Month: June 2003

Animal Rights Group Displeased at Being Target of Law Enforcement

Rocky Mountain Animal Defense, a Boulder, Co.-based animal rights group, was none too pleased to learn in May that Denver police had maintained a file on the group going back to 2001.

The existence of the file was revealed as the result of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Denver Polie Department. After the ACLU announced its lawsuit in March and made public several pages it had obtained from secret police files, Denver Mayor Wellington E. Webb announced that the Denver Police Department had maintained files on as many as 3,200 individuals and more than 200 organizations.

Rocky Mountain Animal Defense director David Crawford told the Rocky Mountain News, “They have absolutely no reason to believe we are involved in criminal activity.” The Rocky Mountain News noted, however, that “members [of the group] have been arrested for acts of civil disobedience.”

The file on the group included everything from a notice of a 2001 garage sale to benefit the group, to notes from meetings that the Denver Police Department infiltrated. One such report included the license plate numbers of cars parked outside the meeting.

University of Colorado police Lt. Tim McGraw, whose department passed on items about the animal rights group to the Denver Police Department, said that even though the group itself may not have been engaged in illegal activities, police often follow such groups because individuals who do not act within the law may be attracted to their meetings.

McGraw told the Rocky Mountain News, “There are some people who attach themselves to these groups who have less than lawful intent.”

In fact, the Rocky Mountain News reported that several of the surveillance reports claimed that, “RMAD members and associates are suspects in the arson in Vail, Co., [claimed by the Earth Liberation Front] and of several other similar arson fires on facilities that had sponsored prairie dog shoots.”

Crawford maintains that although the group opposed the Vail project, it had nothing to do with the arson and adds that, “Because we were protesting, they considered us suspects.”

Source:

‘Spy’ report irks group. Berney Morson, Rocky Mountain News, May 20, 2003.

ACLU of Colorado Files Class Action Lawsuit Challenging Denver Police Spyfiles on Peaceful Protest Activities. Press Release, American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, March 28, 2002.

Sentencing of "Vegan" Couple Brings Out the Nutcases in New York

May 2003 saw the weird denouement of one of the odder episodes tangentially related to animal rights — the sentencing of a couple who nearly starved to death their young daughter on what they considered to be a vegan diet.

Joseph and Silva Swinton fed their daughter only ground nuts, fruit juice, herbal tea, cod liver oil and a liquid mixture of potatoes, sweet potatoes, plantains and fresh vegetables. At fifteen months, the child weighed only 10 pounds

Because of the way child abuse laws are written in New York, the couple were charged with assault against their daughter rather than child abuse, and a jury convicted both Swinton’s on April 4, 2003.

Now most vegans and vegetarians who commented on this case tended to take the line that a) these people were clearly not feeding their daughter a vegan diet (cod liver oil is clearly not vegan), and b) the diet the Swinton’s fed their daughter was not deficient because it was vegan but because the Swinton’s clearly didn’t know what they were doing.

But in New York, several advocates of vegetarianism came out to declare that the prosecution of the Swinton’s was nothing else than the manifestation of an anti-vegetarian/vegan prejudice.

The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a Brooklyn minister, told New York Newsday,

There is a prejudice against people who practice alternative lifestyles as it relates to food and medicine. . . .I think that these are parents who were engaged in an attempt to provide what they thought was best for their baby. My concern is that justice prevail and mercy be shown.

Newsday also reported that Delois Blakely, a Harlem-based activist (and apparent admirer of the Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe), passed out fliers at the Uptown Juice Bar in Harlem that asked,

Was the Swinton family the sacrificial lamb for the District Attorney’s denouncement of the vegetarian community?

Apparently the jury and judge in the case was a bit more swayed by the horrific condition of the child who, when removed from the Swintons’ custody, had no teeth and was so weak she could not move her arms or legs. Silva Swinton was sentenced to 6 years in jail and Joseph Swinton, owing to his below-average IQ, received a 5-year sentence.

Sources:

Prison for Vegans. Herbert Lowe, New York Newsday, May 20, 2003.

Claims of bias in vegan case. Ron Howell, New York Newsday, May 14, 2003.

Anacapa Island Likely Free of Black Rats, Finally

Officials with the Channel Islands National Park announced in May that they believe Anacapa Island is now free of black rats after an eradication project that cost upwards of $1 million. Kate Faulkner, chief of natural resources management at the park, added that it would not be until 2004, however, until biologist could make the official determination that the black rat had been eradicated.

Anacapa Island is an important island for a number of species, including the rare Xantus? murrelet. The murrelet population was threatened by the rats who would eat the murrelet eggs. The rats were introduced to the island sometime before 1940, likely by a wrecked ship.

The American Trader Trustee Council used money it won as compensation for a 1990 oil spill, and which had to be used for restore seabird populations, to pay for the eradication.

But before it could get off the ground, the eradication effort had to overcome opposition from animal rights activists who offered a number of objections to the plan, ranging from claims that the poison to be used was cruel since it kills by causing internal bleeding to claims that a species of deer mice that is found on the island should be declared endangered.

In October 2001 the Fund for Animals and the Channel Islands Animal Protection Association filed a lawsuit arguing that the eradication plan had not adequately taken into account the effects of deer mice and birds eating the poison pellets. That lawsuit was dismissed by a federal court in December 2001 and Phase I of the eradication plan, which targeted the eastern part of the island, was put into effect.

Phase II, which targeted the middle and western part of the island, was conducted last fall.

Source:

Anacapa Island’s black rats killed off. David Montero, Ventura County Star News, May 22, 2003.

Dave Winer Does Not Understand Weblogs

Seriously, anyone who would write this,

Amazingly, Glenn Reynolds is still covering the war. Seems like an exercise in futility. In its aftermath, of what use were the warbloggers. A lot of punditry, a lot of furor and outrage, quite a few flames, but what did they actually do other than act important. They got no stories, no new data, they didn’t balance the press, which reported the war as if the US was a petty Third World dictatorship. They didn’t even out the press. Pheh.

. . . clearly does not understand what a weblog is or why people weblog.

This is a perfect example of a BigEgo at BigEd simply dismissing the amateurs.

Apparently making the world safe (but still not in Google) for his BigPub partners is where the action is really at these days. Oy.

Which reminds me — is the New York Times really so clueless that is tech folks can’t figure out ways to make their archives accessible to Google for indexing but not to real users? Yes, that could be spoofed, but I’d imagine few users would have the technical know-how to do so — they’d benefit far more from having their archives indexed in Google than they would lose from the few people who would actively go around their archive system posing as Google.

In fact, frankly, I’m surprised Google hasn’t worked with such content providers to find a solution to just that problem.

Time for a Medal for Richard Jewell

Watching the news coverage of the capture of Eric Rudolph, I had exactly the same thoughts that Mike Downey noted in the Chicago Tribune — can we now finally give Richard Jewell a medal or something?

After all, Jewell’s heads up attention to detail and quick action in beginning the evacuation of the Olympic Park back in 1996 certainly saved many lives. And in return for this, Jewell’s life was basically ruined by the FBI and the media who effortlessly switched from a “Jewell as hero” script to a “Jewell as pathetic loner because he lives with his mother” script (and some of these folks complain that weblogs can’t be trusted because there’s no editor or organization ensuring people don’t go off on wild speculation.)

Jewell did receive $500,000 from NBC and still has a lawsuit pending against the bastards at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution who actually compared him to convicted child serial killer Wayne Williams (who also lived with his mother). If you want to see an example of “journalism” at its very worst, Jewell’s complaint against the Journal-Constitution is a great place to start — the paper even claimed that Jewell had contacted them for interviews and additional publicity which was completely untrue. Jayson Blair would have fit in well there.