Day: April 24, 2002

Saudi Troops Massing? Puhleeze.

Via Instapundit comes the funniest headline of the week courtesy of Yahoo!, News,

Saudi troops mass on border with Jordan following reports of Israeli military buildup

Of course, this is not your father’s massing of troops. According to the report,

The eight brigades, compromising 8,000 soldiers equipped with armored personnel carriers and missile launchers, moved into the Tabuk region in northern Saudi Arabia, the officials said.

What are they going to do, committ mass suicide in protest if the Israelis provoke them? The last time I checked Israel has an army consisting of about 200,000 regular troops as well as 400,000 people who have had military training and can be called up very quickly. And, of course, equipped with all the latest military gear that the United States can sell them. If Israel wanted to it could once again route all of the Arab states in a shooting war. The Saudi buildup is simply that country’s version of a maneuver my cats love whereby they try to make themselves look bigger and meaner than they really are hoping it will deter potential threats. Of course Saudi Arabia’s biggest threat is Islamic extremism from within (which it actively promotes).

Canadian Cat Killer's Sentence Sparks Controversy

Anthony Wennekers, 25, and Jessie Power, 21, were sentenced this month after pleading guilty to animal cruelty charges after police found a videotape of the two torturing and killing a cat.

Judge Edward Ormston of the Ontario Court of Justice earned catcalls in the courtroom when he announced that he had sentenced Wennekers to time served and Power to 90 days in jail, to be served on weekends. Power will then face 18 months of house arrest and three years of probation. Both men could have faced up to 2 and a half years in jail.

Prosecutor Robin Flumerfelt told the Toronto Star that a decision would be made by the end of May on whether or not the prosecution would appeal the sentence.

Ormston’s explained that Wennekers had already severed 10 1/2 months in jail while awaiting trial, and traditionally courts double the amount of such time when considering sentencing. So, under that formula, Wennekers had already served the equivalent of nearly two years in jail.

But what apparently set off the crowd of onlookers in attendance was not so much the sentence but Ormston’s inexplicable statement that, “There are worse ways that this cat could have died.”

On the one hand certainly it is possible to take almost any death and conceive of ways in which that death could have been worse. On the other hand, Wennekers and Power hung the cat by its neck from a telephone cord, slit its throat, stabbed, kicked and then skinned the animal. Yes, this writer can conceive of an even worse death, but that’s already a pretty damning roster of acts already.

The sentence would have made more sense had Wennekers and Power divulged the name of a third man who is depicted in their videotape of the cat torture but who has so far remained unidentified. Their guilty plea can, as Ormston noted, be used to infer remorse and regret, but surely their failure to name their accomplice mitigates against this explanation.

Source:

Cat torturers’ sentences anger activists. Nancy Carr, Montreal Gazette, April 19, 2002.

Cat killers’ sentence draws anger. Nick Pron, Toronto Star, April 19, 2002.

ALF Claims It Contaminated Shampoo Bottles in New Zealand

The Frontline Information Service distributed a release from the Animal Liberation Front this week claiming that it had contaminated 38 bottles of Pantene Pro V shampoo in New Zealand. The bottles were contaminated with ammonia and hydrogen peroxide and were randomly mixed with uncontaminated bottles.

According to its communique taking credit for the act, the ALF said,

This action was done to coincide with World Week for Laboratory Animals and aimed specifically at Procter and Gamble, manufacturers of the shampoo. Why? An estimated 50,000 animals suffer and die at the hands of Procter & Gamble every year in unscientific ‘product testing’.

This action is dedicated to Barry Horne, whose life’s work brought attention to the suffering of animals in laboratories everywhere, and whose actions inspired people who care about animals to act on their behalf, even if it means risking your freedom for theirs.

The dedication to Barry Horne is apropos since what Horne did was risk other people’s lives for his own insane ideology. Contaminating a consumer product is the sort of cowardly act typical of the Animal Liberation Front.

Source:

NZ Animal Liberation Front Contaminate Bottles of Shampoo. Frontline Information Service, April 24, 2002.

PETA Produces Lab Footage Just in Time for Debate Over Regulations

What a coincidence — the U.S. Congress is currently trying to reconcile Senate and House bills that contain an amendment that would exempt rodents and birds from the Animal Welfare Act. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals just happened to release footage on April 18 purporting to show abuses at laboratories at the University of North Carolina.

PETA had someone work undercover at the animal research facility for the last 6 months shooting footage. Most of the footage shows lab technicians not ensuring that animals are properly euthanized and at least one instance of a researcher apparently violating the protocol of a study with baby rats.

PETA, of course, claims that this shows that the Department of Agriculture should have regulatory authority over rodents and birds. But, of course, the animals that its operative videotaped are already covered by regulations from the National Institute of Health.

Not surprisingly, the National Institute of Health reported that in the six months that this undercover operative was videotaping alleged acts of cruelty, PETA never bothered to file any sort of formal complaint with the NIH.

Nor did PETA formally complain to the University of North Carolina. Less than 24 hours after PETA released its videotaped footage, however, the university had already started an investigation into the allegations.

As for the amendment that Sen. Jesse Helms added to farm legislation to exempt rodents and birds from USDA oversight, according to Helms spokesman Jimmy Broughton that amendment is secure.

“That’s been put to bed,” Broughton told the Raleigh News and Observer. Broughton said that the conferees had already agreed to keep the Helms amendment and that the new PETA video would not lead to any re-opening of discussions on the amendment.

Sources:

UNC Starts Investigation of Labs, Animal Treatment. Meredith Nicholson, The Daily Tarheel, April 24, 2002.

Of mice and Helms. John Wagner, The News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina), April 20, 2002.

PETA says tape shows rat research violations. Rick Weiss, Washington Post, April 19, 2002.

Great Britain Grants Early Release to Anti-HLS Activists

After all of this talk recently from UK government officials about how they are prepared to get tough with animal rights activists who cross the line, The Financial Times reports that in fact two animal rights activists sentenced to six months in jail for a campaign of harassment were released early several weeks ago.

Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty activists Greg Avery, 35, Natasha Taylor, 33, and Heather James, 34, plead guilty for their campaign of harassment against people who were associated with Huntingdon Life Sciences. The trio published a newsletter that was distributed to 5,000 to 10,000 people that listed the names, phone numbers and addresses of individuals. The newsletter urged people to falsely order products to be delivered to targets in order to harm their credit rating. They also advocated phone blockades against banks, letter campaigns directed at individuals and other actions.

At their sentencing, Judge Zoe Smith told the three that, “The effect was to cause stress and strain. Witnesses have spoken of feeling violated and frightened and ill and it is clear you were aware of the effect and the stress they suffered.”

But the BioIndustry Association is warning that activists will get the message that they will be let off easy for such violations after it was revealed that Avery and James were released early a few weeks ago. According to The Financial Times they were ordered to wear electronic tags and not talk to the press.

New legislation has been enacted in Great Britain, but BioIndustry Association deputy chief executive Aisling Burnand told The Financial Times, “It is too early to say if it was enough. Seven people have been put behind bars and there is a feeling the campaign has run out of steam, but that could change.”

The Financial Times quoted SHAC as saying that the idea that their campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences had lost steam was “rubbish.” The Times quoted SHAC as saying,

We have been targeting financial backers of HLS, not just the pharmaceuticals companies. That is the only reason we’re less visible to the industry. They’ll never stop us. We’ll get worse and worse.

Well, at least the last sentence there is certainly true.

Source:

Drug companies warn of animal rights protests. David Firn and Patrick Jenkins, The Financial Times (London), April 23, 2002.

Attempts to Control Chicken Influenza Failing in Hong Kong

In 1997, a strain of avian flu jumped the species barrier and infected 18 people in Hong Kong, killing 6 of them. When tests found the flu spreading among Hong Kong chickens, the entire population of more than one million chickens was slaughtered in an effort to wipe out the disease.

But the avian flu returned in 2002 and hundreds of thousands of chickens have died and been slaughtered.

Research into samples of the 2001 and 2002 viruses show that the latest virus is indeed based on the pervious year’s version — efforts to eradicate the disease failed.

At least one research in Hong Kong, microbiologist Guan Yi, says the only solution is to close all live chicken farms in Hong Kong and ban the importation of live chickens from China. “I believe we have to get rid of the farms, and the poultry markets, and the import of fresh chickens,” Guan told China Daily.

Peter Wong Chun-kow, the Hong Kong president of the World’s Poultry Science Association, rejected that idea, telling China Daily that, “Avian influenza is just like any human flu — you just cannot get rid of it. However, it does not make sense to get rid of the poultry industry to get rid of the bird flu. That would be an ignorant act.”

The real problem here is China. Almost all chickens sold either live or ready for sale in Hong Kong are imported from China — only about 20 percent of chicken sold in Hong Kong actually originates from Hong Kong.

China is notoriously inept at efforts to track the origination of the influenza outbreaks. Not only does China not keep accurate records of outbreaks that would allow researchers to trace back the source of new strains of influenza, but even when China has a habit of denying that there is any new strain of influenza even to the point of denying that its farmers have been forced to slaughter chickens when it is easy to confirm that such actions have, in fact, occurred.

Time reported that when there were reports of an avian flue outbreak and the slaughter of chickens in China’s Fujian province, the response of the Chinese government was simply to deny everything.

The situation is so bad that if live chickens from China are refused by Hong Kong because the avian flu is detected, the chickens are simply slaughtered, repackaged as frozen, and re-exported back to Hong Kong.

Hong Kong’s problem is less with chickens than it is with the politicians in China who do not want to take responsibility for eradicating the avian influenza.

Source:

Hong Kong’s Fowl Problem: Hong Kong’s latest bird flu scare points to a lack of Chinese cooperation. Davena Mok, Time Asia, February 18, 2002.

Hong Kong chicken flu slaughter “failed”. Emma Young, New Scientist, April 19, 2002.