good options

In reality, there are a number of worthwhile methods we can and should employ to reduce fertility rates and thus population growth. Some have proven track records, while others, if not proven, are eminently sensible. In the discussion I linked to a recent Scientific American column by Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. There, Sachs tells us, “We will have to help the poor regions of the world to complete the demographic transition to achieve stable populations, a process that is underway but by far not fast enough.” He explains why it’s necessary:

Fifty percent of the projected global population increase by 2050 will fall within Africa and the Middle East, the world’s most politically and socially unstable regions. That development could well mean another generation of under-employed and frustrated young men, growing violence due to unemployment and resource scarcity, growing pressures of international migration, and growing ideological battles with Europe and the U.S. The global ecological toll could be as disastrous, because rapid population growth is taking place in many of the world’s “biodiversity hotspots”–that is, unique assemblages of species and habitats that are a vital part of the global biological heritage.

Sachs concludes by listing four steps for reducing fetility rates in countries where they’re highest:

1. Improve child survival rates because, “When parents have the expectation that their children will survive, they choose to have fewer children.”
2. Provide better educational opportunities for girls. Girls in school will wait longer to marry, and educated, working women have more choices in life and so tend, on average, to have fewer children.
3. Improve the availability of contraception and family planning information. Making sure every child is a wanted child is a huge step.
4. Increase farm productivity because, “Income-earning mothers use their scarce time in productive employment rather than childrearing.”

All good ideas, I think. To them we can add the idea of economic incentives, as Verdurous suggested in discussion. Tax incentives and disincentives nudging families to have fewer children might make sense, and have in fact been used in some countries. This kind of benevolent, mutually agreed upon “coercion” was advocated by Garrett Hardin in his classic article, The Tragedy of the Commons.

A long list of such possibilities, as well as others such as publicity campaigns, is seen in an article posted on the ominously named Die Off site. Such information (and, one would hope, more updated information) shows us there are indeed humane strategies governments (or, in some cases, even private groups) can employ to influence fertility rates.

But that’s not all

There is much more, though, to think about. Focusing on U.S. environmental issues, for example, some call for tougher immigration restrictions to reduce this country’s population growth. How restrictive a policy would be warranted? Might we focus instead, or in addition, on providing assistance to Mexico to improve its economy so its citizens are not forced to come to the U.S. to make money they can’t earn at home?

Moreover, I recently received from Al Bartlett an article he had published in a recent issue of The Physics Teacher. In it, while acknowledging the good points in Jeffrey Sachs’s column, he is critical of Sachs’s line of argument for several reasons. Dr. Bartlett is one of my favorite thinkers on issues of sustainability and population growth, and his points were as incisive as ever. While I’m not as critical of Sachs, there is much in Dr. Bartlett’s article to think about. But that is for an upcoming post.
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Image source: Gregor Rohrig, as posted on flickr

Another upcoming topic: “If the UN tells us world population may stabilize around 2075, what’s to worry?”