ideology

A predictably appalling article from Nicholas Reece, City of Melbourne Lord Mayor, and a seasoned career growth enthusiast, has found a cozy spot in Australia's legacy press.

An old mate of mine and his son are doing their bit to promote awareness of climate change. Good on them. They arranged a presentation and invited an audience of around 100 people. The focus was on what WE could each do to reduce emissions. The direct link between population growth and climate change was not identified as a key issue.

Examples of storm impacts in the Philippines and acidification of the sea had been provided to explain the impacts of climate change and carbon dioxide. I provided the following supportive comments afterwards:

"I learnt a few things. The 4 million left homeless in the Philippines would have been 2.7 million if their population hadn't grown 50% in the previous 20 years.

The sea has already lost 90% of its fish, and that is caused by the same force as climate change. Acidification and over fishing are caused by population growth. All new oil and gas projects have design lives of 30 to 70 years. It's unlikely they will be abandoned before those lives end. But the number built to meet expanding demand can be immediately be impacted by family planning.

Can't overcome the sense of absurdity associated with deconstructing the environmental argument in this way. The population issue is no more challenging than emissions. It's just a different part of the same problem.

Seems to me that if you go to the effort of creating awareness of sustainability in the form of climate, why wouldn't you also mention the driving force behind both GDP growth and environmental destruction? The US economy has been driven by population growth for over 100 years. In 1962 there was one Wal-Mart. Now there are 8500 of them all selling fish. There are no cod left off Newfoundland.

As I have always sincerely believed; half an argument is like no argument because the big picture problem can't be solved with half a solution!"

As an ironic footnote to this story, the Wal-Mart Syndrome is my definition of what happens when economic growth driven by population growth goes to ridiculous extremes. As Russell Brand has explained, the six Wal-Mart heirs have wealth equal to the total wealth of the US's 185 million poorest citizens. Population growth was a driving force behind the creation of that massive inequity.

As I sat listening to the climate change presentation I was aware that many of the baby boomers in the audience were multi-millionaires who were born at the right time in the right place. These days you only need to have bought 4 houses with borrowed money 30 years ago to be worth more than $10 million.

So these fortunate wealthy epitomise the Wal-Mart Syndrome. The population growth that drove their relatively easy path to wealth has actually dispossessed future generations of similar opportunities. In the context of the climate change debate I am more convinced than ever that those who choose to disconnect the climate change (emissions management) debate from its Siamese twin population growth are living in exactly the state of denial that climate change activists think exists amongst those they are trying to enlist to their cause.

"half an argument is like no argument".......and that is why nothing is happening. WE can do nothing if we deny the most important half of the scientific reality; Exponential Population Growth and Australia's leading role in this debacle.

Michael S brings to a persuasive conclusion his argument that Your ABC has been complicit in a brainwashing exercise that will damage the survival chances of its loyal listeners. As one who comes from a family of Friends of the ABC, with seniors who simply love the ABC for its programs and the window it provides on the world, I know how difficult it is for such people to bring themselves to believe that the ABC would mislead them. For them it is like a fundamental betrayal from an old friend. Nevertheless I think that Michael S is right: ABC policy is run by people whom the lay-person would judge to be outlaws. Yet they are not disciplined or taken to court. What does that say about our legal system? - Candobetter editorial.

A layman’s view of the legal landscape

If we accept that breach of the ABC’s Statutory Duty to avoid bias (Ref: ABC Code of Practice) has occurred, then we must also accept that the ABC is a law breaker.

One premise for accusing the ABC of law breaking is the following 5 minute video, which is the “tip of the iceberg” of ABC pro-Carbon Tax and pro-Population Growth bias:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97cmFCkb1KE

Here is a proof of party political advertising in the ABC Vote Compass, which is also unlawful according to the ABC Editorial Policy document:
http://candobetter.net/?q=node/3844

Pro-population growth and pro-Carbon Tax bias underlie each example. There are many more examples that can be exposed by scrutiny of ABC conduct between 2008 and the present.

It’s a bit like parking in a No Standing Zone. If you didn’t see the No Standing sign you still broke the law.

So I think we can comfortably move on knowing that the ABC has been, and remains, a law breaker in its coverage of these issues.

Both the ACMA and the Commonwealth Ombudsman have refused to acknowledge this bias, despite the facts presented. So they have denied the ABC even parked in the wrong place, let alone did it with intent.

This interesting excerpt provides a description of Accessory after the fact:

CRIMES ACT 1914 - SECT 6
Accessory after the fact

"Any person who receives or assists another person, who is, to his or her knowledge, guilty of any offence against a law of the Commonwealth, in order to enable him or her to escape punishment or to dispose of the proceeds of the offence shall be guilty of an offence.
Penalty: Imprisonment for 2 years."

So if the bias is proven, and the ACMA and the Commonwealth Ombudsman argued that it did not exist, are they Accessories after the fact or are they incompetent and therefore innocent?

So is it possible for the ABC to be incompetent and guilty while the ACMA and Ombudsman are incompetent and innocent?

Hence nobody is accountable for a major betrayal of the Australian people? And because nobody is accountable, the betrayal can continue indefinitely?

Let’s move on to some incriminating facts that challenge the incompetence defence:

• I first raised the direct relationship between emissions growth and population growth in written communication with the ABC on 23 November 2009 and continued to do so many times before passing of the Carbon Tax legislation in November 2011
• Statistics quantifying the direct relationship between emissions growth and population growth, and relatively constant emissions per capita, had been recorded in National Inventory Reports by Government on an annual basis since 1990. They show emissions growth correlated with population growth far exceeding the Australian-based Carbon Tax reduction targets. The ABC has always had full access to this information.

Here’s something interesting about what a reasonable person should be able to do:

Ref: http://epublications.bond.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1056&context=law_pubs
Ordinary and reasonable people: The design of objective tests of criminal responsibility

“This paper reviews the design of objective tests of criminal responsibility for serious offences. It will be argued that their design needs to be rationalised in light of two fundamental principles. First, there is ‘the fault principle’, that is, the principle that there should be no penal liability without fault. It follows from this principle that, whatever the seriousness of an offence, we should reject liability for failure to attain a standard that was beyond the capacities of the accused. Secondly, there is ‘the proportionality principle’, that is, the principle of proportionality between culpability and punishment or penal liability. Proportionality is both a sentencing principle and a principle of responsibility. As a principle of responsibility, it demands that the degree of culpability required for an offence should be commensurate with the level of penal liability. The more severe the sanctions that a person will face upon conviction, the worse should be the culpability required for conviction.”

Since we are not seeking to imprison anybody (but maybe we should?) the persons facing the severe sanctions are the people of Australia whose democratic rights are being abused due to:

• Misrepresentation of the Carbon Tax issue
• Omission of the Population Growth Management issue from public policy debate

Any reasonable person can see this truth, including all the ABC Operatives who perpetrated the bias. So why is it an unreasonably harsh penalty to expect them to apologise and correct all their misrepresentations. Or was it outright fraud?

In terms of numbers, Green-Left ideologues are marginal. But they punch far above their weight. Their mission is plant preconceptions about eco-Malthusians in the minds of grass roots environmentalists and those few in the media would invite our input. Left unchallenged, this bad rap becomes conventional wisdom, and doors continue to slam in our faces. And these New McCarthyists know it. It is time we gave them a dose of their own medicine. We must expose their corporate funding sources and ask the obvious questions. Whose agenda are THEY serving? Whose interest is served by open borders? Are not the "eco-socialists" and "green" Trots Wall Street's useful idiots?

Green Left Smear Network Always Quick Off The Mark

Here we go again. Always close at the heels of our press releases, he Green-Left network smears the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform once more. http://www.dominionpaper.ca It should be apparent that Southern Poverty Law Centre does not have to set up shop in Canada to hurt us. The eco-Marxists have an international web presence, and rely upon the SPLC and a Chicago-based clone (Centre for New Community) as a clearing house for defamatory profiles of "nativists, bigots, reactionaries and hate-mongers" who allegedly use environmental issues as a screen for their wicked anti-immigrant agenda. Key to the smear strategy is the ritual defamation of opponents and the promotion of a media blacklist to quarantine their views.

Our Unearned Reputation Precedes Us

Many of us already know the experience. An upcoming interview with a television or radio journalist, initially enthusiastic at the prospect, is suddenly cancelled without explanation. Or an op-ed piece that had the green light for publication is abruptly yanked at the last moment with the lame excuse that no space was available--bumped for a trivial story about a council vote on a sports stadium. Or a weekly column that you had in an important online paper is terminated---again without explanation. You become paranoid. You smell the intervention of a Mark Potok or a Green Party hack in Ottawa or an anonymous tipster who left a link to an SPLC publication. And your paranoia is later vindicated.

Lazy Journalists Welcome Home-Delivery of Ready-Made Mischaracterizations and Misinformation

Why do smear organizations like SPLC and the Centre for New Community have the ear of journalists, editors and "progressive" movements? They offer ready-made quotable misinformation that unchallenged, have made them an unimpeachable source of objective, reliable news. In this way the threat posed by their enemies can be inflated beyond its actual scale to attract more donations.

Marxist Refugees Found Sanctuary In The Environmental Movement

Betsy Hartmann and Ian Angus are major players in this broad campaign. Hartmann's lair is New Hampshire College, which acts as a boot camp for feminist population-denialism. Angus is a victim of the puerile disorder of Trotskyism, which like genital herpes, once acquired, seemingly can never be cured. It is understandable why refugees from the ideological defeat of Marxism two decades ago found sanctuary in the warm bosom of open-borders environmentalism and anti-racism. Since the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the manifest failure of command economies everywhere and the retreat of social democracy from higher marginal taxation rates, the class struggle in any guise has been a tough sell. Reframed as "anti-racism", however, it enjoys a resurrection. Now environmentalism is not about saving nature but about saving people from capitalism. It is about social justice, or as it is now called, "environmental justice". Red has hijacked Green.

The New McCarthyists Are More Dangerous For Their Influence Than Their Numbers

It is easy for most to dismiss these New McCarthyists as marginal. But it is not them that we should be concerned about, but the broader constituency they influence---like the readership of Dominion Magazine or Alternet and a spectrum of online forums that deal with legitimate environmental issues. That is where the Fem-Green-Left ideologues do their hunting. Betsy Hartmann, whose infamous article “The Greening of Hate” formed the template for this latest attack on CIPR, as it has for smears against similar organizations and personalities, offers a clinic on reflexive mischaracterizations. Our mission to return environmentalists to the foundational “IPAT” formula is depicted as an effort to beguile and mislead them , and our war on overpopulation is dismissed as a “war on women’s bodies” and an attempt to scapegoat the global poor for the sins of the rich. Why does that frighten them?

Why The Leadership Of Canada's Green Party Junked Direct Democracy

Let me give you one reason. They know that on a level playing field that their smears and arguments can be easily defeated. John Meyer, former President of Zero Population Growth Canada, took them on in October, and after a brief skirmish on Angus's "Climate and Capitalism" forum, they remained silent. They had no comebacks. The Green Party of Canada is terrified of us for the same reason. In 2004-5 they flirted with direct on-line democracy. The membership was invited to vote on policy resolutions. Guess what---- 56% of grassroots Greens voted for a policy that would make the reduction and control of immigration intakes a central part of a sustainability strategy for Canada. The response? The hierarchy shut the process down.

They scuttled their democratic experiment because they realized that if the membership was in control, they would be burdened with a policy that might hurt their career ambitions. Green Party leader Elizabeth May campaigns for an immigration intake 25% higher than the government’s to serve what she calls “Canada’s Great Multicultural Project”. We are to get more cultural diversity at the cost of our biological diversity. Immigration, she insists, is an issue of “trivial” ecological importance. We can grow our population by 350,000 every year, meet GHG emissions targets and save our farmland at the same time. Growth can be “decoupled” from environmental damage. No doubt, in Greendom, ice cream consumption can be “decoupled” from weight gain, and thirst from water.

It Is Time We Exposed The Funding Sources Of Green Orgs On The Corporate Take

Another reason that the soft Greens must prevent our penetration of the environmental movement is that adoption of our policies would threaten their corporate funding. How dare we use Trotskyist tactics on Trotskyists! How dare we turn the tables on them by pointing out who their sordid benefactors are! This is their Achilles Heel. Their smears are largely based on guilt-by-association and guilt-by-funding-sources.

Two can play this game. It is about time we shone the light on them, in the same way that Ezra Levant has exposed Greenpeace and the Washington Post has exposed Nature Conservancy. We need to make noise about Green Inc----the shameless partnerships that Big Green have formed with the Big Corporations whom they now resemble. We must pose questions like, "Why is the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy and its clones on the same side of the amnesty/immigration issue as ADM, the agribusiness lobby, Microsoft, the IT industry and cheap labour employers? Are green NGOs paid not to understand the population-environment link? Who has the hidden agenda? In connecting those environmentalists alarmed at runaway population growth with 'xenophobic' or 'racist' foundations and factions, is the pot not calling the kettle black?"

Our problem is finding a high-profile media platform to ask readers to consider these questions and invite them to connect the dots. Until then, we can only fight the Internet war in the trenches.

Tim Murray
November 17, 2010

"Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?" Francis Bacon

"Deprive the average human being of his life-lie, and you rob him of his happiness.” Dr. Relling in Ibsen's play "The Wild Duck"

Confession

I have a confession to make. On March 4th, I watched the full 43 minutes of CBC's "The Hour" hosted by the inimitably nauseating "Strombo" (George Strombopolous) and I managed to retain my stomach contents in the process. To be frank, I was transfixed. His first two interviews were gripping. The theme was religion. Was it a positive or necessary force in our lives, or a dangerous and outmoded delusion?

Pope of Atheism

Strombo's first guest was what he aptly described as "The Pope of Atheism", Richard Dawkins. As usual, Dawkins was incisive and entertaining. His message was that evolution was so wondrous that we should stop to bask in its glory and enjoy this life to the fullest rather than invest our hopes in a post-corporeal existence of our imagination. Scientific theory, he argued, is not to be equated with "theory" as understood in popular parlance. It is much more than that. It is not a speculative conclusion to be ranked with equivalent credibility to other speculations. It is built upon evidence that must pass a much more rigorous standard than the assertions of competing beliefs. The ''theory " of evolution, must be granted the same credence as the "fact" that the Holocaust happened or that Dawkins was sitting in a CBC studio in Toronto. Dawkins is right. Fundamentalist Christians, in my experience, seem to think that any scientific "theory" is something that must serve a probationary period sitting in a waiting room until it is anointed as "fact" and given a pass to enter the kingdom of Truth. This attitude reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific process. All scientific theories offer themselves to challenge---they set out a means by which they can be tested and found incorrect. Religions, on the other hand, demand acceptance in the absence of proof.

Atheism and Insomnia

Dawkins was asked if belief in evolutionary theory was enough to "get us through the night". Irrelevant. Whether a belief gets us through the night or not has no bearing upon its truth. I might dispel my worries by fervently believing that following my expiration, I will be resurrected as the taste-tester in a chocolate factory for all eternity, but such a firm conviction does not constitute proof that my expectation is a reasonable one. If 500 million people passionately believe something to be true, that does not make it true. And if just one individual believes something to be true, that alone does not make it false. The arbiter must be evidence that meets scientific requirements. Yes indeed, scientific 'theory' is a different animal than mere 'theory'.

Ideology

Chris Hedges, the next guest, took issue with Dawkins' "New Atheism" however. Just as he found Christian fundamentalists dogmatic in their belief that truth cannot be found in another religious tradition or a humanist realm, Hedges finds the New Atheists dogmatic in their assertion that truth cannot be found in religion. Atheists fail to understand our spiritual needs and affect a confidence in science alone to quantity important things that cannot be quantified. Even Freud, he said, could not define "love". The chocolate heaven that I dream of may be a fantasy, but whether it is or not does not address my inherent predilection to imagine heaven. I think that Hedges is on to something here. I recall that archaeologists once found a Neanderthal grave in Israel where implements that the departed individual had found useful in his life were placed beside him upon burial. In the other words, even these "mentally" handicapped brutes---as we used to perceive them---thought of life-after-death. I don't imagine that chimpanzees or horses have such preoccupations.

Logic

Hedges speculates that sometime in our two or three million year run-up to becoming homo sapiens, we developed this spiritual dimension. It is now part of our equipment--- like it or not. Dawkins may sincerely claim that he has no need of religion to get through the night, but like the rest of us I suspect, along with his thirst for knowledge there is quest for meaning. Can his exploration of nature be explained only in terms of seeking personal "satisfaction'? How can anyone be satisfied with any accomplishment unless one harbours a belief that leaves a durable legacy? Why write a book like "The Blind Watchmaker" or "The God Delusion" if you don't believe it makes an impact of lasting importance? Why would I contribute to the "populista" movement if I didn't at some level believe it important? And is not this belief absurdly illogical? As Alan Weisman argued in "A World Without Us", the human race and its attainments will one day perish without a trace. Books and articles and podcasts included.

Binary tensions

Hedges maintains that religion is not the problem. The problem can be found in people of all religious affiliations, including the New Atheists. The problem is not in an ideology, but in our own minds and 'hearts'. Fundamentalists of all persuasions, humanist as well, have the habit of 'binary' thinking. There is a right and a wrong. Black and white. Good and evil. They all set up a caricature of evil incarnated in an oppositional straw man. If you are a fundamentalist Christain, that straw man is a "secular humanist" or a Muslim. If you are a fundamental Muslim, your straw man is a Judeo-Christian or atheist. If you are a New Atheist, it is organized religion of all stripes and the infantile belief in a Supreme Being or beings who exercise authority over us and the natural world. Hedges finds all of these mental constructions dangerously problematic, because they make real people into abstractions. But then, we are tribal animals, and tribal war demands that we perceive our enemies in a way that firms up our resolution to defeat them. We must in some sense, "de-humanize" them. Hedges should accept that as a fixture of human nature as well, I think. We are 'hard-wired' to love those most like our selves, and to emotionally disengage from strangers who would threaten them.

Hardwiring

I have argued for some time now, that we are neurologically flawed. We are a prototype of a better model that needs an opportunity to roll off the evolutionary assembly line. Our salvation cannot come from a moral revolution, an advance toward rationality or a funadamentally utopian political or economic arrangement. We will not find safety in some kind of socialism or steady state economy. Even if a rump of hunter-gatherers were to emerge from the rubble of overshoot, there is a very strong possibility---no, a strong probability--- that they or their descendants would tread down the same path of unsustainability that we did. Eventually we would once again take the fatal turn toward cultivation agriculture, the root of our undoing. Our flaw is, simply, an inability to acknowledge limits and grasp the long-term consequences of our behaviour. We are greedy myopics by nature, and not one of the "isms" in the marketplace offer an everlasting cure for our nature. While I too am fatally spiritual, I am not in awe of God. If He had been an engineer at General Motors, He would have been canned long ago. Nader would call us unsafe at any speed. We should have been recalled.

No escape

Dawkins error, in my judgment, is his failure to understand that "religion" is ecumenical. It consists of all delusional thinking, not just that found in a mosque, a church or a temple. Succinctly put, religion can be defined as hope without evidence. By that standard, we are all religious. Despite my 'scientific' world view, I persist in the belief that there exists a Ms. Right sculptured like a 30 year old Hollywood movie star who will materialize at the local supermarket and fail to notice my age or my station, despite nearly five decades of experience that argues for the contrary. I also believe that if I buy a lottery ticket I will be that one in 14 million people who wins the jackpot. I even believe that the Montreal Canadiens will win the Stanley Cup, even though they are currently fighting just to get in the playoffs. I have faith, despite a paucity of evidence. But I am not alone. People like Richard Dawkins still believe in Wall Street's man, Barack Obama, to lead us to the promised land. Even a $12 trillion dollar debt does not cause them doubt. Financial planners believe that we can build financial security that will survive the collapse of the oil economy. Cornucopian socialists believe that there is enough to go around if only society was efficiently and fairly administered. Greens assert that if the affluent cut their consumption, enough resources will be available for the burgeoning poor of the developing world. Growthists believe that scarcity will only encourage innovations that will abolish it. Like Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield, they believe that even in the face of collapse, 'something will turn up'. Environmentalists, for their part, still believe that we can "manage" growth, and that there exists a technological fix for mass extinctions and critical resource shortages. And authentic Chrisitians believe that no matter how many more billion mouths set up shop, God will provide for those who believe in Him.

Denial

All of us live in some state of denial. Most of the time, we actually think or behave as if we were not going to die, and that our civilization will endure. But in our sober moments, we know that all good things must come to an end . Nothing you ever accomplished will survive the passage of time. So why then are you happy? Because you are, at some level, delusional. You 'got religion.' You are a true believer. "Positive thinking", as it is called, may be the recipe for personal success, but applied collectively, it has transformed us into blind sleep-walkers racing to the precipice. Nature does not care about our morale, or whether we feel good about ourselves. It only cares if we can limit our numbers and our appetite within its ability to carry us. So far, we flunked the test. Big time.

It is my contention that unless we can reform our brain structure, we will not survive for much longer. We are just too dumb to live.

As you would expect, that thought doesn't get me through the night very well. A clear apprehension of reality is not a proven sedative.

Tim Murray
March 4/2010

Also published on countercurrents.org.