Category Archives: Blog

Blog, Pro-Life

Puerto Rico Demographic Winter


A continuing strike [4] by students at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) has now closed the institution for more than a month at a cost of over 100 million dollars. Nominally, the strike is about tuition costs, but political interests are clearly exacerbating the situation. At a more fundamental level the strike can be viewed as a minor skirmish in a developing inter-generational competition for resources fueled by demographic collapse.

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb predicting that by the year 2000, hundreds of millions would die of starvation due to a population explosion. Indeed, millions of intellectuals believed this simplism and today in Puerto Rico, as elsewhere, the myth of a population explosion is a dominant narrative in schools and universities.

However, the evidence (see [1], [2], [5]) suggests that the earth is rapidly approaching a catastrophic population implosion. The problem today is not overpopulation but underpopulation. For a population to reproduce itself, the fertility rate (as explained in the video in Fig 1. below) must average 2.1 children per woman.

Figure 1. A Necessary Condition for a Stable Population

Many nations already have rates significantly less than the critical replacement level of 2.1 and most are falling rapidly. For example, the population of Russia (fertility 1.36 in 2010) dropped by over 12 million between 1992 and 2008. Japan’s population of 128 million is predicted to fall to about 89 million by 2050 at which point, around 40% of the population will be over 65. By 2050, median age is expected to increase to 55 in Germany and 58 in Italy. With few exceptions (see figure Fig 2), similar gerontological shifts are occurring worldwide.

Global Fertility Decline
Fig. 2. Global Fertility Decline

Such demographic trends are not easily reversed. Russia and China have found to their chargrin, that once fertility rates drop below replacement, not even financial incentives can raise them significantly. In Shanghai, labor shortages have forced the government to relax its draconian population control measures —but to no avail. Many Chinese no longer even want children, especially girls, and rates of abortion and infanticide remain high. Forced abortions continue at a rate of about 35,000 per day under that country’s coercive one-child policy. The strongly anti natalist policies of the United Nations, USAID, International Planned Parenthood, NGO’s such as Amnesty International, Oxfam and Christian Aid, as well as major philanthropists such as George Soros have wrought worldwide cultural changes. These changes including increased rates of abortion, contraception and breakdown of the traditional family have had a devastating effect on fertility and health. The number of common sexually transmitted diseases has increased from essentially 5 to more than 30, effecting up to a quarter of the population in some US cities. Paradoxically, the promotion of condoms has actually increased the rate of HIV and other infections [8]. According to Dr. Edward C. Green (director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies)

“There is a consistent association shown by our best studies, including the U.S.-funded ‘Demographic Health Surveys,’ between greater availability and use of condoms and higher (not lower) HIV-infection rates,”

Countries undergoing demographic decline inevitably suffer severe and prolonged economic downturns. The productive segment of the age spectrum is reduced from above by aging and from below by low birth rates. As the political power of the elderly increases in proportion to their numbers and propensity to vote, spending on health and pensions rises. Rather than risk opposing this trend politicians prefer to play safe by reducing spending on education, defense, and transport. As in the current strike at the UPR, the younger segment of the population naturally reacts to the rising costs of tuition. The outcome is an intergenerational conflict over limited resources.

Puerto Rico Total Fertility Rates
YearTotal 
Fertility Rate		Percentage 
Change		Rank
19604.55  
20032.02 142
20041.91-5.45%147
20051.75-8.38%166
20061.750.00%167
20071.771.14%158
20081.76-0.56%160
20091.71-2.84%170
20101.60-3.54%176
20151.341  
20230.89

1CDC Data

4-2-1 Population Distribution

The above global trends are already reflected in the demographic profile of Puerto Rico, and projections point to a declining and ageing population. The median age of females has risen steadily reaching 37.9 years in 2009. According to CIA data, the total fertility rate has fallen steadily from 2.02 in 2003 to an estimated 1.65 in 2010, an average change of about -0.04 per year. In 1960 it was 4.55. Puerto Rico’s birthrate now ranks 176 out of a survey of 200 countries in the world. The current fertility level of 1.65 means, roughly speaking, each generation will be 18% smaller than the preceding. Moreover, if the current rate of decrease in fertility is maintained, then by 2020, total fertility will be close to one child per woman -the point at which the population will be reduced by one half in each succeeding generation. The population will then trend towards, what is known in demography as, a 4-2-1 distribution. One adult child will have to provide support for his two parents and four grandparents.

Historically, the decline in fertility in Puerto Rico can be attributed to a population control regime started by USAID and other organizations. In the fifties, Puerto Rico women were the victims of a mass sterilization program[3] masquerading as an anti-poverty campaign. Many were not even informed of the consequences. By 1970 approximately 30% of Puerto Rico’s female population of childbearing age had been sterilized -the highest rate in the world. In the sixties’s Puerto Rico women were used as guinea pigs in the mass testing of unproven contraceptive hormones [6] and by 1963, dozens had died. At that time it was not well known that oral contraceptives, apart from their abortifacient propensity by causing death of the fertilized ovum, also caused blood clots, heart attacks, and pulmonary embolisms, cancer, pelvic inflammatory disease, depression and other conditions (see: (https://thepillkills.org/). In 1973, the demographic decline accelerated as a consequence of the US Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion. If the abortion rate, estimated at .68 in 2001, were reduced in half, the fertility level of Puerto Rico would be above replacement.

Measures of legal abortion in Puerto Rico1
Measures of legal abortion in Puerto Rico1
CountryYearNo.*Ratio‡ Total abortion rate§
Puerto Rico199119,200230.68


1Guttmacher Institute
‡Abortions per 100 known pregnancies.
§The number of abortions that would be experienced by the average woman during her reproductive lifetime, given present age-specific abortion rates.
*Worldwide, about one-fourth of the approximately 180 million pregnancies are terminated by abortion.

UPR facilities used to violate blockade of Cuba

The likely economic consequences of this population decline for Puerto Rico are well described by Alexander F. Díaz, in his article Demographic storm [2]. In fact, the decline in fertility is already being experienced in the closing of schools and the diminishing enrollment in post secondary education. The Puerto Rico Department of Education is planning for a reduction of 14,000 students in the public schools in 2010 and at least 40 schools are in danger of closing. The University of Puerto Rico has experienced an estimated 14% drop in enrollment at its main campus in Rio Piedras from 21,561 students in 2000 to 18,653 in 2010. To date, this fall in enrollment has gone largely uncommented. There is a tendency among educators to hide the decline. The UPR Department of English website still proclaims a total enrollment in 2010 of 22,000 students. Many professors are wedded -apparently without the possibility of divorce- to the long discredited narrative of population explosion and continue to teach this in their courses. The decline in enrollment, and concurrent loss of revenues, has contributed to the UPR’s 300 million dollar deficit and is a contributing cause of the current five week student strike. However, unlike in previous strikes, not all of the student’s demands are likely to be met. The government does not have the luxury of robbing the already weakened general economy to bale out an institution which has long been a black hole for money: where tenure is a sinecure; where students regularly take more than 8 years to graduate; where professors of postmodern stripe dedicate time to propagating the discredited ideologies of Freud, Marx, and Freire or the lunacy of gender theory; where many students, ignorant of communist atrocities, proudly wear Che t-shirts and, in violation of Federal laws, participate in brigades to visit Cuba; where student unrest receives the endorsement of dictators such as Castro and Chavez; where Literature professors devote class time to showing triple x movies; where Body Art has supplanted Western Civilization in the curriculum. When a large percentage of the population is unemployed and lacks health care or an adequate pension and revenue is limited, there is no political incentive for a government, with dwindling revenues, to divert additional resources to a dysfunctional institution [7]. Better to adopt a politically expedient solution such as converting the main campus in Rio Piedras into a graduate research facility. With the fall in student numbers, the remaining students could be easily accomodated in other campuses in Puerto Rico or the US.

Prospects for the independence of Puerto Rico are also impacted by current demographic realities. The economic advantages of the relationship with the US are such that there is little imperative for Puerto Ricans to seek full independence and it is unsurprising that at least 40% of the population favor statehood. In fact, during the 2008 elections, the Puerto Rico Independence Party (PIP) lost official recognition obtaining only 2.04% of the vote.

An obvious necessary requisite for independence is a successful and growing economy for only in such an economy would independence be viable. A healthy and expanding economy requires a young and growing population. Demographic and economic decline in Puerto Rico can be expected to translate into an outmigration to the US mainland. Since it is generally young people who leave, a feedback loop is formed leading to a spiral of further decline. Already, almost half of all Puerto Ricans live on the mainland. For this reason, it is clearly in the interests of parties seeking independence for Puerto Rico to encourage population growth and strong stable families.

By embracing “diversity” in a desperate search for members, the Puerto Rico Independence Party, the Refundacion Comunista, the Frente Socialista, and other groups supporting independence, have fallen into the trap of adopting radical feminist agendas which promote abortion and population control, and which have contributed to the breakdown of the traditional family. The antinatalist stance adopted by these organizations is agravating the demographic decline which has already made political independence for Puerto Rico a virtual impossibility. Holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously is a hallmark of incompetence or psychiatric disorder. Unless the various Puerto Rican pro independence parties cease promoting a “culture of death” and adopt rational policies, in accord with their principal objective, the prospects for Puerto Rican independence would seem, at best, bleak.

Philip Pennance, May 2010
https://pennance.us/

Addendum

Puerto Rico birthrates fell by 3.8 percent in 2009 and marriages dropped by 13.2 percent from 2007 to 2008. According to the 2010 Census, Puerto Rico’s population fell by 2.2 percent from 3,808,610 in 2000 to 3,725,789 in 2010. Since no US state has shown a comparable population decrease, Puerto Rico’s share of more than $400 billion in annual federal aid will be correspondingly reduced with disastrous consequences for the local economy. There are already more than 500,000 non-Puerto Ricans residing on the island Puerto Rican. Unless abortion is halted and the contraceptive mentality changed. Puerto Rican culture remains in serious danger of dissapearing along with any prospects of independence. Meanwhile the perpetual unrest at the UPR continues —added 12/27/2010

References

  1. Steven Malanga, Our Vanishing Ultimate Resource. Plummeting birthrates threaten prosperity worldwide. Can America buck the trend?, City Journal Vol 20, no. 1.
  2. Alexander F. Diaz, Demographic storm, Carribean Business, August 14, 2008 | Volume: 36 | No: 32.
  3. Philip Pennance, The cost of human eggs – Warning to Puerto Rico students.
  4. La Huelga y El Visitante. Concerning the Strike at the UPR.
  5. Demographic Winter. Documentary on demographic collapse.
  6. Mujeres en Puerto Rico utiliazadas como “conejillos de Indias”, Boletin de Vida Humana Internacional 15 Oct 2003.
  7. All UPR Posts at Pennance.us
  8. Philip Pennance, Condom Roulette.
Blog, Pro-Life

Brain Death – The Hoax That Won’t Die

by Earl E. Appleby, Jr.

Whether you are classified as dead or alive depends upon your attending physician’s understanding of the concept of death. The radical departure from the traditional cardiorespiratory standard of death inherent in “brain death” has, in Capron and Kass’s words, brought “extramedical concepts to the forefront of concern.”

Moreover, “medical judgments,” as Lamb reminds us “are informed by philosophical presuppositions, whether or not the latter are explicitly formulated.” The following article explicates the “philosophical presuppositions” underlying the “extramedical concepts” of brain death as articulated by its proponents.

If as propagandist par excellence, Joseph Goebbels maintained, a lie repeated often enough is soon believed, the brainwashed public’s blind faith in “brain death” is telling testimony to the pervasive power of the big lie. Regrettably, while the medical myth of brain death won’t die, its victims do.

Brain death, a prominent proponent attests, is “a creation of prevailing medical technologies.” Ironically, these “technologies” have nothing to do with the ability to determine death and everything to do with the ability to sustain life. Brain death “standards” have more permutations than the HIV-virus and like AIDS, they are all deadly. The first U.S. guidelines were proposed by the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to examine the Definition of Brain Death. Their 1968 report, revealingly entitled A Definition of Irreversible Coma, cites two “reasons “to define irreversible coma as a new criterion for death”: (1) “increased efforts to save those who are desperately injured,” in the wake of medical progress in “resuscitative and supportive measures,” and (2) “controversy in obtaining organs for transplantation” in light of the traditional cardiorespiratory definition of death.

Death by Definition

Over the years, physicians have practiced euthanasia,” Dr. Willard Gaylin, of the infamous Hastings Center, acknowledges in Harvesting the Dead. “They have withheld antibiotics or other simple treatments when it was felt that a life did not warrant sustaining, or pulled the plug on the respirator when they were convinced that what was being sustained no longer warranted the definition of life.”

The staged debate among its sundry sects notwithstanding, the real question posed by the brain-death cult is not whether its victims are dead but whether they have a right to life. We are, in Gaylin’s words, “faced with the task of deciding whether that which we have kept alive is a human being, or, to put it another way, whether that human being. . . should be considered alive.'” “The problem,” he concludes, “is well on its way to be resolved by what must have seemed a relatively simple and ingenious method. As it turned out, the difficult issues of euthanasia could be evaded by redefining death.” (emphasis added)

We live in a world in which words are wielded as weapons. “Euthanasians,” Fr. Paul Marx reminds us, “abuse language magnificently to their own ends.” Once the dehumanizing derangement of “beating-heart cadavers,” “ventilated corpses,” “living dead,” and other such sociobiological bigotries were accorded the dignity due rational discourse, the wholesale inflation of death by definition was guaranteed. The difference between so-called “whole brain death,” perversely peddled as the “pro-life” definition of brain death, and its kindred spirits, “cerebral death,” “neocortical death,” “social death,” ad nauseam, is the difference between a call girl and a street walker the price at which something sacred will be sold.

Dying for Dollars

Price, of course, is the bottom-line of checkbook euthanasia (and of euthanasia, in general). Brain death is no exception. British advocate Dr. Christopher Pallis cites “the cost-effectiveness equation” as one reason why “it is bad to ventilate a corpse.” Dr. Chandler Brook, of the SUNY Medical Center, asks, “Can an affluent society squander its resources in the preservation of ineffectual life in the body after brain death?'”

Responds Dr. A. Earl Walker, author of Cerebral Death, “The expense of resuscitative efforts in terms of money, professional personnel and hospital facilities made it imperative that their unnecessary use be eliminated.” Dennis Horan, who chaired the American Bar Association’s brain-death committee, continues, “Maintaining patients on respirators in an ICU at $750 or $900 a day until the policy runs out, even though they are brain-dead, is just as morally wrong as the reverse side of the coin.” (Beware those who equate taking life with preserving it.)

Of course, when cost drives the engine of euthanasia, the cover of “choice” is discarded. At the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Dr. LeRoy Walters warns, “Either patients themselves will say by some kind of prior agreement [‘living will’] that they don’t want to be artificially (sic) sustained in these conditions or insurance companies, Medicare, and hospitals are going to start worrying about cost questions.” When this unholy trinity worries about cost, patients should worry about their lives.

Whose Gift of Life?

Anyone unwise enough to have signed an organ donor card also has legitimate cause for concern. Would you trust a doctor who regards your body “not as an organism in need of healing but as a container of biological useful materials” (to use bioethicist Arthur Caplan’s apt description)? That’s exactly what organ donors do.

Although “organ donors are declared dead, they hardly resemble patients who have died from cardiopulmonary arrest,” the authors of Psychosocial and Ethical Implications of Organ Retrieval concede.

In fact, they remind us in many ways of living patients. They are warm and retain a healthy color, which, is no surprise, because their hearts continue to pump oxygenated blood through their bodies. Digestion, metabolism, and elimination continue.

“Should the (brain-dead) ‘patient’ have a cardiac arrest, even resuscitation is considered essential,” the article in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) continues.

It is no wonder intensive-care-unit personnel may feel confused about having to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation on a patient who has been declared dead, whereas a ‘do-not-resuscitate’ order has been written for a (legally) living patient in the next bed.

There is a simple scientific reason why brain-dead organ donors remind us of the living. It is because they are . . . until, of course, their organs are “harvested.” “It is the life that remains in dead organ donors that makes their gift worthwhile, the NEJM article affirms. Precisely. The “gift of life” is the gift of the life of the “donor,” often without consent, rarely with informed consent.

Last Words

“Writers on death have failed to ask the most basic question about the death definition problem,” according to Prof. Gerald Dworkin. “What difference does it make whether somebody is dead?”

To regard “someone who is permanently unconscious as dead is, in my opinion, not a bad thing,” Dr. Daniel Wikler, of the University of Wisconsin, declares. And he is not alone.

As for CURE, we wholeheartedly endorse the views expressed by Doctors Joseph Evers and Paul Byrne in their landmark expose, “Brain Death-Still a Controversy” (The Pharos, Fall, 1990): To say that a patient on a ventilator, declared “brain dead,” is certain to die, and is, therefore, no longer a person is to deny reality.

Great care must be taken not to declare a person dead even one moment before death has actually occurred. Death should only be declared after, not before the fact, as to declare death prematurely is to commit a fundamental injustice. A person who is dying is still alive, even a moment before death, and must be treated as such.

Death ought not to be declared unless and until there is destruction of the entire brain, and of the respiratory and circulatory systems as well.

Blog, Politics, Video

Obama – Infanticide President

Video

“Its above my paygrade” (to determine when life begins) —Barack Obama

It now seems to be well established that Barack Obama obstructed the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act and, moreover, lied about his reason for doing so. It is probable that Obama’s untruth was neither a misspeak, nor some careless act of forgetfulness — he is far too intelligent for that. His opposition to the first two Born Alive Infant Protection Bills was ostensibly based on the fact that they did not contain clauses protecting the Roe versus Wade decision. Obama understood there existed no scientific or ethical distinction between a very late term abortion and death by post partum neglect (shelving to die —without solace— in soiled linen baskets and discarded as medical waste -see video) and that banning the latter might, consequently, endanger the legality of the former.

Obama must have recognized that human development is a continuum, a process in which it is impossible to draw meaningful and obvious subdividing lines for the purpose of making moral judgements. Such distinctions as can be observed, are, from a scientific viewpoint, completely insignificant and, therefore, ethically inconsequential. For example, what reasonable person can point to a significant structural difference between a baby one second before birth and the same baby one second after birth? An immediate corollary to this reasoning is the moral equivalence of, say, partial birth abortion and infanticide.

Thus, Obama was faced with the choice of either supporting a bill which logically endangered his pro abortion stance or blocking the legislation, thereby supporting infanticide. Since no politician wishes to be seen condoning infanticide, the legislation had to be prevented from leaving the committee, which is what appears to have happened. Obama and other Democrats on the committee voted down the bill even though it contained the desired Roe versus Wade exclusion clause. It only remained to justify this action. Since the decision was ethically unjustifiable a lie was forthcoming. Once again, Obama claimed that he had voted against the Bill for lack of the appropiate exclusion clause —except this time his objection had no merit.

Obama’s actions do not resemble the moral confusion typical of ethical relativists. His statements and actions show that he clearly saw the logical consequences of passing the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (even with an exclusion clause), obstructed it, and, for political expediency, lied about his reason for doing so.

Chronology

Barak Obama voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. This act addressed cases where, during an abortion procedure, the live infant was actually born. The act would have banned killing the living child. According to National Right to Life Commission RLC spokesman Douglas Johnson:

“Newly obtained documents prove that in 2003, Barack Obama, as chairman of an Illinois state Senate committee, voted down a bill to protect live-born survivors of abortion — even after the panel had amended the bill to contain verbatim language, copied from a federal bill passed by Congress without objection in 2002, explicitly foreclosing any impact on abortion. Obama’s legislative actions in 2003 — denying effective protection even to babies born alive during abortions — were contrary to the position taken on the same language by even the most liberal members of Congress. The bill Obama killed was virtually identical to the federal bill that even NARAL ultimately did not oppose.”

Obama lied by claiming that he voted against the bill in committee because it lacked a codicil protecting the “Roe versus Wade” legislation. However, official documents of the Illinois Senate reveal that the amended 2003 bill did in fact contain such a protection. In particular, the following document shows the actual vote about which Obama lied. It can be seen that Obama voted YES on the amendment —which passed— and NO on the final vote, thereby killing the amended bill in committee.

Three bills were introduced during Obama’s tenure in Illinois Senate. The following is a brief chronology of events.

  1. 2001 Senate Bill 1095,   Born Alive Infant Protection Act
    • March 28, 2001   Obama voted “no” on Bill 1095 in the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee.
    • March 30, 2001  Obama voted “present” on Bill 1095 after verbally opposing the bill on Senate floor.
  2. 2002 Senate Bill 1662,  Born Alive Infant Protection Act
    • March 6, 2002   Obama voted “no” on Bill 1662 in the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee.
    • April 4, 2002  Obama voted “NO” on Bill 1662 and verbally opposing the bill on Senate floor.
  3. 2003 Senate Bill 1082,  Born Alive Infant Protection Act
    • March 12, 2003   Health & Human Services Committee, chaired by Barack Obama voted YES on a codicil protecting “Roe versus Wade”
    • March 12, 2003,  Obama made an about face and voted NO in committee on the ammended bill.

Additional Information

President Barack Obama’s Pro-Abortion Record: A Pro-Life Compilation

Blog, Climate

A Nobel Prize For Inanity


Last week, the prison population in England and Wales exceeded capacity. Rather than addressing the main causes of this increase, namely, the abandonment of traditional values and the collapse of the two parent family, the principal concern of the government seems to be that imprisoning more people will increase anthropogenic global warming. Citing “research” showing that carbon emissions within former Home Office bodies , including the prison service, have risen from 28,237 tonnes in 2005-06 to the insignificantly greater amount of 28,925 tonnes in 2006-07, Maria Eagle, Junior Justice Minister, has announced that an increase in the prison population together with changes in “regime facilities”, such as the provision of in-cell showers, have boosted CO2 emissions.

If there existed a Nobel prize for inanity, the scientists behind this ludicrous “research” would surely be in close competition with those at York University who recently calculated the carbon footprint of the average UK Christmas dinner or those who blame livestock for bovoprogenic warming. The Minister’s comments, which lack any common sense, disqualify her from office and illustrate the primitive level to which British education and science have fallen.

Meanwhile, Professor John White, an education adviser to the British government has stated that traditional disciplines such as Math, Geography and History should no longer be taught because they are “middle class creations”. Rather, they should be replaced by topics such as global warming and personal skills, taught via a regimen of “theme or project-based learning”. Professor White’s error is hardly original. The constructivist educational philosophy he espouses is already well entrenched in Britain, and has been since the period of school “comprehensivisation” following the second world war. Generations have already been idiotized —the blind (including Professor White) leading the blind into a rapidly approaching moral and intellectual dark age.

Addendum
The Bishops of London and Liverpool, Dr Richard Chartres and James Jones, are launching the Carbon Fast at Trafalgar Square. They hope to encourage people to reduce their carbon footprint for 40 days.

— The UK  is now an insane asylum.

By Philip Pennance

Blog, Climate

On the carbon footprint of cranberry sauce

According to Project leader professor Adisa Azapagic:

“Food production and processing are responsible for three quarters of the total carbon footprint, with the largest proportion – 60% – being related to the life cycle of the turkey.

“All stages in the supply chain have been considered, including raising the turkey, growing the vegetables, food storage, consumer shopping, cooking the meal at home and waste management.

“This includes the emissions of carbon dioxide due to energy consumption along the turkey supply chain and the emissions of methane and nitrous oxide generated due to the agricultural activities to raise the turkey.”

The cranberry sauce alone, normally imported from North America, contributes half the carbon footprint related to transport. 

–Filed under: Idiocy

Blog, Pro-Life

The cost of human eggs – Warning to Puerto Rico students

There is nothing so foolish that some philosopher has not said it, and there is nothing so evil that some bioethicist has not proposed it. — Anthony Daniels

A controversy has arisen in the local media concerning advertisements for egg donors which have appeared in “Diálogo” a University of Puerto Rico supported publication. The Interim Director of Diálogo, Sylvia Álvarez Curbelo, has claimed that these advertisements are not paid for using UPR funds. However, this is misleading since the UPR does heavily subsidize the running costs of this publication, and by acquiescing to such advertisements, the UPR is, in effect, using public funds to provide a platform for these advertisements. In doing so, the University completely ignores the fact that oocyte (egg) donation is an invasive, painful, and physically demanding procedure with dangerous side effects.

Continue reading The cost of human eggs – Warning to Puerto Rico students →
Blog, Climate, Religion

Physicist blames Christians for global warming

b_sphere_all

“Pagan emptiness and fears about nature have led to hysteric and extreme claims about global warming. In the past, pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.” —George Cardinal Pell

The American Physical Society (APS) has joined the junk science bandwagon. According to the abstract of a talk at the April 2007 meeting of the APS, “On failures in education and public policy”, by John Ely of University of Washington, an example of such a failure is

“the end of the world by global warming due to Christian religion forcing family planning money to be withheld from the UN leading to population excess”[sic]

This claim is scientific nonsense. As is well known, planets with no Christian populations such as Jupiter, Mars, and Venus are all simultaneously undergoing temperature changes or exhibiting severe weather. Nevertheless, this author appears to believe that mere Christianity (not CO2 or earthworms or the sun) is the principal motor behind global warming. This would be funny were it not for the fact that some environmentalists regularly come out with statements such as:

Continue reading Physicist blames Christians for global warming →
Blog, Education

Puerto Rico NAEP Results -Why the wheels of education don’t turn

El currículo actual le da mucho énfasis a los cálculos aritméticos (sumar, restar, multiplicar y dividir). Con lo accesible de las calculadoras es necesario que repensemos si se justifica tanto tiempo en la enseñanza de esos algoritmos. —Ana Helvia Quintero (Subsecretary of Education)

“We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.”—G.K. Chesterton.

The 2003 and 2005 NAEP results for Puerto Rico, which up to now were a well kept secret, have finally been released. As expected, the results are catastrophic. Puerto Rico came last -by far- among all states; 2 standard deviations below the national average, or 1 standard deviation below Washington DC, the worst in the country until now — (s.d. is ~2.9 at grade 4, and ~3.6 at grade 8). Washington DC is very grateful to PR for its results.

It is significant that Puerto Rico has refused millions in Federal Funds to teach phonics —the scientifically preferred method of teaching reading while at the same time accepting NSF funds/bribes promoting the replacement the traditional algorithms by calculator based “graph calisthenics”. Unfortunately, the twin viruses of constructivism and whole language have for many years been dominant ideologies in the education schools in Puerto Rico (click here for a detailed discussion). The NAEP results now point to an urgent need for a radical change in these teaching practices.

Continue reading Puerto Rico NAEP Results -Why the wheels of education don’t turn →
Blog, Pro-Life

Unmasking the Strategy to Legalize Abortion throughout Latin America

Just a few hours before the vote by the Constitutional Court on a case which will legalize abortion in Colombia, the Documentation and Analysis team of HazteOir (HO), a web based civil association based in Madrid, issued an exhaustive report on the strategy being employed by a group of international organizations to legalize abortion throughout the continent. Experts in both Europe and Latin America point out that Colombia is merely the beach head for this strategy, and warn that the case before the Colombian Constitutional Court is intended as the key to what could be a cascade of similar legalizations.

The report, entitled “Harassment and Destruction of Life: The UN’s Astounding Gamble in favor of Abortion in Latin America”, aims to shed light upon the existence of a ten year old plan, jointly crafted by a number of international bodies, whose shared aim is the legalization of abortion throughout the region. The instigators of this scheme include the UN Committee on Human Rights [sic], the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), an abortion business whose revenue from a global network of abortion clinics amounts to billions of dollars annually.

The document makes clear that the scheme, which involves High Impact International Litigation, is yet another attempt to impose certain global agendas on countries which would not otherwise accept them. These agendas include the legalization of abortion in Latin America and, in European countries in which abortion is already legal, the abolition of conscience clauses for doctors who refuse to carry out such operations.

The report points out that this strategy is one of many being employed to achieve a new international order, in which small, unelected groups of ideologues, unquestioned by anybody and answerable for their actions to nobody, impose their agendas on
entire countries by deception and control of the media.

According to HO, “for Latin America to promote legal abortion is a step backwards when in Spain, which, sadly, pioneered the legalization of abortion, there is now a consensus of public and political opinion that abortion is a tragedy for both mother and child, a tragedy that should be eliminated by offering positive alternatives to mothers who have unexpected pregnancies.

Source: “HazteOir.org unmasks the strategy to legalize abortion in Latin America” HazteOir.org, 9th of May 2006. —Translated by Philip Pennance for Human Life International.