Month: July 2000

Is Veganism A Religion?

    I know plenty of anti-animal rights folks who think that things like animal rights or ethical veganism are just shy of a religious cult, but I was a bit surprised to see a vegan arguing in court that this dietary preferences constituted a religious belief system. But that’s just what Jerold Friedman argued, unsuccessfully, in a lawsuit against his former employer, Kaiser Permanente.

    Kaiser Permanente offered a Friedman a full-time job and then retracted that offer after he refused to take a mumps vaccination; the mumps vaccination includes material derived from chicken embryos. According to Friedman, “Egg-laying hens suffer greatly in chicken factory farms, and the use of unborn chickens to culture the mumps vaccine causes further unnecessary death.” Apparently the extra unnecessary deaths of human beings that would result without the mumps vaccination don’t concern Friedman.

    Friedman has filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit arguing that since veganism is a religion, his firing constitutes religious persecution under U.S. civil rights laws.

    Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ronald Sohigian flatly rejected this claim and summarily dismissed nine of the eleven cause of action against Kaiser Permanente outlined in Friedman’s lawsuit. (Friedman also accuses the company of lying to him by telling him that a TB test he took didn’t contain animal products, when in fact it is cultured in cow serum).

    Friedman’s lawyer is planning an appeal, saying, “We are confident that the Court of Appeals will hold Ethical Veganism as a religion or the functional equivalent of a religion. Not only Ethical Vegans, but all religious minorities would benefit from such a ruling,” said Friedman’s lawyer, Scott Myer.

    Despite Myer’s optimism it’s extremely unlikely that a court is going to hold veganism as a religious movement. Moreover, even if that happened it’s hard to see how it would help Friedman as laws against discrimination in the workplace don’t apply where the act of discrimination is a necessary part of the job, and clearly having a mumps vaccination and tuberculosis tests are extremely important for people working in health care.

Source:

Judge tosses much of ‘vegan’ suit; former Kaiser worker to appeal. Press release, July 17, 2000.

LibertyBoard.Org

    One of the fun things about running a site like this is people are always sending me links to their libertarian-oriented web sites — most of which I would never have run across on my own. One of the better sites I’ve run across in this way in the past few months is LibertyBoard.Org. I’m a big fan of the Linux/Open Source discussion site, Slashdot and LibertyBoard.Org uses software that emulates the Slashdot design. Updated regularly with interesting features, LibertyBoard is sure to be a hit once more people stumble across it.

IRS Fears Strong Encryption

    The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is starting to get scared that it’s not going to be able to tax the Internet economy. Specifically it is worried that Americans using strong encryption software will start engaging in financial transactions in countries that don’t share financial data with the United States (or in fact, Americans who do business using strong encryption to hide the fact that assets and income actually belong to Americans).

    At a recent meeting of tax collection officials from around the world, U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers pleaded for foreign governments to start taxing Americans citizens more.

Problems could arise from the increasing sophistication of Internet encryption codes that are established for valid reasons of commercial secrecy but can also be used to conceal relevant tax details from tax administration. In such a world, it will be easier for companies to avoid tax collectors by operating worldwide through websites based in jurisdictions that are unwilling to share taxpayer information.

    The best solution to solve this “problem,” said Summers, is for foreign governments to create rules to ensure that American citizens are taxed to death regardless of where in the world they do business.

    To further its ability to monitor Americans’ international financial transactions, the Clinton administration is pushing the International Counter-Money Laundry Act which allows the Justice Department to require banks to report suspicious financial transactions involving other countries. This is basically a re-hash of the “Know Your Customer” regulations that were proposed and then quashed by a public outcry. The Know Your Customer proposal would have required banks to report all suspicious transactions, while the current version limits that to international transactions.

    The government’s fears are probably well founded. Already millions of Americans either underreport their income to avoid taxes or simply don’t file tax returns altogether, not to mention the many people who work in the underground economy trading services for difficult-to-track cash. There can be little doubt that if there were a relatively easy, secure system to hide income and assets from the IRS, Americans would likely flock to such systems by the millions.

Source:

Financial privacy under attack? Declan McCullagh, Wired News, July 14, 2000.

Is encryption tax-protective? Declan McCullag, Wired News, July 15, 2000.

More Lawsuit Fodder: CAFT activist allegedly threatens Ted Nugent

    You’d think they’d learn. The Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade is already being sued by Jacques Ferber Furs under the civil provisions of RICO — essentially the fur store claims that CAFT is engaged in a conspiracy of illegal intimidation and harassment in order to drive legitimate enterprises out of business. CAFT, of course, denies the charge but since the lawsuit was filed there have been a number of incidents where people associated with CAFT have been arrested while attempting to or for allegedly planning to engage in illegal activities.

    In the latest incident, CAFT member Bhaskar Sinha was arrested in front of the Neiman Marcus store in San Francisco’s Union Square after allegedly confronting musician Ted Nugent and threatening to kill him. She is currently being held on a $20,000 bond charged with one charge of battery and attempt to terrorize.

    Nugent was in San Francisco to perform with Kiss Sunday night and went to Neiman Marcus to shop. After leaving the store, Nugent told police that he got into an argument with CAFT activists who were handing out leaflets denouncing the fur trade. Nugent told police that Shina threatened to kill him.

    The CAFT activists, meanwhile, claim Nugent spit on them and threatened them. A judge will get to start sorting the mess out today as Shina appears makes a court appearance. If Nugent’s claims hold up in court, this will be one more piece of evidence that will be used to drive the nail in the coffin of CAFT at its RICO trial.

Source:

Fur-for-All as Outspoken Rock Star Confronts S.F. Protesters. Mark Martin, Pervaiz Shallwani, San Francisco Chronicle, July 31, 2000.

How to Beat Writer’s Block

Occasionally I run across people who claim to have “writer’s block” and find
themselves unable to write. Here is my simple, one-step cure: just start writing
already. Compared to many things in life, writing is ridiculously easy. Performing
open heart surgery, getting through law school, or trying to understand the
appeal of boy bands — now those are difficult. But writing? Just grab a pen
and pad or fire up your word processor and get started.

I suspect that most writer’s block is motivated by a false fear or hope that
there must be something more or less to writing than there actually is. I see
this all the time in other aspects of lives. I know quite a few people, for
example, who can describe in detail exactly what their short term goals are,
whether it’s losing weight or writing a novel or just studying harder. Unfortunately
too many of those people spend more time and energy making excuses for why they
are not accomplishing those goals than they do actually working toward them.
I have met people before who I am surprised aren’t dead because the smallest
obstacle so stymies them that they immediately go into “make an excuse mode.”

Most of these folks would be spectacular at what they do if they could focus
on the goals in front of them, but instead they usually underperform because
they are so obsessed with everything have to be a certain way before they can
accomplish anything.

Which is why “writer’s block” is such an insidious idea. Leave it to wannabe
writers to not only make excuses not to write, but then turn around and give
those excuses a clinical sounding name. Personifying your inner fears by granting
it a separate name is ill advised. It encourages the sort of negative problems
that, in another venue, cause otherwise gifted athletes to obsess so much about
their fears of making an error throwing from say catcher to pitcher that the
players go out and literally can’t make those throws (there are baseball teams
that actually retain the services of psychologists to deal with high performing
athletes who develop mental blocks where their own fears prevent them from making
routine throws.)

Look, as far as I am concerned writing sucks. I write 2,500 to 3,000 words
pretty much every day, 7 days a week, and I loathe and despise every minute
of it. I can think of about 5,000 things I would much rather do than write this
sentence. On the other hand, I have chosen to be a writer and so I keep plugging
along despite what other attractions or fears might get in my way.

WTO and Animal Rights

    Last year animal rights activists joined protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization for allegedly not doing more to protect endangered species. Ironically, the European Union is trying to use the WTO mechanism to effectively force its regulations of animal agriculture on the United States and other WTO members.

    European agriculture is already relatively non-competitive, requiring massive state subsidies in many parts of the region to be profitable. In an attempt to make its agricultural products more competitive, European nations recently proposed that animal welfare issues be added to the WTO framework.

    The European Union has introduced proposed regulations that would determine the minimum space for battery hens as well as for animals being transported. The EU further argues that such regulations puts their farmers at a competitive disadvantage compared to farmers in countries that don’t have such regulations.

    Rather than dispense with expensive regulations that raise the cost of European-produced food, however, the EU proposes that European farmers be compensated for the additional costs that the regulations impose (in essence the EU is suggesting that it be rewarded for imposing economically inefficient regulations on its citizens). This is directly contrary to the basic framework of the WTO which calls for an end to government subsidies of agriculture.

    In addition, the EU wants the WTO to look at labelling food based on animal welfare issues. The labels apparently would inform consumers that the food was produced in countries that don’t have strong animal welfare laws.

    It would be the height of irony if a free trade pact which animal rights activists almost universally opposed ended up being a protectionist tool for the activists pet views on animal agriculture.