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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!houxm!ihnp4!zehntel!tektronix!orca!shark!hutch
From: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: poor starving people
Message-ID: <1174@shark.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Nov-84 16:49:58 EST
Article-I.D.: shark.1174
Posted: Fri Nov 30 16:49:58 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Dec-84 04:46:31 EST
References: <610@amdahl.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 70

< eat flaming death, fascist media bugs >

|> | = phil ngai in a very uncharacteristic mood
|>   = myself in a very uncharitable mood
|    = gordon muppet in a very self-righteous mood

|> | But that's not what I want to flame about. Are the United States and other
|> | countries expected to continually bail out countries which can't feed
|> | themselves? I think there must be too many people living in Ethiopia.
|> | I think there probably isn't any birth control there.
|> 
|> Ignorant jerk.  The cause of the famine in Ethiopia is the five years of
|> severe drought.  The birthrate there is nearly zero.  Starving people don't
|> make new babies.
|> 
|> | PROPOSAL
|> | The United States should send more food to Ethiopia, but all recipients
|> | must consent to sterilization.
|> | 
|> |  Phil Ngai (408) 749-5720
|> 
|> Only if I get to sterilize you first.
|> 
|> This kind of flame is far too mild for you.  Send your address and I will
|> arrange more literal flames.
|
|I think Steve's response to Phil sums up Steve's thought and
|understanding of this problem very well.  Steve is even erroneous
|about "starving people don't make new babies" -- they do have babies,
|but the offspring are frequently mentally retarded.
|
|Hey, but why bother making sense when you can flame?
|-- 
|Gordon A. Moffett		...!{ihnp4,hplabs,amd,sun}!amdahl!gam

Well, Gordon, I appreciate your summary of my thought and understanding,
but until I see you with Amazing Randi's check in hand, along with the
evidence that you can add two and two together and get four twice in a row,
I would advise that anyone else ignore your summary.  Except maybe as
a curiosity, which it certainly is.

The sahara desert has been growing to the south for the last several years.
It has brough severe drought with it.  Before that time, the population
in the afflicted areas was growing at a high rate, due to the increases
in simple medical knowledge.  This meant not only that more babies were being
born, since they were being carried to term, but that they were also living
to the age where they could make their own babies.

Once the famine set in, the birthrate dropped.  This is a fact, not subject
to vote or opinion.  The drop occurred because the rate of miscarriages
increased sharply.  Pregnant women don't carry to term when they suddenly
stop having enough food to eat.  Additionally, many of the offspring who are
born are both mentally and physically deformed.  They don't live long.
And after starving long enough, say, a year, fertility drops WAY down.

So, yes, in a sick sort of way, you are right.  Starving people do continue
to make babies, sporadically and poorly.  Obviously genocide is the only
answer, and Phil is right in his original assertion :-(.

Oh, by the way, while putting in your seven bits worth, please make
sure that those seven bits don't include adding a letter to my last name.
It's spelled  Hutchison  not  Hutchinson.  If you promise to refrain from
that error, I promise not to call you Gordon Muppet.

Hutch  (In the defined spirit of net.flame I refuse to apologise for or
	even recognise that anything is wrong with the vile, sniping, and
	vicious tone of my articles.  If flames are requested then flames
	will be generated.  So there.)