From: owner-eda-thoughts-digest@smoe.org (eda-thoughts-digest) To: eda-thoughts-digest@smoe.org Subject: eda-thoughts-digest V3 #156 Reply-To: eda-thoughts@smoe.org Sender: owner-eda-thoughts-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-eda-thoughts-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk eda-thoughts-digest Sunday, April 23 2000 Volume 03 : Number 156 * If you ever wish to unsubscribe, send an email to * eda-thoughts-digest-request@smoe.org with ONLY * the word unsubscribe in the body of the email * . * PLEASE :) when you reply to this digest to send a post TO the list, * change the subject to reflect what your post is about. A subject * of Re: eda-thoughts-digest V3 #xxx or the like gives readers no clue * as to what your message is about. Today's Subjects: ----------------- ET: wow [BRONCOBAND@aol.com] ET: Now its my turn... [SectionBaby ] ET: ending the myth of overpopulation [RedWoodenBeads@aol.com] ET: oh, i forgot this too [RedWoodenBeads@aol.com] ET: ~nearly every night now~ [shivergirl ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 17:48:49 EDT From: BRONCOBAND@aol.com Subject: ET: wow Hehe, slow down people, I can't read that fast! :) Just kidding...BUT, I have gotten way behind. Don't tell me we will eventually have so much going on that people start dropping off because they can't handle the mail and end up deleting it all!!! Oh no...no no no :( I think it's terrific how everyone is sharing though!!! Keep it up people, I'll get to it eventually :). Laura ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 15:34:25 -0700 (PDT) From: SectionBaby Subject: ET: Now its my turn... Well I was told by a few members that they would like to hear my story so here it is: I warn you I will say a few swear words. If you want to start in the beinging then we would have to go back to when i was 8 years old. That is when the thrashing of myself started and just as i am addicted to chocolate. I went all through my life doing this then in the 5th grade i got horrible!! My mood swings were waayyy out of control i remember one time i was on the floor and i just told my mom to leave when really i wanted her to stay and when i closed my eyes i saw people coming at me with knifes. So i started to go to a theripist not for that long though maybe a month or so then we stopped cause i had calmed down and life was better for me we thought. But of course this whole time i would beat myself up because of how i looked. Then 6th grade came and i became friends with some new people i really didnt have that many stable friends so i went to thr ones that were willing to be my friend, the sex addicts the girls who now have babies and the ones with eating disorders. I fit right in always doing what i did.I lied a lot saying the did the same stuff that they did just so that i wouldnt feel left out. 7th grade was when i cracked, some how there was a rumor that i went to a party and then went into a bedroom with another girl. And so then I was labled a lesbian. At the time i really hadnt handled that type of accusation i was shocked pissed off. To top that off the suicide thoughts some how just decided to drift right on in with me. THe best thing that happened in the 6th grade was that my best friend that i hadnt talked to in awhile was talking to me again and we were bulding the friendship back up. 7th grade gave me days of hell, one minuete i was happy next i wanted to do i was lackuing emotion and i admit sometimes i would just say that i felt like that to get out of something. SUmmer of 7th grade got better and i manged to keep myself calm. Well when 8thgrade came all hell broke lose. I would draw pictures of what i would die with i would do things that normallyi wouldnt. During xmas break and during school all i did was sleep or if i wasnt sleeping i would be on the computer, but doing nothign with my life. Well finally my parents saw that somethign was wrong so then they decided to get me to another theripist. Well by this time i wasnt myself. Cutting myself was a pleasure smoking sounded great running away was the best idea yet. And i always would do the what if I line to myself. Soon i became unstable. so on the week of valentimes day. I stayed home. Monday and tuesday dad made me stay home he didnt trust the school system then wednsday i was going to go and i had it set in my mind that all i wanted was sometrhing to be right in my life so i put advil in my bag to make myself throw up or die one or the either. So then i was taken into the hospital. I was put inthere for 5 days. And i dont knwo if any of you havebeen on this list for more then 3 years cause i have been and i wrote a poem 1 year later called 5 days. And i was talking about the 5 days i spent int he hospital and how i was treated and everythign. The best part of my hospilazation was how much i needed to live. That there was a reason for me, my best friend talked to me when i was in the hospital acting as if i wasnt. and once i got out, she acted like i hadnt even been gone for a week. I was in the hospital over vday so that is why i hate the day. I also hate it because this year my grandfather died on vday. Once i got out i was out on more meds and slowly i became more stable i decreased the smoking i did.:) I became happy bit by bit. Until the summer well the summer i saw my first concert and my first love in concert :)) 9th grade i was ok, i still didnt like how i looked but i never thought that i wanted to kill myself. I was sexually harassed that year instead. 10th grade came and i ws going to do better and i was going to do this and that. Well shit, i didnt get off right so i did my best and i tried this and that. But then the thoughts are a bit by bit coming back. I still hate how i look with a passion. Grades are betting better and so is my depression. I am still best friends with the same girl. And we fend for each other more then ever. :) And that is where I am today. 16 years old a writer, hopeless romantic, lover, and a former suicidal patient. Any questions go ahead and ask, i am not shy....now Holly __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send online invitations with Yahoo! Invites. http://invites.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 17:01:19 EDT From: RedWoodenBeads@aol.com Subject: ET: ending the myth of overpopulation Since the 1970's, population control has been an integral component of US foreign aid programs. One of the five stated goals of USAID, for instance, is that of "population stabilization," which overwhelmingly takes the form of population reduction. The time has come to take an assessment of such an approach to development aid. And the results of any assessment are far from satisfying: Poverty abounds throughout the developing world, primary health care languishes, deaths from malaria, pneumonia and other easily preventable diseases have not diminished. Countries seeing a decrease in fertility rates are not seeing a commensurate increase in prosperity. Population control programs, moreover, are not winning the United States friends overseas. More and more, poverty reduction is becoming identified with elimination of the poor, and complaints about the "new imperialism" are being leveled against the foreign aid paradigm that incorporates population reduction as its key component. It is time for the US to realize that population control funding is a waste of its foreign aid monies. Human rights abuses are endemic to population control China's national population control policy, the ongoing persistence of its one-child policy and the compulsory abortion which is its enforcement mechanism, have become almost a truism. But China is not an isolated incident. To date, 38 countries are recorded as having human rights violations occur within the enforcement of their population policies. The latest example of such violations is Peru. In July 1995, President Alberto Fujimori announced that family planning would become a major priority for the government. Shortly thereafter, the Congress legalized sterilization as a method of family planning, and by the following spring, targets had been set. The effort to meet the regionally allocated targets has resulted in the deaths of an as yet unspecified number of women, coerced sterilization, sterilization in exchange for food or clothing, and sterilization without knowledge or without informed consent. That such abuses abound in other countries as well comes as no surprise when the mechanism of governmentally promoted population reduction programs is understood. Almost without exception, the success of these programs is evaluated with reference to set targets or quotas for contraceptive use, sterilizations, or reductions in fertility among the national population. Historical precedent shows us that these quotas are enforced with little regard for human rights considerations, such as informed consent, or in many cases, without consent at all. Family planning is inherently coercive in a developing country context The root of coercion does not lie in the setting of quotas alone. The element of coercion, of inherent intrusiveness, is unavoidable once family planning becomes a goal of any development or humanitarian aid program. Middle-class Americans would be angry if strangers bearing condoms and contraceptive drugs began appearing on their doorsteps courtesy of the US government (or any other non-governmental organization). In a developing country scenario, in which the door-to-door visits are paid by governmental workers upon poor, semi-literate, village women, there is an inherent imbalance at work. The poor mother of hungry children cannot afford to be angry - she is only cowed. It is disingenuous to claim that any counseling in such a relationship is non-directive. This imbalance is only magnified when the promoters "suggesting" the acceptance of modern contraceptive methods are at the same time the officials with control over the distribution of food or enrollment in nutritional or health programs, as is very often the case in the developing world. In an inherently imbalanced situation such as this, there is very good reason to claim that the fine line between family planning and population control has already been crossed. Population control undermines primary health care When massive amounts of funding are injected into a Third World country to achieve a reduction in the fertility rate, the entire health care sector is skewed. This is true regardless of whether the aid arrives directly through bilateral programs, indirectly through multilateral aid programs such as the UNFPA, or through the offices of NGOs. The invariable fact is that foreign-funded programs command greater access to resources and provide better equipped and more modern operating facilities. The result is that local professionals are drawn away from primary health care and to the better remunerated, better equipped positions and services. The balance of medical professionals shifts markedly away from basic health care to family planning and fertility reduction programs. Those doctors who do remain in primary health care work in primitive conditions, lacking even the most basic of medications or technology. A Kenyan doctor's testimony is representative of the standard scenario: "Our health sector is collapsed. Thousands of the Kenyan people will die of malaria, [the] treatment [of which] costs a few cents, in health facilities whose shelves are stocked to the ceiling with millions of dollars worth of pills, IUDs, Norplant, Depo-Provera, etc., most of which are supplied with American money. . . . A mother brought a child to me with pneumonia, but I had not penicillin to give the child. What I have in the stores are cases of contraceptives." Basic health is further skewed by the impact of contraceptive acceptance on developing populations, most of which are unprepared to deal with the side effects many women experience. "Some of these contraceptives like Depo-Provera cause terrible side effects to the poor people in Kenya, who do not even have competent medical check-ups before injection. Many are maimed for life. The hypertension, blood clots, heart failure, liver pathology, and menstrual disorders cannot be treated due to the poor health services. . . . I see women coming to my clinic daily with swollen legs . . . They have been injured by Depo-Provera, birth-control pills, and Norplant. I look at them and I am filled with sadness…. Nobody tells them about the side effects, and there are no drugs to treat their complications. " Such is the state of medical care in many Third World countries, where generously funded family planning programs have become a magnet for local personnel, resources, and official attention, leaving primary health care programs to collapse from official inattention or outright neglect. Population control makes no demographic or economic sense Confounding the doomsayers, world population growth is slowing dramatically. The US Census Bureau recently reported that the globe’s population grew by only 79.6 million in 1996: seven million fewer than the high-water mark of population growth in 1994. The immediate reason for this decline is shrinking family size. The Census Bureau reports that the world’s total fertility rate—the number of children born per woman during her lifetime—has declined to 2.9, its lowest level ever. There are now 79 countries—representing fully 40% of the world’s population—with fertility rates below the level necessary to stave off long-term population decline. The developed nations are in the worst straits. But this "birth dearth," as Ben Wattenberg has called it, has now spread well beyond the developed world. There are now 27 "developing" countries where women are averaging fewer than 2.2 children. These include such unlikely candidates as Sri Lanka and Thailand. Replacement level fertility, moreover, is not always 2.2 children per women. Infant mortality drives these figures up, and drives a country's absolute rate of growth down relative to its total fertility rate (TFR). A recent report by Mexican demographers has identified the specific Mexican replacement level fertility as being 3.0 children per woman. In the meantime, Mexican women have a TFR of 3.3 and falling, and population reduction programs are still under full implementation. The human face of this population implosion is melancholy—villages bereft of children, schools closed for lack of students—and the economic consequences are grim: Labor shortages cramp production, the housing market grows moribund, and this in turn creates a drag on real estate and other sectors of the economy. While the population of portions of Africa, Asia and Latin America will continue to grow for several more decades, the rest of the world will soon be in demographic free fall. The bottom line: Population will peak at seven billion or so in 2030, and then begin a long descent. (This is essentially the U.N. Population Division’s Nov.13 "low variant" prediction, with African, Asian and Latin American total fertility rates adjusted to converge on those of present-day Europe, or 1.35 children per woman). no longer cradled in gravity's memory still in and spinning in spiral drifts of endlessness spinning in torment into the garden of light - -Pale Saints "A Thousand Stars Burst Open" http://www.chickpages.com/musicmania/joepages ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 17:06:18 EDT From: RedWoodenBeads@aol.com Subject: ET: oh, i forgot this too did you people know that according to the UN's statistics, the entire world population could fit in Texas? It's the truth. no longer cradled in gravity's memory still in and spinning in spiral drifts of endlessness spinning in torment into the garden of light - -Pale Saints "A Thousand Stars Burst Open" http://www.chickpages.com/musicmania/joepages ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 23:31:33 -0400 From: shivergirl Subject: ET: ~nearly every night now~ + we are driving home alone, we are finally, blessedly, grown-up-- not merely living inside this poem, waiting for our real-time characters to show up + love me up and i'll electrify you down emitting gasps and sparks where we tremble and hiccup with love (kisses abound) desperate and longing aching to create a whole new noun + "imagination is more important than knowledge" - --albert einstein ta~ra* ------------------------------ End of eda-thoughts-digest V3 #156 **********************************