lunes, 28 de septiembre de 2009

Jeffrey Sachs' fear of 3rd world womens' wombs

"Common Wealth" is the title of the occasionally interesting, often outright sexist thoughts of the economist and co-creator of Goldman and Sachs. influenced by keynesian economics, - that poverty can be a powerful creator of violence; but yet ultimately profoundly influenced by neo conservative milton friedman ideology - Markets are Awesome - especially when implemented by force.

Theme of the day: population control. Watch out world. women are on the loose. With babies. lots of them. ahhhhh! Human survival is doomed. The culprit? women. Poor women from Africa and India would kill us all in a heartbeat if they could do it tomorrow. Unless... we fix this problem Now! through: "voluntary reduction in fertility rates". Why Jeffrey, you are a genius.

getting serious, so i can present my viewpoints 'academically' in a classroom that does not look kindly on sarcasm or jokes.

Sachs presents 10 other positive things that all point to lower fertility - eg education for girls, labor equality, health services,empowerment through equality in land titles and the law, better child survival rates.

1. misguided cause and effect
- low Fertility rates (having 3 children or less)is not a virtue by itself. Having fewer children does not magically create a functioning educational and health system. It does not grant equal access to the law. It certainly does not stop male privilege and gendered violence.
(In fact, male privilege may be the single largest factor creating all of these other negative factors, yet Jeffery does not address this. For example, he claims that education is important for women to 'get ahead'. I don't disagree. However, Conservative male dominated governments in places like Iran and that seized power they forbade women to work - even those with a university degree. Female doctors, lawyers, and professors that had been earning an income were suddenly barred from using their education. The only thing that stood in the way was penis power. The same with Afghanistan. the US supporter the Taliban against Russia, helped install conservative male power which demonized women. On top of that, the US then invades Afghanistan which killed off many of the women as well as their children and bombed them into the stone ages. War is much more devastating than high fertility rates.)
2. How many people can the earth hold? If population by itself is to blame for the pollution and destruction of the earth's environment, then that would mean that each person contributes equally to the destruction. however, as Sach's wrote in the previous chapter - 1st world countries, especially America - and the rich within America are disproportionately destroying the earth. logic would follow, that rich American women should stop having children - because her child pollutes as much as about 100 African children (if not more). not to mention that child will live twice as long - meaning that if we calculate the destruction that "paul" has - living to 78 years old as compared with "mandella" who lived to be 46, that is twice as much time to pollute. meaning paul pollutes in his lifetime as much as 200 african children. This of course does not even take into account the likely hood mandella lives to be 46 rather than 5. Point is, the sheer amount of time those that are destroying the earth have is far greater. Not to mention that 1st world countries' fertility rates are actually increasing! but this causes no alarm bells.

The critique that Sachs does not address is (which he even mentions, pretending that he will address) is that the problem is not population, but about living sustainably. For example, imagine if the earth held 11 billion people rather than the 6.7 we currently have. The only reason a large population is bad - is because we are too destructive. Because even when we had 3.5 billion in the 1950's this was the start of the worst environmental destruction in earth's history. Mostly through large polluters like coal production, steel mills, and deforestation. So large populations don't destroy the earth - single people do. So imagine if we were less destructive at 11 than at 6.7, then logically there would be no problem. But yet Sachs creates the goal of 'stabilizing at 8 billion' because 'we cannot continue the current path we are on'. Again, the path he refers to is the complete destruction of our environment. At 6.7 billion we are very wasteful. Do we need to fix shit? yes. get rid of coal. get rid of open pit mining. stop oil drilling. This obsession with 3rd world women's motherhood choices creates fear and will not solve the real problem. SUSTAINABLE LIFESTYLES.

sábado, 5 de septiembre de 2009

conflict studies

thus begins my formal academic career in conflict studies. perhaps one of the most highly contested and political fields in my opinion. terrorism, what creates it, how to best respond to genocide, wars of agression... the list goes on. while the program is rooted in the idea that peace is indeed desireable and possible, much of the current literature is not.
current class: reinventing foreign policy from a conflict resolution perspective for Obama. self reflection: i have difficulty reading material i disagree with, because it makes me angry. trying to dissacociate from it, and try to understand their argument without having to agree with it. The book "peace and conflict 2008" by hewitt and wilkenfeld is like reading what the US state department wants you to believe. As I am reading through, in the back of my mind - why did they choose that definition? or, if they use that, why did they not include x,y,z? such as in the chapter discussing terrorism. "the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation." the us state department only uses the term political - and actual violence rather than threat of violence. legal terrorism questions not withstanding as a moral problem, what about the war in iraq? wars of agression are illegal accourding to international law, with bombings, for political reasons. this is terrorism. why did they choose to consider rebel groups, or minority groups the sole perpetrators of terrorism? without admitting that they actually did so? but they did not consider any state terrorism. not even the razed villages campaign in Guatemala that killed 200,000 people and the gov't was responsible for 93% of the deaths. but the resistance group is counted among the terrorist? give me a break.

other areas of concern: "economic openess" is discussed as 1 of 4 main criteria for judging instability.
wow: i just looked up the political instability task force: where much of this info is analyzed. it says the task force was created by request from senior policy makers to understand failed states. columbia university, arizone, george mason public policy program.. the kicker: "funded by the CIA. are you kidding me!!! wtf george mason? how legitimate is any academic study funded by the CIA.

"The PITF is funded by the Central Intelligence Agency. The PITF website is hosted by the Center for Global Policy at George Mason University and is provided as a public service. The views expressed herein are those of the Task Force and its individual members, and do not represent the views of the University or the US Government."

wow.

martes, 1 de septiembre de 2009

liberals vs. conservatives

From my first impression of my first class - arguably not the best sample to form a real opinion, but that has never deterred me before... It seems that we ("liberals") vastly underestimate who conservatives are, what they believe, and the ideology that we disagree with. conservatives are not only undeducated rural americans. They are professors, they are the heads of think tanks, they are military generals, they are our congressmen. and a few are even our congresswomen.
People were commenting on the anger and division during the elections. or how they can't really talk to their conservative friends. Personally, I enjoy rural america. maybe not all of it. the white supremicist groups are unwelcome and protested almost everywhere they go in Montana, but they still do have their supporters. Unlike dc, you can actually have a conservation not involving politics. unwillingly i do as much as i can to change that.

if we use education as our measure to create an inferiority complex, why would it uniquly be a white thing? What about the labor movement with low wage jobs?
Lets face it folks, the war cry is not limited to republicans. in fact, ron paul was against iraq also. education makes one docile in the face of authority. pavlov's other experiment - asking people to shock their peers by pretending to be a doctor. despite hearing their screams to stop.

anyways, my point is, i think people overestimate democrats, which doesn't seem like such a radical concept, concerning what most progressive blogs write about concerning the blue dog betrayal on health care... so it surprised me to see that partisan adherence come out even in the initial conversations. fake liberals annoy me most because they pretend they are pro humanity. yet they still want to bomb people, because that is the practicality of life.