foreign aid

The migration game – props up corrupt regimes and seeks to tear down Western civilization

kaykiser

The migration game – propping up corrupt leaders

kaykiser

Migration, Remittances & Foreign Aid Keep Corrupt Leaders in Power

Would-be immigrants arrive on a boat (Photo credit Mauro Seminara/AFP/Getty Images)

Many people are encouraged and sometimes paid and helped to leave their countries by their governments.  Removal of unemployed potential trouble makers is beneficial to the government in power. It is a kind of safety valve, ensuring continuation of corrupt government power that might otherwise be challenged.

Developing countries profit from emigration in two ways. First, unemployed citizens that leave the country lift the burden of providing for them and eliminates a source of civil unrest or political challenges.  Secondly, the economies of poor countries benefit from remittances, i.e. money sent back to families in their home countries.  Some countries depend on these remittances to prop up their economies.  For example, in 2016 Mexico officially received $26.1 billion in remittances sent back to families by Mexican immigrants, mostly from the United States. That’s roughly 2.5 percent of Mexico’s GDP, which is a significant contribution to the country’s economy. Because this is an estimate with no way of knowing the exact amount, it may be much higher.

Remittances account for a significant part of the GDP of some developing countries in Africa.  See values from World Bank/IMF, in the table below. As expected, the neediest countries receive the most remittances as a % of GDP.  Although Nigeria is on the low side as a % of GDP, it is the most populous with comparably higher GDP, so that the actual amount is quite high.

Country Remittances as % of GDP
Liberia > 20%
Cameroon > 15%
Gambia > 15%
Lesotho > 10%
Senegal > 10%
Cape Verde > 10%
Togo > 3%
Mali > 3%
Ghana > 3%
Nigeria > 3%

Source: “Where to Invest 2018,” Rand Merchant Bank, from World Bank/ IMF data

The Foreign Aid Trap

Government to government foreign aid with little or no accountability is also a part of this picture.  Very little of the foreign aid actually gets to the people who need it, much less to infrastructure building that can encourage investment and raise standards of living and health. Leaders get rich while their people remain in poverty, sickness, ignorance and isolation.  Corrupt dictators and their regimes benefit from keeping their countries poor. As long as the people are needy, the aid keeps coming.  Corrupt governments are only accountable to their international donors, not to the people.  Raising the economy and standard of living has the opposite effect.  Any foreign aid should be temporary or emergency relief with strict accountability for its use.  Without unaccountable foreign aid, governments would be dependent on their tax base and accountable to their people.  They would be forced to encourage investment, develop infrastructure and contribute to economic development.  In this case, raising standards of living and the economy boost the government’s income.

Additionally, poor countries have been prevented from developing by UN, advocacy groups and their own corrupt leaders.  What these countries need are Infrastructure, (roads, reliable electricity, etc.), Investment (foreign and domestic), Employment, Education and Disease Control.

Natural and Artificial Migration

What is the reason for much of the new waves of migration flooding Europe and the United States? Are conditions getting that much worse in their home countries than previously, or is there another answer?  According to open borders believers, it is because overpopulation is getting so bad.  I have heard the refrain, “they are escaping from overpopulated countries because they have no place else to go.”  That is pure rubbish aka propaganda.  This myth is pushed by the United Nations and advocacy groups promoting a worldwide campaign for population control and open borders. The world is far from overpopulated by any definition, whether it is food scarcity or room for the people. Hunger usually has more to do with politics than anything else.

It is important to point out that there are two types of immigration, Illegal or unauthorized, and legal or sanctioned by receiving countries.  Sending countries have historically been allowed by receiving countries to send people at a reasonable rate that allows for absorption with minimal cultural disruption.  Strict guidelines have always required good health, no criminal record and evidence of self-support or a sponsor.

While a trickle of unauthorized migration with no supporting documentation has always happened, the current flood of unauthorized immigrants is a fairly new phenomenon.  In many cases it is more like an invasion, complete with militant behavior, than simple migration.   The flood is composed mostly of young, able bodied men, with only a few women and children.  Poverty, overpopulation and violence, in the form of wars and civil unrest, are three of the “reasons,” aka excuses, given for the flood.  However, these causes cannot explain the huge increase in numbers because there has been little or no change in the amount of distress in the world. What could have caused this sudden onslaught?

While some migrants are fleeing from violence in war torn areas, most are not, and they certainly are not displaced by the supposed struggling hordes of overpopulation.  The image projected by pictures of overcrowded city slums is of wallowing masses of destitute people.  That is certainly not the case for most of the world.  Most of the people in poor countries are concentrated in cities for job opportunities, not because there is nowhere else to go. The remainder of each country is, if anything, under populated.  So, if not overpopulation, why do they leave their homes and endure a difficult and dangerous journey to a strange land?

This is being encouraged by advocacy groups for various reasons, including those who want to bring down Western civilization such as Islamists, Communists and their sympathizers.  The new flood of migrants originated largely as a way to disrupt Western civilization and impose socialism, Communism or Islamic Sharia Law and is supported by money and propaganda from advocacy groups.  People are paid, promised jobs, given new clothing, supported on their journey with food, water and shelter, and often are given ship or rail passage. Where does all this money come from? It comes from wealthy donors and other backers that seek to change the world to fit their ideologies.

The Future Looks Bright for African Countries

kaykiser

Longer Term Solutions

  1. End Population Control Campaigns
  2. End DDT Bans
  3. Implement Hygiene Education Programs
  4. Aggressively Treat All Worm Infestations
  5. End Insistence on Subsistence Farming
  6. End the European Union Ban on Importing GMO Crops
  7. End Insistence on Solar and Wind Power Only
  8. Provide Electricity and Clean Water Systems for City Slums and Rural Villages
  9. Encourage Foreign and Domestic Investment

 

  1. End Population Control Campaigns. We need to work to stop these campaigns by groups such as UNFPA, USAID, WHO, World Bank, International Planned Parenthood, Population Council, and Club of Rome. A few ways to do this are to
  • Expose the lies about overpopulation, their sources, and their aim. The overpopulation myth is all about socialist control, racism, elitism, and misguided environmentalism. Poverty, not overpopulation is harmful to the environment. Raising people out of extreme poverty will benefit the environment.
  • Defund all programs that promote involuntary or forced sterilizations, birth control, or abortion. Promote voluntary, informed choices only. President Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which withholds funds from foreign aid programs that promote or perform abortions. He also defunded UNFPA through the Kemp-Kasten amendment, which prohibits funding for any organization supporting coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization. Unfortunately, some other population control advocacy groups have stepped in to fill the gap. The US must pressure the UN and member countries to end this practice worldwide. The US must also defund Planned Parenthood.
  • End overstocking population control drugs, devices and sterilization supplies in hospitals and clinics. Use the funds from this and other population control activities to stock medical facilities with medicines and supplies for endemic diseases such as malaria, TB and parasites. Medical facilities need supplies for treating injuries, surgical supplies and vaccination sera to save children’s lives.
  • Provide sanitation, clean water and soap for handwashing for all clinics and hospitals.
  • Train local people as medical assistants in the tradition of the field medic as a first line of defense.
  • End Western values-based sex education in schools that encourages abortion, multiple partners, and thus sexually transmitted diseases. These practices are contrary to local cultural and religious beliefs and practices. We must respect their cultural and religious beliefs, which value children and family above all else. Imposing Western values on them destroys families and results in the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Encourage monogamy and fidelity in marriage to one sexual partner as one of the best ways to reduce sexually transmitted diseases.
  1. End DDT bans. Begin widespread spraying in homes and medicate victims to cut the cycle of malaria and other insect-borne diseases. The Environmental Protection Agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer and other agencies that regulate possible toxins must change their regulations to allow DDT to be used for control of mosquitos and other insects. India is a good example of how effective this approach can be. In several government facilities, India manufactures DDT and other insecticides that can be purchased by people in African and other developing countries. India sprays DDT on interior walls of homes twice a year in malaria prone areas. This practice is a good first step in ending the malaria cycle and has greatly reduced the deaths from malaria in India. Africa could reduce theirs accordingly with DDT on interior walls as well as bed nets. Bed nets alone are not a good substitute for DDT spraying.

 Global Malaria Deaths[1]  India is included in the South-East Asia group.

  1. Implement Hygiene Education Programs. Focus on educating all people, especially rural poor, about microbes and hygiene. Teach skills needed to provide clean water such as: How to filter and purify water; How to make soap and set up handwashing stations; How to dig wells and latrines; Safe use of composted wastes for fields; How to keep waste and other contaminants out of streams.
  2. Aggressively Treat All Worm Infestations. Alongside treating for worms it’s important to provide shoes for all children to prevent re-infestation.
  3. End Insistence on Subsistence Farming as a more sustainable method. Encourage modern agricultural methods and improved varieties that are better suited to their environment, with higher nutrition and higher yields. This also ends or reduces slash-and-burn deforestation.
  4. End the European Union Ban on Importing GMO Crops. This and other protectionist philosophies, stagnate development in European countries and cause African countries to reject improved crops. Educate the people and the leaders of developing countries about modern agricultural methods and the benefits of GMO and other high yield varieties.  Educate European leaders and farmers about the potential market for their goods in developing countries. This can be accomplished through advertising campaigns to the general public, not just entrenched government leaders.
  5. End Insistence on Solar and Wind Power Only. Encourage large and small electricity projects by all means possible, including fossil fuel, hydroelectric, geothermal, and nuclear. Fund large and small hydroelectric and fossil fuel power plants and transmission lines into rural areas through loans. Until larger projects and grid systems can be implemented, promote local mini and micro hydroelectric, geothermal and fossil fuel systems. These small systems can be incorporated into a wider grid when that becomes available.
  6. Provide Electricity and Clean Water Systems for All City Slums. Improve housing, sanitation, and clean up standing water and wastes that breed insects and disease. Spray insecticides regularly to reduce insects that carry diseases. Cleaning up the slums can go a long way toward encouraging investments.
  7. Encourage Foreign and Domestic Investment. It is important to encourage investment in all sectors including agricultural, natural resource extraction, manufacturing, service sector and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). It is time to re-examine the company town concept. Historically used for extraction industries in isolated areas, company towns can be useful for other businesses such as manufacturing, service and STEM in order to attract, train, and house employees and their families.

Encourage building of company towns with homes, hospitals, schools, and markets for employees in remote areas that provide electricity, clean water, latrines or sanitation systems. These company town projects should include progressively extending roads beyond the town over time to help others not directly employed but that could market agricultural products to town inhabitants. Such extensions over time can provide the basis of a larger transportation system that can encourage further foreign investment in newly opened business centers. Inhabitants of shanty towns (city slums) can be employed and live in new company towns near cities.

The future of Africa looks bright and development is booming in the cities and in more developed agricultural areas. The average GDP growth rate for sub-Saharan African countries is 6.2 percent. Cote d’Ivoiri, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have GDP growth rates over 7 percent. This is great, but somewhat misleading since a percent of a smaller economy is a smaller amount of growth in real numbers. However, if these growth rates continue as they have been, it will result in real economic progress.

Although historically agriculture and extraction of natural resources have been the mainstays of African prosperity and development, half of all foreign investment in recent years has been outside natural resources. Of the countries that have this profile, a group of countries called the African Lions, which include Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia, have led the way. Rwanda has had a growth rate of 9 percent since 2001 because of its favorable business creation policies. In Rwanda child mortality has been reduced, nearly all children have access to education and 98 percent have access to healthcare. Ethiopia has a growth rate of 10 percent but 20 percent of the population are still in extreme poverty with nutritional issues. Botswana has become a leader in online banking due to its low corruption levels and secure business environment.

Corruption is still an issue in many of the developing countries in Africa and elsewhere. Corruption, along with domestic unrest, is one of the major barriers to attracting foreign investment. This corruption is encouraged, supported, and prolonged by foreign aid given to the governments, not directly to the people or to infrastructure contractors. Many government leaders have fat bank accounts by skimming most of the aid that is intended to help the poor and build infrastructure. Even when aid is given in the form of goods, not money, a similar picture emerges. The people may get very little of it as the goods filling warehouses are either sold on the black market to the highest bidder or are left to rot for political reasons.

Any foreign aid needs to be tied to full accountability and transparency by governments about how the money is used and its impact on the people. Free ride foreign aid to governments must be ended to make leaders more accountable to the people, not just their foreign donors. This can lead to free and fair elections.

[1] WHO, 2016

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My award winning book, Saving Africa From Lies That Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries is now available in print and eBook through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million.

Award-Winning Finalist in the Social Change category of the 2019 International Book Awards

After reading the book, please remember to review it on Amazon; share it with a friend and do your part to end bad practices. Visit my blog for more information and to sign up for email updates at https://savingafricafromliesthatkill.com/   and like my Facebook page.

Read the first chapter free through Bookfunnel by clicking here 

The migration game – propping up corrupt leaders

kaykiser

Migration, Remittances & Foreign Aid Keep Corrupt Leaders in Power

Would-be immigrants arrive on a boat (Photo credit Mauro Seminara/AFP/Getty Images)

Many people are encouraged and sometimes paid and helped to leave their countries by their governments.  Removal of unemployed potential trouble makers is beneficial to the government in power. It is a kind of safety valve, ensuring continuation of corrupt government power that might otherwise be challenged.

Developing countries profit from emigration in two ways. First, unemployed citizens that leave the country lift the burden of providing for them and eliminates a source of civil unrest or political challenges.  Secondly, the economies of poor countries benefit from remittances, i.e. money sent back to families in their home countries.  Some countries depend on these remittances to prop up their economies.  For example, in 2016 Mexico officially received $26.1 billion in remittances sent back to families by Mexican immigrants, mostly from the United States. That’s roughly 2.5 percent of Mexico’s GDP, which is a significant contribution to the country’s economy. Because this is an estimate with no way of knowing the exact amount, it may be much higher.

Remittances account for a significant part of the GDP of some developing countries in Africa.  See values from World Bank/IMF, in the table below. As expected, the neediest countries receive the most remittances as a % of GDP.  Although Nigeria is on the low side as a % of GDP, it is the most populous with comparably higher GDP, so that the actual amount is quite high.

Country Remittances as % of GDP
Liberia > 20%
Cameroon > 15%
Gambia > 15%
Lesotho > 10%
Senegal > 10%
Cape Verde > 10%
Togo > 3%
Mali > 3%
Ghana > 3%
Nigeria > 3%

Source: “Where to Invest 2018,” Rand Merchant Bank, from World Bank/ IMF data

The Foreign Aid Trap

Government to government foreign aid with little or no accountability is also a part of this picture.  Very little of the foreign aid actually gets to the people who need it, much less to infrastructure building that can encourage investment and raise standards of living and health. Leaders get rich while their people remain in poverty, sickness, ignorance and isolation.  Corrupt dictators and their regimes benefit from keeping their countries poor. As long as the people are needy, the aid keeps coming.  Corrupt governments are only accountable to their international donors, not to the people.  Raising the economy and standard of living has the opposite effect.  Any foreign aid should be temporary or emergency relief with strict accountability for its use.  Without unaccountable foreign aid, governments would be dependent on their tax base and accountable to their people.  They would be forced to encourage investment, develop infrastructure and contribute to economic development.  In this case, raising standards of living and the economy boost the government’s income.

Additionally, poor countries have been prevented from developing by UN, advocacy groups and their own corrupt leaders.  What these countries need are Infrastructure, (roads, reliable electricity, etc.), Investment (foreign and domestic), Employment, Education and Disease Control.

Natural and Artificial Migration

What is the reason for much of the new waves of migration flooding Europe and the United States? Are conditions getting that much worse in their home countries than previously, or is there another answer?  According to open borders believers, it is because overpopulation is getting so bad.  I have heard the refrain, “they are escaping from overpopulated countries because they have no place else to go.”  That is pure rubbish aka propaganda.  This myth is pushed by the United Nations and advocacy groups promoting a worldwide campaign for population control and open borders. The world is far from overpopulated by any definition, whether it is food scarcity or room for the people. Hunger usually has more to do with politics than anything else.

It is important to point out that there are two types of immigration, Illegal or unauthorized, and legal or sanctioned by receiving countries.  Sending countries have historically been allowed by receiving countries to send people at a reasonable rate that allows for absorption with minimal cultural disruption.  Strict guidelines have always required good health, no criminal record and evidence of self-support or a sponsor.

While a trickle of unauthorized migration with no supporting documentation has always happened, the current flood of unauthorized immigrants is a fairly new phenomenon.  In many cases it is more like an invasion, complete with militant behavior, than simple migration.   The flood is composed mostly of young, able bodied men, with only a few women and children.  Poverty, overpopulation and violence, in the form of wars and civil unrest, are three of the “reasons,” aka excuses, given for the flood.  However, these causes cannot explain the huge increase in numbers because there has been little or no change in the amount of distress in the world. What could have caused this sudden onslaught?

While some migrants are fleeing from violence in war torn areas, most are not, and they certainly are not displaced by the supposed struggling hordes of overpopulation.  The image projected by pictures of overcrowded city slums is of wallowing masses of destitute people.  That is certainly not the case for most of the world.  Most of the people in poor countries are concentrated in cities for job opportunities, not because there is nowhere else to go. The remainder of each country is, if anything, under populated.  So, if not overpopulation, why do they leave their homes and endure a difficult and dangerous journey to a strange land?

This is being encouraged by advocacy groups for various reasons, including those who want to bring down Western civilization such as Islamists, Communists and their sympathizers.  The new flood of migrants originated largely as a way to disrupt Western civilization and impose socialism, Communism or Islamic Sharia Law and is supported by money and propaganda from advocacy groups.  People are paid, promised jobs, given new clothing, supported on their journey with food, water and shelter, and often are given ship or rail passage. Where does all this money come from? It comes from wealthy donors and other backers that seek to change the world to fit their ideologies.

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How can you help? Read my new book, Saving Africa From Lies That Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries that is now available in print and eBook through Amazon, and available on line in paperback through Barnes & Noble, Books a Million.

Learn the truth and how you can help change this horrible situation of longstanding crimes against poor countries by international organizations and advocacy groups.

Read the introduction and first chapter free through Bookfunnel at            www.bit.ly/savingafricachapter1

After reading the book, please remember to review it on Amazon; share it with a friend and do your part to end bad practices.

Overpopulation – The Deadly Myth Behind The Other Myths

kaykiser

Who says the world is overpopulated? And what does that mean anyway? Hunger?  Crowding? Environmental harm?  For over 200 years we’ve been told that the world is overpopulated. But is it? Check this out.

In 1798, Thomas Malthus thought the world was overpopulated when world population was under one billion. In his book, An Essay on the Principles of Population, he advocated not supporting the poor and controlling the population. He was wrong.

When world population was about 1.3 billion, Charles Darwin, who’s Theory of Evolution was based on Malthus’ book, thought the struggle for survival would cause the extinction of underdeveloped cultures by developed peoples. He was wrong.

Francis Galton, creator of Eugenics, the so-called science of improving the human race, thought the African races were so inferior genetically that Chinese should be settled in Africa to drive the Negro races to extinction and replace them. He was wrong.

Around 1920 when the population was about 1.9 billion, Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and a prominent eugenicist, believed we needed to get rid of “human weeds,” including dark skinned people from Southern Europe, Africa and India as well as the mentally or physically impaired. She advocated for sterilization, birth control, and abortion. She was wrong.

In the 1930s when world population was about 2 billion, Adolf Hitler believed the world was overpopulated and sought to gain “Lebensraum” (living room) by invading other countries and exterminating “inferior” people, including Jews and Gypsies. By doing so he sought to create a super race of Arian Germans.  He was wrong.

In 1966 when the world population was 3.3 billion, to control population, under President Johnson, US AID began requiring population control quotas as a condition for receiving foreign aid. Mass sterilization camps were set up in poor countries using equipment supplied by the UN and US. He was wrong.

Meanwhile, in the 1960s the Green Revolution of higher yield, more disease resistant and more nutritious varieties, increased crop yields by orders of magnitude, making it possible to feed the world without sacrificing forests and other pristine wilderness areas. 

When The Population Bomb was published in 1968 by Paul Ehrlich, world population was about 3.7 billion. He believed the world was overpopulated and required drastic action to reduce the population in order to prevent mass starvation and collapse of the society. He was wrong.

In 1972, after nearly 30 years of controlling disease carrying insects, DDT was banned by the EPA in spite of overwhelming evidence refuting claims of harm; the ban was based more on political fears of growing populations in developing countries than on real science or perceived harm. Before the ban DDT eliminated Malaria in the developed world. Developing countries were threatened with loss of foreign aid if they did not discontinue DDT use. Most did, but India did not comply.

Today the world population is about 7.5 billion. USAID, UNFPA, (UN Fund for Population Activities), UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), WHO, World Bank, International Planned Parenthood, Population Council, Marie Stopes and other groups continue the Overpopulation Myth with abortion, sterilization, IUD implantation and birth control activities in poor countries around the world.  They are still wrong.

So, is the world overpopulated? Not by any measure. Let’s look at what we mean by overpopulated.

Do we have enough food for everyone? Yes. Thanks to modern agricultural techniques and high yield crops there is more than enough for at least 11 billion people without any increase in acres cultivated.  Advancing technology will probably multiply the yield still further as it has in the past.  Myths against modern pesticides, herbicides, modern agricultural techniques and biotech crop enhancements (aka GMO) are used to keep poor countries on subsistence agriculture, which results in deforestation to replace depleted fields.

Is the food distributed fairly? No. Other than disasters and wars, hunger has more to do with local politics than with food supplies.  Corrupt governments, propped up by government to government foreign aid, which the poor rarely see, are incentivized to help with international population control schemes, but not to build infrastructure, attract investment and help to raise the standard of living of their own rural poor. As long as the people are kept poor, the aid money keeps coming, so corrupt governments have little or no incentive to improve conditions for their people. Foreign aid must be replaced by foreign and domestic investment in infrastructure with accountability.

Is there enough room for all the people? Compared to the land area of the earth, the population is very small. For perspective, if all the people in the world were placed in an area the size of Texas, each person would have almost 93 square meters.  A family of four would have 372 square meters. That’s about 4000 square feet, enough for a 2000 square foot house and a yard or garden.  This thought experiment puts population in perspective with the size of the earth. No one is suggesting we actually do this, except for the loony left who are grasping at straws to defeat this argument against the overpopulation myth. 

Global average population is 55 people per square kilometer of land area, excluding Antarctica. That’s 17.96 acres per family of four. In 2016, over 54% of the population lived in cities, which covers only 2.7% of the land.  That means that 46% of the population is rural and lives on 97.3% of the land area. That calculates to 26 people /km2 in rural areas or 38 acres per family of four.  Yes, I know that large areas are uninhabitable. Even if we assumed 50% uninhabitable, that’s still a lot of land per person.  The fact that only 10% of the land is actually inhabited doesn’t change the picture.  There is still a lot of land out there to accommodate and feed a larger population. All this doesn’t even count the 71% of the earth’s surface that is water, which is a food source and a highway between markets.

Is Overpopulation causing Climate Change? As a part of the biosphere, the human race is a small contributor to the total carbon and carbon dioxide gas, and is exceeded by orders of magnitude by land and sea vertebrate animals, and even more extremely by insects and other invertebrates, both in numbers and total mass. One estimate claims there are 300 pounds of insects for every human pound, or 1.4 billion insects per person. With almost 2 million different species described so far and possibly many more un-described, estimates vary widely, even for human populations, especially in poor countries. Corrupt governments may over estimate numbers and under report economic conditions to receive more foreign aid dollars.

Is the environment being harmed by too many people? No. Poverty, including subsistence farming, not population, causes environmental harm and deforestation.  Modern agriculture and higher yield crop varieties can end deforestation and provide surplus crops to sell.  Roads, electricity, clean water and disease control can provide a healthy workforce and energy to attract investors and run industry. Historically, improved infrastructure and opportunity also stabilize populations and reduce family size. By keeping the poor in poverty, environmentalists actually are doing more harm to the environment. Raising standards of living means people will be able to care for their environment.

Many developed countries have bought into the overpopulation myth to the point that their birth rates are below replacement value. Japan, which reached one of the lowest global birth rates of 1.4 in 2014, has started paying people to have children because of the looming demographic catastrophe of too few people to work and support the elderly who cannot work. Some of the highest density areas of the world are the richest.  Look at Shanghai. It is not only the most populated city in the world, 24 million, with an average population density of 2050/km2 (3854/km2 urban) but is one of the most prosperous. 

Rural poor areas in developing countries are underpopulated. With diseases from insects and contaminated water taking a high toll and attrition from migration into cities by the young and healthy, there are not enough healthy people to build infrastructure and markets and raise the standard of living of the rural poor.  They already have population control by disease and poverty.  They certainly don’t need birth control, sterilization and abortion. 

Is the planet overpopulated?  By all measures of overpopulation, the earth is far from capacity to support its people.  Since overpopulation advocates have been scaring us for 200 years, why should be believe what they keep saying?  Quit worrying about an assumed problem that has yet to materialize.  The real problem is with the population control advocates, the abortionists, the sterilizers and the international governmental and nongovernmental organizations that keep paying these organizations for killing off the hope of the future while keeping people in extreme poverty: poor, sick, isolated, ignorant and controlled. Free market solutions are the answer, not money given to prop up corrupt government officials, which the poor rarely see.

The rural poor in developing countries need disease control, electricity and roads to end isolation. They need Employment, Education, Investment, Infrastructure and Disease Control to join the 21st century.  It is possible and you can help.

How can you help? Get involved through charities, investments and campaigning against policies that hurt and oppress the poor.  Be an advocate for economic development and against population control.

Note: Updated from an earlier post, June 2019.

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Learn the truth and how you can help change this horrible situation of longstanding crimes against poor countries by international organizations and advocacy groups.

Read the first chapter free through Bookfunnel at www.bit.ly/savingafricachapter1

Award-Winning Finalist in the Social Change category of the 2019 International Book Awards

Buy the book; available in book and ebook formats at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million.

Investments, not handouts are needed in African countries

kaykiser

New Hope for Africa through Investment and Freedom from UN interference

There are two worlds in countries of sub-Saharan Africa and many other underdeveloped countries, the urban world of development, investment and progress, and the rural world that is isolated, poor and struggling to survive. Between these two are the more developed agricultural areas near cities and the slums surrounding cities where rural people who come to cities for more opportunity, end up living in deplorable conditions without proper infrastructure.  The areas with modern agriculture have many of the amenities of the city such as access to electricity, clean water, sanitation and roads, but the slums have more in common with the rural poor, without access to clean water, sanitation and sometimes electricity.

In most developing countries the leaders tend to concentrate infrastructure development in urban areas while largely ignoring the needs of the isolated rural poor. Because the businesses of the cities attract investment, and bring in both market value and taxes, they are given priority.  This is natural since the cities are the hope of future economic development, and attracting investment from other countries is one of the main means of improving the lives of all of their countrymen in the long run.  However, part of the funds available from this economic development should go into extending electrical distribution and transportation over time to the rural communities.  In the short term it makes sense to support the cities, but in the long term extending support to the rural poor can further raise the overall economy and attract more investment. Rural electrification, transportation and opportunities through markets and business investments will raise many of those in extreme poverty to a higher economic level.

Investment, not aid, is the answer to raising developing countries out of poverty. See next section for information about the investment climate in Africa. Aid should only be a temporary measure for support in emergencies and for infrastructure building in the form of loans that can be repaid when conditions have improved.  Aid should never be used for permanent or long term support of generationally poor populations.  What you subsidize, you get more of.  The rural poor don’t need hand-outs; they need jobs, electricity and roads so they can climb out of poverty.

The worst type of aid is government to government foreign aid, which should be ended as soon as practical. Typically less than 2% of this type of aid goes to improving the lives of ordinary people.  Most of it goes to corrupt leaders and their administrations. Ending the practice of government to government foreign aid will reduce or end much of the government corruption and make leaders more responsible to their constituents. If they are dependent on the tax base and not foreign donors they will have incentive to build the infrastructure in order to attract business investors and grow the economy, and thus the tax base. Building the transportation and energy sectors into more rural areas would then make practical sense in order to attract investors and open markets to rural agricultural production.

China is investing heavily in African energy projects such as hydroelectric and fossil fuel power plants. While I would like to assume that China has only benign motives, that has not been their history.  The Western world would be wise to invest in similar projects and not just throw money at corrupt governments in an attempt to stave off Chinese communist incursions and power.

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The book: Saving Africa from Lies that Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries was published in September, 2018. Print and ebook are available online.

My first book, Perverted Truth Exposed: How Progressive Philosophy has Corrupted Science was published in 2016. It is available in print and ebook, on line only, through Amazon, Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble.  See the companion blog at www.realscienceblog.com  for related posts and pages.

Is the World Overpopulated?

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The Overpopulation Myth – 200+ years of doom and gloom

Who says the world is overpopulated? And what does that mean anyway? Hunger?  Crowding? Environmental harm?  For over 200 years we’ve been told that the world is overpopulated. But is it? Check this out.

In 1798, Thomas Malthus thought the world was overpopulated when world population was under one billion. He wanted to deny aid to the poor in his country and praised malaria for keeping the death rate high and life spans short in Africa and other developing countries. He saw disease, famine and war as good things to reduce population.  His philosophy, which prompted Britain to pass laws against helping the Irish, was responsible for a million deaths in the Irish potato famine while still exporting wheat from Ireland to Britain. Malthus made two major erroneous assumptions: no improvements in crop yields per acre and the genetic inferiority, enhanced fertility and inability of the poor to improve their economic status.  He was wrong.

 “Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and restrain those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpations of particular disorders.”  

                     —Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principles of Population, 1798       

When world population was about 1.3 billion, Charles Darwin, whose Theory of Evolution was based on Malthus’ book, thought the struggle for survival would cause the extinction of underdeveloped cultures by developed peoples. He was wrong.

 “At some future period, not very distant as measured in centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world.”

                                                            —Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871

Francis Galton, creator of Eugenics, the so-called science of improving the human race, thought the African races were so inferior genetically that Chinese should be settled in Africa to drive the Negro races to extinction and replace them. He was wrong.

“My proposal is to make the encouragement of the Chinese settlements at one or more suitable places on the East Coast of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race.”

                        — The Times, June 5, 1873, “Africa for the Chinese,” Francis Galton

The Eugenics movement in Britain and America wanted to reduce the population by preventing procreation by “genetically inferior” people, including sterilization and institutionalization. The Eugenics movement influenced policies that limited immigration based on racial and ethnic background because of the assumed genetic inferiority of certain races and cultures.

Around 1920 when the population was about 1.9 billion, Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and a prominent eugenicist, believed we needed to get rid of “human weeds,” including dark skinned people from Southern Europe, Africa and India as well as the mentally or physically impaired.  She counted among them the generationally poor and criminals.  She advocated for sterilization and birth control, and later for abortion. She was wrong.

  “The most serious charge that can be brought against modern benevolence is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression.”

                                                — Margaret Sanger in The Pivot of Civilization, 1922

In the 1930s when world population was about 2 billion, Adolf Hitler believed the world was overpopulated and, following an older philosophy of German expansion, sought to gain “Lebensraum” (living room) by invading other countries and exterminating “inferior” people, including Jews and Gypsies. By doing so he sought to create a super race of Arian Germans.  He was wrong.

 “In the limitation of this living space lies the compulsion for the struggle for survival, and the struggle for survival, in turn contains the precondition for evolution.”           

— Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, 1925

 When The Population Bomb was published in 1968 by Paul Ehrlich, world population was about 3.7 billion. He believed the world was overpopulated and required drastic action to reduce the population in order to prevent mass starvation and collapse of the society. He was wrong.

 “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…”

                                                            — Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, 1968

 In that same decade, US Indian Health Service, using newly created Medicaid money, began sterilizing or implanting IUDs in Native American women without informed consent or knowledge and it was often coerced. For some tribes, it was near genocide. Department of Health Education and Welfare Population Crisis Committee sterilized up to a third of women in Puerto Rico.

Planned Parenthood clinics, which had been placed in poor, mostly black, neighborhoods began the modern abortion industry targeting African Americans as “human weeds;” the US Office of Economic Opportunity also set up “birth control” clinics in black neighborhoods and schools.

In 1966, under President Johnson, US AID began requiring population control quotas as a condition for receiving foreign aid, even in famines or other emergencies. Mass sterilization camps were set up in poor countries using equipment supplied by the UN and US.  This has continued to this day except for a recent Trump ban on USAID and US support for UNFPA being used for sterilization and abortion.  However, other agencies have filled the gap. Today, the United Nations has stepped up their propaganda and coercion of poor countries for liberalization of abortion laws. 

Meanwhile, in the 1960s Norman Borlaug and others began the Green Revolution by breeding more prolific, more disease resistant and more nutritious varieties of grains along with modern agricultural methods. Crop yields increased by orders of magnitude, making it possible to feed the world without sacrificing forests and other pristine wilderness areas.  India went from famine to self-sustainability in little more than a decade.  

In 1972, after nearly 30 years of controlling disease carrying insects, DDT was banned by the EPA in spite of overwhelming evidence refuting claims of harm; the ban was based more on political fears of a growing population in developing countries than on real science or perceived harm. It had been largely responsible for eradicating malaria in North America and Europe, and reducing its incidence in developing countries in which it was used.  US and UN agencies then required developing countries to abandon DDT in order to receive financial support.  It is even now only beginning to be used on interior walls in some areas of Africa to control malaria carrying mosquitoes.  India never banned its use for homes and has greatly reduced malaria by semiannual spraying of interior walls.    Today India manufactures and exports DDT.  See “DDT: A Study in Scientific Fraud,” by J. Gordon Edwards, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 9 Number 3 Fall 2004. On the web at these links: http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf, and related blog  DDT Needed Now in Underdeveloped Countries,

“My own doubts came when DDT was introduced for civilian use. In Guyana, within two years it had almost eliminated malaria, but at the same time the birth rate had doubled. So my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it has greatly added to the population problem.”

—Alexander King, cofounder of the Club of Rome, 1990

Today the world population is about 7.5 billion. USAID, UNFPA, (Fund for Population Activities), UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), International Planned Parenthood, Population Council and other groups continue the abortion, sterilization, IUD implantation and birth control activities in poor countries around the world.  China has had a draconian one child policy involving forced abortions, sterilization and denial of benefits.  Recently China has allowed a second child, but only after 4 years and only with a state approval certificate.  A child born outside this requirement gets no government benefits or education.

So, is the world overpopulated? Let’s look at what we mean by overpopulated.

Do we have enough food for everyone? Yes. Thanks to modern agricultural techniques and high yield crops there is more than enough for at least 11 billion people without any increase in acres cultivated.  Advancing technology will probably multiply the yield still further as it has in the past. Is the food distributed fairly? No. Hunger has more to do with local politics than with food supplies.  Corrupt governments, propped up by government to government foreign aid, are incentivized to help with international population control schemes, but not to build infrastructure, attract investment and help to raise the standard of living of their own rural poor.  Corrupt governments want aid to continue, so economic development threatens this. 

Is there enough room for all the people? Compared to the land area of the earth, the population is very small. For perspective, if the entire global population was placed on the big island of Hawaii, everyone would have 1.4 square meters to sit or stand. Using the same thought experiment, if all the people in the world were placed in Texas, each person would have almost 93 square meters.  A family of four would have 372 square meters. That’s about 4000 square feet, enough for a 2000 square foot house and a yard or garden.  No one is suggesting we actually do this, except for the loony left who are grasping at straws to defeat this argument against the overpopulation myth. 

Global average population is 55 people per kilometer of land area, excluding Antarctica. That’s 17.96 acres per family of four. In 2016, over 54% of the population lived in cities, which covers only 2.7% of the land.  That means that 46% of the population is rural and lives on 97.3% of the land area. That calculates to 26 people /km2 in rural areas or 38 acres per family of four.  Yes, I know that large areas are uninhabitable. Even if we assumed 50% uninhabitable, that’s still a lot of land per person.  The fact that only 10% of the land is actually inhabited doesn’t change the picture.  There is still a lot of land out there to accommodate and feed a larger population. All this doesn’t even count the 71% of the earth’s surface that is water, which is a food source and a highway between markets.

Is the environment being harmed by too many people? No. Poverty, including subsistence farming, not population, causes environmental harm and deforestation.  Modern agriculture and higher yield crop varieties can end deforestation and provide surplus crops to sell.  Roads, electricity, clean water and disease control can provide a healthy workforce and energy to attract investors and run industry. 

Developed countries have bought into the overpopulation myth to the point that their birth rates are below replacement value. Japan, which reached one of the lowest global birth rates of 1.4 in 2014, has started paying people to have children because of the looming demographic catastrophe. Some of the highest density areas of the world are the richest.  Look at Shanghai. It is not only the most populated city in the world, 24 million, but is one of the most prosperous. 

Rural poor areas in developing countries are underpopulated. With diseases from insects and contaminated water taking a high toll and attrition from migration into cities by the young and healthy, there are not enough healthy people to build infrastructure and markets and raise the standard of living of the rural poor.  They already have population control.  They certainly don’t need birth control, sterilization and abortion. 

Is the planet overpopulated?  By all measures of overpopulation, the earth is far from capacity to support its people.  Since overpopulation advocates have been scaring us for 200 years, why should be believe what they keep saying?  Quit worrying about an assumed problem that has yet to materialize.  The real problem is with the population control advocates, the abortionists, the sterilizers and the international governmental and nongovernmental organizations that keep paying these organizations for killing off the hope of the future while keeping people in extreme poverty: poor,  sick, isolated, ignorant and controlled. Free market solutions are the answer, not money given to prop up corrupt government officials and that the poor never see.

The rural poor in developing countries need disease control, electricity and roads to end isolation. They need Employment, Education, Investment, Infrastructure and Disease Control to join the 21st century. 

Note: Updated from an earlier post, June 2018.

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The book: Saving Africa from Lies that Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries was published in November, 2018. Print and eBook are available online at Amazon.com. and other outlets.

My first book, Perverted Truth Exposed: How Progressive Philosophy has Corrupted Science was published in 2016. It is available in print and ebook, on line only, through World Net Daily store, Amazon, Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble.  See the companion blog at www.realscienceblog.com  for related posts.  

UK aid to boost access to finance for sub-Saharan Africa — Financing for Development in Africa

Quote kaykiser

New UK aid package will help mobilise £500 million in private sector investment and create 50,000 jobs across sub-Saharan Africa. UK aid to mobilise over £500 million of private sector investment, creating over 50,000 jobs in sub-Saharan Africa. The package will support financial start-ups and entrepreneurs and boost economic growth across the region. It will […]

via UK aid to boost access to finance for sub-Saharan Africa — Financing for Development in Africa

7th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD7): Invest in Africa’s food markets to win the war on hunger and boost nutrition – African Development Bank — Database of Press Releases related to Africa – APO-Source

Quote kaykiser

By investing in Africa’s food markets, governments can win the fight against stunting and improve nutrition across the continent. And with support from institutions like the African Development Bank (www.AfDB.org), the results would be a win-win situation for all. “What a huge potential the food markets represent. “Feed Africa,” which is one of the Bank’s […]

via 7th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD7): Invest in Africa’s food markets to win the war on hunger and boost nutrition – African Development Bank — Database of Press Releases related to Africa – APO-Source

Get Out of the Way! Let Africa catch up to developed countries

kaykiser
 get out of the way!! UN & advocacy groups keep Africa and Developing Countries where the entire Preindustrial world was in the past

Much of Africa and the developing world are where the whole world was before the advances in technology and knowledge in the 19th and 20th century; the entire world was struggling, poor and sick, so that even the more well-off people had short lifespans due to preventable and curable diseases, poor nutrition and infections.  In the developed world, widespread acceptance of germ theory and the development of antibiotics and vaccines only occurred in the early to mid 20th century.  Malaria, meaning “bad air,’ was only eradicated in the developed world, in the mid 20th century due to 20 plus years of spraying pesticides for effective mosquito control, development of anti-malaria medicines and window screens. Likewise, malaria in poor countries could be reduced or eradicated by allowing proper pesticide use and providing malaria medicines.

Even into the late 20th century, some isolated areas in the developed world did not have electricity, purified water or paved roads and some people still lived in drafty shacks or log cabins, sometimes with dirt floors. Before the improvements in infrastructure, large multi-generational families were the norm because of high childhood death rates and the need for surviving children to care for their parents in a world where there was no social safety net for the disabled and elderly.  Large families also filled the need for labor in a world where mechanical devices were few or lacking and back breaking work was needed for every job, whether agricultural, industrial or domestic.  Without reliable electricity, transportation systems and industrial and agricultural development, we all could be back there now.

Global need for UNFPA population control activities

Source: UN Fund for Population Activities at https://www.unfpa.org/data

This is where rural Africa and underdeveloped countries are now.   What will it take for developing countries to catch up with the developed world?  First, we need to end counterproductive and damaging interference by international organizations that are working under wrong assumptions from the distant past about supposed overpopulation as a cause of environmental harm.  Wrong practices include imposing population control and blocking effective insect and disease control, as well as modern agriculture and infrastructure development, while putting cultural and wildlife preservation above the real immediate needs of the people. Poverty, not overpopulation, causes environmental harm. Improving the economy can stabilize the population and preserve both cultural heritage and wildlife. Modern agricultural practices can end slash and burn deforestation and feed everyone.

Africa needs Investment, Infrastructure, Employment, Education  and Disease Control.

Education in hygiene can end much of the disease burden, facilitate clean water and sanitation systems, and provide a healthy workforce. Education in agricultural, industrial and technical skills can open opportunities for employment, small business earnings and raise their standard of living.  Transportation in the form of improved and extended roads and railroads can end isolation, encourage foreign investment and provide access to markets, employment opportunities, education and medical facilities.

Reliable electricity is important for economic growth and can facilitate the development of transportation systems, medical facilities and industrial investment, all of which cannot run on intermittent and varying power as provided by wind and solar power. Solar panels on huts are a start, but should only be a temporary energy solution until reliable electrical systems can be installed and extended into rural areas. Solar panels should never be used as a substitute for true energy security or an excuse for neglect.

Poor countries cannot afford to skip the reliable types of energy generation that have made the developed world what it is today. The solution should include all means possible, including hydroelectric, geothermal, fossil fuel and nuclear power.  Africa has enough hydroelectric potential to supply all of their needs for the foreseeable future. Hydroelectric power is both clean and reliable. In Africa alone, over 200 hydroelectric dams have been blocked by environmentalists. This must stop!

Africa needs Investment, Infrastructure, Employment, Education  and Disease Control.

Foreign aid must be replaced by investment in infrastructure. Most of the foreign aid is given to prop up corrupt governments. Leaders become rich while most of the aid is not used for famine relief or to build rural infrastructure and seldom reaches the people in need. Government to government foreign aid props up corrupt leaders, makes them accountable only to their donors, not the people, and prolongs poverty. Leaders that depend on foreign aid, not the tax base, are less likely to want to attract investment in new businesses or to invest in infrastructure that facilitates economic growth. As long as the problems are not solved, foreign aid money keeps coming, so corrupt leaders benefit from keeping their countries poor and controlled.

Foreign aid, other than temporary disaster relief, must be replaced with investment in infrastructure including extended electrical systems, powered by all means available, and improved and extended roads, railroads, airports and bridges, as well as education and medical facilities, and industry. The aim is to raise the economy so that poor countries no longer need outside help, but rather are net contributors to the world economy, or at least are self sufficient. It can be done and you can help.

What can you do? Lots! Here are a few suggestions from my book. Start by contacting government officials and elected representatives to demand that perpetual government to government foreign aid be replaced with accountable infrastructure investment, and that abuses by the UN and other organizations be eliminated and better practices be implemented ASAP.  Donate to charities that help build infrastructure such as World Vision and Samaritan’s Purse. Volunteer to go and work with these organizations in poor countries.  Invest in businesses/industries that are selling or buying African goods or are locating new businesses in Africa, or are offering real infrastructure assistance, or are improving medical and educational facilities.

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My award winning book, Saving Africa From Lies That Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries is now available online and in book stores everywhere. In print and eBook through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million.

Award-Winning Finalist in the Social Change category of the 2019 International Book Awards

After reading the book, please remember to review it on Amazon; share it with a friend and do your part to end bad practices. Visit my blog for more information and to sign up for email updates at https://savingafricafromliesthatkill.com/   and like my Facebook page.

Read the first chapter free through Bookfunnel by clicking here 

The Truth About DDT and Population Control

kaykiser

Population Control by Insect Borne Diseases.  

It is time to bring back DDT to save Africa and other impoverished areas. Although much maligned, DDT is Safe for Humans and the Environment according to extensive research.  See evidence below. 

Over 80% of infectious diseases in poor countries are carried by insects and other arthropods.  DDT is desperately needed in impoverished countries where insect borne diseases kill and sicken millions every year, cutting lifespans and productivity.  Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Oceana and South-Central Americas are most affected.  This unpardonable crime amounts to continuing genocide of black and brown races by western powers, which is based on the myth of overpopulation. 

Without these insect borne diseases and with access to clean water, populations may increase at first, but better health can facilitate the building of infrastructure and industry that can raise millions out of poverty, ignorance and hopelessness. Historically, raising people’s standard of living also stabilizes the population by reducing early childhood mortality and the need to have more children in anticipation of those loses. 

“How much labor and waste of time these wicked insects do cause, but a ray of hope, in the use of DDT, is now held out to us.”    

       — Out of My Life and Thought, Dr. Albert Schweitzer  (autobiography translated from Ma Vie et Ma Pensee)

Global Malaria Risk, 1900 to 2002[1]

Most people assume that malaria is a tropical disease, but before DDT was introduced and widely used for 30 years, malaria was prevalent worldwide as far north as Siberia. DDT worked so well that malaria and similar insect borne diseases were eradicated in most developed countries and were near eradication in poorer countries where it was used prior to DDT being banned in 1972 by the EPA. In spite of an overwhelming body of research that failed to find any harm to humans or the environment DDT was banned for political reasons.  See evidence and references below. 

 “To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT.  It has contributed to the great increase in agricultural productivity, while sparing countless humanity from a host of diseases, most notably, perhaps, scrub typhus and malaria. Indeed, it is estimated that, in little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million deaths due to malaria that would otherwise have been inevitable. Abandonment of this valuable insecticide should be undertaken only at such time and in such places as it is evident that the prospective gain to humanity exceeds the consequent losses. At this writing, all available substitutes for DDT are both more expensive per crop-year and decidedly more hazardous.” 

               — National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Research in the Life Sciences of the Committee on Science and Public Policy, The Life Sciences: Recent Progress and Application to Human Affairs, The World of Biological Research, Requirements for the Future (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1970), 432.                             (Emphasis added)

 

Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, was filled with lies, half-truths, misinterpretation of research results and wild speculations.  Rather than being an attempt to protect humans and the environment as stated, it was really part of an anti-human, anti-progress movement with a goal of stopping assumed overpopulation, especially in Africa, India and other impoverished countries.

The Population Bomb by Paul Erilich (1968) was a book based on Malthusian, eugenicist, racist lies, aka propaganda, that claimed worldwide catastrophic starvation would occur unless the global population was immediately reduced. None of it was true.

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…”

— Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, 1968

Population control groups such as the Club of Rome, supported by charitable foundations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, continue to spread the myth of overpopulation.  Many rural areas have too few healthy people to build roads and other infrastructure, and develop industry.

“My own doubts came when DDT was introduced for civilian use. In Guyana, within two years it had almost eliminated malaria, but at the same time the birth rate had doubled. So my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it has greatly added to the population problem.”

—Alexander King, co-founder of the Club of Rome, 1990

DDT was a God-send to millions at the end of WWII, saving millions.  Among other uses, it was administered directly onto soldiers’ and refugee’s clothing as a powder to fight body lice, ending a deadly Typhus epidemic.  There were no reports of harm in this practice.  It was used in developed countries to fight deadly diseases and agriculturally to increase food and fiber production. However in 1972 DDT was banned by US EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus[2] in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence presented at hearings that refuted claims of harm by activist groups such as Environmental Defense Fund and Audubon Society.

“DDT is not a carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic hazard to man. The uses under regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on fresh water fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife…and…there is a present need for essential uses of DDT.”[3]

                      — EPA Administrative Law Judge Edmund Sweeney, after months of hearings, “In the Matter of Stevens Industries, Inc., et al., L.F. & R. Docket Nos. 63, et al.). Hearing Examiner’s Recommended Findings, Conclusions, and Orders, April 1972.” (40 CFR 164.32).  (Consolidated DDT Hearings)       As summarized in Barrons, May 1, 1972. Source:  J. Gordon Edwards, “DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud,” Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Volume 9, Number 3, Fall 2004

Beginning in the 1970’s, agencies such as USAID, UN WHO, UNESCO and the World Bank pressured leaders of poor countries to discontinue DDT as a prerequisite to receiving essential aid.  This continues to the present with exception of the UN WHO recently allowing limited spraying of interior walls in selected areas of Africa. Leaders of most poor countries felt they had no choice but to discontinue its use. India did not comply and has continued to manufacture and use DDT to periodically spray interior walls in malaria prone areas. 

Annual Malaria Deaths by Region, WHO 2016   Note that India is included in the South East Asia section

 

 

Although DDT is the most studied pesticide on the planet, it is still listed as an environmental toxin and possible carcinogen because the EPA listing has not changed, in spite of all of the studies that failed to find harmful effects on humans or the environment.  It is much safer to handle and use, and more economical than any of the replacements. 

 Verifying the Claims of Silent Spring

None of Rachel Carson’s “facts” about environmental and human harm were true. Most of the facts below, except where noted, are from “DDT:  A Case Study in Scientific Fraud,” by J. Gordon Edwards, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 9 Number 3 Fall 2004.[4]  (See link below.)

Dr. Edwards, who had been a witness in the EPA hearings, examined each of Silent Spring’s claims and found them wrong and possibly fraudulent. In his report, Dr. Edwards cites the many scientific studies on which his conclusions were based and lists them as references so that the sources can be examined by the reader.

Not one person has been harmed or died from DDT.

  • The only death associated with DDT was a 3 yr. old child that drank a solution of DDT in kerosene, which is a hydrocarbon known to be toxic.
  • DDT in high doses can cause temporary, reversible tremors and liver changes.
  • Gordon Edwards was a PhD entomologist who sometimes ate a spoonful of DDT powder at his lectures as a demonstration of its safety. He suffered no significant ill effects and died of a heart attack at age 84 while hiking in the Rockies.

DDT is not carcinogenic, mutagenic or teratogenic

  • “Workers in the Montrose Chemical Company had 1,300 man-years of exposure, and there was never any case of cancer during 19 years of continuous exposure to about 17mg/man/day.”
  • “Concerns were sometimes raised about possible carcinogenic effects of DDT, but instead its metabolites were often found to be anti-carcinogenic, significantly reducing tumors in rats.”
  • Expected rise in leukemia in children and breast cancer years later in girls exposed during puberty never happened.

DDT is not an endocrine disrupter or estrogen mimic

  • Examples cited for this claim were of Alligators in a heavily polluted lake in Florida which showed smaller penises, but the lake received sewage which contained birth control hormones from the city of Winter Garden and other farm pollutants.
  • Other research failed to find any cause and effect link to DDT, although activists and some international organizations still claim this without evidence.

Bird deaths, thin egg shells and buildup in the environment have proven to be false.

  • Bird deaths at the University of Michigan, cited by Carson, were not from DDT, but were probably from soil fungicide containing mercury. In later tests, mercury was found in the soil and earthworms there. Other areas did not experience bird deaths from spraying of DDT. Carson’s Source was: Bird Mortality in the Dutch elm disease program in Michigan, Bulletin 41, Cranebrook Institute of Science by George John Wallace; Walter P Nickell; Richard F Bernard
  • “The counts of raptorial birds migrating over Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania, indicated that there were many more hawks there during the “DDT years” than previously. The numbers counted there increased from 9,291 in 1946 (before much DDT was used) to 13,616 in 1963 and 29,765 in 1968, after 15 years of heavy DDT use.”
  • According to Audubon Society Annual Christmas Bird Counts, bird populations actually increased during the thirty years of DDT use. Numbers rose from 90 birds seen per observer in 1941 to 971 birds seen per observer in 1960. Other examples are given in Edwards’ report.
  • The eggshell thinning studies cited by Carson could not be replicated and had actually reduced dietary calcium, which is needed to build egg shells, of experimental birds to get that result.
  • Museum specimens compared to wild population eggs may have led to false claims of thinning because the museums used the best specimens available; natural variability in the wild may have been interpreted as thinning.
  • DDT is not metabolized by birds and is rapidly excreted in their droppings.
  • “The whole idea that pesticides are concentrated as one moves up the food chain, which is crucial to Carson’s arguments about distant and delayed effects, has become increasingly dubious in the years that followed,” Donald Fleming quote from “Roots of the New Conservation Movement,” 1972, in “Reading Rachel Carson” by Charles T. Rubin, The New Atlantis, September 27, 2012.
  • DDT attaches to soil particles and does not migrate to ground water or streams due to this attachment and its insolubility in water.  EPA and CDC report that soil DDT has a half-life of 2 to 15 years due to sunlight and microbial action. Reports of longer persistence are probably mis-identification of other chlorinated substances by a non-specific test. Supposedly, DDT, which is not present in nature, was found in museum soil samples collected before it was even invented. Obviously, a mis-identification.
  • Note that “presence” does not imply harm as some advocacy groups claim. Before it was banned, DDT was widely used in agriculture and for open air fogging in malaria prone areas.

Aquatic life has not been harmed by DDT; it is practically insoluble in water, with only 1.2 ppb (parts per billion) at saturation.

  • A study cited by Carson claimed 500 ppb DDT in seawater inhibited photosynthesis and killed algae. The problem with this study is that alcohol was added to the tank to dissolve the DDT in the water. Alcohol alone would cause the observed effect.
  • The assumption of persistence of DDT in seawater for decades was also challenged.  Tests showed DDT and its metabolites disappeared in as few as 38 days from microbial action and other factors. 

Further reading

  1. “DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud,” by J. Gordon Edwards, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 9 Number 3 Fall 2004. Available online at: http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf
  2. “The Lies of Rachel Carson,” J. Gordon Edwards, 21st Century Science and Technology Magazine. Transcript of speech at 21st Century Science meeting, summer, 1992. Available online at https://21sci-tech.com/articles/summ02/Carson.html
  3. “The Truth about DDT and Silent Spring” by Robert Zubrin, adapted from Robert Zubrin’s book Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism,” published in 2012, in New Atlantis Books series. Online at: www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-truth-about-ddt-and-silent-spring
  4. “Reading Rachel Carson” by Charles T. Rubin, The New Atlantis, September 27, 2012; available online at https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/reading-rachel-carson

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[1] “The global distribution and population at risk of malaria: past, present, and future,” Simon I Hay et al, Lancet Volume 4, Issue 6, p327-336, June 1, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(04)01043-6

[2] Federal Register vol. 37, no. 13, Friday, July 7, 1972. Environmental Protection Agency [I. F. & R. Docket Nos. 63, etc.] Consolidated DDT Hearings, Opinion and Order of the Administrator …William D. Ruckelshaus, June 30, 1972.

[3] Actual text from 40 CFR 164.32, Environmental Protection Agency, Consolidated DDT Hearings, Hearing Examiner’s Recommended Findings, Conclusions, and Orders, April 1972. p. 93-94; Conclusions of Law: findings are as follows: (omitted 1-8 which are about adequacy of the evidence and finding that DDT was not misbranded.) “9. DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man. 10. DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man. 11. The uses of DDT under the registrations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife.” (omitted 12-16 that discuss other evidence and that vacated earlier rulings of misbranding) “17. There is a present need for the continued use of DDT for the essential uses defined in this case.”   A photocopy of the original is available as a downloadable pdf file at https://www.thenewatlantis.com/docLib/20120926_SweeneyDDTdecision.pdf

[4] http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf

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