Population

Population
Indonesia Table of Contents
There was widespread agreement within the Indonesian government and among foreign advisers that one of the most pressing problems facing the nation in the early 1990s was overpopulation. While Indonesia still had high fertility rates, there were significant reductions in these levels in the 1980s. The overall population annual growth rate was reduced to an estimated 2.0 percent by 1990, down from 2.2 in the 1975-80 period. The crude birth rate declined from 48.8 births per 1,000 in 1968 to 29 per 1,000 in 1990. Although the widely publicized goal of 22 per 1,000 by 1991 was not achieved, the results were impressive for a country the size of Indonesia. The effect of the programs of the National Family Planning Coordinating Agency (BKKBN; for this and other acronyms, see table A) was particularly dramatic in Java, Bali, and in urban areas in Sumatra and Kalimantan, despite cutbacks in funding. The success of the program in these areas seemed to be directly linked to the improved education of women, their increasing tendency to postpone marriage, and, most important, to a growing awareness and effective use of modern contraceptives.
The reason behind Indonesia's overall decline in fertility rates was a matter of debate in 1992, because it was not clear that economic conditions had improved for most Indonesians during the 1970s and 1980s (the middle class did experience some improvement). Indeed, although the number of poor decreased in the 1970s and 1980s, landlessness, malnutrition, and social and economic inequality may have increased for many of the rural poor. However, some observers argued that, despite the lack of social and economic improvements among Indonesia's poor, easy availability of birth control procedures, mass education, and more mobile family structures may be sufficient to explain this impressive change.
Even though Indonesia's growth rate had decreased over the decades since independence, the population continued to grow and population density increased significantly, particularly on the main islands. In July 1992, Indonesia's population had reached 195,683,531, with an annual growth rate of 1.7 percent, according to United States estimates. The Indonesians themselves claimed 179,322,000 in their 1990 census and various foreign estimates for 1992 ranged between 183 million and 184 million, with a 1.7 percent growth rate. Population growth placed enormous pressures on land, the education system, and other social resources, and was closely linked to the dramatic rise in population mobility and urbanization. At such rates of growth, the population was expected to double by 2025. Even if birth control programs in place in the early 1990s succeeded beyond expectations and each Indonesian woman had only two children, Indonesia's population was still so young that huge numbers of women would reach their child-bearing years in the first decades of the twentyfirst century. This tremendous ballooning of the younger population groups virtually ensured that overpopulation would continue to be a major source of concern well into the next century. By the year 2000, Indonesia's population was projected to reach at least 210 million, with the country maintaining its position as the fourth most populous nation on earth.
Although Indonesia's demographic situation was cause for great concern, it had much in common with other Third World nations. Indeed, in some respects Indonesia was slightly better off than other developing countries in the early 1990s because it had initiated some of the world's most ambitious programs to control its population problem. The key features of these initiatives were the national birth control program and the massive Transmigration Program, in which some 730,000 families were relocated to underpopulated areas of the country.
The population problem was most dramatic among the rice-growing peasants of Java and Bali and in cities--particularly Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, and Medan. In 1980 the islands of Java, Madura, and Bali, which comprised 6.9 percent of the nation's land area, were home to 63.6 percent of Indonesia's population. These major islands had a population density of more than 500 persons per square kilometer, five times that of the most densely populated Outer Islands.
The inability of these islands to support ever larger populations on ever smaller plots of land was apparent in 1992, particularly to the farmers themselves. Although the intensification of padi agriculture had for decades permitted the absorption of this rising labor force, the rural poor from Java, Bali, and Madura were leaving their native areas to seek more land and opportunity elsewhere. Attempts at significant land reform, which might have improved the peasants' lot, were stalled--if not abandoned--in many areas of Java because of riots and massacres following the alleged communist coup attempt of 1965. Reformers were cautious about raising the issue of land redistribution for fear of being branded communists.
The Effects Of Television
Most people think that television is Haraam only because it projects images of living creatures. Today, tables in living rooms and bedroom walls are adorned and decorated with family pictures and other portraits, to the extent that some students hang the portraits of their shaikh on the wall for blessings. It is difficult to comprehend how the mercy of Allah ta’alaa is going to descend.
Any home that has images displayed is not visited by angels. The Holy Prophet of Allah (S.A.W.S) has informed us that any home which contains pictures of living creatures is not visited by angels. However, do you think television is only haraam because it projects images? There are many reasons for the ‘T.V.’ being haraam. Everybody who studies its influences finds new dangers. Televsion is an instrument of violating the injunction of hijaab. We all know that a non-mahram man cannot look at a non-mahram woman. The Prophet (S.A.W.S) has said “verily, the gaze is a poisonous arrow from the arrows of satan”.
Take heed my friends! After having seen one woman you turn to another and then another and are not satisfied and so you move onto magazines. But, the lust in your heart remains unfulfilled so you move onto pornographic images on the television and video. The truth is always bitter and hard, but one does not need to conduct a survey to find out what people think when they are spending hours, watching naked women and men on the filthy ‘box’. The viewing of films that inflame sexual desires is definitely questionable. It is reported on the authority of Hasan Basri (R.A) that the Apostle of Allah (S.A.W.S) is to have said “the curse of Allah is on the who sees and on the one who is seen”. When a man looks at a non-mahram woman, then Allah’s curse descends on that individual for as long as he keeps on looking. We are glued to the television for 2 to 3 hours, some even more, at a time. Be cautioned my friends. During all this time, Allah’s curse is befalling us.
There is no doubt that society at large influences children, but without any hesitation I can say that the effects the television has are far greater. It is the television that take our children on the path of drugs, alcohol, fornication, disrespect, confrontation, modernism and many other evils that are apparent in our society today. Know that these evils are a direct result of watching and learning from the television.
Infact, community television is being used to disseminate evil within the. You may think that you are passing time and entertaining yourself when you are passing several hours in front of the T.V. You are mistaken my friend! Whatever you watch on television you accept as the truth. The television is not an instrument of entertainment, but an instrument used to reshape and motivate ones thoughts and loyalties.
Radiation Effects on Humans
Radiation occurs when unstable nuclei of atoms decay and release particles. There are many different types of radiation. When these particles touch various organic material such as tissue, damage may, and probably will, be done. Radiation can cause burns, cancers, and death.
Units of Measurement
The unit used to measure radiation dosage is the rem, which stands for roentgen equivalent in man. It represents the amount of radiation needed to produce a particular amount of damage to living tissue. The total dose of rems determines how much harm a person suffers. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, people received a dose of rems at the instant of the explosions, then more from the surroundings and, in limited areas, from fallout. Fallout is composed of radioactive particles that are carried into the upper atmosphere by a nuclear explosion and that eventually fall back to the earth's surface.
Effects of Radiation Exposure on Human Health
Although a dose of just 25 rems causes some detectable changes in blood, doses to near 100 rems usually have no immediate harmful effects. Doses above 100 rems cause the first signs of radiation sickness including:
 nausea
 vomiting
 headache
 some loss of white blood cells
Doses of 300 rems or more cause temporary hair loss, but also more significant internal harm, including damage to nerve cells and the cells that line the digestive tract. Severe loss of white blood cells, which are the body's main defense against infection, makes radiation victims highly vulnerable to disease. Radiation also reduces production of blood platelets, which aid blood clotting, so victims of radiation sickness are also vulnerable to hemorrhaging. Half of all people exposed to 450 rems die, and doses of 800 rems or more are always fatal. Besides the symptoms mentioned above, these people also suffer from fever and diarrhea. As of yet, there is no effective treatment--so death occurs within two to fourteen days.
In time, for survivors, diseases such as leukemia (cancer of the blood), lung cancer, thyroid cancer, breast cancer, and cancers of other organs can appear due to the radiation received.
Major Radiation Exposure in Real Life Events
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
For more information on what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, consult the nuclear past page and the nuclear warfare page.
Many people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki died not directly from the actual explosion, but from the radiation released as a result of the explosion. For example, a fourteen-year-old boy was admitted to a Hiroshima hospital two days after the explosion, suffering from a high fever and nausea. Nine days later his hair began to fall out. His supply of white blood cells dropped lower and lower. On the seventeenth day he began to bleed from his nose, and on the twenty-first day he died.
At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the few surviving doctors observed symptoms of radiation sickness for the first time. In his book Nagasaki 1945, Dr. Tatsuichiro Akizuki wrote of the puzzling, unknown disease, of symptoms that "suddenly appeared in certain patients with no apparent injuries." Several days after the bombs exploded, doctors learned that they were treating the effects of radiation exposure. "We were now able to label our unknown adversary 'atomic disease' or 'radioactive contamination' among other names. But they were only labels: we knew nothing about its cause or cure... Within seven to ten days after the A-bomb explosion, people began to die in swift succession. They died of the burns that covered their bodies and of acute atomic disease. Innumerable people who had been burnt turned a mulberry color, like worms, and died... The disease," wrote Dr. Akizuki, "destroyed them little by little. As a doctor, I was forced to face the slow and certain deaths of my patients."
Doctors and nurses had no idea of how their own bodies had been affected by radioactivity. Dr. Akizuki wrote, "All of us suffered from diarrhea and a discharge of blood from the gums, but we kept this to ourselves. Each of us thought: tomorrow it might be me... We became stricken with fear of the future." Dr. Akizuki survived, as did several hundred thousand others in or near Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, at least ten people who had fled from Hiroshima to Nagasaki survived both bombs.
The survivors have suffered physically from cataracts, leukemia and other cancers, malformed offspring, and premature aging, and also emotionally, from social discrimination. Within a few months of the nuclear explosions, leukemia began to appear among the survivors at an abnormally high rate. Some leukemia victims were fetuses within their mothers' wombs when exposed to radiation. One child who was born two days after the Hiroshima explosion eventually died of acute leukemia at the age of eighteen. The number of leukemia cases has declined with time, but the incidence of lung cancer, thyroid cancer, breast cancer, and cancers of other organs has increased among the survivors.
Three Mile Island
For more information on what happened at Three Mile Island, consult the nuclear past page.
On a Wednesday morning, maintenance workers cleaning sludge from a small pipe blocked the flow of water in the main feedwater system of a reactor at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The sift foreman heard "loud, thunderous noises, like a couple of freight trains," coming. Since the reactor was still producing heat, it heated the blocked cooling water around its core hot enough to create enough pressure to have popped a relief valve. Some 220 gallons of water per minute began flowing out of the reactor vessel. Within five minutes after the main feedwater system failed, the reactor, deprived of all normal and emergency sources of cooling water, and no longer able to use its enormous energy to generate electricity, gradually started to tear itself apart.
The loss of coolant at the reactor continued for some 16 hours. Abort a third of the core melted down. Radioactive water flowed through the stuck relief valve into an auxiliary building, where it pooled on the floor. Radioactive gas was released into the atmosphere. An estimated 140,000 people were evacuated from the area. It took a month to stabilize the malfunctioning unit and safely shut it down. The reactor was a total loss and the cleanup required years of repair and hundreds of millions of dollars.
No one was reported injured and the little radiation that leaked out was quickly dispersed. Although this accident did cost lots of money and time, no one was hurt.
Chernobyl
For more information on what happened at Chernobyl, consult the nuclear past page.
A far more serious accident occured at Chernobyl, in what was then still the Soviet Union. At the time of the accident, the Chernobyl nuclear power station consisted of four operating 1,000 megawatt power reactors. Without question, the accident at Chernobyl was the result of a fatal combination of ignorance and complacency. "As members of a select scientific panel convened immediately after the... accident," writes Nobel laureate Hans Bethe, "my colleagues and I established that the Chernobyl disaster tells us about the deficiencies of the Soviet political and administrative system rather than about problems with nuclear power."
Although the problem at Chernobyl was relatively complex, it can basically be summarized as a mismanaged electrical engineering experiment which resulted in the reactor exploding. The explosion was chemical, driven by gases and steam generated by the core runaway, not by nuclear reactions. Flames, sparks, and chunks of burning material were flying into the air above the unit. These were red-hot pieces of nuclear fuel and graphite. About 50 tons of nuclear fuel evaporated and were released by the explosion into the atmosphere. In addition, about 70 tons were ejected sideways from the periphery of the core. Some 50 tons of nuclear fuel and 800 tons of reactor graphite remained in the reactor vault, where it formed a pit reminiscent of a volcanic crater as the graphite still in the reactor had turned up completely in a few days after the explosion.
The resulting radioactive release was equivalent to ten Hiroshimas. In fact, since the Hiroshima bomb was air-burst--no part of the fireball touched the ground--the Chernobyl release polluted the countryside much more than ten Hiroshimas would have done. Many people died from the explosion and even more from the effects of the radiation later. Still today, people are dying from the radiation caused by the Chernobyl accident. The estimated total number of deaths will be 16,000.
Medical Treatment
For a more in-depth view of current medical technologies available to the treatment of radiation, go to the medical imaging page.
There is currently no effective medical treatment available for potentially fatal radiation doses. The case of the Japanese boy mentioned above illustrates an important fact about radiation sickness. The boy had probably received a dose of 450 rems or more, yet his symptoms were about the same as those of a person who received about 300 rems. Medical science has no way of telling the difference between people who have received fatal doses and will die despite all efforts and others who received less radiation and can be saved. Treatment for the ones that can be saved includes blood transfusions and bone-marrow transplants. Bone-marrow transplants rejuvenate the supply of white blood cells which was affected by the radiation.
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Harmful Effects of Smoking
Smoking isn't good for one's body. Especially if you've been smoking a pack a day, and for a long period of time. But what is the full extent of the effects of smoking on your body?
The effects of smoking varies from person to person as it will depend on the person's vulnerability to the chemical in cigarette or tobacco smoke. It will also depend on the number of cigarette sticks a person smokes per day, the age when the person first started to smoke, and the number of years the person has been smoking.
According to recent studies, every year hundreds of thousands of people all over the globe die from medical complications caused by smoking. Aside from the stench it leaves on one's clothes, breath, and hair, it also has other complications. Here are some of the different effects of smoking:
Immediate effects upon smoking a cigarette stick:
• Raises a person's blood pressure and heart rate.
• Decreases a person's blood flow to body extremities like the fingers and toes.
• The brain and the nervous system is stimulated for a short time and then reduced.
• Dizziness.
• Nausea.
• Watery eyes.
• Hyperacidity.
• Weakened sense of taste and smell.
• Loss of appetite.
Other effects:
• Shortness of breath.
• Chronic coughing.
• Reduced overall fitness.
• Yellowish stain on the smoker's fingers and teeth.
• Smokers experience more coughs and colds as compared to non-smokers.
• Difficulty recovering from minor illnesses.
• Impotence for men, infertility for women.
• Facial wrinkles appear at an early age, making them look older than non-smokers of the same age.
Because they experience these different side effects, they have a higher risk of developing diseases like:
• respiratory tract infections (like pneumonia and chronic bronchitis)
• emphysema (collapse of the small airways in the lungs)
• heart attack and other coronary diseases
• different kinds of cancers (lungs, throat, mouth, bladder, kidney, pancreas, cervix, and stomach)
• stomach ulcers
• peripheral vascular disease due to a decreased blood flow to the legs
Once a person becomes addicted to cigarettes, they may find themselves experiencing different withdrawal symptoms when they decide to stop. These withdrawal symptoms include:
• increased nervousness and tension
• agitation
• loss of concentration
• change in sleep patterns
• headaches
• coughs
• strong cravings
For pregnant women, it is important to know that the growing child in their womb may suffer if they continue smoking. The effects of smoking to a growing fetus include: low birth weight, premature birth, or stillbirth. Even those who do not smoke are at risk of incurring diseases. Second hand smoke may cause lung cancer or heart problems to those who passively inhale smoke exhaled by smokers.
Smoking may make a person look cool or macho, but you should consider more than just how it would make you look. Keep in mind that smoking has harmful effects that can end up claiming your life. Before you light up your next cigarette, think of the various harmful effects of smoking and if you'd want that to happen to you.