-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,610319,00.html
}}}>Begin
Drugs push scarred land to the brink
Moldova was crippled by poverty after throwing off its Soviet chains.
Now a new epidemic is plunging its people into ruin. Anthony Browne
reports from Chisinau
Anthony Browne
Sunday December 2, 2001
The Observer
The orgy has lasted 10 days. Fourteen gaunt addicts, cramped together
in a bare flat in the shattered ruins of a Soviet tower block,
repeatedly inject themselves with the drug that they have distilled
over candles from cough mixture, aspirin and vinegar. The hits are
sharp, highly addictive and propel everyone into a sexual frenzy.
The effects are so short-lived, everyone has to inject at 40-minute
intervals - more than 30 times a day. Veins quickly get torn and they
have to inject into every accessible blood vessel in the body - in
the arms, legs, neck, genitals.
A government film, shot secretly from a cupboard, shows that during
the 10 days of the orgy the addicts get no sleep and eat little. They
collapse for a week and the cycle starts again.
With shared needles and no condoms, almost all ephedrone addicts are HIV-positive. But
it doesn't matter to them. The drug is so harsh on the body that addicts invariably
die within three years as their organs simply coll
apse.
The ephedrone epidemic started sweeping Moldova, Europe's most shattered nation, five
years ago, offering the only escape for a people who have given up hope.
Since their first free elections in December 1991, many have seen their standard of
living slip back to that of the Middle Ages.
In Moldova's second largest city, Balti, one in 10 are now injecting drug users, with
many of the rest on softer drugs. Still under communist control, Balti used to make
hi-tech weapons for the Soviet army but has now tur
ned into a city of ghosts.
Sitting huddled in her empty flat in a crumbling block filled with human faeces,
Tatiana, 33, knows she has about a year left to live. She was introduced to ephedrone
two years ago by her brother-in-law and has been injec
ting it ever since.
Her brother and sister are also addicts; all their seven severely underdeveloped
children are addicted to glue. She gets no money from the state and has sold her
fridge, cooker, television, carpet, lights and even the gla
ss in the door to buy drugs.
She has no gas, electricity or water and sits all day on a bench with just a few
rotting cabbages on the floor, her only decoration a crucifix. At lunchtime, she
stares blankly at a bowl of cold porridge, and decides to s
ave it for dinner, when she will have to eat in the dark.
'The ephedrone means there is no pain, then you feel active and sexy. But it destroys
the body in a very short period. Even your speech suffers,' she said.
Her 14-year-old son, Igor, had been imprisoned that morning - she didn't know why -
and her 15-year-old daughter, Ilyana, was in tears. She hadn't managed to get her fix
of glue that afternoon.
Ilyana has a sideline as a prostitute to make money for drugs and food. Prostitution
has become so normal among young women, there is no longer any stigma - it is just
part of growing up.
'Prostitution is now socially acceptable,' said Gabriella Ionaschcu, head of the
United Nations' Aids programme (Unaids) in Moldova. 'People taking ephedrone don't
have long to live, but they don't care - they are only
interested in taking the drug and getting maximum pleasure.'
Unaids has projects to discourage people from sharing needles and to encourage them to
use condoms, but prostitution and drug use are so rampant that Moldova could end up
with African levels of HIV within a decade.
For many, lethal drugs are a way out of one of the worst social and economic collapses
the world has seen. Since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Moldova's
economy has shrunk by almost 70 per cent, making it by
far the poorest nation in Europe, with an average income of �180 a year. Only in the
capital, Chisinau, are there any signs of prosperity, among the gangster capitalists
who have flourished on smuggling, corruption and t
he sale of state assets.
In the village of Mereni, an hour's drive from Chisinau, most of the population have
slid back into pre-industrial times. There are no longer any cars, only donkeys and
carts trundling around.
Jurig Prisagaru, 33, used to work as a truck driver when Moldova was part of the
Soviet Union but lost his job, then broke his arm, and had to give up one by one the
benefits of the twentieth century. He can no longer aff
ord gas, electricity or to buy food from others. He lives in a scruffy mud-and-brick
hut with his wife, Lyumila, and their four children.
Their water is drawn from a well and heated by wood stolen from the forest and
vegetables grown on the scrap of land around them. They haven't eaten meat, fish or
sugar for six months. Their only income is the �3 a month
they get from the government - about �35 a year for a family of six.
'It was much better in Soviet times - we had factories, machine parts and tractors for
the fields,' he mourned. 'Now we have nothing. I've had to take two of my children out
of school because I can't afford the books.'
The UN Development Programme reckons that in this once industrialised country
two-thirds of the rural economy is now based on subsistence and barter. Moldovans are
worried about unemployment, failing health and rampant cr
ime, but opinion polls show that their biggest fear is simply famine.
They are also losing their strongest asset, their high levels of
education and culture. Since 1991, illiteracy among rural children
has risen by 30 per cent. Even the rural rich are sliding back to the
Middle Ages. Prisagaru's neighbours, Lydia and Petru Ustica,
considered themselves well-off in Soviet times, with good jobs and a
large house. Now his job as a watchman brings in just �8 a month to
support them and their five children, and they have to grow their
food. They can not pay their gas bill of �50 and are preparing to
manage without electricity.
But there are lengths to which Petru Ustica will not go: unlike
others in the village, he is not prepared to sell one of his kidneys
for a transplant operation in the West. 'I could get $4,500 but I
will never sell my health,' he said. Ustica would like to go abroad
but says: 'I don't even have the money to move.'
A quarter of the population of four and a half million are working
abroad, most of them women, almost all of them illegally. What
remains of the economy has become dependent on the �150 million they
send back each year.
End<{{{
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe
simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not
believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do
not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not
believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men.
Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it
agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all.
Then accept it and live up to it."
The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutta
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller,
German Writer (1759-1805)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that
prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless
of frontiers."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will
teach you to keep your mouth shut."
--- Ernest Hemingway
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
