Twenty-four years ago I thought oral contraceptives should be cheaper and more available to reduce the pain and suffering of 100,000 abortions per year. ("Public hospital abortions and cheaper contraceptives needed, inquiry finds", Age 26/5). My wife had an expensive Little Collins St abortion with a previous boyfriend.
Kevork Almassian does not agree with laws forcing women to cover their heads, in Iran, Saudi Arabia, or anywhere else. He thinks Iran should not have these laws, but he thinks that western media publicity for these protests is done because they don't like Iranian foreign policy, not because they care about women's rights. And we should think of why that is.
Syrian women are helping to save Syria and all of humanity against the scourge of Western-supported terrorism. The Canadian government, [Candobetter.net editor: and others, including Australia's, supporting the US-NATO agenda] on the other hand, is destroying women’s rights (and all human rights) in Syria and beyond. If the truth were ever accepted by broad-based populations, then our government, led by those who project progressive fronts, would be exposed as the misogynist, life-hating rot that it is.
This article was first published at https://www.globalresearch.ca/womens-rights-in-syria/5629648
Trudeau is destroying Syria through illegal sanctions, and through direct and indirect support of every single terrorist in Syria. Canada is a member of the NATO terror organization, which along with its allies, seeks to create “regime change” in Syria, — the highest crime according to Nuremburg Principles.
All Syrians, but especially Syrian women, have much to lose if the Canadian government’s diabolical ambitions are realized.
Amany Ashy[1] lives in a government-secured area of Syria where she is headmistress of a high school. She explains that life for women in government-secured areas hasn’t changed much. She explains that
The government supports women’s right and liberty before and now. We have the liberty to choose our work , to wear whatever we like , to choose the type of education we want and even to fight side by side with the army. We have the safety to go at anytime during day or night.
She also explains that
men now are busy fighting with the army or trying hard to work double shift after the crazy raise of prices and after the sanctions. Women’s life as the life of all Syrian has been affected badly by the sanctions. The prices of food and vegetables have become double. Medicine prices are very high and some are not available.
Life in terrorist-occupied areas, however, is entirely different, and alien to Syria and to most Syrians. Ashy explains that
women in the areas controlled by the US- backed terrorists have no rights at all. They have to wear a black uniforms to cover their bodies and this uniform must be very simple and loose and if any women try to break their rules they take them to Hespah (prison). They keep them imprisoned for hours and force them to buy a uniform that they have and agree on … Women are prevented from going to schools or working any kind of job that they don’t approve of.
Ashy adds that the government respects freedom of thinking and religion and that nobody has the right to interfere in someone’s religion.
Saudi Arabia, one of Canada’s allies in the war for terrorism and against human rights is both a fountainhead of terrorism and Wahhabism, and it is this Wahhabi ideology that prevails in terrorist-occupied areas of Syria. It is also this Wahhabi ideology (takfiri/salafi) that is referenced in a 2012 DIA document[2] (14-L-0052/DIA/287) which laid out clearly the West’s plans to destroy Syria, one of the 7 countries targeted for destruction as enumerated by General Flynn.
As the U.S and its terrorist allies occupy the oil rich areas of Eastern Syria – also laid out in the aforementioned DIA document — Canadians should remember that this war, like its predecessors in Libya, Iraq and beyond, was sold to them and continues to be sold to them through outrageous, constantly repeated, war lies.
*
Notes
[1]Amany Ashy is a pseudonym for an actual Syrian source. She shared her narrative in a private Facebook message dated 2 October, 2017.
[2] Brad Hof, “2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document: West will facilitate rise of Islamic State ‘in order to isolate the Syrian regime.’ “ LEVANT REPORT THE REAL MIDDLE EAST, DEBUNKING THE SOUND BITES. 19 May 2015. (https://levantreport.com/2015/05/19/2012-defense-intelligence-agency-document-west-will-facilitate-rise-of-islamic-state-in-order-to-isolate-the-syrian-regime/) Accessed 18 February, 2018.
Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.
Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and three years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes.
Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes the mainstream media narratives on Syria.
Republished from PressTV. See also: Saudi Arabia's Princess Sara claims asylum in the UK of 8 July in The Telegraph, Russia should demand regime change in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, ... of 8 July, Kofi Annan: International Community Has Failed Syria of 8 July by Tony Cartalucci in Land Destroyer, Saudi regime forces kill two demonstrators in Eastern Province, Bahrainis rally to support Shia cleric detained in Saudi Arabia, Protesters to gather outside Saudi Embassy in London of 9 July in PressTV.
Editorial comment: The Saudi Arabian monarchy, from which Princess Sara is seeking asylum, is one of the Arab dictatorships which is supplying weapons and funds to the terrorist mass-killers of the so-called "Free Syrian Army". Should these Saudi/Israeli/NATO proxies win in Syria, the conditions from which Princess Sara fled will be the conditions that Syrian women will also have to endure.
Saudi Princess Sara bint Talal bin Abdul Aziz (pictured) is seeking political asylum in Britain, alleging physical and mental abuse at the hands of Saudi authorities.
"I've been physically abused. I've been mentally abused. My assets have been frozen," she said in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph at a secret location in London.
She said that she was assaulted outside the Saudi embassy in London by an official, who tried to grab her arm.
"I am very scared right now," said the princess. "They know I can't go back now. There is a threat. That's a slap in the face of the Kingdom."
The embassy has turned down the princess' extended stay request in coordination with British authorities.
On Friday, her lawyers notified the Home Office of her intention to seek asylum.
Her allegations must be assessed by UK officials so the 38-year-old can be offered a safe haven, in spite of Saudi authorities' insistence on her return.
The princess went to the UK in 2007 after she fell out with her 80-year-old father Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud.
She also claimed that she has been subjected "to a litany of serious crimes, including threats, assault, an attempted kidnapping, and the attempted abduction of my children."
The motives are political, she argued.
"I am a threat because I am a reformer from within. My way is the modern Islamic way," she told the paper.
The political asylum request, which came weeks after the death of her uncle and main supporter Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, who was an opponent of her father, offers an insight into the tensions within the Saudi royal family.
Political analysts have predicted that the kingdom will experience instability in the near future as the poor health among the aging royal family augments the power vacuum amid a wave of protests over the persisting brutal crackdown on the Saudi people.
This article was adapted from a radio program I hosted on 3RPP with Jenny Warfe as my guest, called "Women in Politics, Why don't more participate?" The program found that participation rates depend on definition. Indeed, we found that women dominate politics in Victoria, Australia - they just don't draw salaries. Inside we look at three classical theories for why women participate less in politics than men; argue that the Real Politics are outside Parliament, (Indian theory); give examples of Victorian women in politics outside Melbourne's parliament; analyse these women's political roles as more reactive and militant than planned-for and careerist. We also note that women led the French Revolution and we ask, "Are Female environmental activists in Victoria leading a new political movement?"
Illustration: "Boadicea Haranguing the Britons,"
by H.C. Selous (c. 1840) (her ill-fated daughters at her feet)
I was recently criticised (by new male management) for talking about the environment and interviewing female environmentalists on the Feminist radio show, Freewaves, 3RPP.
My defense is that the environment is the main game in politics and activism down here on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, in the rest of Australia, and everywhere, actually. The other side calls it “Planning,” but it involves the same living envelope that surrounds all our senses and keeps us alive, well and happy.
It boils down to corporate commerce versus democracy. Symptomatically in Australia, corporate commerce increasingly mislabels 'democracy' as 'populism.'
An example of this tendency is to be found in The Australian Industry group's "wish-list" to "Reject populism and overhaul the public sector."[1]
Official political voices in parliament mostly represent corporate lobby groups which make money out of doing stuff to our environment, which many of us do not want, but for which we pay in impacts, charges, tolls and taxes. In fact women, who own much less property and financial wealth than men are far more immediately dependent on the ‘common wealth’ of public amenity, natural environment and public services. For this reason, women are naturally on the front-line in suffering the effects of privatisation, annexation of parkland, commercialization of public swimming pools, destruction of forests and wild green spaces, loss of backyards, cruelty and destruction of wildlife at the suburban interface,[2] and the commercial co-option of natural and vital resources, like water and food.
Although there are a few more women at the official "top" (i.e. in parliament - see the graph[3]) going by the mainstream media, male parliamentarians still hog the limelight with aggressive activities in infrastructure and land-use planning, using a moot justification of a need to accommodate population growth in order to ram through massive infrastructure projects. Women who get the limelight in official politics mostly engage in similar professional lobbying behaviour for such interests, like Anna Bligh and Christine Keneally.
Perhaps a lot of women don't join in official politics because they are taught to have childlike faith in a fatherly authority and simply assume that the 'government' is doing its job. On the other hand, most women's political activities are under-reported or not reported at all in the mainstream media, which markets an official view of reality which hardly reflects women's existence beyond their function as consumers, producers of children, and wage-hands. It is therefore perhaps not so surprising that it takes some women a long time to realise that most of what they worry about is actually political. Some women become involved in politics, especially later in life, when they realise that, after all, important things are not being taken care of by the people who are being paid by taxes to look after everyone.
Before we cite some interesting examples and look at where they may be taking us, let us look at some useful theory on the matter of female participation in politics.
Theory 1: The political socialization process discourages women from playing an active political role (Socialisation) (mooted above);
Theory 2: Family responsibilities keep some women at home and out of the work force (Situational);
Theory 3: Women are overrepresented in demographic groups that have low participation levels (structural). For instance, more women have less wealth and less education.
In Susan Welch’s “Women as political animals? A test of some Explanations for Male-female political participation differences,” American journal of political science,[4] the researcher found that, once situational and structural variables were controlled there were no systematic differences in levels of male-female participation. In light of these findings, she questioned the validity of the political socialization explanation.
Ashok Kumar, “Political Participation of Women,” [5] suggests that we do need to broaden our definition of the political process in order to better detect women's participation:
“The concept of political participation of women is broader than the one covering women’s participation only in the electoral and administration processes. It includes the gamut of voluntary activities with a bearing on the political processes, including voting, support of political groups, communication with legislator, dissemination of political views and opinions among the electorate, and other related activites. However, political participation can be considered to include an involvement in any from of organized activity that effects, or seeks to effect, these power relationships. It refers broadly also to ‘activities by those not formally empowered to make decisions, these activities being mainly intended to influence the attitudes and behaviour of those who have powers for decision-making.’
New perspectives on old processes may highlight latent political conflict.
“Minimally, a political perspective requires that some activity called ‘politics’ be differentiated from other activities, relationships, and patterns of action. If all conceptual boundaries are blurred and all distinction between public and private are eliminated, no politics can exist by definition. The relatively open-textured quality of politics means that innovative and revolutionary thinkers are those who declare politics to exist where politics was not thought to exist before, should their reclassifications stick over time and meaning of politics – indeed of human life itself may be transformed. Altered social conditions may also provoke a reassessment of old, and recognition of new, ‘political’ realities. However, the theme of political participation of women has raised a major dilemma. On the one hand, it is the fundamental right of every citizen to contribute to the decision-making process. It is, in fact, the citizen’s duty as well as in based on the presumption that each member has adequate means and conditions to achieve a full realization of his personality as an entity in society. On the other hand, from a feminist perspective, an analysis of women’s participation in political process has questioned the narrow definition of political participation as accepted by mainstream of political scientists and policy-makers.
Politics involves power relationships and reactions to these:
“Political participation can be considered to include an involvement in any form of organized activity that affects, or seeks to affect, these power relationships. It refers broadly also to ‘activities by those not formally empowered to make decisions, these activities being mainly intended to influence the attitudes and behaviour of those who have powers for decision-making.’ In fact, protests and demonstrations against those in power also form part of political participation. Women’s participation has covered a range of activities including movements, protest and support meetings on all issues connected with labour, dowry, rape, domestic violence, pressurize, food adulteration and deforestation, as also movements for the promotion of peace.
Here is a list of women who are strongly engaged in politics in Victoria, Australia. It is not exhaustive and is simply what I came up with in a couple of minutes from memory. (I would welcome similar lists of politically engaged women in other states and countries.)
Mary Drost, Planning Backlash
Julianne Bell, Protectors of Public Lands
Jenny Warfe of Blue Wedges, who ran as a Radical Independent in 2010 Federal elections.
Jill Quirk - a connection in many groups and leader of Sustainable Population Victoria
Sheila Newman (myself) through her writing on population, land-use planning and democracy, at candobetter.net
Jan Beer, Plug the Pipe - a farmer who ran against Brumby’s North South Pipeline
Jill Redwood - Long-running leader of Environment East Gippsland, recently led the first prosecution of VicForests and the Victorian government in the Brown Mountain case.
Janice Rossiter Militated against the sale of Footscray pool and other undemocratic and unwise privatisations (Became a councilor)
Gloria O'Connor - swimming pools and rate payers in Packenham
Maryland Wilson - President of The Australian Wildlife Protection Council
Vivienne Ortega - leads (through her writing on candobetter.net) on wildlife and wilderness activism in Christianity
Elida Radig who started the Rye women's group over 30 years ago. It is the oldest and almost the only surviving independent women’s group and safety house in Victoria.
Catherine Manning – Hastings infrastructure project activist and child pornography activist (joined the Greens).
Gillian Collins – The Pines Protectors (joined the Greens)
Christine Pruneau, planning activist for Massedon Ranges Residents Association
Marilyn Canet, activist extraordinaire who exposed corruption in Brimbank Council
The women on the list started up lobby groups or emerged as leaders in spontaneous processes to change laws or behaviour or protests by community groups seeking recognition of natural or legal rights.
Few or none are predominantly known for their activity in official political parties, only through their alternative creations and activities.[6]
What's happened in Victoria is that these women have come together because their concerns converged due to the fact that they were all about the treatment of public land, and its non-commercial occupants, such as flora, fauna, women and children. The mainstream parties, however, were about exploiting these or were not helping to stop this exploitation, or only dealing with peripheral issues.
For this reason these women emerged as significant leaders in spontaneous new groups.
Men can be concerned about these things but they are more likely to become professionalised in politics, like Charles Berger of the ACF, or Serge Thomann, who headed a council activist group then became a councillor in St Kilda. Men often become involved in politics because it enhances their professional opportunity or because they are defending or seizing mainstream political opportunity and activity in such groups can boost their profile. You get quite a few planning, construction and conveyancing professionals as dilettants in local activist groups.
Not reactionary, but REACTIVE to injustices and dangers rather than choosing establishment politics as a career. That is, they don't plan to have political careers; they become politicised, radicalised in response to injustice and bullying. Most are natural leaders rather than followers. This is a reflection of their need to foray into uncharted waters as outsiders in conflict with the official system. Thus they take on the political responsibility of being a leader. They step into vacuums created by our commercially dominated society. Very few men will spend most waking moments defending something they don't hope ultimately to get paid for. [7] Also, these women tend not to be employed in the area in which they are activists, or they are retired, or 'home-makers' so they can speak out without much fear of being sacked for going against in house policies. It seems that men are less inclined to be politically active outside their professional areas of expertise. Why is this?
Men perhaps would tend to join political parties because they have more chance of getting somewhere in them. Retired men are often active in groups, but rarely lead them, perhaps because so very much unpaid work is required to make a group function. A woman might form a group where none existed before and in which there was no chance of making money; a man is less likely to. Or men might belong to traditional alternative political groups, such as the Marxist ones, which are strong on rhetoric and short on practical representation. One man who stands out as an exception is Joe Toscano, a geriatrician who has been a strong and committed activist in the anarchist movement for many years in Victoria and who is particularly concerned with the abrogration of public space by private enterprise and the community's loss of political assembly rights in these places.
Women don't own mainstream newspapers or television channels or radio stations, so how could they influence public perception in a powerful way? They don't own nearly as much property as men, therefore value public land more and are less likely to profit from things like urban densification and privatisation of public lands and other assets. They tend to benefit from laws for public protection, public access and basic standards. Perhaps, just as men are less likely to take good care of their health than women, they are less likely to take care of their civil rights.
5 October 1789: The Women’s march on the Palace of Versailles
Armed with stakes, sticks and forks, something like 7000 women from Paris – where people were starving – walked from Paris to the palace at Versailles – a distance of 16km as the crow flies or around 20km by road today. They were reacting in part to news that, during a banquet in honour of the Flemish Regiment, members of the king’s personal guard had trampled the tricolour rosette, which was the symbol of the revolution and the bill of rights. But they were also marching on the palace to demand food, since they and their families were starving.
The women were joined later at the rear by men and the National Guard. At the palace, the women demanded to see the Queen, a woman loathed as a foreigner who influenced the king against listening to his people. During the night palace guards were killed. Eventually the people returned to Paris with the king and his family, preceded by a cart full of flour and followed by cartloads of grain. The royal family was then put under house arrest in the Tuilleries, a large palace which had been built in the 16th century. They remained under arrest until they were executed some time later. Shortly after this mass uprising, the king signed the 4th of August abolition of feudal privileges.
Insofar as no-one else is defending the rights of citizens to retain the quality of their built and natural environment, groups of women in Victoria seem to be leading the only effective action against a growth lobby which seems to have taken over government and to have emptied much of our normal political processes of effectiveness, in the service of a commercial agenda which demands the overturn of democracy.
Candobetter.net would like to hear from any similar activists and groups in other states.
[2] Increasingly in Australia, commerce mislabels 'democracy' as 'populism', as in The Australian Industry group's "wish-list" to "Reject populism and overhaul the public sector." See, "O'Farrell will have his hands full," Australian Financial Review, 10 March 2011, p.5. (Note that small business tends to be in favour of democracy and to complain of being unrepresented.)
[3] "Composition of Australian parliaments by Party and Gender as at 5 January 2011", Politics and Public Administration group, Parliamentary Library, www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/pol/currentwomen.pdf.
[3]As the traditional custodians of home and gardens, women are more likely than men to notice when the magpies stop singing and the wattlebirds stop doing their displays, and the possums no longer come out with the moon and the wallabies and kangaroos simply disappear. Often they take care of wounded wildlife and grieve intensely, as do their children. Men, the traditional cooptees to the salaried workforce in the industrial system often have less time at home, although this is also changing for the worse as our system demands increasing hours of toil away from our homes and real lives, in the service of the appetite of commerce.
[4] American journal of political science
[5 Ashok Kumar, “Political Participation of Women,” in Sunit Gupta, Mukta Gupta (Eds.), Role of women in the twenty-first century, Anmol Publications, Daryaganj, New Delhi, 1996.
[6] Someone reminded me of Victoria’s first woman Premier’s origins in parents' groups at schools: Joan Kirner became the first woman Premier of Victoria -1988 to 1990. After leaving paid politics she helped with the LandCare movement then focused on the creation of Emily’s List Australia, based on a U.S. originating list which aims to fund pro-choice women in politics all over the world. Disappointingly for Victoria's independent candidates, the Australian list only seems to fund Labor candidates.
[7] This reluctance of men to work for nothing is in part due to their greater traditional responsibility as breadwinners and the regimented nature of their salaried lives.
International Women's Day will once again be celebrated in all its darkness and its lightness at the Women's House at 3 Lyons Street Rye, on 8 March 2011. As usual there will be debates with women at the microphone. This time a feature will be women and Sharia Law. Known as "That Purple Place," the Women's Resource Centre was founded in 1982 by Elida Radig, a local and international tower of strength and force for good in Australia. Elida is also known for her creation of the Women's House program, where different female voices present "Freewaves" on 3RPP, Thursdays, 3-4pm. Rye Victoria's Women's Resource Centre is one of very few totally independent forces for women. It receives no government funding but is self-supporting, mostly through sales at its second hand store, which is one of the best loved in Victoria. There is also a cafe on the premises. The centre also provides hands-on support for women and their children in crisis.
Celebrate International Women's Day, Tuesday March 8th, 2011 at the Women's Resource Centre in Rye, Victoria
3 Lyons Street, Rye
Tel: 59855955
(That's a Victorian number so preface with 03 if you are dialing interstate and with 613 if you are dialing internationally.)
Events go from 10am to 6pm with the microphone open to all women all day.
10.00 am *At Rye Pier: Memorial Ceremony of Water & Flowers for women who have died, including victims of war.
10.30 am * Back at the Women’s Centre for scones & cream.
10.45 am * Welcoming & acknowledgment of the Sisterhood of all women on planet Earth.
11.00 am * MORNING OPEN FORUM- Your opinion is important
Issues: What do we want?
Platform for Action
This is a consciousness-raising forum
12.30pm * INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY LUNCH 
Barbecue, salads and cakes under the shade of the Hibiscus tree
2.00pm * VAUDEVILLE HOUR
Carol Jamieson, her guitar and friends.
Singers/ Comedians/Jokes.
Belly Dancing with Clara & dancers.
3.00pm * AFTERNOON OPEN FORUM – Your opinion is important.
Issues: Sharia law in Australia?
The stoning of women.
This is a political forum
4.00pm * CIRCLE OF WOMEN
5.00pm * INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY DINNER
Self-serve yummy left overs.
In sisterhood is our strength
Click here for radio interview with Julia Whitty on New Orleans radio
Of course we should thankful that the CBC, at last, made the Population Bomb the topic of a 30 minute interview with Julia Whitty, author of "The Last Taboo" featured in Mother Jones. If I was writing for a general audience, I would devote most of my observations to the very many good and important things that Whitty said. I would praise her for putting "Peak Soil" at the top of the list of insuperable problems---a danger that, as she said, has no technological cure. And I would explore the reasons that she advanced for why the subject of overpopulation is still taboo. She was bang-on in identifying immigration and abortion as toxic issues that have intimidated many in North America into silence. Nonetheless I was irritated by some of Whitty's qualifications. Perhaps she felt, with some justification, that it was best to embrace some of the standard anti-Malthusian objections in order to take the wind of out of the sails of critics poised to repeat them. She took pains to characterize Thomas Malthus as a rather unpleasant and callous individual, the one whom Charles Dickens used to construct his fictional "Ebeneezer Scrooge". According to her, Malthus counselled neglect of starving people and opposed contraception, and was of the then commonly held belief that only 'better' people should breed. No doubt she would regard me with the same odium. I believe that it is imperative that we offer no food relief for any population that refuses to implement family planning. And I fully subscribe to the Hopfenberg thesis. Like any other species, we expand to catch up to an expanded food supply.
Whitty threw two sops to the Monbiotists. She readily concurred with a critic who said that population activists usually want to control other people's population, that is, the population of poor people of colour, rather than our own. The focus on over-population lets the developed countries off the hook for their over-consumption. She pointed out that Americans consume as much as 4.7 billion Indians would, and quoted the Ehrlichs in making the same point. Obviously we must address both issues. If Whitty had not said that, our flanks would be left unprotected. And she did assign importance to suppressing fertility rates in America. But in concluding that "we must consume less to allow more to live" she repeated the core creed of soft green environmentalism. Lester Brown has posed the question, "How are we going to feed 9 billion people?". The real question should rather be, I think, "Why would we try?" Whitty spoke about the prospect of containing our appetites as the greatest challenge yet, greater than curbing our population growth, which she said, we already have by halving fertility rates in recent decades. If we managed to feed another 2 billion people-breeders, how could we make 9 billion people consume less than the 6.8 billion we already have? How can we support them without exhausting the very resources she said are being taxed to the max---land, water and fuel? She did remark, after all, that in 50 years we must feed people on half the existing acreage available to us now. Is the priority to save the number of people who are currently alive today or is it to enhance our prospects of survival as a species? If our objective is the latter, then only a triage approach is tenable. As Garrett Hardin reminded us the same year that Ehrilch's Population Bomb was published, desperate times require revolutionary ethics.
More disingenuous was her assertion that 'coercive' measures were unnecessary and not particularly effective. The old standby---making birth control available and 'educating' women should do the trick. After all, women do want smaller families given the options. "There is a direct corellate between educating women and fertility decline." This mainstay of current cant suffers from several flaws. One is the question raised by the interviewer, Anna Marie Tremonte. Educated women make for a more prosperous economy. But doesn't this prosperity lead to more consumption, which Ms. Whitty, in repeating the green left mantra, said is now our most vexing nemesis? Nations with stable or declining populations can still exert more pressure on land and water resources through increased per capita consumption--affluence may allow more people to build bigger homes on bigger lots or even acquire second homes, as they have on this continent and elsewhere. Whitty conceded that it was a problem that must be addressed with "balance". Hmmm.
I suppose my greatest frustration in hearing the party line on women's reproductive rights and preferences is that their free and voluntary choices may not, no, WILL NOT, lead to a population decline rapid enough to save us. As Robert Engleman demonstrated in his cross cultural study some two years ago, women the world over want, on average, no more and no less than two children. That is at least one too many. At the bottom of most fem-friendly prescriptions is a vast over-estimation of our carrying capacity. Not many years ago the consensus was that it was around 2 billion. Now those who make more exacting calculations, in the face of looming energy shortages, have it at no more than 100 million people--a level that we must attain before century's end. According to Richard Wakefield's computation, that would mean that we would have to lose a population the size of Toronto's every five days for the next hundred years. That is about two people for every one born. A slavish genuflection to the feminist agenda will not come close to meeting that target. Most population-reduction advocates simply don't have the sense of urgency required to face up this stark truth. It is amazing that Whitty has imbibed the Replacement Rate Fallacy. Mother Nature doesn't give a Tinker's Damn about falling fertility rates. She is more impressed with demographic momentum and the number of people riding on her back. Human beings are not fruit flies. When we are born, our parents don't immediately die to make room for us. Generations overlap. In fact, more and more of us reach adulthood before our grandparents die. Mark O'Connor has spelled that out very clearly. http://www.australianpoet.com/overloading.html#rrf
Two things must be remembered. The predicament of overpopulation is more coercive than any measure proposed to solve it. Nothing that has ever been done in China is as coercive as what the lack of water, energy, food and space will inflict upon more and more people as our numbers continue to grow. Instead of looking for humane solutions, we must look instead for the least inhumane of effective solutions. Ineffective 'humane' or voluntary and democratic 'solutions' are not solutions if they do not do the job. If I develop gangrene in my leg while I am alone with you in the wilderness, you hopefully wouldn't avoid cutting it off to save my life because, lacking an anaesthetic, there is no "humane" way to do it. Quite frankly, I can't fathom the inhumane ethics of so-called humanitarians. It is a moral edifice built upon the assumption of affluence, or the denial of any need to make hard choices. The perverse reverence of the quantity of human life at the cost of its quality, together with the right of non-human species to have a life at all. The first question on the table must be whether rapid population decline is necessary to the survival of our species. If it is not, splendid. Then we can dismiss all the draconian measures that clerics and bleeders find so abhorrent. No one would be happier than I. But if it is necessary, then it is necessary. "Coercion" if necessary, but not necessarily coercion, coercion as a last resort, mutual coercion mutually agreed upon. And yes, I am well aware that making such a pronouncement would hand opponents a stick to beat us with, possibly to death. But what if that is what the doctor orders? I am hard put to understand the value of any moral system if we become extinct by following it. Then again, I don't believe that any portion of us will be raptured to safety. I suppose that makes me one of the accursed ones bound for hell.
One cannot help but notice that people who spend their time denouncing China's one-child-per-family (OCPF) regime happily reap the reward of fewer carbon emissions and resource consumption that this policy gifted to the world. The second thing that I think should be remembered is that one must not confuse reproductive rights with pro-creative rights. To say, rightly, that no woman should be forced to give birth to a child that she does not want is not the same as saying that any woman has a right to have as many children as she wants to. I may have the right to drive a car, but I cannot have the right to drive it as fast as I want to. If women choose to have more children than the environment can bear their 'rights' impinge on the rights of others. I need a permit to build an addition to my house or a licence to catch fish, how absurd is it then the most impactful decision of all---adding another consumer---is treated as a sovereign personal right? Not many fish drive Hummers or jump on a jet to Majorca for a vacation.
Most disappointing was Whitty's failure to mention that biodiversity loss. Instead of holding out olive branches to the fem-left---- the folks who sabotaged the Cairo Summit on world population---- it might be a better strategy to challenge them on ethical grounds. As they mount the high horse of women's rights, they should be asked about whether they think that these rights should trump the right of other species to live. Their conventional "people vs. nature" dichotomy should be countered with the assertion that other species, or more precisely, the habitat that supports them, is critical to our own survival. Betsy Hartmann and her ilk will only treat population stabilization as a welcome or even a neutral by-product of "empowering women'. For them, the goal of achieving smaller population levels is an inconsequential one. After all, there may be 300,000 people starving to death right now, but that is all down to unfair trade agreements, corrupt governments and poor distribution. It is all a matter of effecting political and cultural change. Or so they say. Carrying capacity is a concept beyond their grasp. Someone should break the news to them that the "surplus" of food that they count on as available to the starving masses if we get to the Promised Land of just distribution is an artificial one. It is the consequence of the unsustainable fossil fuel inputs of modern agriculture. We won't even be able to feed our current numbers. As Norman Borlaug himself warned, there never will be another Green Revolution. He was careful to say that his invention would only be a stop-gap, something to buy us enough time until family planning could arrest our growth. Alas, like all efficiency paradoxes effected before controls are first put in place, more efficient use of land only served as a growth-enabler.
Population growth is not just a missing variable. It is a prime driver of environmental degradation, and it will remain so for decades to come, if we make it that long. For too long human rights crusaders and social justice campaigners have held the floor. For too long the focus has been on the inequitable relationships between the passengers on our lifeboat, and not where it should be, on the fact that our boat is overloaded. It is time that we stopped appeasing their obsession and rang the alarm bell of overpopulation even louder. There is no social justice among drowned passengers. We can fight the class war after we make it to the next port safely, comrade sister.
Tim Murray
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