Month: January 2005

Nobel Prize Winner — Abortion Is Wrong

Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai was awarded the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, according to the Nobel committee, “for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.” Maathai also has strong opinions about abortion and Kenyan fathers who shirk their responsibility, denouncing both in strong language.

When it comes to abortion, Maathai, who is currently Kenya’s deputy minister of the environment, told Norway’s Dagen newspaper,

Both [the woman and the aborted fetus] are victims. There is no reason why anybody who has been conceived, shouldn’t be given the opportunity to be born and to live a happy life. The fact that a life like that is terminated, is wrong.

. . .

When we allow abortion, we are punishing the women — who must abort their children because their men have run away — and we are punishing the children whose life is terminated.

Maathai goes on to identify a particularly bizarre aspect of the Kenyan legal system that she believes drives women there to abortion. Under Kenyan law, mothers alone are responsible for the maintenance of children born out of wedlock. No, that’s not a misprint or an exaggeration — in Kenya, a man who fathers a child out of wedlock has no legally enforceable requirement to financially support that child.

Maathai told Dagen,

I want us to step back a little bit and say: Why is this woman and this child threatened? Why is this woman threatening to terminate this life? What do we need to do as a society? A part of that answer lies in this House [the Kenyan Parliament].

. . .

Now I think we are too lenient on men. We have almost given them a license to father children and not worry about them. That is part of the reason why women abort, because they do not want to be burdened with children whose fathers do not want to become responsible.

Source:

Abort er galt, sier Maathai. Jostein Sandsmark, Dagen, December 12, 2004.

“Abortion Is Wrong” says Nobel Prize Winner Maathai. LifeSiteNews.Com, December 7, 2004.

WFP to Wean China Off Food Aid — Another Lester Brown Prophecy of Doom Bites the Dust

After a five day visit to China, World Food Program executive director James Morris announced that his organization would no longer provide food aid to China. Noting China’s phenomenal economic progress over the past 25 years, Morris said that China no longer faces the sort of food insecurity problems that the WFP must, of necessity, focus its resources on.

Morris told the BBC,

Our job is to feed the hungriest, poorest people, wherever they are in the world. We are very focused on those countries that would be the least developed, that would have the greatest food security problem, and the least per capita income. China is no longer one of those countries.

Morris went on to add that, “China now has this extraordinary experience of how to move a large number of people out of hunger and poverty.”

Just don’t tell Lester Brown.

Back in 1995, Lester Brown wrote one in a long line of prophetic books about overpopulation, “Who Will Feed China? A Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet.” Published as a WorldWatch book, the plot was simple — China’s rapid growth in industrialization combined with its sky high population meant that China would soon need levels of grain imports that were simply impossible. After all, according to WorldWatch

Within a span of two years (1992-1994), China has gone from being a net grain exporter of 8 million tons to being a net importer of 16 million tons. China’s overnight emergence as a leading importer of grain, second only to Japan, is driving up world grain prices, promising to raise food prices everywhere, the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental research institute, said in a study released today.

Brown projected massive, unbelievable grain import demands from China. He suggested that simply to feed all of the chickens necessary to meet China’s demands for eggs by 2000 would require the equivalent in grain imports of the entire Australian production.

The reality, of course, was a bit different. China’s brief period as a net importer of grain turned out to be an anomaly. For example, other than 1994-95 and 1995-96 when it as a net importer of corn, China has been the second leading exporter of corn, behind only the United States.

Brown and others, as they always do, vastly underestimated the ability of China’s grain production capabilities.

Rather than China’s rapid industrialization and economic growth outstripping its ability to produce food, China, as Morris noted, “has built its capacity to address its own problems, it doesn’t need us any more.”

Brown made two fundamental errors of the type commonly made by prophets of doom. First, he assumed that very short trends — in this case, just over two years (!!) — represented long-term trends. Second, he assumed that the development model that Japan followed — rapid industrialization and population expansion that quickly created land shortages — would also be applicable to China, despite the obvious dissimilarities between the two (Brown might want to locate Japan and China on a map someday and compare and contrast the respective land mass of the two countries).

Source:

China ‘ no longer needs food aid’. The BBC, December 13, 2004.

UN Agency to Halt Food Aid to China. Benjamin Sand, NewsVOA.Com, December 14, 2004.

Future Directions for China’s Food Demand. Robert Wisner, AgDM Newsletter, November 2000.

Who Will Feed China:
Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet. Press Release, WorldWatch Institute, November 3, 1995.

PCRM Analysis Claims Merely Handling Dogs and Mice In Laboratories Is Cruel

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is hyping a report — its unclear if its simply a literature review or a bonafide metanalysis, though the former seems more likely — claiming that day-to-day activities in laboratories expose laboratory animals to undue stress and cruelty, rendering even non-invasive experiments cruel.

In a press release, PCRM summarized the findings of ethologist and PCRM member Jonathan Balcombe,

For example, a mouse who is picked up and briefly held experiences several physiological reactions. As stress-response hormones flood the bloodstream, the mouse exhibits a racing pulse and a spike in blood pressure. These symptoms can persist for up to an hour after each event. Immune response is also affected. In rats and mice, the growth of tumors is strongly influenced by how much the animals are handled.

The paper was published in the Autumn issue of Contemporary Topics in Laboratory Animal Science.According to Balcombe, this means all animal experiments are inherently cruel,

In essence, there is no such thing as a humane animal experiment. Fear or panic ensues when the animal is touched or stuck with a needle.

Source:

Animal Experiments More Stressful than Previously Recognized. Press Release, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, November 18, 2004.

My Life of Crime

I find this amusing, but it freaked out my wife today. I use a Nextel cellphone provided by my employer. I know very little beyond the basics about cellphone technology but I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon — everytime I walk through certain brands of theft prevention detectors at certain stores, my Nextel is apparently causing them to trigger.

This happens every single time I enter any of the local Office Max’s for example (I think OfficeMax uses ADT Sensor-Matic). The damn thing goes off coming and going, and the only consistent pattern is that it only happens when I have my Motorolo i60 with me.

It happens so often that I don’t even think about it anymore. So today my wife needs to go to OfficeMax to pick up some supplies. She’s walking behind me into the store when I realize she’s stopped and is about 5 feet behind me. Why has she stopped? Because the theft prevention system went off. Like I said, I tune it out at this point, so I didn’t even hear it, but she’s looking shell-shocked with a big WTF? all over her face.

I just shrug and say, “It’s the damn Nextel,” and keep going.

But now there’s a new twist. Almost immediately we’re being shadowed by store security. Some guy in a poorly fitting navy blue suit who looked about as inconspicuous as I would at a rave. He’s spying on us, but trying to pretend that he’s shopping. We’re in the store for about 15 minutes, and I swear this guy’s within 20 feet the whole time. It was hilarious.

So after a few minutes, I’m trying to work things into the conversation with my wife to give the guy the idea we really are shoplifters. Gee, honey, this is just like that time in Ohio when the police . . . oh wait, nevermind . . .

Even when we were in the checkout lane, we had the security guy and about 2 store employees hanging back apparently frantically discussing whether or not they were going to stop us or just let us go. Apparently they decided they didn’t have enough to warrant stopping us, and we left.

Not, of course, before the Nextel set off the detectors on the way out. Now if I’d have been alone, I probably would have started on a sprint as soon as the system went off just to screw with them, but Lisa wouldn’t go for that.

In summary — wow, what an effective antitheft system OfficeMax has. I wouldn’t be putting too much of my portfolio into ADT stock if I were you.

Women In United Arab Emirates Sentenced to Flogging and Imprisonment for Becoming Pregnant Out of Wedlock

Amnesty International recently reported that two foreign women working as servants in the United Arab Emirates were ordered flogged after they became pregnant out of wedlock in that country.

Rad Zemah Sinyaj Mohammed, of India, was sentenced to 150 lashes to be administered over two flogging sessions. She will then be deported back to India.

Wasini bint Sarjan, of Indonesia, was sentenced to 100 lashes and a year in jail, after which she too will be deported back to her home country of Indonesia.

Both women are currently pregnant, and Muslim Shari’a law forbids the flogging of pregnant or nursing women. Instead the court will appoint a medical officer to determine when the women have given birth and/or weaned their respective children, at which point the sentence will be carried out.

Amnesty International notes that the UAE is a party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women which prohibits gender-based violence, including torture, but since the UAE also uses flogging to punish men, its unclear how that convention would apply to this case.

Amnesty International also claims that criminalizing private sexual conduct penalize women more than men, but does not elaborate on how or why this is the case.

It is really quite simple, though — criminal punishment of adult men or women for consensual, non-marital sex is barbaric. The use of flogging further ratchets up (or down) the level of barbarity involved here.

Source:

United Arab Emirates. Amnesty International, December 23, 2004.

PETA Criticizes Animal Planet Over Depictions of Animal Predation

As long time watchers of the organization probably realize by now, there is simply no absurdity which People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals will refuse to embrace in the furtherance of this cause. PETA is currently unhappy with cable television’s “Animal Planet” because of a new series which uses technology to provide viewers with a unique, vivid look at predators.

The series, “Spy on the Wild,” involves placing miniaturized cameras on animals and then recording what they do naturally. The Los Angeles Times sums up what viewers see in a “Spy on the Wild” episode on peregrine falcons,

In “Spy on the Wild,” the falcon takes off and glides in “Matrix”-style slow motion, in death defying barrel rolls. A miniature camera attached to the bird’s neck shows the ground rushing up.

Then the image dives underwater to a close-up of a shrimp’s claw. The force of this claw is so great, says the narrator, that it momentarily boils the water when it slams onto prey.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals would apparently prefer that shows like this simply not be made. The Los Angeles Times quotes PETA’s Laura Brown saying (emphasis added),

When animals are portrayed as violent creatures, it encourages animal cruelty. No animal should ever be used simply for entertainment, particularly when you have to strap cameras to their backs or attach bulky devices.

Presumably, peregrine falcons and other predators should only be shown in their natural environment munching on tofu or perhaps queing up to order a veggie burger.

Source:

Animal planet bares its competitive teeth. Charles Duhigg, Los Angeles Times, January 2, 2005.