Tag Archives: Depopulation

Childfree movement gets its greenwash

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Part of the problem. Photo: Alan Turkus

I am  sure that some in the childfree movement feel so self-conscious about their choice not to raise kids that they need, occasionally, to create a smug, in-your-face manifesto.

The latest missive from the childfree movement, which has been around since the 1960s, comes in awash in green.

Lisa Hymas, in an essay at Grist*, claims that humans who choose not nurture other humans are making an admirable choice for the planet, and their pocketbooks.

Hymas, a disciple of Al Gore and Stephanie Mills of the Post Carbon Institute (think about that one, for a moment), writes that being childfree is a “luxurious indulgence that just so happens to cost a lot less for me and weigh a lot less on the carbon-bloated atmosphere.”

Hymas does not avoids mentioning adoption, abortion or infanticide, issues that would have introduced some ethical complexity to the piece.

The green solution, according to a Grist editor and blogger.

Hymas also uses a hackneyed rhetorical technique — the false premise — to get her point across.

She suggests, without any supporting evidence, that people with kids typically look down on those who have none.

A link to HuffPo’s coverage of Hymas’ manifesto, is below.

via Ultimate Way to Go Green? Don’t Have Kids, Writer Lisa Hymas Says – AOL News.

*Note: I have written for Grist myself, about environmental issues.

Cops scour the land for angels of death

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Photo: CC/tanya petrova

Photo: CC/tanya petrova

The “death with dignity” crowd in the US is in a state over law enforcement’s efforts to quash would-be Jack Kervorkians:

The internet is being kept under close watch by law enforcement to find more victims to back up their dubious prosecutions in Georgia and Arizona. Thus this is a time to be extra cautious and discreet. At trial, the defendants will be rigorously defended.

This harassment is most likely a right-wing backlash to our movement’s law reform successes in Oregon, Washington and Montana. We shall proceed.

via Law enforcement searching America for ‘assisted suicide’ cases | Assisted-Suicide Blog.

Doublethink alert: Government to shrink cities "sustainably"

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Photo: CC/mistress_f

Small cities are to be wasted. Photo: CC/mistress_f

Cities like Flint are simply giving up, and flattening their decaying neighborhoods.

Now the Obama Administration wants to spread the practice.

And the papers are quoting a small group of “shrinking cities” experts, who see their job as breaking the bad news to all of us. Their line: “We can offer you, ‘death with dignity.’”

“The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we’re all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way,” said Mr Kildee. “Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity.”

Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective programme at the University of California, Berkeley, said there was “both a cultural and political taboo” about admitting decline in America.

via US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive – Telegraph.

College admins hope to curtail toking on 4/20… at 4:20…

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420 at UC Santa Cruz, in 2007. Photo: CC/josh

Good times. 420 at UC Santa Cruz, in 2007. Photo: CC/josh

I think the authorities, through their lack of enforcement of whatever marijuana laws are left on the books, are pushing mass behavior toward increased cannabis use.

From the viewpoints of behavior modification and population control, pot’s got a lot going for it: The drug can produce passivity and suggestibility, and reduce aggression, and cause hormonal changes that impact reproductive health.

As for UCSC’s letter to mom and dad, I say, “Good luck with all that…”

According to a recently-sent e-mail from Felicia McGinty, vice-chancellor of student affairs, delivered to inboxes of UC Santa Cruz freshman parents, “I encourage you to talk with your student about his or her plans for 4/20. Ask direct questions about the choices they make and express your expectations regarding marijuana, alcohol or other drug use. Although students may not initiate discussion on this topic, your opinions and expectations can influence their behavior.”

via UC Santa Cruz contacts parents in attempt to curb infamous pot smoking festival – San Jose Mercury News.

Nursing homes: Human dumps for population control

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Perhaps this is what passes for mental health “parity.” Lumped-in with the old, some of the most dangerously sick people are culling the herd.

Near the end. Photo: CC/Peter

Near the end. Photo: CC/Peter

Nursing home operators say protections against frivolous transfer or discharge keep the homes from throwing out some mentally ill residents.

“Many times, the nursing home’s only option becomes dialing 911,” said Lauren Shaham, a spokeswoman for the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging.

Full AP story here.

"Kirk" calls for depopulation

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If Man won’t do it, Nature will, William Shatner says.

(In the Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror,” Kirk meets a wicked Spock in a parallel universe. He dissuades his first officer from eradicating an uncooperative humanoid race. Image: StarTrek.com)

from Mark:

Star Trek star William Shatner said last week that the earth is striking back against humans with natural disasters.

“They [people] are pressed together, defecating into the ocean,” said Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek. “The earth can’t take it.”

At one point in a long conversation with talk show host Glenn Beck, Shatner decried humankind’s penchant for reproduction. (See clip, and an excerpt from the transcript, below). It is a position he shares with his fellow transhumanist, Max More.

In a strange blurring of real and virtual reality, both Shatner and his Star Trek character are heroes to the transhumanists, who view the human body as limited, imperfect, and in need of artificial augmentation.

The transhumanists also want to bring about “a social order where responsible decisions can be implemented.”

Shatner, a vigorous 74-year-old (he also appears to have been “under the knife”), was on Beck’s show to flog his new autobiography, Up Till Now.

Note: I was a contributing editor to one issue of Glenn Beck’s magazine, Fusion. — mb

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA2xn35NpdA]

Glenn Beck – Interviews – Shatner v. Glenn
Well, nature, nature eventually will take care of that problem like they did, like nature does with animals. We’re overgrazing. So when deer multiply, when the natural order of things is disturbed and predators are taken away, for example, the deer, they overpopulate, they eat too much of the food and they starve. And we’re going to — if we don’t curb — how do we stop the overpopulation? I guess it’s by education and saying you’ve got to have less children, you can’t have all the children you want anymore. There’s a difference in the world now. Or nature will take care of it.

Is transhumanism a religion?

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Movement promises “an end run around mortality”


A real beauty, or virtually so. (Image: from the transhumanist book, The Perfect World Tour, by “A.R. Teest.”)

Natasha Vita-More does not appreciate being called a religious leader. (See her reply to a recent parallelnormal post here.) Vita-More and her husband, Max More, are leaders of the transhumanist and extropian movements, which advocate for the use of technology to transform the human into a “posthuman,” which they believe will be better than the originals.

But the movements, which have ties to the United Nations, and to Oxford and Yale universities, do offer hope to those who long for life “beyond our current biological limitations,” and for greater security in a dangerous world.

Transhumanism also has its share of famous followers, drawn largely from the fields of science, engineering and biology.

The transhumanists, after all, will need the help of scientists to realize their dream of creating a life form to supplant mankind.

Posthumans will replace ordinary, biological, humans with “completely synthetic artificial intelligence,” according to one scenario described by the Extropian Institute, Max More’s think-tank.

Such virtual life might arise from human brains being downloaded to computers, or humans being modified with multiple computer implants, the extropians add.

The inventor Ray Kurzweil and MIT artificial intelligence guru Marvin Minsky are transhumanists.

Kurzweil is not a religious man. But he does believe science might help him “live long enough to live forever.” He takes dozens of supplements daily, and spends a full day each month at a Massachusetts clinic, where he receives massive vitamin doses intravenously.

“The promise of eternal life through continuous upgrades obviously satisfies one of the chief needs of religious personalities — an end run around mortality,” my brother, Erik, told me last week.

Erik covered a meeting of the World Transhumanist Association at Yale for the Village Voice in 2003.

Erik does not share my belief that transhumanism might meet the deifinition of a cult. “But,” he said, “some vulnerable people attracted to it might be ripe for such exploitation.”

++

More information:

Red Ice Creations special report

Alan Watt’s Cutting Through the Matrix

Chips are for kids: Failing tech rag reaches for RFID dollars

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Hate arphids? Then you must hate babies, according to PC magazine columnist Lance Ulanoff.

Ulanoff made it clear this week to potential RFID advertisers that he is in their camp. In a short piece, he decries arfid opponents as “moaning about privacy and First Amendment implications” associated with the VeriChip subcutaneous arfid implant for humans.

Ulanoff says that America’s 4 million newborns each year should be chipped, so they can be tracked by Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. And he parrots VeriChip’s bogus argument that the chip will prevent tragic child abductions.

The truth is that hospitals are doing an excellent job preventing abductions without the use of permanent, implantable chips that have not undergone longterm testing in humans.

The American Academy of Pediatrics calls the risk of any newborn being abducted virtually nonexistent.

As a parent myself, I find it difficult to imagine another parent being a sucker for VeriChip’s “someone might steal your baby” pitch.

Ziff-Davis has a long history shilling for technology advertisers. For a time, the company was owned by the Japanese computer catalogue publisher Softbank.

And many years before that, in 1938, Ziff-Davis purchased the early science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, which is credited with “inventing” flying saucers in its pages. William B. Ziff, Jr. inherited the company from his father in 1953. Many Ziff-Davis executives joked that Ziff, Jr., who abandoned his philosophical studies in Germany to run the company, “could see the future.”

I quite writing product reviews for several Ziff Davis publications a decade ago, after telling editors there that I refused to delete my criticisms of products from potential advertisers.

clipped from www.pcmag.com
RFID has been a boon to corporations with large retail outlets, inventory rooms, warehouses, and more.
Yet it seems all I hear is moaning about the privacy and First Amendment implications. This is growing tiresome, and it’s time to set people straight.
RFID chips are a good idea. RFID chips that can help locate people and objects are a better idea. RFID chips implanted in pets and people are the best idea of all. Let me illustrate how committed I am to this idea.

New York Times rehashes "we're all in a sim" story

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No mention of connections to science and technology cult, Yale University

Back to the Future: Oxford University professor Nick Bostrum’s friends and Transhumanist cohorts, Natasha Vita-More and Max More, yuck it up with Star Trek star William Shatner. (Photo: Natasha Vita-More’s website.) Note: Vita-More (see her comments, below), states that I do not have her permission to use this image. I consider my use of the image “fair use” under the U.S. Copyright Act, however.

The New Times is continuing its drumbeat for Transhumanism, even where it fails to mention the science and technology cult by name.

Times science columnist John Tierney in an August 14 story (link and excerpt, below) suggests that we are already living in the Matrix.

This is exactly the same story the Times reported over four years ago.

But the Matrix idea (that we are all living in a computer simulation) may be more timely now, given the media hype surrounding virtual worlds such as Second Life.

The most striking thing about this story, however, is that Tierney fails to mention that his subject, Nick Bostrum, is the leader of the modern Transhumanist movement, which aims to replace traditional religions with a belief system based solely upon science and technology.

Bostrum, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, founded the World Transhumanist Association in 1998. He has also worked as a consultant to the CIA and the European Commission. Continue reading →

Now, it's psyops for your Second Life

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More than one way to skin a cat: Users of the Sentient World Simulation can use graphs, charts and even alternate reality avatars to visualize their information.

U.S defense, intel and homeland security officials are constructing a parallel world, on a computer, which the agencies will use to test propaganda messages and military strategies.

Called the Sentient World Simulation, the program uses AI routines based upon the psychological theories of Marty Seligman, among others. (Seligman introduced the theory of “learned helplessness” in the 1960s, after shocking beagles until they cowered, urinating, on the bottom of their cages.)

Yank a country’s water supply. Stage a military coup. SWS will tell you what happens next.

The sim will feature an AR avatar for each person in the real world, based upon data collected about us from government records and the internet.

The Defense Department is already running sims of Iraq and Afghanistan, China and dozens of other countries, as it prepares for a future of house-to-house urban warfare.

Here’s a link (below) to my story about the Sentient World Simulation at The Register:

clipped from www.theregister.com
Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale
Sim Strife
By Mark Baard
Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a “synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information”, according to a concept paper for the project.”SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP),” the paper reads, so that military leaders can “develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners”