Month: September 2001

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Paul McCartney is one of many celebrities trying to help raise money to benefit the families of firefighters killed while trying to save people from the two World Trade Center towers.

McCartney notes that his father was a fireman in Liverpool during World War II, and his benefit concert scheduled for October in New York City is a welcome aid. But there’s another thing McCartney could do for firefighters — publicly distance himself from the extremist animal rights activists, including within People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who endorse so-called direct action, including arson.

Groups such as the Animal Liberation Front have long used arson as a means of terrorism against people involved in animal enterprises, including farms and medical research laboratories. The activists have longed claimed that arson is a non-violent means of protest since they only torch buildings they think are unoccupied. But as the events at the World Trade Center put in stark contrast, whenever there is a fire of any kind, firefighters, police and others often end up putting their lives in immediate danger. Along with the attack on the World Trade Center, many still remember the New York firefighters who died while trying to rescue people from a burning building — it later was revealed that the people the firefighters died trying to evacuate had exited the building earlier.

Yet despite the dangers posed to rescue officials by arson, such activities by the ALF have found plenty of support within the mainstream of the animal rights movement. Although PETA is careful to keep its distance from actual acts of terrorism, it paid part of the defense of |Rodney Coranado|, who was convicted of fire bombing a research laboratory at Michigan State University, and lately people who work for PETA, such as … have come out strongly in favor of such acts of terrorism.

If McCartney truly cares about the lies of firefighters, as he almost certainly does, why does he continue to associate with an organization which endorses activities that regularly put the lives of those firefighters at risk?

Source:

McCartney plans firefighters’ benefits. Reuters, September 21, 2001.

After the 9/11 terrorist attack, the United States government began openly and privately courting Pakistan for obvious strategic reasons. According to an MSNBC report,

Afghanistan’s neighbor, Pakistan, also has incentives to cooperate. For siding with the U.S. against the Taliban and bin Laden, Islamabad stands to get as much as $3 billion in debt relief, emergency aid for refugees and the removal of sanctions that were imposed when they tested nuclear weapons and staged a military coup. That would enable Pakistan to also get military aid, including spare parts for its F-16’s, Tow missiles and armed personnel carriers.

Before we climb into bed with Pakistan, however, lets remember that Pakistan shares many of the features that President George W. Bush so eloquently noted plague Afghanistan, especially in the way its legal system treats women.

Two years after General Zia-ul-Haq took power in Pakistan in 1977, Pakistan’s criminal code was modified with what are called the Hudood Ordinances. These encapsulate some of the anti-female attitudes that are so derided in Afghanistan.

In Pakistan, extra-marital sex is illegal and the age of majority for women is 16 or the onset of puberty, whichever comes first. In practice what this means is that if a 30-year-old man has sex with a 12-year-old girl, rather than prosecute that as statutory rape, Pakistani authorities will in fact go after the 12-year-old girl as well. There are a couple dozen girls 12 and up in Pakistani prisons due to precisely such charges.

And unbelievably the girl cannot even testify in her own defense at such a trial. As a 1999 State Department report on Pakistan noted,

Likewise, the testimony of women, Muslim or non-Muslim, is not admissible in cases involving Hadd punishments. Thus, if a Muslim man rapes a Muslim woman in the presence of several women, he cannot be convicted under the Hudood ordinances because women cannot testify. Similarly, if a Muslim man rapes a woman in the presence of non-Muslim men and women, he cannot be convicted because women and non-Muslim men cannot testify.

And these folks are going to be our new allies?

Sources:

U.S. Department of State Report on International Religious Freedom for 1999: Pakistan. Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Washington DC, September 9, 1999.

James Cromwell, the actor best known for playing the farmer in the 1995 film “Babe,” has lately been very active in the animal rights movement. He has worked with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and was among a number of people arrested at a PETA-sponsored protest of Wendy’s this summer. And like a number of other PETA-affiliated celebrities, Cromwell is a rank hypocrite, condemning people who eat meat but turning around and defending other uses of animals when it impacts his lifestyle.

In a profile in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cromwell says that, “I’m a vegan with an asterisk.” The asterisk? Among other things, Cromwell enjoys wearing leather shoes and dairy products in baked goods.

So it is okay to kill a cow to produce leather for Cromwell’s shoes, but wrong for you or I to eat the meat produced from that same animal. Come on, Cromwell, why be so wasteful? Lets use the whole animal.

Source:

Television column. The Plain Dealer, September 23, 2001, p.33.