A future with only planned children

 

Everything would be much easier if there were only planned children in the future.

When contraception fails as part of family planning, couples are left with a question: Should we, and are we allowed to, have an abortion?

Does the woman’s right to self-determination or the human embryo’s right to life apply?

The buzzword “pro-choice” originated in the US for the position that abortions should be generally permitted. Opponents organize themselves under the buzzword “pro-life” as part of so-called right-to-life movements.

The New Testament does not address the issue, but the Catholic Church, in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae, holds that elective abortion is always a grave moral offense.

I can well understand opposing abortion on religious grounds, but the New Testament gives no indication that you can impose your own convictions on those who disagree.

According to WHO estimates, 40% of all pregnancies are unplanned and about one fifth of all pregnant women decide to abort.

This corresponds to about 42 million abortions annually, 20 million of which are legal and 22 million of which are against the law at the place where they are carried out.

Abortions can of course be prevented through the consistent use of contraception.

However, this isn’t an option everywhere in the world. 225 million women in the world’s less developed regions today still lack access to safe and effective family planning methods.

About one-third of the world’s population growth today is due to unwanted pregnancies.

This is leading to rapid population growth, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. (Wikipedia Jan. 2021: Family Planning)

The majority of illegal abortions are performed by laypersons and therefore usually under medically and hygienically precarious conditions. The number of abortion deaths is declining because women are increasingly using medications to terminate pregnancies.

The rate of abortion in countries with liberal legislation is lower or comparable to the rate in countries with restrictive legislation.

However, there is a direct correlation between the level of sex education and the abortion rate. Sex education and easy access to contraceptives reduce the abortion rate. Restrictive laws only encourage illegal abortions.

There have been many studies that have attempted to capture how often women suffer from mental health issues after an abortion. The results of these studies vary widely. However, it is clear that the moral pressure of society and the perceived stigmatization have a strong burdening effect.

However, mothers who have been denied abortions can also suffer consequences, according to a systematic review. It is reported that many women found it difficult to adapt to the unwanted role of mother and tended to see the child as a burden. The children of affected mothers perform worse in school on average, have behavioral problems such as delinquency more often, and require psychiatric treatment more frequently (Wikipedia: Abortion).

I would like to emphasize here that these are statistical data and that there are certainly also many women and couples who, in the case of an unwanted pregnancy, eventually look forward to their child and raise it with love and care.

 If we enable voluntary family planning around the world, we will achieve 3 goals:

1.    We will make it easier for women and men to be together in developing countries and prevent fatal abortions.

2.    Economic and social conditions in third-world countries will improve more sustainably and rapidly. 

3.    Global warming will slow down.

Left-Green supporters and religious organizations prevent development aid money from being spent on family planning.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: ...any act is reprehensible which, either with forethought or during consummation... prevents procreation... (see post “Self-determined sexuality also in developing countries”).

Left-Green supporters postulate that better education for women automatically leads to lower numbers of childbirths. But that could take another 30 years or more in Africa.

According to UNESCO estimates, 58 million children of primary school age do not attend school. How is self-determined sexuality possible under these conditions?

The Left-Green supporters fear that we could be accused of racist motives by promoting family planning. Certainly, this danger exists, but that should not be a reason to make family planning a taboo subject.

This encourages famine and the neglect of children, who are left on the streets by their parents because they can no longer feed their large flock of children.

Every 12 years, the world population grows by 1 billion. It does no good if we significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions if greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries are increased by the same amount. More information on this can be found in the post “We can’t meet the climate goals”.

We cannot sufficiently reduce CO2, methane and N2O emissions through restrictions and new technologies alone, and we run the risk of a climate catastrophe.

Even if it were possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions substantially worldwide, the earth could not support 10 or 11 billion people. Species extinction would be unstoppable.

The number of children per woman has fallen sharply in industrialized countries and is now well below 2.1 in most cases. It is astonishing that in Iran and Brazil, for example, the number of children has also fallen to 1.8.

But in Niger, for example, the number of children is 6.6 and in Nigeria 5.1. As soon as a school is built another one has to be in the planning. Help with family planning here has nothing to do with racism! The sustainable development of these countries is almost impossible under these conditions.

We should not see this problem through the glasses of ideologues.

The world population has to slowly decrease as soon as possible. This would be possible without any problems if the means for voluntary family planning were available free of charge all over the world.

At the same time, couples around the world should be able to have as many children as they want.

What do we need to change to make that happen?

Women who do not have children should no longer be made to feel that they are not fulfilling their “biological destiny.” Women with and without children are absolutely equal.

On the other hand, health insurance companies should continue to pay for artificial insemination for couples with an unfulfilled desire to have children. Many couples suffer when their desire to have a child is not fulfilled.

For teenagers, finding out they are pregnant is a huge shock. Unwanted pregnancies should be avoided through good education and ease of obtaining contraceptives.

There is also a medical reason to advocate for planned pregnancies. To prevent babies from being born with spina bifida, women who wish to have children are advised to take folic acid before they become pregnant.

But if we have fewer children, who will fund health care for the elderly? Retired people hardly pay any taxes and health care costs are rising, but on the other hand the costs for kindergartens, schools and universities will decrease. The cost of expanding infrastructure will also fall significantly.

Business fears that there will be too few workers; conversely, many fear that automation and digitalization will result in the loss of many jobs in the future. Both fears are unfounded. You can find more information on this in the post “Citizens are more important than the economy”.

Can liberalism be dangerous?

The guiding goal of liberalism is freedom of the individual, primarily vis-à-vis the state. Every person is supposed to live as they want to, as long as they don’t violate the freedom of others.

I’m sure everyone can agree on that. But what happens when someone’s inheritance or abilities make them so economically powerful that others become dependent on them? What if they are only focused on maximizing the profit for their company and abuse their power?

This kind of behavior can lead to predatory capitalism (also called turbo-capitalism or ultra-liberalism).

Some economists have promoted the  f r e e  economy. But today most economists advocate a  s o c i a l  market economy.

How social should the market economy be? If an economy is only social, the driver for accomplishing great things is missing. In a free market economy, people’s selfish pursuits can contribute to the well-being of society as a whole.

When an economy is only “free", employees in non-privileged positions receive unfairly low wages. The economy has to be regulated so that everyone gets a fair share of the profits.

Unions can help defend the rights of wage earners. Unions are needed. Everyone needs to be able to defend themselves and assert their rights.

But when unions push wages up against the realities of the market through strikes, they use tools closer to cartels. Just as the formation of corporate cartels, fixing wages through cartels is poison for the economy.

Why are wages rising insufficiently in lower income brackets? If we assume that the principle of supply and demand also applies to wages, then we have to conclude that people with low-skilled jobs are forced to compete with workers from China because of globalization. The employees at a company producing vacuum cleaners can’t achieve higher wages through strikes, because the vacuum cleaners would be imported from China then. Unions have lost influence in the manufacturing sector.

Wages, and therefore the prices of products, are no longer rising and we have almost no inflation.

Employers can also bring in almost unlimited numbers of workers from low-wage countries. Tweaked “studies” by economists would have us believe that wages are no less likely to rise as a result of immigration. And many unions also accept these studies because they are committed to socialism, which wants to open borders to everyone.

There is an unholy alliance between representatives of the free market economy and trade unions influenced by socialism, which has the effect that the “supply” of workers with low qualifications is always large and wages do not rise by themselves.

Uncontrolled globalization benefits international corporations the most.

Organisms in nature consist of cells that are protected by cell walls. Each cell determines what is allowed to pass through the cell walls and what isn’t. Organisms do not consist of a fluid in which everything can move everywhere.

In the same way, all countries also need to determine to what extent they want to keep their borders open.

The social market economy needs carefully balanced laws. But everything can’t be regulated by laws. Companies and institutions have to have good reputations in society to survive. Blacklists can have a lot of influence here.

When companies indulge in predatory capitalism, they need to be pilloried by the political parties.

The social market economy can’t entirely prevent large wage differences. Income disparities have to be mitigated through taxes. Tax rates are progressive in most countries. However, tax progression has become skewed by inflation in almost all countries. Cold progression means that small and medium incomes are taxed too heavily and the top tax rate takes effect too early. The same is true for property taxes.

Dogmatic liberalism has the characteristics of an ideology and is harmful to society because it leads to injustice and promotes communism and dogmatic socialism.

What should you do if you are arrested by the police

People who are unexpectedly arrested by police officers usually feel caught off guard. Hardly anyone can keep a cool head in that kind of situation. But if you are, you should stay as calm as possible even if you feel you are not guilty. This is the advice given by “Attorney Rudolph.” Anyone who resists police officers physically runs the risk of being charged with resisting arrest.

W h a t  w o u l d  y o u  d o ?

I googled the term “police violence” and found the following post: Sefolosha, a basketball player, was a victim of police violence five years ago: During a stop, officers broke his lower leg. I wonder if police in the US are just that violent during stops to begin with, or if Sefolosha verbally and physically resisted.

I posted this on Twitter: Most police officers are not bad. We need the police! There would be less police violence if people didn’t insult and attack police officers. There needs to be de-escalation on both sides!   anonym@maxs1r0h replied: This is blaming the victim. That’s all you can really say about a post like this.

Why does violence occur so often during police operations? Frequently, conflicts between the police and the person being stopped develop according to this pattern (Heinz Kraft, The De-escalative Deployment Model of the NRW Police):

1. The parties involved in the conflict base their own actions on the actions of their adversary.

2. The actions by one party are followed by an immediate reaction by the other party (“the first turn of the conflict spiral”).

3. Action and reaction mutually reinforce each other and the tension in the conflict increases (“escalation effect”)

4. The escalation becomes more and more dynamic and the conflict gets out of control for the parties involved.

Heinz Kraft suggests engaging the “addressee” through conversation, thereby reducing the likelihood they will run or exhibit aggressive behavior.

Right-wing and left-wing extremist parties, groups of all colors and all worldviews should urge people not to resist verbally or physically if they are arrested. Resisting and running away leads to violence. If the police tolerated suspects escaping, it would lead to chaos.

How can the police be reformed so people begin to accept them more again? Significantly more women and police officers with immigrant backgrounds should be recruited on the police force, and sensitive operations should only be carried while wearing bodycams.

It is important to me personally that the police treat me with respect and as an equal during a stop.

It has become clear in Germany that there are police officers who spread radical right-wing ideas amongst their ranks. Why are there hardly any people in the police who support left-wing positions? In the GDR, all the police officers had left-wing views, but in Western democracies there are hardly any police officers who are politically left-wing. Many police officers hold views to the right of the political center. The story is different for journalists. Most journalists hold left-wing views, and so it happens that left-wing journalists often report favorably on left-wing demonstrators who have confrontations with the police.

Everyone generally agrees that the police have a monopoly on the use of force and thereby serve to ensure the security of the citizens. The police should not abuse their monopoly on the use of force and have to behave in such a way that they can be seen as “friends and helpers.” However, there are segments of the population that are frequently stopped and checked by the police, and who see the police not as a friend, but as their enemy.

Openly calling for a fight against the police should not be tolerated. As I pointed out in my blog post “Aggressions", there are games where you can shoot rows and rows of police officers (Google: youtube gta 50 headshots).

We all appreciate the fact that we live in a free society, but we damage our free system when we allow the police to serve as a whipping boy for people who cannot find a place within our state.

 

 

Is there a right to assisted suicide?

Our society continues to grow older. Medicine makes it possible to postpone death, but it often fails to keep life worth living until the end.

Man has the right of self-determination even over the time of his death. I have a right to live, but also a right to die, once my life is no longer worth living.

A difference is made between different forms of assisted suicide (euthanasia).

Passively assisted suicide

In the case of passively assisted suicide, life-sustaining measures are ended. This is done with the consent of the affected person or their family members.

Indirectly assisted suicide

Indirect euthanasia refers to the administration of pain-relieving or consciousness-clouding medication. The person concerned wants this treatment or made such declaration in a Patient’s Provision.

Attended suicide 

This refers to obtaining lethal medication for the person willing to die. The person concerned still needs to take the drug themselves.

Actively assisted suicide

Also called killing on request, it is only permitted in a few countries. In the case of active euthanasia, the patient is administered a lethal injection at their request, e.g. by a physician.

Assisted suicide is permitted in an increasing number of countries. However, most religious communities disapprove of euthanasia.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church condemns “assisted suicide”.

2277 An act or omission which, of its own accord or with the intention of death, in order to put an end to pain, is murder, a grave offence against human dignity and against the respect owed to the living God, the Creator.

2278 Morality does not demand therapy at any price. It may be justified to discontinue costly and dangerous medical procedures that are extraordinary or disproportionate to the result that is hoped for. The intention is not to cause death, but one simply accepts that it cannot be prevented.

       I couldn’t find anything in the Bible that directly condemns suicide.

Islam also does not permit assisted suicide. What is more, Islam states that man is created to endure difficulties and hardship. It is not permitted to free a person from suffering or pain by means of death.

Every country should determine the conditions under which euthanasia is possible and must not allow representatives of religious communities to make these decisions for them.

Aggressions

On the Internet, you can find videos of games in which you can run around as a mass shooter and shoot dozens of people.

For example this guide to a game: (google: youtube gta 50 headshots)

… shooting people on the head … all you are doing here is driving around from place to place in the town finding people on the street…you know… you are stopping, point your gun on the head, then getting the head free shot… he shoots, the man collapses … you know… you drive around, you have not to leave the car, you can shoot him from inside the car … he shoots, the man hits the ground … it may be easier …

You can also shoot police officers, drive over as many pedestrians as possible, turning them into mud, shoot victims in the stomach with close-ups depictions so that the intestines squirt out ...

Nevertheless, there are psychologists, who in scientific studies reach the conclusion that “violent video game engagement is not associated with adolescents' aggressive behavior” 

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.171474#d3e2748

The link above redirects to an often quoted study by the University of Oxford. This study may call itself scientific, but it does not even begin to meet the requirements of scientific or medical research. It is likely that it’s not even possible to conduct scientifically accurate studies with humans in this field.

Pharmaceuticals require a randomized double blind placebo controlled study. This study was not at all randomized, because a thousand 14- and 15-year-olds were chosen who signed up and were thus most likely already strongly influenced by games that glorify violence. Hence 500 young people were missing who so far had hardly had any access to games like these. These, however, would hardly have received permission from their parents to expose themselves to videos glorifying violence for hours in this experiment.

The teenagers surely also had a tendency to answer the questions in such a way that they were allowed to continue playing all games, thus negating all scientific validity.

There is no need for such studies, because common sense tells anyone (except some psychologists) that violent games reinforce aggressive thoughts and reduce empathy. A powerful game industry that is well organized exists. It would be naive to assume that these companies would not try to finance this kind of research.

Up until the 1980s, the cigarette industry financed studies on the (un)harmfulness of smoking and financed (covert) articles in which non-smokers were urged to show tolerance towards smokers. And it worked, because no one wanted to be intolerant.

Gamers don’t want to lose games that glorify violence and fight back: “And when you consider that millions of people play such games, then the world’s streets should be paved with corpses every day. I think that you just have to differentiate and separate games from reality”.

If you think about aggression, you almost inevitably come across the bloody gladiator fights of the Romans. When Emperor Trajan celebrated his triumph over the Dacians, the “Games” are said to have lasted 123 days. 10,000 fighters and 11,000 exotic animals ensured that the Colosseum’s ground turned red. After that, the massive slaughters then stood for the annihilation of all enemies and the gladiator fights for the legions’ bravery and lethal courage.

Rome needed legionaries with great potential for aggression.                                              The games usually lasted the entire day, split into three parts. The animal hunt kicked off the program. It was quite a colorful affair, as the point was to offer the audience a display of the world Rome ruled. During a single session of Emperor Nero, 400 bears and 300 lions are said to have been killed. The mass slaughters at midday, when hundreds of convicted criminals and prisoners of war killed each other, represented the extermination of all enemies.

Once one of the gladiators died, the duel was over. Whenever an injured gladiator fell to the ground, the decision was made regarding the life or death of the defeated. “Kill him” or “mercy” would ring out from the audience. In a way, they entered into a dialog with the organizer of the Games. And he was well-advised to join the crowd’s judgment.

With 3D video games everything becomes more realistic. At least they are not reality, in contrast to the Romans’ gladiator fights. The Romans looking on could call “kill him” but could not kill themselves. When it comes to games, I think it is scary that people don’t watch as others are killed, no, you actively kill by pulling the trigger virtually!

 Even Donald Trump is against games that celebrate violence. He said:“We must stop the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace. It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence. We must stop or substantially reduce this, and it has to begin immediately. Cultural change is hard, but each of us can choose to build a culture that celebrates the inherent worth and dignity of every human life”.

If a woman falls in love with a young man who plays games that glorify violence, she shouldn’t be surprised if her boyfriend or husband then beats her later.

If you live in a group that supports violence, or have been the victim of violence yourself, you tend to become aggressive yourself. In cultures where vendettas are part of customary law, all humiliated male members must regain honor, or face being marginalized as inferior.

Most people want to live in a peaceful culture. We need to stand up and ensure that violence and aggression are rejected. Tolerating aggressive behavior - in daily life, too - must be condemned.

Aggressive behavior is also common-place in traffic. Driving too close and tailgating are a normal part of traffic on streets.

When you drive a car, protected by a metal body, you become anonymous. If you want to elbow your way ahead in any other situation, you would have to make eye contact. Whenever someone tailgates me too closely, I think: Is he gay or what does he want? (Sorry, in any other case I actually like gays).

40% of all accidents are rear-end collisions. Some drivers need to always drive the limit. When they encounter a driver who wants to travel at a reasonable speed, they tailgate to show that they are capable of going faster.

Surveys show: Eight out of ten people have experienced what it means to be harassed, intimidated or provoked by others in traffic. Traffic becomes hectic and the majority of drivers lose a bit of their quality of life.

Without do-gooders, there are no populists

Which statement is correct:

Well-meant is the opposite of good and well-meant is not the same as done well.

The term ”do-gooder” is a sarcastic, spiteful or contemptuous denigration of individuals or groups.

Do-gooders can be described as an emotionally loaded term. But there is no replacement for do-gooder or goodie two shoes.

All people occasionally take on the role of a do-gooder.

People in Europe have to admit to themselves that, had they been born as Nigerians, they would probably also make their way to Europe and people in the USA understand that as Hondurans they would also try to cross the border.

Nevertheless, does this empathy have to mean that all people in developing countries are granted the right to emigrate to the USA or Europe, even if a few million would make their way there?

Do-gooders would say: Yes, we have to. Surely not too many people will come and we will manage.

However, such an immigration triggers a sense of unease in a lot of people to varying degrees. (More on this in the Refugees post).

Governments that do not pay attention to this unease (“fears”) and insist on human rights and the Geneva Convention on Refugees lose many votes to populists.

Trump won the US elections in 2016 because he promised to build a wall on the Mexican border.

The biggest argument of Brexit supporters was the cancellation of the EU’s freedom of movement.

Most Germans who vote for the AFD don’t want a Nazi regime. They want a party that promises to stop immigration. The immigration topic drives the AFD. If Germany would implement a regulated and restrictive immigration act like in the USA, Australia or Japan, the AFD would quickly decline to become an insignificant party.

The do-gooders, however, prevent this from happening and strengthen the populists.

A realistic, pragmatic policy without ideological blinders would calm the political situation in the USA and Germany. There would then be time and energy to contemplate on ways to improve the situation of crisis states.

Most parties to the left of the center want to keep the borders open for ideological reasons.

The parties to the right are not in agreement on how far they want to open the borders. The pressure of migration from the south has increased in the past decades in the course of globalization and will continue to do so. Even if the situation slowly improves in developing countries, the wealth in the industrialized states will grow more quickly due to IT and automation and the gap is likely to continue to widen.

Migration will continue to be a pressing and loaded issue for the next 50 years!

Were all wars pointless?

Have there been wars that, looking back, may be described as justified or that created “progress?”

Or were all wars pointless? Does it even make sense to ask this question?

Jean Amery writes: One should not and must not leave the past undisturbed, or it may rise once more and become a new present.

Let us look at the wars in Iraq first. In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. A few months later, a Coalition led by the USA began the fighting to liberate Kuwait. Kuwait was free just a few days later and the Iraqi troops suffered a devastating loss.

In 2003, a war was once again started in Iraq and led by the USA. The USA had suspected Iraq’s dictator at the time, Saddam Hussein, to be in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). They toppled Saddam Hussein and pursued the goal of bringing a democratic government to power.

The Liberation of Kuwait by the armies of the Coalition was, without a doubt, a justified and successful operation.

In contrast, the Invasion of Iraq, which consequentially led to the toppling of the dictator, Saddam Hussein, must be described as a huge disaster.

The claim that Saddam Hussein had been developing WMDs turned out to be false. It is true that he supported terrorism and oppressed his people. But may allegations as these legitimize military interventions in the future? The Invasion of Iraq claimed many lives among Iraqi civilians and after the war was over, the situation deteriorated and resembled a civil war. This was an advantageous condition for terrorist attacks and the spread of the so-called Islamic State.

The intention to install a democratic government was completely unrealistic! The hope remains that the insight finally asserts itself that democratic governments can only be installed in countries with a population that is ready for it.

Were any lessons learned?

The conflict in Syria began in 2011 with peaceful demonstrations which quickly turned into armed clashes with the authoritarian regime of Assad. A large number of armed groups fought for power, who also represented the interests of foreign powers.

The heterogeneity of the Syrian state and society leads to a great potential for conflict. The Sunnis represent the majority of the population. The religious minorities include Shiites (Alawites, Druze), Yazidi and Christians. President Bashar al-Assad belongs to the Alawites. Most rebels were Sunni, who felt oppressed by Assad.

Starting in November 2012, the secret service CIA massively supported the rebels by means of covered operations (Wikipedia: Civil War in Syria since 2011).

From July 3013, the Obama Administrations only openly supported “moderate” rebels with weapons.

The “Islamic State” benefited from the chaos in Syria and quickly conquered large areas of the country. It could only be pushed back once US and Russian fighter jets intervened.

Half a million Syrians have lost their lives due to the war and more than 5 million have fled abroad.

Why did the Syrian people have to suffer? The rebels, the Obama Administration and many European states supported the removal of the despot, Assad. They received moral support from renowned newspapers in the US and Europe. Most newspapers were of the opinion that peace would not be possible with Assad in power.

Sure, Assad is a dictator who can only cling to power using brutal violence. But what is the alternative?

In predominantly Muslim Syria, a culture dominates in which violence is and always has been commonplace. The conflict between Sunni and Shia is not a new phenomenon. 18 years after the Prophet Mohammed died, the Sunni and Shia resolved their disputes in bloody conflicts. I do not believe that the West can develop Syria into a functioning state.

The violent toppling of Gaddafi in Libya has also not concluded in great success.

       The military deployments of the West described above were all carried out in foreign cultures.

The conflicts in Yugoslavia occurred in the realm of our culture and a military intervention there should therefore be rather successful.

NATO’s intervention in Kosovo cannot be explained without the mass murder of Srebrenica. People in the West felt guilty for not having intervened in Srebrenica.

In 1999, the conflict between Serbs and insurgent Kosovo-Albanians had reached a level that made it impossible for the public to simply stand by. The intervention of NATO was meant to protect Kosovo’s civilian population.

NATO assumed that a few heavy air attacks against military targets would suffice to make the Serbs change course. However, the Serbs only changed their actions after civilian infrastructure was also targeted, which led to about 500 civilian casualties.

In the end, the intervention brought about the contended independence of Kosovo, where the weapons are now silent, however.

Are there further wars or interventions that one could rate as a success today?

A website titled “Wars of Humanity” lists more than 400 wars. We are no longer concerned with most of these wars and can only discern why people budded heads back then with great difficulty.

Yet the War of Secession in the US still keeps our minds busy these days. There are countless articles online and easily hundreds of books have been written about the American Civil War. Yet only very few actually ask whether this war was necessary and what would have happened, had it not been fought. When Abraham Lincoln, who is seen as an opponent to slavery, was elected President, the South seceded and proclaimed the Confederate States of America. Lincoln could not accept the dissolution of the United States’ unity and started the Civil War in 1861. 

In 2015, the Frankfurter Allgemeine wrote: “It was only by means of that war that the USA could ascend to become a world power. The conflict revolutionized the economy of the North.”

I, however, have my doubts that the North’s economy would not have become stronger even without the war. And even if that is the case, was it worth the death of 620,000 people - 2 percent of the American population?

In my Pacifism post of November 2017 I wrote:

In recent years there have been two principle reasons for armed conflict:

·       Minorities without any autonomous rights are held in the central state by force of arms in order to preserve the unity of the states. How many deaths is the unity of a state worth? It should become customary law that all minorities should be allowed to vote on how many autonomous rights they wish to claim.

·       Over the past two thousand years, ideologies and religions have repeatedly led to catastrophic wars.

I believe that the Confederate and Union States would have found a way back together after several decades even without this bloody war and that the inhuman slavery would also have been abolished in the South. The citizens of the North, who wanted to use armed force to control the states of the South, certainly meant well, but..... (cf. Foreign Policy of Oct. 2017).

The question does arise whether it is appropriate to interpret US history as a European. The assessment of the US Civil War still has an effect on the whole world to this day. Because if you are of the opinion that Lincoln had to invade the South to end slavery and preserve the Union, then you will take the same view today - that governments that violate human rights must be overthrown by use of force.

            

Table of Contents

We Can't Meet the Climate Goals                                     17.01.2020

CO2-free energy generation is only possible to a limited extent in Central Europe – also in the future!     

Fighting for the Apparent Good – Robin Hood Syndrome     12.01.2020

Is it true: Whether peaceful or militant, resistance is important?

Citizens are More Important Than the Economy                   07.01.2020

Economic growth lowers our feel-good factor and our quality of life.

Self-determined Sexuality also in Developing Countries     18.12.2019

We are committed to providing access to means for voluntary family planning.

From Carnivore to Frutarian                                                  17.12.2019

Vegetarians and vegans have to put up with many questions that are difficult to answer.

Does the World Improve/Worsen without Ideologies and Religions 
Is it possible without a class struggle or moral codex?          04.12.2019                                

The Dance around the Golden Calf                                       04.12.2019

The EU acts as a monopolist for the European single market and extorts Great Britain and Switzerland.

The Cherry Pickers                                                                25.11.2019

The unlimited freedom of movement of people must not be separated. Anyone who tries it is called a cherry picker.

Green Ideas and Ideologies                                                   25.11.2019

Ideological blinkers lead to many undesirable developments in environmental protection.

Battle of the World Views                                                     19.11.2019

Will do-gooders win the fight?

Direct Democracy                                                                 19.11.2019

Direct democracy is the highest form of democracy.

A Critical View of Human Rights                                         16.11.2019

The authors of human rights knuckle under from religions and ideologies.

The Problem with the Do-gooders                                        06.11.2019

Trump is the anti-do-gooder.

Refugees                                                                                28.10.2019

The refugee problem could tear us apart.

Peace                                                                                    20.10.2019

For ideologues of all kinds, their own truth is more important than peace.

Pacifism                                                                                 15.10.2019

I think we should start talking about moderate pacifism again.

Asylum Policy                                                                       09.10.2019

If Europe opened its borders, millions of refugees would come to Europe every year.

Foreign Policy                                                                        08.10.2019

We must not use violence to spread our view of democracy and human rights around the world.

EU                                                                                          08.10.2019

Who supports the free movement of people in the EU? It is the unholy alliance between the Social Democrats and the economy.

Ideologies  
Can we live without ideologies and religions?                       16.09.2019                                                      

Islam   
Is Islam a respectable religion?                                             15.09.2019                                                       

Socialism                                                                               10.09.2019

Socialism is an ideology that wants to remove all territorial boundaries.

Nationalism                                                                           10.09.2019

As soon as nationalism becomes ideological, sooner or later it will lead to war.

What are your views? Comments are very welcome.

Or write me:  2000phil2000@gmail.com

We Can't Meet the Climate Goals

 We can’t meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement!

Global CO2 emissions is the product of the CO2 emissions of the individual person multiplied by the number of people in the world (more in the post on Undesirable Green Developments from November 2019).

In 2014, the environmental protection organization Ecopop (www.ecopop.ch) launched the popular initiative “Stop Overpopulation - Safeguard our Natural Environment” in Switzerland. The initiative called for government funding worldwide to promote voluntary family planning.

The National Councillor Balthasar Glättli (of the Greens) called Ecopop's aim to prevent population growth with contraceptives abroad a “contemptuous, neocolonialist attitude” (NZZ).

The reader will no doubt have noticed that I am not a fan of parties like the Social Democratic Party and the Greens that spread socialist ideas. But this is not about political exchanges. The aim is to find out how the left and the Greens can remove their ideological blinders so that they too can help lower the world’s population in the next 50 years.

If we enable voluntary family planning around the world, we will achieve two goals:

1. We facilitate the living together of women and men in developing countries and prevent abortions. More in the blog on Self-determined Sexuality in Developing Countries from June 2019.

2. At the same time, we help to reduce global warming.

            We humans have to choose whether we want to stop global warming with ascetic living or take other rational measures.

In industrialized countries, we should  a l s o  promote dropping the number of children per woman to 1.2-1.6. (The population remains stable with 2.1 children per woman). I believe that the number of children should not drop below 1.2, because we need to ensure that old-age provisions are not endangered. The lack of contributors to old-age provisions can only be partially replaced by immigrants, as the willingness and ability of the local populations to accept them should not be overestimated. With the number of children from 1.2 to 1.6, some couples can also have 3 children, because there will be more and more couples who have no children.

7.7 billion people currently live in the world.

1.4 billion live in industrialized countries. China, which is difficult to classify, also has 1.4 billion.

This means that almost 5 billion people live in emerging and developing countries.

CO2 emissions are slowly declining in industrialized countries. China also wants to get there in 10 years.

But the crucial question will be how the CO2 emissions of emerging and developing countries will develop.

There are articles to the point of weariness in the media about global warming, but there are no articles that deal with the issue above. Developing countries are only recorded individually in the statistics.

Let's take India as a “model state” for emerging and developing countries. There are developing countries that are developing faster than India, but there are also many that are developing more slowly.

India emitted 0.61 tons of CO2 per person per year in 1990 (Wikipedia: CO2 emissions per capita). In 2020 the value will rise to around 2.0. So the value has more than tripled in the past 30 years. We can assume that the value will also triple in the next 30 years (by 2050). This means that CO2 emissions in the “model state” of India will amount to 6.0 tons per person in 2050.

India represents 5 billion people in the emerging and developing countries.

5 billion people times 6.0 tons per person gives 30 billion tons of CO2. How much is 30 billion tons of CO2?

Global CO2 emissions in 2017 were 36.2 billion tons (Statista Research Department).

We have to conclude that emerging and developing countries will emit huge amounts of CO2 in 2050, which cannot be compensated for by reducing the values in the industrialized countries.

One can object that India will also partially switch to alternative energy generation by 2050. That may be, but the “model state” of India also stands in for Africa, and the population in Africa will increase to about 2.5 billion by 2050.

The world population is now 7.7 billion. Another 2 billion people will be added by 2050. (The population is declining in industrialized countries, but the population is increasing rapidly in the underdeveloped countries). How much CO2 will these 2 billion people emit in 2050? The experts have apparently never asked themselves this question. Please let me know if you find any reports mentioning the above question.

             If we look at the development of the world’s population, we can hardly assume that CO2 emissions can be significantly reduced by 2050.

But maybe in the next 10 or 20 years new methods for energy generation will be found that make the switch to CO2-free energy generation easier than previously thought.

Photovoltaics:

If solar panels are installed on roofs and exterior facades, electricity can be generated in a very environmentally friendly way with photovoltaics.

However, photovoltaics have one major disadvantage. In Central Europe, solar panels generate 10 times less electricity in January than in July.

But we need a lot of electricity in winter. Solar panels only make sense if we can build storage facilities in which the electricity generated in the summer can be stored for the winter, or we accept that additional electricity must be generated in the winter with gas power plants. I will come back to electricity storage later.

Wind energy:

Eight years ago, I was in western Texas. There are large wind farms with very high towers. I drove under a wind turbine that was surrounded by five others. A constant, strong or very strong wind was blowing. There was an impressive roar. You could feel that huge amounts of energy were being tapped here. It was as loud as if three helicopters were taking off at the same time. But you couldn’t live near there. I was amazed that they wanted to build hundreds of such plants in Switzerland and Germany. There are too many dreamers and too few realists among energy-system planners and journalists.

          Offshore wind farms have a future. However, if too many farms are built in a region (e.g. the North Sea), there is a risk that the power grid will collapse if there is a lull.

The development of floating wind turbines, which can be installed on the Atlantic coasts of Portugal, France, Great Britain and the USA, is promising.

To stop impending climate change, industrialized nations like the USA would have to invest considerably more in basic research on energy supply, says Microsoft founder Bill Gates. This also includes research on new types of nuclear reactors, such as the so-called rotor reactor, the development of which is being co-financed by Gates.

 Bill Gates also said: “All technologies that call themselves renewable are not reliable because they are not available in sufficient quantities in all locations.”

We need high-performance energy storage. The Linth-Limmern pumped storage power plant is the newest and most powerful pumped storage power plant in Switzerland. It has a storage capacity of 33 GWh. The annual consumption of electricity by the city of Zurich is 3000 GWh. The Linth-Limmern pumped storage power plant could only compensate for fluctuations in electricity production for the city of Zurich for a few days. That’s surprisingly little, as the Linth Limmern reservoir holds 23 million m3 of water and the height difference is 600 m. Solar electricity from summer cannot be saved for winter this way. (Recommended article: https://www.bulletin.ch/de/news-detail/wasserkraft-versus-batterien.html

All realistic-thinking natural scientists know that physics sets narrow limits when it comes to building energy and storage facilities. There will be no miracle facilities in the future!

The situation is different in the IT area, where amazing developments can still be expected.

In the long term, one of the biggest problems will be that the CO2 we release is extremely slow to break down. About half of the CO2 released will be absorbed by the sea and land after a few decades, but 15% to 40% of the CO2 will still be in the atmosphere even after 1000 years (IPCC). This will have far-reaching consequences.

Fighting for the apparent good - Robin Hood Syndrome

When prehistoric man was surprised by an enemy, his body released adrenaline. His heart would beat faster, his breathing accelerated and the blood pressure increased.

Man was ready for a fight or flight in this mode. When man decided to fight, the excitement gave him enormous power and could lead to disinhibition, which allowed him to defeat the enemy.
The ability (disposition, drive) to fight enemies with great commitment is deep within all of us and was essential for survival. When the will to fight was weak in a tribe, it would perish.

While we live in the 21st century, the predisposition to fight against enemies is still fully developed.

In my “Peace” post in December 2017, I described how wars were waged almost continuously over the last 3000 years. 

The Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research counted 20 wars and 385 conflicts worldwide in 2017.

         Most people now desire peace.

But this also applies:

"The devoutest cannot live in peace if the evil neighbor does not like it."
But when there is conflict, when does a state that has a fully defensive predisposition have to say: up to this point and no further?

The conflict between the West (USA/Western Europe) and Russia is particularly suitable for discussing this in concrete terms in a current conflict.
    In 1989 the western border of the GDR was the border between NATO and the Soviet Union. In 2004, the Baltic States, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria joined NATO, moving NATO’s border closer to Russia’s. But that went further in 2008.
     Jack Matlock, former ambassador to Moscow, said: “In 2008, NATO decided to put Ukraine on a track to gain membership. A country deeply divided internally, right on Russia’s doorstep.”

In September 2008, Ukraine and the EU reached an agreement on an Association Agreement.

This sparked fears in Russia. Russia began supporting rebels in the Donbass, whose population was predominantly friendly to Russia. And Russia annexed Crimea. How can Russia justify this step? Sevastopol, Russia’s most important naval port on the Black Sea, is located on Crimea. Crimea was assigned to Ukraine only in 1954 by decision of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Elections in 1994 revealed that the majority of Crimean citizens are friendly to Russia. Only Russia declared the 2014 elections (after annexation) as valid.

To secure peace, one should always try to understand the enemy's point of view.

     What would happen in the reverse, if Russia tried to organize a military alliance with Canada and Mexico? The USA rightly reacted vehemently when Russia concluded a military alliance with Cuba under Fidel Castro.

In 2018, all 29 NATO countries spent around 963 billion dollars on military armaments. Russia disarmed (also because of the crisis) and spent 61 billion in this area (Sipri).

Given these figures, can Russia really be dangerous?

Is it justified to start talking about a Cold War, again?

Since they could carry weapons, humans have waged wars. Must this continue in the 21st century?

Or is the rule now: If you don’t have enemies, you go out and find some?

Or rather: If you aren’t with us, you’re against us?

Russia is aware that it has nothing to offer that is on par with the Western arsenal. Based on military logic, it is thus understandable that Russia restarts a nuclear armament. Do we want to die in a nuclear war unleashed under unfortunate circumstances?

Wouldn’t it better to come to terms in a peaceful coexistence? The Eastern European states worry that Russia could once again try to “protect” the Russian minorities living there. So couldn’t one speak openly about these fear at a conference and make Russia promise to not move any borders in the future?

An objection may be that Russian agents kill critics of the regime. We cannot allow that. But can we really achieve anything by means of economic sanctions and the Cold War?

We have only reached one thing: Rearmament has returned.

          The predisposition to want / be able to fight enemies with great commitment is not equally pronounced in all people. Anyone who wants to follow this “urge” these days can play violent computer games, join a soccer fan club or join a left- or right-wing extremist group.

Be it peaceful or militant - what matters is the resistance. This saying was expressed by a left-wing extremist movement, but could also come from a right-wing extremist group.

Based on a readiness to fight enemies, the disposition developed to be able to also fight evil.
Leftist organizations convey to their adherents the conviction that they are fighting against evil (capitalism) and are thus standing up for good. This is very appealing to young adults and many fall for the Robin Hood syndrome.

The young bourgeois parties have a much harder time. They need to strive to find the best path on which the market economy can thrive while incorporating as many social components as possible.

In a grouping in which all share the same world view, the group members feel secure.

That "we-feeling" contributes to a positive attitude to life. All are on the same level and can fight together against people who dissent.

It is often overlooked that the good that is fought for is only supposedly good and often such engagements have catastrophic consequences. I described examples in the post titled “The problem with do-gooders” in March 2018.