Month: February 2004

Cuba Limits Free Speech to Protect People from Satanic Cults

Cuba received widespread condemnation in early January when it implemented a ban on ordinary Cubans using the Internet.

Under a law that went into effect on January 18, 2004, only people with special authorization from the government will be allowed to have Internet access.

Technically, access to the Internet in Cuba has always required government permission, but as many as 40,000 people have skirted the law to obtain unofficial access to the INternet. The new law is an attempt to crack down on such access so that Cuba can more closely monitor who is using the Internet and for what purposes they are using it.

As Amnesty International noted in a press release about the change,

The new measures, which limit and impede unofficial internet use, constitute yet another attempt to cut off Cubans’ access to alternative views and a space for discussing them. This step, coming on top of last year’s prosecution of 75 activists for peacefully expressing their views, gives the authorities another mechanism for repressing dissent and punishing critics.

But to be fair to Cuba, the government said it only had its people’s best interests at heart. As Friends of Cuban Libraries noted in a press release, Cuban officials offered up a number of justifications of the new law, including this:

In a letter to a New Zealand newspaper (Scoop, January 24),
the Cuban ambassador, Miguel Ramirez, described Amnesty International’s protest
as “totally biased and full of prejudices according to the values of western
and developed countries…,” and he defended Cuba’s new law as a reasonable
measure to “regulate access to [the] Internet and avoid hackers, stealing
passwords, [and] access to pornographic, satanic cults, terrorist or other
negative sites…”

I can understand why they wouldn’t want people to have access to satanic sites, though — after all, Castro’s getting a bit old for that sort of competition.

Sources:

Cuban law prohibiting Internet access to take effect. UNWire, January 15, 2004.

Cuba Says Internet Ban Deters “Satanic Cults”. Press Release, Friends of Cuban Libraries, January 27, 2004.

Cuba: Further bans on freedom of expression. Press Release, Amnesty International, January 12, 2004.

LRA Kills Almost 200 in Weekend Attack

Lord’s Resistance Army soldiers attacked a camp for displaced persons near Lira, Uganda, this weekend. According to the BBC, 190 of the estimated 4,000 people living in the camp were killed in the attack and many more were injured.

The BBC quoted MP Charles Angiro describing the attack,

The rebels came with sophisticated guns… and grenades. When they arrived at the camp at 5.30pm, they approached it from three fronts – from the north, east and south and left the western side for their exit. . . They bombed the camp… and overpowered the local defence forces and then started burning the huts.

Angiro complained that the army has not done enough to protect civilians in the area from the LRA, and that it had tried to downplay the extent of the casualities.

Angiro told the BBC that he counted at least 500 huts burned to the ground by the LRA.

Source:

Uganda rebels ‘burnt my family alive’. The BBC, February 23, 2004.

India Uses Low-Tech Method of Malaria Control: Fish that Eat Mosquitoes

An Indian malaria researcher recently reported on the success of initial pilot projects to use fish that eat mosquito larvae to control malaria.

This is a traditional method that was commonly used before the introduction of DDT in the 1950s and is once again being looked at as part of the solution to malaria.

The idea is to stock ponds, rivers and wells with fish like guppies that feed on the mosquito larvae. Dr. VP Sharma of the COuncil for Medical Research said that while the technique could not be used everywhere, in places where it was appropriate to use it had virtually eliminated a subspecies of malaria-carrying mosquito in some districts where mosquito-eating fish were introduced.

According to the BBC, Sharma credited the fish introduction program for India’s falling malaria rate which declined by about 200,000 cases per year after the program’s introduction. Sharma did add that, “It will take another five years before the real impact would be known” from the numerous fish introduction programs that the World Bank is underwriting.

Source:

Fish eat away at malaria in India. Richard Black, BBC, January 5, 2004.

South Asian Nations Sign Free Trade Pact

In January, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka signed a free trade zone agreement that will start to bring trade barriers between those countries down beginning in 2006.

The agreement calls on the most developed of these countries — Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka — to virtually eliminate tariffs with the other countries by 2013, but gives the other countries until 2016 to lower their tariffs. There is, however, a provision that allows countries to maintain a list of “sensitive” products on which tariffs can be maintained.

Beyond advancing the cause of free trade, the real importance of this pat is the shot in the arm it could give to trade between Pakistan and India. Currently, trade between the two rivals is estimated at about $1.5 billion. That could double under the free trade regimen. And, of course, the more the two countries become economically intertwined, the higher the cost (and hence, the lower the risk) of war between them.

According to the BBC, there are now more than 200 regional free trade agreements.

Sources:

South Asia ‘agrees to free trade’. The BBC, January 2, 2004.

South Asia signs free trade pact. Reuters, January 6, 2004.

In Defense of Animals Starts Letter Campaign Against Proposed Pro-Trapping Postage Stamp

On December 8, 2003, In Defense of Animals included this item in its weekly newsletter,

A pro-trapping postage stamp is currently under consideration by the U.S. Postal Service. The National Trappers Association (NTA) is pushing the stamp and if they go forward with their campaign to institute the pro-trapping stamp, the trappers will inundate the USPS with vocal requests for these stamps.

Each year approximately 10 million animals are trapped in the wild, so that they can be skinned for fur coats. The primary tools used by fur trappers are the following: leghold trap, the body grip (Conibear) trap, and the wire snare. Volumes of documentation proving that leghold traps mutilate wild animals, are non-selective in what they catch, and are a danger to companion animals and children.This is not something to be promoted on a stamp. Learn more about trapping here.

Contact the national Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee and ask it to deny any pro-trapping stamp requested by the NTA. Tell the Committee that the USPS should not promote animal cruelty.

But a couple weeks later, New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance activist Joe Miele posted a copy of a letter he had received from the USPS dated November 4, 2003, denying that the postal service had plans for a trapping stamp,

November 4, 2003

Dear Mr. Miele:

Thank you for your October 24 letters expressing your opposition to the
issuance of a stamp honoring trappers and animal trapping.

There are no plans to issue such a stamp as part of the annual stamp
program.

Each year the Postal Service receives thousands of letters suggesting
hundreds of different topics for new stamps. The Citizens’ Stamp Advisory
Committee was established in 1957 to review all suggestions and make
recommendations to the Postmaster General. Committee recommendations are
based on national interest, historical perspective, and other criteria. We
rely on the Committee to produce a balanced stamp program that touches on
all aspects of our heritage. Enclosed for your reference is the Creating
U.S. Postage Stamps brochure.

We appreciate your interest in our stamp program.

Sincerely,

Terrence W. McCaffrey
Manager
Stamp Development

If IDA wants to keep activists busy on a wild goose chase, more power to them.

Sources:

Trappers push pro-trapping postage stamp. Animal News Center, December 22, 2003.

E-Newsletter. In Defense of Animals, December 8, 2003.

USPS correspondence. Terrence W. McCaffrey, November 4, 2003.

Robin Webb on Animal Rights Terrorism

No Compromise recently ran a telling interview with Animal Liberation Front press officer Robin web about the roll of terrorism in the animal rights movement. Webb told the magazine (emphasis added),

The Animal Liberation Front, together with more radical groups such as the Animal Rights Militia and Justice Department, is the hard cutting edge of the war against abuse and exploitation of the weak and innocent, irrespective of gender, race or species.

. . .

The third policy is to take every reasonable precaution not to harm or endanger life, either human or non-human.

Anyone, so long as they follow at least a vegetarian—but preferably vegan—lifestyle, can go out and undertake an action that falls within those policies and claim it as the Animal Liberation Front. There is no hierarchy; there are no leaders. There is just a compulsion to follow your heart in pursuit of justice. That is why the A.L.F. cannot be smashed, it cannot be effectively infiltrated, it cannot be stopped. You, each and every one of you: you are the A.L.F.

And if someone wishes to act as the Animal Rights Militia or the Justice Department? Simply put, the third policy of the A.L.F. no longer applies.

As this web site has repeatedly said, it is incorrect to think of the ALF, ARM and Justice Department as groups. Instead they are little more than brand names for specific actions that are likely taken by overlapping group of activists.

Burn down a laboratory and nobody is injured? Claim it in the name of the ALF. Want to send razor blades to the homes of medical researchers? Fine, just make sure you label it as a Justice Department action.

Instead of thinking of these groups out there organizing to carry out activities, animal rights terrorism and extremism is better conceived as, in general, small groups of extremists who pick and choose a la carte from these brands depending on the outcome of their activities. There is no ALF dedicated to not harming people as opposed to an ARM that has no problem composing assassination lists. Instead there is simply a hardcore of animal rights extremism that picks and chooses these names for their own purposes.

In fact Webb and activist David Hammond were arrested in 1994 and charged with possession of a sawed-off shotgun. Later Hammond and Webb had a falling out, and The Observer reported in 1998 that,

Earlier, ALF defector David Hammond claimed Webb was the secret force behind the pro-killing group, the Justice Department. He said the outwardly respectable ALF spokesman had even offered him a sawn-off shotgun in a Sussex lay-by and asked if he knew Colin Blakemore – an Oxford professor who is at the top of the Justice Department’s hit-list.

Source:

Staying on target and going the distance: an interview with UK ALF Press Officer Robin Webb. No Compromise, Issue 22, Fall 2003.