Day: January 16, 2006

New Orleans Mayor: Katrina Was God’s Punishment

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin apparently decided to join the ranks of nutcases like Pat Robertson in proclaiming that natural disaster, such as Hurricaine Katrina, is God’s punishment. Nagin said today,

Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it’s destroyed and put stress on this country. . . . Surely he doesn’t approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We’re not taking care of ourselves.

Or perhaps God was angry at Nagin’s own racist remarks at a townhall meeting on the rebuilding of New Orleans,

I can see in your eyes, you want to know, ‘How do I take advantage of this incredible opportunity? How do I make sure New Orleans is not overrun with Mexican workers?’

On the other hand, perhaps Nagin has a point. Maybe we can divine God’s intent from smaller weather incidents as well. For example, I’m beginning to suspect some snow we had here recently was do to God’s displeasure at the University of Southern California’s loss in the Rose Bowl.

Or maybe it just mean’s He’s unhappy with racist, religious nutcases, even when they’re Democrats.

Update: For some reason there are people who think the important thing about Nagin is that he used to be a Republican (ah, those nutty Republicans, right?) The problem is that this appears to be false. The Washington Post incorrectly reported this as fact and had to retract the claim on this story,

Correction to This Article
An Oct. 26 article that featured an interview with New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin incorrectly stated that he had switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat. He has never been a Republican.

Source:

New Orleans Mayor Says God Mad at U.S. Brett Martel, Associated Press, January 16, 2006.

Immigrants find opportunity in ruined New Orleans. Reuters, December 23, 2005.

Copyright Keeps May Children From Hearing “I Have a Dream Speech”

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech” is easily one of the most iconic — if not the iconic — American speech of the 20th century. And thanks to the King Foundation’s ironclad grip on King’s work, many schools cannot allow their students to listen to or watch the speech. Not a few of them use illegal methods to pass on the complete text of the speech to their student.

According to The Washington Post,

All of King’s speeches and papers are owned by his family, which has gone to court several times since the 1990s to protect its copyright; King obtained rights to his most famous speech a month after he gave it. Now, those who want to hear or use the speech in its entirety must buy a copy sanctioned by the King family, which receives the proceeds.

. . .

When King was killed, his family was left without much money. The family earns income from licensing his image and charging fees for the use of his speeches. Some of his papers are free for researchers to look through. The King family did not respond to queries for this article.

Joseph Beck, an attorney for the King family and an expert in intellectual property rights, said, “The King family has always supported providing access to the speech and to the video for educational purchases and encourages interested persons to contact the King Center in Atlanta.” According to the family’s Web site, videotapes and audiotapes of the speech can be purchased for $10, but one copy often is not enough for an entire school, and many schools don’t know what materials are available.

Many schools use the text — often taken in violation of the copyright from the Internet. The King family, however, wants teachers to use the speech and has not pursued legal action against educators, Carson said.

$10/copy sounds cheap until you need fifty copies, and you’re a school on an extraordinarily tight budget. Moreover, Beck’s assertion that the King family isn’t going to pursue certain types of copyright violations isn’t worth the electrons its printed on at the Post’s website. No legal adviser worth anything is going to suggest to a school that they simply go ahead and break the law because the King family probably won’t sue them.

Similar problems have pretty much made the excellent documentary about the civil rights movement, Eyes on the Prize, from use in the classroom in recent years. When it was first made, the producers of the documentary bought time-limited permission to reproduce archival footage. When they went to re-release the documentary, the archival footage owners upped their licensing costs to ridiculous amounts, making it prohibitively expensive to re-release the documentary.

Source:

King’s Fiery Speech Rarely Heard. Valerie Strauss, Washington Post, January 15, 2006.

Ricky McGinn, the 2006 Version

The main problem with being opposed to capital punishment, as I am, is that there are a lot of organizations also opposed to capital punishment who seem to be run by Michael Dukakis liberals — the sort of people who will fight tooth and nail for convicted murderers but lack empathy and understanding of the horrors that crime victims go through that is what really drives support for capital punishment in my opinion.

One of the most idiotic things that comes out of this excessive focus on convicts is that anti-capital punishment groups tend to latch onto this person or that person whom they believe to have been wrongly executed or about to be executed, only for evidence to emerge that confirms the guilt of the individual. Moreover, the individuals such groups tend to latch onto are the sort of career criminals who are obviously guilty that it raises a serious question about just how gullible/rational some in the anti-capital punishment movement are.

Back in 2000, it was Ricky McGinn who was the star of the show. McGinn claimed he had not raped and murdered his 12-year-old niece step-daughter as a Texas jury had found, and opponents of capital punishment claimed DNA tests of pubic hairs and semen would prove this. Then Gov. George W. Bush granted a temporary 30 day reprieve for McGinn so such testing could be conducted. Rather than exonerate McGinn, of course, the testing showed that the killer was either McGinn or a very close maternal relative. McGinn was executed shortly afterward.

More recently, many anti-death penalty groups hopped on the Roger Coleman bandwagon. Coleman’s case is especially egregious. He was convicted of the 1981 rape and murder of his 19-year-old sister-in-law, and executed in 1992.

Coleman was an immediate suspect in the murder because there was no forceable entry at the murder scene, Coleman had left his job at a nearby mine at the end of his shift shortly before the murder giving him time to carry out the killing, and the fact that Coleman had a previous conviction for the attempted rape of a teacher. At trial, evidence against him included pubic hairs found at the scene that were consistent with Coleman’s and DNA tests that established he was part of the 2 percent of men in the country who could have contributed the semen found at the scene.

To put it bluntly, there was an overwhelming amount of evidence that Coleman was the killer, and yet numerous anti-death penalty groups and activists got on the “Coleman was innocent” bandwagon. Many bought Coleman’s claim that he simply did not have time to go from his job to the victim’s house and commit the murder. For example, according to the New York Times,

In 1988, James C. McCloskey, a divinity school graduate and founder of Centurion Ministries Inc., a group based in Princeton, N.J., that advocates for inmates it considers innocent, took up Mr. Coleman’s case and spent four years reinvestigating it.

Mr. McCloskey concluded that Mr. Coleman did not have the time or motivation to commit the murder, raising questions about the jailhouse confession and the forensic evidence. He asserted that Mr. Coleman had been wearing clothing covered with coal dust but that no dust was found at the scene, and he offered evidence pointing to an alternative suspect.

As in McGinn’s case, the DNA test confirmed the state’s verdict — Coleman was guilty as hell.

The upshot is that, as I’ve predicted before, DNA testing is going to ultimately reinforce support for the death penalty rather than lead to some new widespread anti-death penalty movement. Capital punishment supporters will point to these results as well as the extensive DNA testing that occurs in cases today to argue that whatever problems there may have been with determining guilt in the past, that DNA evidence makes many verdicts as close to incontrovertible as any system is ever going to get.

Sources:

Warner Orders DNA Testing In Case of Man Executed in ’92. Maria Glod and Michael Shear, Washington Post, January 6, 2006.

DNA Ties Man Executed in ’92 to the Murder He Denied. James Dao, New York Times, January 13, 2006.

Another PETA Staffer With a Name Change Gimmick

Nineteen-year old People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals staffer Chris Garnett garnered a bit of press at the end of 2005 by legally changing his name to KentuckyFriedCruelty.Com.

This is, of course, simply a copy of an earlier stunt when Karin Robinson supposedly changed her name to GoVegan.Com. Of course, she only used it for about 15 minutes — when she sends letters or gives interviews to newspapers, she goes by Karin Robinson.

Presumably, Garnett will abandon his moniker the minute after media outlets stop writing about it.

Source:

Teen’s New Name: KentuckyFriedCruelty.Com. Associated Press, December 30, 2005.

Newkirk: We Oppose All Violence Against Civilians, But Fashion Designers Are Fair Game

Ingrid Newkirk, of all people, gave a speech at a conference addressing violent conflict in the Middle East at which she said,

. . . we call all attacks on civilians, whether against Palestinians in Jenin or Israelis in Tel Aviv, what they are: War crimes.

If we want an end to violence, it means that we must first reject the slaughterhouse, the animal circus, and animal skins and remember that kindness to animals has been a cornerstone of every great religion in the history of the world.

Mohandas Gandhi, one of the icons of the nonviolence movement, taught that how we treat animals shows our ability to empathize with those who are ‘different’ from us, which is the first step toward living in peace with our human neighbors.

Leaving aside the accuracy of her claim about religion and animals, it is interesting that Newkirk declares violence against civilians “war crimes”, but as far as I know neither Newkirk or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has ever apologized for Dan Mathews remarks in admiration of serial killer Andrew Cunanan. Cunanan murdered fashion designer Gianni Versace, and in 1999 PETA’s Mathews, asked to name a 20th century man he loves, replied,

Andrew Cunanan, because he got Versace to stop doing fur.

Source:

Animal rights group addresses Mideast conflict. Ynetnews.Com, January 4, 2005.

Friends of Animals vs. The New York Theosophical Society

Friends of Animals sent out a press release on January 3 complaining about an a couple of events to be held at the New York Theosophical Society in January.

According to the press release, the first event on Jan. 5 would feature the New York Companion Bird Club and a raffle of prizes from Grey Feather Toy Creations, which apparently makes toys and accessories for birds. The worst part, however, is that,

The raffling of a “bird gym” will fund the transportation of a bigger cage for a nursing home-based cockatoo. . . .

Overall, the planned Bird Day event is a promotion of cages, not freedom. . . .

On January 14, the Society is featuring speaker Larry D.D. Clifford exhibiting a macaw. Friends of Animals is upset since in addition to holding captive birds, Clifford trains animals for Sea World and for other animal-related shows, including television work.

Friends of Animals’ legal director Lee Hall tries to appeal to the Theosophical Society’s history, saying in the press release,

The Theosophical Society’s mission is to cultivate the spiritual growth of humanity. A pioneer in its history was the acclaimed vegetarian doctor Anna Kingsford, who spoke of the inherent value of animals other than ourselves. To offer a venue for patently exploitive promotions is to flout the Society’s best traditions.

Now Hall could have cited Theosophical Society founder Madam Blavatsky, but Blavatsky was a meat eater, so best ignore her. But what about Kingsford?

Kingsford was a 19th century vegetarian and a prominent anti-vivisectionist as well. And she would certainly have been right at home in today’s animal rights movement. She claimed to have mystical visions in which she was visited by angels, traveled through time, and was given prophetic revelations such as this.

As for Kingsford’s vegetarianism, she had an interesting — but solidly Victorian England — defense of vegetarianism. To Kingsford, the problem with eating meat was that it debased human beings to the level of mere animals,

The modern advocates of flesh-eating and vivisection, on the contrary, would reverse the sentiment of the lines just quoted, and would have us

“Move down, returning to the beast,
And letting heart and conscience die”,

making thereby the practice of the lowest in the scale of Nature the rule of the highest, and abasing the moral standard of mankind to the level of the habits of the most dangerous or noxious orders of brutes.

. . .

But the disciple of Buddha and of Pythagoras, the preacher of the Pure Life and of the Perfect Way, cries to humanity, “Be men, not in mere physical form only – for form is worth nothing – but in spirit, by virtue of those qualities which exalt you above tigers, swine or jackals!. . .”

Sources:

May Birds Know A World Without Cages. Press Release, Friends of Animals, January 3, 2006.