Day: March 12, 2003

Inquest Complete on Barry Horne's Death

A British jury recently completed an inquest on the death of animal rights activists Barry Horne who died while on a hunger strike in prison. Horne had een sentenced to 18 years in jail after being convicted of numerous acts of arson in a two-year firebombing campaign he carried out in the United Kingdom.

The inquest’s purpose was to ensure that Horne was of sound mind and body and free from coercion when he made the decision to die.

The jury heard evidence that Horne was not mentally ill when he commenced his final hunger strike and that he had left written instructions that he was not to be fed. The report of a psychiatrist who interviewed Horne said that the animal rights extremist thought he “would win by dying,” apparently believing that his death would force the British government to ban medical research with animals.

Sources:

Open verdict on hunger strike. ICCoventry.Co.Uk, March 11, 2003.

Hunger striker’s inquest. Sky News, March 11, 2003.

Was Iran Behind Bombing of Argentinian Jewish Community Center?

The BBC has an interesting story about a diplomatic row between Argentina and Iran over the worst terrorist attack ever in Argentina. In 1994 somebody detonated a car bomb that destroyd a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people.

Argentina has long suspected that Iran was behind the bombing, but it recently put its cards on the table by issuing arrest warrants for four Iranian officials including,

  • Ali Fallahian, the former Iranian intelligence minister
  • Mohsen Rabbani, the former cultural attache at the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires
  • Ali Balesh Abadi, a diplomat
  • Ali Akbar Parvaresh, a former education minister

Iran denies the accusation, but it doesn’t help its case by appealing to the saem lame excuse that Middle Eastern governments always used when accused of wrongdoing — it’s just a bunch of “baseless allegations” invented by the Israelis.

Besides there’s the little problem of phone calls intercepted from the Iranian embassy in 1998 which established beyond much doubt that Iran had been involved in the bombing. Argentina expelled several Iranian diplomats at that time, but its investigation into which specific individuals were responsible for the attack stalled.

What’s changed in the meantime? In September 2001 en individuals went on trial in Argentina for havin gassissted in the bombing. These were mostly Argentinian police who were accused of taking bribes to protect a stolen car ring that the terrorists used to purchase the car ultimately used in the bomb plot. Of course there’s alwasy been suspicion that the police may have been more directly involved, especially given the rather large amounts of money that exchanged hands (one of those accused receieved a $2.5 million bribe). Perhaps that trial and its aftermath led to new leads.

Either way this episode illustrates that while George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” characterization may be a bit overblown and simplistic, Iran has been an active sponsor of terrorism in foreign countries and after Iraq is likely the biggest threat in that region (which is why supporting internal efforts to liberalize should be a major policy goal of the United States).

Ubiquitous WiFi Soon? (Please)

One of the things I love about the university I work at is that WiFi is ubiquitous. I have yet to find a place on campus where I can’t get a decent network connection. And the feature is certainly popular — walk through the student union or even take a stroll outside across the campus and you’ll see dozens of people with their laptops connecting to the Internet.

But go just a mile or so off-campus and there’s zilch. At least two or three times a week I’m eating lunch at a restaurant where I’m thinking “you know, if these folks had a WiFi connection, this would be a great place to come more often.”

Which is why McDonald’s announcement of its WiFi trial is so interesting. Frankly, I think McDonald’s has the right idea and I’m surprised that more restaurants aren’t exploring this. The beauty of McDonald’s plan is that as long as you’re a paying customer, the WiFi access is free.

That’s the only way I can imagine I’d ever pay for WiFi access. Other than McDonald’s, the main nationwide efforts to add WiFi seem to be installing networks at, say, all Starbucks and then making the customer pay an additional charge on top of whatever he’s paying for food, coffee, etc. for network access. I guess if you spend a lot of time at a specific place like Starbucks that might make sense or aren’t very price conscious that might not make sense, but if such experiments are going to succeed they’re going to have to give away the network access to paying customers and advertise the feature as a competitive advantage.

I don’t understand why more places aren’t experimenting with that model. Offering a basic level of access wouldn’t be very expensive nor does it seem it would be all that difficult to maintain from a technical standpoint.

I hope McDonald’s experiment inspires others because, frankly, though my daughter loves McDonald’s the seating accomdations leave my body feeling like it spent 20 minutes in a wrestling cage match with The Rock.

The Death Penalty and Child Killers

Although I have always been staunchly anti-capital punishment, at the same time I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the likely fate of these sorts of people, who will have problems staying alive very long in a Texas prison even if they escape the death penalty (assuming, of course, that police have a solid case against the parents):

A woman and her common-law husband were charged with murder Wednesday after police found the bodies of a decapitated 1-year-old boy and two young siblings in the family’s small, run-down apartment.

The children’s 23-year-old mother, Angela Camacho, and John Allen Rubio, the 22-year-old father of the youngest child, were being held without bond, according to police Lt. Henry Etheridge.

The 1-year-old’s body was found Tuesday night on a bed, and the others were in garbage bags beside it, police in this border town said.

Is the UN Placing Enough Priority on Urban Water?

David Satterthwaite of the International Institute of Environment and Development in London recently told the BBC that the United Nations’ goals for clean water are unrealistic and do not do enough to address water quality issues in urban settings. Satterthwaite is working on a report for the UN that will make those points.

Satterthwaite told the BBC,

According to most official government statistics, most urban people have good water and sanitation. Our puzzle has long been that pretty much every city and small urban centre I work with in Africa and Asia, and most in Latin America has very poor provision, especially for low-income groups.

. . .

There are no sewers, few open drains, and most people rely on standpipes. It’s common for there to be 1,000 to each stand pipe.

Satterthwaite argues that the total number of people in urban settings lacking access to clean water and sanitation is likely four to five times that of official statistics. He told the BBC,

Possibly the most socking thing we found was the number of urban dwellers who rely on open defecation. They have no toilet. What we found was, in many cities, there’s been a popular term for open defecation. In many cities in Africa, it’s known as “flying toilets,” because you defecate in a plastic bag and then you throw it.

Source:

UN water aims ‘unrealistic’. The BBC, February 28, 2003.

U.S. Marines Abandon Use of Chickens as Chemical/Biological Weapons Detectors

The U.S. Marines earned the ire of animal rights activists after it proposed using chickens as a detection system for chemical and biological weapons.

The idea was based on the whole canary in a coal mine idea, that if a chemical or biological agent was released the chickens would become ill and then the soldiers could respond by putting on their gas masks and taking other actions.

Of course there were numerous problems with this rather goofy idea. Apparently the Marines didn’t learn until after they had already started this harebrained scheme that there are chemical weapons that will kill human beings long before they make a chicken ill. Not to mention that the chicken’s feathers would protect them from some chemical or biological agents longer than a human being’s.

And then most of the chickens died pretty quickly. According to Stephens Washington Bureau, 41 of the 43 chickens shipped to Kuwait have already died. So the Marines have put the whole scheme on hold, probably permanently.

Just to be sure, though, United Poultry Concerns’ Karen Davis is urging people to write President George W. Bush and urge him to, “Leave the chickens out of it.”

She’s probably right for a change. Chickens would make a much better meal for soldiers than chemical weapons detectors.

Sources:

‘Operation KFC’ kicks the bucket. Adam Ashton, Stephens Washington Bureau, March 10, 2003.

Observe the chickens of America clucking towards Baghdad. Drew Cullen, The Register, March 11, 2003.