Day: September 25, 2001

America Cannot Be Protected Against Terrorism

Okay, that might be a bit of an overstatement, but there is no way to turn the United States into a terrorist proof zone.

Don Larson linked to a Reuters story about proposals to protect nuclear power plants from possible aerial assaults.

The problem is that the number of ways to inflict mass murder is so large that you can never plug all the holes in the dike.

Here’s a little recipe to kill a few thousand people. Find a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility nearby. Figure out where they store their chemicals and find a way to blow up that plant. Results — probably tens of thousands of deaths (think Bhopal, India).

For example, Pharmacia has a couple of plants here in Kalamazoo. One of the important chemicals used in pharmaceutical production are cyanide and related compounds. If a terrorist could successfully blow up the storage facility where those compounds are kept, they would probably kill tens of thousands of people in just the first couple hours.

(The amusingly macabre thing about this particular area is that we might not need terrorists to cause this disaster. In the sort of decision that only Americans would make, the city decided to place its airport right next to the pharmaceutical plant, meaning several dozen planes fly over the plant either taking off or coming in for a landing. There have been a handful of crashes near the facility, and it’s only a matter of time until a commuter plane accident wipes out everybody in lower Michigan and upper Indiana).

And if we sat down and thought about it, I’m sure we could think of dozens of ways to kill thousands of people. There’s just no way to childproof the world.

Alex Hershaft: Farmers Worse than bin Laden

After holding their tongues for a few days, the usual suspects in the animal rights movement are falling all over themselves to see who can make the most absurd comment comparing the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States to the alleged suffering of animals.

Today’s exhibit is Alex Hershaft, who recently distributed a press release urging animal rights activist to march in Washington, DC on September 29 and 30 at two peace rallies. Hershaft discusses possible sign slogans (“Stop Human and Animal Terror!”) and then offers what he calls “the thoughts that moved us to” join the peace protests, which actually maintain that animal agriculture is much worse than the Al Queda terrorist network believed to be behind the terrorist attacks. According to Hershaft,

Worldwide, every day, 125 million innocent, sentient animals are dreadfully abused and butchered for food.

These tragedies are perpetrated by a worldwide animal agricultural terrorist network that is much more threatening to planetary survival than the Al Queda network, because it kills more people and animals, because it kills them unrelentingly every day, because it is pervasive and accepted.

For every human being who dies of warfare, crime, or terrorism, 10,000 innocent, sentient animals die a violent death. A march/rally advocating nonviolence without an animal contingent would be greatly diminished.

A worldwide animal agricultural terrorist network? Is this the same Alex Hershaft who was complaining that the Washington Post was portraying animal rights activists at AR 2001 as extremist nuts?

Source:

WFAD and Peace rallies in nation’s capital. Alex Hershaft, press release, September 23, 2001.

SHAC Plans to Turn New York City into a "Battle Ground to Smash Huntingdon Life Sciences"

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty urged its supporters “from the tri-state area” to join them on October 1st “as NYC becomes the battleground to SMASH Huntingdon Life Sciences and their supporters.”

A press release posted to an animal rights e-mail list promised that “On October 1st we will name, shame and annihilate those who see fit to make it possible for HLS to poison and brutally kill around 500 animals every day.”

SHAC notes that, “NYC is chock full of companies that provide financial support, financial services, and contracts to kill and its time we held them accountable.” The press release promises that they will target multiple businesses on October 1st.

Source:

Oct 1st: NYC becomes a battle ground to smash HSL. Stop Huntingdon Animal Creulty, Press Release, September 24, 2001.

WorldNetDaily, Anti-Abortion Groups Wants Redbook to Spread Junk Science

Some anti-abortion groups are not happy with the September 2001 issue of Redbook. In an article, “Seven cancer facts you need to know,” Redbook raises the issue of whether a woman’s risk of cancer is affected by having an abortion. The article dismisses the claim as a “persistent rumor” that is not based on sound science.

Writing for WorldNetDaily.Com, Diana Lynne outlines what she apparently believes is a widespread conspiracy to hide from women the very real cancer risks from abortion. Lynne points to 28 studies published since 1957 linking abortion with breast cancer.

Those studies certainly exist, but Lynne leaves out an important point — none of them find statistically significant links between breast cancer and abortion. Most of the studies only include very small numbers of women, and typically only find increased risks of cancer in the 20 to 40 percent range.

That level of increased risk might sound impressive, but in epidemiological terms it is all but insignificant. Epidemiological methods simply aren’t able to reliably measure such very small levels of increased risk. If a large study found that women had a 100 percent or 200 percent increased risk, then there might be cause for concern and further research, but a 20 to 40 percent increase in such small studies is essentially the same as saying there is no link at all.

Meanwhile, Lynne reports that in north Dakota, a lawsuit is going to trial in which the plaintiff is trying to force the Red River Women’s clinic to inform women about studies linking breast cancer and abortion. The sad thing is that this might succeed since there is a long history in both the media and courts of treating such small increased risk levels as if they are capable of reliably implying causation (much of the research claiming that cell phones might cause brain cancer, for example, is based on similarly low levels of increased risk).

Source:

Redbook magazine ‘bending the truth’? Diana Lynne, WorldNetDaily.Com, September 11, 2001.