Month: April 2001

Will Activists Try to Bring Foot and Mouth Disease to the U.S.?

The Associated Press ran a story on Friday about the concerns of Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Rep. Michael Simpson (R-Idaho) that animal rights activists might intentionally try to bring foot-and-mouth disease to the United States. Their fear was sparked by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals president Ingrid Newkirk who a few weeks ago told reporters that, “I openly hope that it [foot and mouth disease] comes here. It will bring economic harm only for those who profit from giving people heart attacks and giving animals a concentration camp-like existence.”

Craig and Simpson wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture asking the government to take steps to prevent someone from intentionally bringing the disease into the country.

We know that the department is taking steps to keep the United States foot-and-mouth free. However, we are concerned about recent press statements made by an extreme group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, where they openly hope that it comes here in order to destroy the domestic livestock industry. We are also concerned with reports from Europe that the foot-and-mouth outbreak could have been started deliberately by someone who stole a test tube of the virus from a laboratory.

Unfortunately, it would be almost impossible to stop somebody who wanted to fulfill Newkirk’s hopes. Although the government bans the import of animals and animal products from countries that suffer from the disease, it cannot ban the travel of people too and from such countries. Foot and mouth disease is so contagious that it would be relatively easy for anyone sufficiently motivated to start an epidemic here (though the size of any outbreak would depend a lot on how quickly the USDA can react).

The irony is that even without any help from animal rights activists, foot and mouth disease is extremely likely to find its way to the United States. Thanks to Newkirk’s comments, however, if and when it finally does arrive here, animal rights activists are likely to come under intense scrutiny and blame even if they had nothing to do with it.

Source:

Republicans worry eco-terrorists will unleash livestock disease. Associated Press, April 18, 2001.

Real American Sue

Sometimes I get the feeling I’m not a true American because I have yet to sue anyone.

Now Michele Nations is a real American. In 1994 she was walking at a municipal park in Tucson, Arizona, when she tripped over a 5 inch deep, 10 inch diameter hole made by a gopher or squirrel. As a result Nations sprained her ankle.

The other day she was awarded $450,000 in her lawsuit against the city which claimed that park officials had not given adequate warning of possible dangers from gopher and squirrel holes.

As an attorney for the city told the Arizona Star, “You would think in a park — in a natural space — people should have to watch where they’re going.” Apparently not — we’re Americans, damn it, and asking us to take any sort of personal responsibility is simply going too far.

(Thanks to Overlawyered.Com for digging up these goofy lawsuits).

The Trouble with Traditionalist Anti-Feminism

Paul Gottfried recently penned an article for LewRockwell.Com on The Trouble with Feminism which serves, inadvertently, as a good introduction to the problems with traditionalist anti-feminism.

Unlike equity feminism, which argues that women deserve equal rights but is extremely critical of attempts by radical feminists to go beyond that, traditionalist anti-feminism is in large measure opposed entirely to the notion of men and women as roughly equal and able to participate in the public and private sphere on equal terms. For Gottfried the distinction between equity/individualist feminism and radical feminism is a false one — both views are equally radical.

Serious conservative scholars like Allan Carlson and F. Carolyn Graglia have maintained that the change of women?s role, from being primarily mothers to self-defined professionals, has been a social disaster that continues to take its toll on the family. Rather than being the culminating point of Western Christian gentility, the movement of women into commerce and politics may be seen as exactly the opposite, the descent by increasingly disconnected individuals into social chaos.

Even more importantly, the distinction between “moderate” and “radical” feminists, which is basic to [Kenneth] Minogue?s essay, is not a significant difference. That distinction is in fact based on what neocons are willing to absorb of the feminist movement, as opposed to what they dislike, at least for the moment. It is also without historical justification to focus on the sui generis character of the latest phase of feminism and to treat it as discontinuous from what preceded it. The arguments made by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique were pulled from a polemical arsenal that, as Mrs. Graglia demonstrates, went back to feminists of the early twentieth century. Already in the interwar years, female professionals were organizing to push through a predecessor of the ERA. It may be assumed from Minogue?s observations that it was ok for feminists to unite to break down gender barriers and to enlist the state on their side before Betty Friedan came on the scene.

Whereas equity/individualist feminism supports the right of women to enter the workplace (or stay home and take care of children for that matter) but oppose affirmative action and other forms of special treatment for women, for Gottfried the entry of women into the work place itself is a disaster.

The message is driven home through his inclusion of F. Carolyn Graglia as one of the “serious conservative scholars” who opposes feminism. Like Gottfried, Graglia’s Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against Feminism argues that feminism has been a disaster because it has encouraged women to enter the public sphere which simultaneously denigrated the traditional homemaker role of women, which Graglia seems to believe is the one true role that best fits women. Her book is filled with claims such as “when a woman lives too much in her mind, she finds it increasingly difficult to live through her body.”

Graglia endorses Andrea Dworkin’s view of heterosexual sex as an act of domination by men of women, with the main difference being that Graglia finds this to be a good thing. She goes so far on this line of thinking as to approve of the goal — though not the method — of genital mutilation in keeping women’s sexual assertiveness in control. When Cathy Young highlighted this tidbit in a review for Reason magazine, Graglia responded in a letter-to-the-editor saying,

My purpose is to suggest that the fact that some cultures felt so threatened by female sexual assertiveness that they would resort to such draconian measures to prevent it should give pause to those feminist sexual revolutionaries who promote such assertiveness as part of their sexual prescription.

In other words, the “serious conservative scholars” are just as bad as the radical feminists at making outrageous, illiberal claims.

Source:

The Trouble with Feminism. LewRockwell.Com,

Fantasy Death Row

Some days I imagine the world can’t get any stranger and then along comes a site like Fantasy Death Row.

The site is modeled along fantasy sports games, except with death row inmates. The idea is to pick three inmate who are on death row in the United States and scheduled to be executed within the next 2 months. Players get 50 points if their inmate is pardoned, 25 for a clemency, on down to -10 points if the prisoner is executed. And, of course, -50 points if the inmate is executed but later proven innocent.

The site even sells Fantasy Death Row t-shirts, with buyers the option of donating part of the cost of the t-shirts to either Amnesty International, which opposes capital punishment, or Texans for Equal Justice, which supports capital punishment.

Missionary, Child Killed In Peru Become Latest Drug War Victims

Two Michigan residents, Veronica Bowers, 37, and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, were recently killed when their Cessna was shot down over Peru after being mistakenly identified as a drug plane. Pilot Kevin Donaldson survived. Many Americans were shocked by the deaths, but this is nothing new for U.S. anti-drug policy in the Andes.

News reports of the deaths are filled with claims that the Peruvians have rigorous standards they employ before bringing down an airplane. That anyone within the U.S. government is willing to use the words “rigorous standards” and “Peruvian military” in the same breadth is amazing. In fact the United States has looked the other way while the Peruvian army, fulfilling its role in the U.S. war on drugs, has murdered countless civilians, occasionally in just such an “accident.”

How inept is the Peruvian military? In the late 1980s its chief intelligence official, Vladimiro Montesinos, worked with several Peruvian generals to create an illegal death squad to go after leaders of the Shining Path, a Maoist movement that was one of the few things in Peru even more murderous and cruel than the government.

Anyway, in 1991, about 20 people were having a good time partying at an apartment a little ways from the Presidential Palace. The death squad thought the party was actually a secret meeting of the Shining Path. They busted their way into the party, forced everyone onto the floor, and then fired over 100 shots. Fifteen people died and four others were wounded.

This was just one of many grotesque human rights abuses that occurred in Peru, and yet through most of the 1990s the United States considered Peru a great asset in the war on drugs. Ironically what caused the United States to finally break with Peru somewhat in the late 1990s was that it turned out their main asset in Peru, Montesinos, was playing both sides of the field. While taking money to fight drugs in Peru, he was simultaneously helping arm guerillas in Colombia.

The death of innocents at the hand of the Peruvian military has occurred all too often. Now that it is American civilians being killed, maybe the United States will at last rethink its relationship with Peru, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Source:

U.S. Suspends Peru Flights. ABCNews.Com, April 21, 2001.

Court Reigns in Rodney Coronado

In a recent newsletter, Americans for Medical Progress reported that the parole conditions for Rodney Coronado have apparently been altered to prevent Coronado from continuing his very public writing and speaking campaign in favor of animal rights. Coronado fire bombed a laboratory at Michigan State University and served almost five years in jail for his crimes before being paroled.

Before being sentenced in 1995 Coronado read a statement saying that, “I have gone from the most vocal proponent to now an open opponent of the ALF. My actions were illegal, radical and extreme and caused great pain to others. It took me years to realize the impact of my actions.”

Coronado quickly repudiated those remarks while in jail and after his release on parole began writing articles for activists publications such as No Compromise extolling the virtues of the Animal Liberation Front and similar groups.

Apparently his activities didn’t go unnoticed by the courts. According to AMP, a communique was recently circulated by activists to the effect that new parole conditions forbid Coronado to “write articles or otherwise work for activists publications, nor can speak out, publicize or support illegal actions or associate with ALF or ELF members for the next 16 months–the remainder of his parole term.”

Source:

ALF’s Rodney Coronado Under Tighter Parole Restrictions. Americans for Medical Progress, April 12, 2001.