Obama quote from Scriptures highlights moral confusion over mass migration

Today (21 November 2014) the ABC broadcast Obama saying: "Scripture tells us that, 'We shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger. We were strangers once too,'" he said. "My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once too. And whether our forebearers were strangers who crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like or what our last names are or how we worship."

Well; the New American Standard Bible says:
"As for you, be fruitful and multiply; Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it." ..........and we know that doesn't work indefinitely.

So let's analyse Obama's comments to better understand their meaning. Will a lawyer do anything to defend his population growth "client"; regardless of the facts?

A definition of a stranger:
A person whom one does not know or with whom one is not familiar.

Strangers include the over one billion undernourished or starving in the developing world. The US may always be a nation of immigrants; but it will definitely NOT always be a nation of population growth. Of that we can be certain. Population growth must stop either by strategic planning or catastrophe.

Again this highlights the confusion over the difference between humanitarian outcomes for one versus humanitarian outcomes for all. For over 100 years the US creed has been economic growth. But what the US is not saying is that to drive that economic growth it has relied upon the forces of population growth and global anthropogenic environmental destruction in all its forms. Population growth fuels GDP growth. There is no doubt about this scientific fact.

The truth is that the more people that migrate into high cost (and higher emissions) environments like the US, Canada and Australia, the more the developing world will be disadvantaged. This is simply because if a developed economy has growing debt as its population grows, that economy has less financial capacity to provide aid to strangers in the developing world - where population growth is a key problem rather than one to be "copied" by the developed world.

Per capita social welfare expenditures in the US, Canada and Australia are far higher than required to improve or save a life in the developing world. In simplistic economic purist terms, if a developed economy is accumulating per capita debt then the net contribution of each person in that economy is negative. If continuing to grow the population of indebted economies like Australia and the US is contributing to increasing the levels of debt in those countries, it therefore contributes to widening the gap in living standards between the developed and the developing world BECAUSE it continues to reduce the capacity of wealthy countries to provide philanthropic foreign aid - which constitutes to most fundamental means for achieving of global social equity - including population growth management. The US, Canada and Australia are different in many ways; but this fundamental immorality is common to all. Growing populations in the developing world are arguably the world's biggest problem. Growing populations in the developed world by mass migration simply makes the problem worse by refusing to address the obligation to stabilise population in every country. The US has been reported to have 50 million people (roughly 15% of the population) below its so-called poverty line. Is the Australian Government and its propaganda machine (the ABC) intent on achieving a similar outcome?

So the Scriptures can be interpreted in more ways than one; and certainly cannot be used as ethical justification for mass migration. The humanitarian high ground clearly lies in prudent moderation of population-fuelled GDP growth, in order to support increased humanitarian foreign aid in pursuit of population stabilisation, global human rights and global sustainable development.

The whole logic behind the IMF, the World Bank and all Agencies dedicated to improving humanitarian outcomes in the developing world is totally at odds with the use of mass migration to fuel the outdated and fatally flawed economic and environmental mass destruction perpetrated by countries like the US, Canada and Australia. These organisations typically use developing world GDP growth as a Key Performance indicator of their "progress".

Comments

How many people criticize anyone suggesting we cut immigration by saying "we are a nation of immigrants" and "we are all immigrants" - or offspring of them! It's saying that the past is the precedent for the present, and future? While we are all "immigrants" out of Africa, it doesn't mean we can have the doors open forever, in a finite nation. We might benefit from something in the past, but it may not be able to be propagated forever in a closed system. Is there a conspiracy to make Australia a third world nation, with economic "muscle" from masses of people, rather than from high standards of living, good education, and knowledge investment? Masses of people create a pool of cheaper human resources, and economic power from workhouses of employees willing to take on whatever housing and jobs that are available? Surely it's the end result of neo-liberal policies? Besides Australia becoming the big Quarry for China, Prime Minister Tony Abbott, has come under fire of late, with the significant stripping back of funding for Australia’s pre-imminent research body the CSIRO, the ARC and universities. As reported in , , University of Melbourne wrote a Tweet in April this year that caught my attention. It read, "Cutting resources for science, technology, innovation and education is a sure way of accelerating our transition to a Third-World economy." "Well, if we're just going to have an economy based in farming, mining and tourism, that's not really a First-World economy, is it? I mean, we do have other attributes - higher education sector and the education sector in general, but it is kind of disturbing if we lose a lot of our capacity for science and innovation". It almost appears that there’s an unspoken bipartisan agreement in place to silently allow manufacturing to whither. Manufacturing is critical to our future wealth. What other first-world country on earth that maintains its standard of living off agriculture and resources alone. Third-world nations that do! "Australia will start to become a third world country in its living standard." Professor Goran Roos, Advanced Manufacturing Council. If third world immigration continues at the current rate, Australians will become a minority in their own country within a few decades. The major political parties support the idea of a ‘big Australia’. The International Monetary Fund expects Australia will have the worst jobless rate in the Asia-Pacific region over the next two years, bar the Philippines. Like third world countries, many families in Australia struggle to get food and this can negatively affect the social, emotional and education outcomes for the children in these families. Our economy, living standards and access to basic resources are now declining. On top of this, we now have fierce cuts to the ABC and SBS! The ABC's Media Watch program reported the Government will cut the broadcaster's budget by $50 million a year, on top of the $9 million announced in the May budget. We have seen how prices skyrocket under privatization. When all public assets are sold we become the unlucky country, a poor country, a disadvantaged country that squandered its resources. What else can we do to stop this country becoming a third world country?

I think that if we are to avoid becoming a third world country, the car factories can be saved simply by making more robots for replacing humans because the wages have exceeded their limits which they can no longer afford these costs. That's why countries like Thailand, Philippines and China can work at much lower rates but their food mainly consist of fish and rice whereby in Australia, we have a much wider variety of food to choose from. So the question remains, is it possible to save our car factories by replacing humans with robots like they do in Japan or will it be a fact that Australia will become a third world country which nobody wants?

The term "Third World" originally referred to the non-aligned nations during the cold war. That is, those nations which weren't part of the first world (the West) or the second world (Communist Bloc). People noticed that these countries were often developing, or poor, and the term then came to mean poor nations. Technically, there is no third world as the cold war has ended, but the term remains with an alternative connotation. It is interesting to see how people apply the term, and what they assume to be third world. I think the term which more accurately describes where we may head, is a banana republic.

In the last few years, our power bills have doubled, making Australia's electricity prices some of the highest in the developed world. Prime Minister Tony Abbott blames two things: the carbon tax and the renewable energy target. He says the government's review of the target will look at its impact on bills, because 'renewable energy targets are significantly driving up power prices right now'. Twice as many NSW families have had their power disconnected in the past financial year compared with five years ago, the Australian Energy Regulator has revealed. Origin, Australia's largest energy retailer, disconnected one in every 100 of their customers in the past financial year – double the previous year's rate. About 108,000 households in NSW, or 3.6 per cent of customers, are burdened with an electricity bill debt, defined as an amount that has been outstanding for more than 90 days. The average debt is $529, the report also shows. By comparison, only 2 to 3 per cent of customers in Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory are in arrears, though the average debts are larger, at $704 and $825 respectively. The AER report, which will act as a benchmark to monitor future energy market trends, also showed the average low-income household paying market prices paid 4.3 per cent more for electricity and 4.5 per cent more for gas. A second rail harbour crossing, new motorways, and billion dollar upgrades to schools, hospital and sports facilities will be built if the NSW government wins a mandate to sell 49 per cent of the state electricity network at the next election. The sale would also provide an extension of the west Connex freeway-like conditions across much of the Sydney road network. Premier Mike Baird said that the sale would allow a once in a generation opportunity to attack congestion in Sydney. Like Melbourne's East West Link, relieving "congestion" means more spending, and encroaching on public assets, not relieving the population pressure! State Electricity Commission of Victoria was sold off during the Kennett government's era of neo-liberalism. The authority was created in 1921 to provide cheap energy for the state, using the abundant brown coal reserves of Gippsland. Under the guidance of engineer and soldier Sir John Monash, among others, this is largely what it did for the next 70 years. Cheap, reliable power provided to a growing state. Privatization put an end to it! In the study commissioned by the Electricity Trades Union, Professor Quiggin examined 20 years of pro-privatisation reform in his report, “Electricity Privatisation in Australia: A Record of Failure”: – price rises have been highest in states with privatised electricity networks; – customer dissatisfaction jumped, with complaints to the energy ombudsman in privatised States leaping from 500 to over 50,000 per annum; – resources have been diverted away from operational functions to management and marketing, resulting in higher costs and poorer service; It is time to eradicate the myth that coal doesn’t cost much. In reality, it is costing humanity more than we can imagine (or are willing to admit). Coal also has enormous environmental, social and health costs. Some of these “externalities” can be accounted for. The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering has found that these extra costs effectively double the wholesale price of coal-fired electricity. Reports based on international evidence show that air pollution — especially the tiny particles emitted from the mining, transport and burning of coal — increases the risk of heart and lung disease, and reproductive problems. Since 2009, the electricity networks that own and manage our “poles and wires” have quietly spent $45 billion on the most expensive project this country has ever seen. They’ve spent vast sums on infrastructure we don’t need, and have charged it all to us, with an additional fee attached. This is the single biggest reason power prices have skyrocketed. According to the federal treasury, 51% of your electricity bill goes towards “network charges”. Thanks to the networks’ infrastructure binge, we now pay some of the highest prices in the developed world. The impact has been felt most keenly in New South Wales and Queensland, where the networks are government owned and network charges have accounted for two thirds of the price increases. We are suffering from the dis-economies of scale , which benefit land speculators, banks etc to the misery of the existing population and our natural and built environment . The poles and wires investment is caused by the need for new connections. This need is driven by a population growth rate of 1.2 million extra people every 3 years.

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