Day: July 3, 2002

We’re Number One!

We’re number one … at failing schools.

The U.S. Department of Education issued a report yesterday that identified “failing” schools. Of 8,600 schools across the country that it labeled as failing, 1,500 of them are in Michigan. That’s one-third of all Michigan public schools.

My wife and I lucked out as far as finding a decent school for my daughter to go to Kindergarten next year.

The school that she would normally go to is abysmal. By fourth grade, only 54 percent of children meet or exceed state standards on math, and only 39 percent meet or exceed state reading standards. In both cases, that is 20 percent below the state average.

Which is my wife and I transferred my daughter to a school a little farther away where the number of students achieving state math and reading standards exceeds the state average.

Great Britain’s Birth Statistics and Overpopulation Nonsense

Great Britain’s Office for National Statistics recently released a report about the continuing decline in birth rates in that country which highlighted some interesting statistics.

One in five women 40 or older, for example, have never had a child. That is twice as it was just 20 years ago. The average age for new mothers is now 29 years.

The average birth rate in Great Britain has fallen to 1.64 children — the lowest since the UK began tracking that statistic in 1924. That is, of course, far below the population replacement level. Like other European nations, Great Britain will have to rely on immigration to maintain its population or else see it eventually shrink.

Notice that this directly contradicts a common but fallacious argument about human populations that was popular in the 1970s and 1980s. Numerous commentators argue that since in non-human species increased food led to ever increasing population sizes until an inevitable crash that this too must happen to human beings.

And yet Great Britain is one of the richest human societies in the history of the world and its peacetime birth rate is below replacement level. In fact, throughout much of the world wealth and availability of food is inversely related to births — the wealthier a society is, the lower its birth rate tends to be.

Source:

More women staying childless. The BBC, June 28, 2002.

Bardot Wants France to Guarantee Animal Rights

A small item in British newspaper The Independent reported that,

Brigitte Bardot has written to the French Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, requesting the incorporation of animal rights legislation to the French constitution. In the letter, the actress say that just as France voted in 1789 for the declaration of human rights, it should add a similar declaration in 2002 for animals. The actress’s animal rights foundation has offered to help draw up a law.

Of course the immediate outcome of the French revolution was tyranny, as would be the outcome of a Declaration of Animal Rights.

Source:

People: Bardot steps up animal campaign. The Independent (London), June 26, 2002.

PETA's Sensitivity to Terrorism Accusations

The Virginian-Pilot ran an article in June about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ apparent growing concern about accusation that it funds and/or supports animal rights terrorism.

Reporter Bill Burke notes that for once Ingrid Newkirk has been keeping a low profile on this topic and letting PETA’s general counsel, Jeffrey S. Kerr, field all press inquiries about the allegations. Kerr tells Burke,

The whole notion that PETA supports terrorism is false and defamatory. When you use the word ‘terror,’ look at the terror inflicted on billions of animals in this country every year. That’s real terror.

. . .

They’re [PETA’s opponents] trying to smear us any way they can.

In a letter to a House subcommittee investigating ecoterror, Kerr wrote that it “is an insult to the victims of Sept. 11th” to suggest that PETA fosters terrorism. “It is reprehensible for PETA’s opponents to equate peaceful and lawful animal protection with al-Quaida or any other type of terrorism, and to exploit that tragedy for expedient political gain.”

In other words, when PETA’s point man on fur, Dan Matthews, said he admired serial killer Andrew Cunanan “because he got Versace to stop doing fur” — that must have been some other Dan Matthews working for some other animal rights group.

And when Bruce Friedrich told an audience at Animal Rights 2001 that while he doesn’t personally advocate animal rights terrorism, “I do advocate it, and I think it’s a great way to bring about animal liberation” — well, he was probably a victim of some mind control scheme by those evil folks over at The Center for Consumer Freedom.

At the very least, when Ingrid Newkirk was quoted in 1997 as saying, “I wish we all would get up and go into the labs and take the animals out or burn them down,” that was probably a case of mistaken identity. That was really Ingrid Bergman back from the dead saying such vicious things, because everyone knows Ingrid Newkirk would never even think such a thing.

PETA’s press blackout on the terrorism allegations included refusing an interview request with Gary Yourofsky. Yourofsky has an Animal Liberation Front tattoo on his arm and said just over a year ago that animal activists should “not be afraid to condone arsons at places of animal torture” and said that if an animal researcher were killed in such a raid “I would unequivocally support that too.”

That sort of resume makes him perfect material for PETA which hired Yourofsky on as a “humane education presenter” after Yourofsky sent out an e-mail whining that he was broke and leaving the animal rights movement temporarily.

The bottom line is that the widespread support for terrorism within the animal rights movement harms groups and individuals associated with it far more than it poses any credible threat to bringing medical research or animal agriculture to a halt. Fortunately it is not that difficult to make the link since so many prominent animal rights activists apparently see the need to endorse or condone criminal acts in order to appease the extremists who seem to set the agenda within the animal rights movement.

For this reason, The Center for Consumer Freedom’s print ad featuring a Bruce Friedrich quote is easily the most powerful anti-animal rights ad I’ve seen. Hopefully there will be a follow-up with some choice quotes from Yourofsky.

The animal rights movement is intellectually bankrupt on a number of issues, but its willingness to endorse violence and criminal acts makes discrediting the movement to all but the true believers relatively simple. Personally, I’m glad that PETA hired Yourofksy and that Newkirk and Friedrich decided to wax on about their support of terrorism. It certainly makes it much easier to illustrate just how extreme even the most nominally mainstream animal rights organizations are.

Source:

Terrorism accusations raise hackles at PETA. Bill Burke, The Virginian-Pilot, June 22, 2002.