Month: September 2001

James Cromwell: Just Another Hypocrite PETA Celebrity

James Cromwell, the actor best known for playing the farmer in the 1995 film “Babe,” has lately been very active in the animal rights movement. He has worked with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and was among a number of people arrested at a PETA-sponsored protest of Wendy’s this summer. And like a number of other PETA-affiliated celebrities, Cromwell is a rank hypocrite, condemning people who eat meat but turning around and defending other uses of animals when it impacts his lifestyle.

In a profile in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cromwell says that, “I’m a vegan with an asterisk.” The asterisk? Among other things, Cromwell enjoys wearing leather shoes and dairy products in baked goods.

So it is okay to kill a cow to produce leather for Cromwell’s shoes, but wrong for you or I to eat the meat produced from that same animal. Come on, Cromwell, why be so wasteful? Lets use the whole animal.

Source:

Television column. The Plain Dealer, September 23, 2001, p.33.

McCartney Plans Firefighter Benefit — Should Denounce His Terrorist-Supporting PETA Friends as Well

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Paul McCartney is one of many celebrities trying to help raise money to benefit the families of firefighters killed while trying to save people from the two World Trade Center towers.

McCartney notes that his father was a fireman in Liverpool during World War II, and his benefit concert scheduled for October in New York City is a welcome aid. But there’s another thing McCartney could do for firefighters — publicly distance himself from the extremist animal rights activists, including within People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who endorse so-called direct action, including arson.

Groups such as the Animal Liberation Front have long used arson as a means of terrorism against people involved in animal enterprises, including farms and medical research laboratories. The activists have longed claimed that arson is a non-violent means of protest since they only torch buildings they think are unoccupied. But as the events at the World Trade Center put in stark contrast, whenever there is a fire of any kind, firefighters, police and others often end up putting their lives in immediate danger. Along with the attack on the World Trade Center, many still remember the New York firefighters who died while trying to rescue people from a burning building — it later was revealed that the people the firefighters died trying to evacuate had exited the building earlier.

Yet despite the dangers posed to rescue officials by arson, such activities by the ALF have found plenty of support within the mainstream of the animal rights movement. Although PETA is careful to keep its distance from actual acts of terrorism, it paid part of the defense of |Rodney Coranado|, who was convicted of fire bombing a research laboratory at Michigan State University, and lately people who work for PETA, such as … have come out strongly in favor of such acts of terrorism.

If McCartney truly cares about the lies of firefighters, as he almost certainly does, why does he continue to associate with an organization which endorses activities that regularly put the lives of those firefighters at risk?

Source:

McCartney plans firefighters’ benefits. Reuters, September 21, 2001.

Coulston Facility Bombed

I haven’t seen any other reports of this, which is surprising given the current fear over terrorism, but a CBS affiliate in Alamogordo, New Mexico, reports that a bomb went off at a primate lab owned by the Coulston Foundation in the early morning hours of September 20.

Station KRQE quoted Coulston spokesman Don McKinney as saying the bomb went off around 4:15 a.m. on September 20 at the facility. No animals were kept at the facility, and no one was injured, but the device did an estimated $1 million in damages.

KRQE reported that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms along with the FBI are investigating.

Source:

Bomb Goes Off At Primate Lab. KRQE News 13, September 20, 2001.

Americans and Foreign Affairs

The latest edition of Scripting.Com is a good illustration of the problems with American foreign policy — very few Americans consistently follow foreign affairs.

On the one hand, for example, Dave Winer notes that many people are surprised to learn about the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. Many of the people I’ve talked to seem to think that the Taliban has a regular military along the lines of Iraq. It was a bit absurd watching Dan Rather on CBS the other day reporting about Taliban troops supposedly massing on Pakistan’s border and allegedly armed with Scud missiles.

On the other hand, Winer himself clearly knows little about the history of the region when he says,

Here’s the scoop. The Taliban believe they brought down the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and there’s reason to believe they’re right.

Well, since the Taliban militia wasn’t formed until 1994 — quite a few years after the Soviet withdrawal — it is a bit hard to understand how they could be right about bringing down the Soviet Union. On the other hand, there’s a reason to believe Winer is unfamiliar with Afghanistan’s history.

After the Soviet pullout the various groups fighting the Soviets began fighting each other and for awhile it looked like Afghanistan was going to go the route of Sudan, where a 40+ year civil war has raged with neither side able to completely establish control over the other.

Pakistan didn’t exactly warm to the idea of this instability near its border, and began aiding the Taliban. If it hadn’t been for Pakistan’s help, it is unlikely the Taliban would have ever managed to control a significant portion of the country.

Osama bin Laden certainly played a significant role in the anti-Soviet jihad, but the Taliban is a product of the post-Soviet withdrawal era, not the cause of said withdrawal.

Know Who Your Friends Are

After the 9/11 attack, the United States government began openly and privately courting Pakistan for obvious strategic reasons. Accordingto an MSNBC report,

AfghanistanÂ’s neighbor, Pakistan, also has incentives to cooperate. For siding with the U.S. against the Taliban and bin Laden, Islamabad stands to get as much as $3 billion in debt relief, emergency aid for refugees and the removal of sanctions that were imposed when they tested nuclear weapons and staged a military coup. That would enable Pakistan to also get military aid, including spare parts for its F-16Â’s, Tow missiles and armed personnel carriers.

NBCÂ’s Mitchell reports that Saudi Arabia has also offered Pakistan free oil.

Before we climb into bed with Pakistan, however, lets remember that Pakistan shares many of the features that President George W. Bush so eloquently noted plague Afghanistan.

For example, a little over a month ago a Pakastani court sentenced Dr. Younis Shaikh to death for blasphemy. What did Shaikh say that was so horrific?

Shaik allegedly said that since the Prophet Mohammed didn’t receive his first spiritual revelation until he was 40, Shaikh argued that Mohammed wasn’t a Muslim during his younger years, and that moreover Mohammed’s parents weren’t Muslim since they died before he revealed his spiritual revelations.

As Human Rights Watch notes, a Pakistani Chrisitian, Ayub Masih, was sentenced to death for blasphemy as well. His crime? He spoke favorably of Salman Rushdie.

Unfortunately, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Two years after General Zia-ul-Haq took power in Pakistan in 1977, Pakistan’s criminal code was modified with what are called the Hudood Ordinances. These encapsulate some of the anti-female attitudes that are so derided in Afghanistan.

In Pakistan, extra-marital sex is illegal and the age of majority for women is 16 or the onset of puberty, whichever comes first. In practice what this means is that if a 30-year-old man has sex with a 12-year-old girl, rather than prosecute that as statutory rape, Pakistani authorities will in fact go after the 12-year-old girl as well.

And unbelievably the girl cannot even testify in her own defense at such a trial. As a 1999 State Department report on Pakistan noted,

Likewise, the testimony of women, Muslim or non-Muslim, is not admissible in cases involving Hadd punishments. Thus, if a Muslim man rapes a Muslim woman in the presence of several women, he cannot be convicted under the Hudood ordinances because women cannot testify. Similarly, if a Muslim man rapes a woman in the presence of non-Muslim men and women, he cannot be convicted because women and non-Muslim men cannot testify.

And these folks are going to be our new allies?

Fanboy Review of Phantom Menace DVD

Slashdot linked to this review of the upcoming Phantom Menace DVD. Unfortunately it’s such a fanboy review, I got the feeling that if George Lucas had released Phantom Menace on Betamax that this would have been offered as a reason to go out and find a working Beta player.

But I do have a point beyond ripping on fanboy web sites. One of the things that this review and other, less enthusiastic, reviews of the DVD have mentioned is the inclusion of a documentary, “The Beginning,” which is (based on the reviews I’ve seen so far), one of those “Making of…” films that doesn’t actually suck.

Anyway, the documentary gives some clues as to why Phantom Menace sucked so bad. At one point, Steven Spielberg shows up on the set and Lucas actually tells Spielberg (apparently being very serious) that the final droid/Gungan battle to is “literally War and Peace.”

Comparing a CGI droid battle to one of the greatest novels ever written proves that Lucas has simply lost his mind. No wonder his movies are so boring now (I fell asleep during Phantom Menace and had to be woken up by one of the 12 year olds I took to see it).