Dear Ludwig,

You wrote: Is the value of a desperately poor child’s life, amongst hundred of millions of similarly poor children in Bangladesh worth the same as that of someone like Barack Obama or Bill Gates?

In writing you have mixed two questions - that of tribe and that of status.

Barack Obama and Bill Gates belong to our tribe. The Bangladeshis don't. There are high status individuals in Bangladesh. Perhaps you phrased the question the way you did to put a perception as all Bangladeshis as poor. Of course their average income is much less than ours, but all Bangladeshis are not poor. Some of our children are treated horribly. Occasionally the newspapers have an item of one of our children battered to death.

I have been postulating about your reasons but really don't know why you phrased it that way. It leads to a question of mine. Is tribe or status a more potent identification with most people? There have been a great many anti-Muslim and anti-Israel attitudes expressed on these strings. For the people on the OLO strings it seems to me that tribe is much more important than status.

Ludwig, thanks for the link. America is of course the most religious
Western country on earth. The fundie churches there support the
Catholic Church. Just about every link around the world however,
always leads back to the Vatican. That is the difference, the
Vatican operates globally.

The BBC Panorama programe did a story on some of what the Vatican
is up to in the third world.

The transcript can be downloaded on this URL.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/3147672.stm

Great news about Bill Gates's dad supporting Planned Parenthood,
who are the "evil organisation" in the eyes of the church.

Me still thinks that the Gates Foundation is just being diplomatic
and that their anti HIV gel will also kill sperms. They might just
not be saying it as such, for very good reasons.

Yabby. I do believe your paranoia and your hatred of one religion is preventing you from acknowledging the facts on population growth.

Since I understood we were talking about population explosions, I raised the prolific and unsustainable issue of Muslims having exceptionally large families.

"Perhaps Islam, with less hangups about sex, is for that very reason
more popular."

Time for a reality check Yabby. "Less (sic) hangups about sex" requires responsible birth control and it ain't happening in the Islamic world or perhaps you don't read the links provided here? Your malice is evident and your assertions - spurious.

"I don't see what that has to do with this thread. Even you would
need to concede that the Catholic Church trying to outbreed their
competition, the Muslims, is not exactly a sustainable option."

No it would not be a sustainable option Yabby, however, it is not happening. Catholics are not outbreeding Muslims - Muslims are outbreeding Catholics - by the millions!

So are we talking about high population growths or have you once again, corrupted another thread to spread your fanatical hatred of Catholics (of which I am not)?

Please....get a grip on yourself.

*Federal Minister for Population Welfare Chaudhry Shahbaz Hussain outlined the following intellectual themes and objectives of this conference:

That Islam’s classical doctrines do not prohibit family or population control.

That even if they do, hypothetically speaking, by the deployment of ijtihad, Islamic jurists should find newer theories of jurisprudence to justify birth control and family regulation in the civil society.

If I may comment here, without using the word “abortion,” the thrust of the semantics has been that abortion is perfectly lawful and permitted if the woman so wishes.

That a large family is bad per se as it creates poverty and limits the resources of the family, the society, and the Islamic Ummah.

That it is because of larger and larger populations that Muslim nations continue to be poor and without resources. *

Dickie dear, that was part of an Islamic conference about family
planning, which you will find here :

http://www.islamonline.net/English/contemporary/2005/05/article03.shtml

When the Catholic Church starts to talk in the language that they
are talking, I will take notice.

Meantime it cannot be denied that the Catholic Church remains the
world's largest lobby group against modern family planning.

They are your old employer, perhaps you are just biased.

Dickie “They don’t! Catholics in the West have decreased in numbers - particularly Europe.”

That is because, despite the catholic church, they are populations of a reasonable to high levels of “education”.

I would note the Catholic Church acknowledges its membership growth is in third world countries, places of lower education standards.

I would note the shortage of priests is requiring the transfer of third-world grown priests into Europe and the ‘developed’ world.

Trying to adjoin the Catholic Church to responsible parenting outcomes in this manner is a cynical manipulation of a spurious correlation.

In short nothing short of what we have come to exp3ect from trickie-Dickie

Now dickie, as I am addressing you, I recall some outstanding business, where you claimed I told lies and I called you on it… for the umpteenth time I request you illustrate your sculilous slur with quotes of what I have said or I will just continue to assume and repeat that you are a bare-faced liar, completely devoid of any redeeming quality

"Meantime it cannot be denied that the Catholic Church remains the
world's largest lobby group against modern family planning."

Indeed yes Yabby just as you are part of the largest group endeavouring to overpopulate these arid lands with eco-destructive, cloven hooved animals which have already thoroughly trashed our fragile eco system.

Very little difference between your ignorance and that of the Catholic Church I would say.

The fact remains that your lobby group is succeeding and the Catholic lobby group are failing.

"Dickie dear, that was part of an Islamic conference about family
planning, which you will find here :"

I am not interested in Islamic dogma where birth control is being ignored Yabby - just facts and the facts are that the Islamic world are not practising family planning nor are the Pakistanis to which your link refers. In 2007, Pakistan's population was 164 million. In 2008, it was an unsustainable 173 million!

http://www.chowrangi.com/population-explosion-and-illiteracy-forcing-for-economic-suicides.html

I reiterate, please get a grip on yourself.