Economist Debate: World Better off with Fewer People? || Global over-population is the real issue, Boris Johnson, Mayor, London

Economist Debate: World Better off with Fewer People ?

The Economist:

About this Debate:

During the past few years, the size of the world’s population has become a matter of public debate in a way not seen since the 1970s. The total number of people, 6.7 billion now, is forecast to surpass 9 billion by 2050. Many observers fear that an environment degraded by climate change will not be able to support so many. Half the British population, according to one opinion poll, think people should not have more than two children. Yet at the same time governments in Japan, Germany and Russia have been trying to reverse those countries’ falling populations. When is a growing population a blessing and when is it a curse? Is there a best size for the population of the world, or of any particular country? Should governments introduce population-control policies, whether voluntary or mandatory? And how important to demographic matters is climate change?

[Memetics] Waking From the Meme Dream: Who Am I? Do I Exist? Why Is My Head so Full of Thoughts?

Waking from the Meme Dream: Who Am I? Do I Exist?

Susan Blackmore

Paper presented at: The Psychology of Awakening: International Conference on Buddhism, Science and Psychotherapy Dartington 7-10 November 1996

Also published in The Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Science and Our Day-to-day Lives. Ed. G.Watson, S.Batchelor and G.Claxton; London, Rider, 2000, 112-122

Also available in Italian and French, and in Spanish in Dharma, 1, 21-9, 2005

Wake up! Wake up!

Errrr, ummmm, grrrrggr, Oh yes, I’m awake now. Wow, that was a weird dream. I really thought I had to escape from the slurb, and it mattered terribly to get to the cupboard in time. How silly! Of course, now I see it wasn’t real at all.

Wake up! Wake up!

What do you mean, "wake up", I’m already awake. This is real. This does matter. I can’t wake up any more. Go away!

Wake up! Wake up!

But I don’t understand - From what? And how?

[Memetics] In control? Think again. Our ideas of brain and human nature are myths | Nobody in Your Brain...

In control? Think again. Our ideas of brain and human nature are myths

The notion of individual autonomy underpins our society, yet new research suggests this guiding principle is an illusion

It was browsing in a bookshop that got me started. I was confronted by a bank of bestsellers on the brain: how it works and how we think. There were the books which have attracted huge attention, such as Nudge and Blink, but there were others popularising the new insights of a range of academic disciplines – social sciences such as evolutionary psychology as well as neuroscience – which are radically challenging the most fundamental assumptions on which human beings operate.

Perhaps that sounds a little overblown, but it's not. Who, dear reader, do you think you are? Do you think your mind is capable of independent judgment and largely directs the course of your life? Do you think that most of your decisions in life have been the product of your rational, conscious self? Do you believe you are in control of your life? Do you cherish ideas such as self-expression, a sense of autonomy and a distinct, self-authored identity? The chances are that, albeit with a few qualifications, most of your answers are yes. Indeed, given a pervasive culture which reinforces all these ideas, it would be a bit odd if you didn't.

But the point about this new explosion of interest in research into our brains is that it exposes as illusions much of these guiding principles of what it is to be a mature adult. They are a profound misunderstanding of how we think, and how our brains work. They are fairytales, about as fanciful and as implausible as goblins.

Why the Mainstream Media Is Worthless || CIA & Pentagon: Overpopulation & Resource Wars || US Army War College: Overpopulation & Resource Scarcity

The Four Reasons the Mainstream Media Is Worthless

George Washington Blog

There are four reasons that the mainstream media is worthless.

1. Self-Censorship by Journalists


Initially, there is tremendous self-censorship by journalists.

For example, several months after 9/11, famed news anchor Dan Rather told the BBC that American reporters were practicing "a form of self-censorship":


"there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around peoples' necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions.... And again, I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism.
"What we are talking about here - whether one wants to recognise it or not, or call it by its proper name or not - is a form of self-censorship."


Keith Olbermann agreed that there is self-censorship in the American media, and that:


"You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the entire ocean is in trouble .... You cannot say: By the way, there's something wrong with our .... system".

[Д♠][Population Security] Nobel winner supported biological warfare as form of population control

Nobel winner supported biological warfare as form of population control

Third World de-population has been U.S. strategic policy since '74

Top-secret files recently declassified from the National Archives of Australia, despite government opposition, has revealed that one of the fathers of modern biotechnology and genetic engineering advocated using biological weapons against Indonesia and other "overpopulated" countries of South-East Asia. Australia's The Age reports that world-famous microbiologist Sir Macfarlane Burnet recommended in a secret report for the Australian Defence Department in 1947 that biological and chemical weapons should be developed to target food crops and spread infectious diseases.

Macfarlane, who won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1960 and died in 1985, said, "Specifically to the Australian situation, the most effective counter-offensive to threatened invasion by overpopulated Asiatic countries would be directed towards the destruction by biological or chemical means of tropical food crops and the dissemination of infectious disease capable of spreading in tropical, but not under Australian, conditions."

Before a government committee in 1948, Macfarlane said, "In a country of low sanitation the introduction of an exotic intestinal pathogen, e.g. by water contamination, might initiate widespread dissemination." He advised that, "Introduction of yellow fever into a country with appropriate mosquito vectors might build up into a disabling epidemic before control measures were established." The committee recommended that "the possibilities of an attack on the food supplies of S-E Asia and Indonesia using biowarfare agents should be considered by a small study group".