Brian Carnell – Page 1969 – Brian.Carnell.Com

Thoughts Conceived While Sick on the Couch

I left work early today with some sort of virus. Spent most of the afternoon moaning on the couch (temperature was up to 103 degrees before I took some medication). Stupid viruses. Unfortunately I’m overseeing a meeting at work tomorrow that I absolutely have to be there to make sure it goes off without a hitch. Then more couch time.

After the week-long downtime I was worried that it might take a while for the traffic to pick up again. In fact, traffic has been through the roof since Seth got everything back online again. There are some excellent conversations going on at AnimalRights.Net where there about 80-100 new posts every day now.

In fact my server at a whole is quickly approaching the point where it will have more than 60,000 messages. I remember when I was first considering using Conversant asking if it would scale to active sites with large messagebases and high daily traffic. And the answer has been overwhelmingly yes as Seth has made a lot of progress on optimizing the software.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Ants?

The Los Angeles Times wrote a profile this week of Milton Levine who, in 1956, created a novelty craze with his Uncle Milton Ant Farm. Since 1956, Levine’s company has sold more than 20 million ant farms and sales for the product are still strong.

The reporter decided to call People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for their take on ant farms, and PETA’s Stephanie Boyles obliged with the following,

Ants are sentient beings, like we are, and have a right to life like we do, and they shouldn’t be shown the level of disrespect the producers of ant farms show them. We can learn about ants without having an ant farm. Kids end up getting tired of them and they perish.

Usually anti-animal rights folks are told that they are being disingenous when they claim that animal rights will inevitably be pushed to its logical outcome of granting insects and other very primitive life forms rights. It is nice to see PETA admit that it thinks even ants are “sentient beings” like us and should be accorded rights.

Source:

Creator of the Ant Farm Finds That His Tiny Workers Can Still Pull Their Weight. David Kelly, Los Angeles Times, August 5, 2002.

The Reality of Animal Rights Terrorism Is More Interesting than the Parody

LancasterOnline.Com staff writer Ryan Robinson recounted a bizarre example of poor ethics at the American Egg Board. The editor of Nutrition Up-Close — which is a publication of the American Egg Board — took a parody story about the Animal Liberation Front and ran the story in his newsletter as if it were true.

The editor, Donald J. McNamara, claims that he ran the parody on purpose to demonstrate how desensitized people have become to ALF-style actions. Robinson writes,

The editor of Nutrition Close-Up said he lifted it from a satirical piece on the www.theonion.com Web site. He purposely ran the bogus news, he said, so he could follow it up with a commentary in an upcoming issue about the public’s desensitization toward such misdeeds by activists.

“I’ve only gotten two calls since the article ran, including yours,” Close-Up Editor Donald J. McNamara said, citing that fact as support for his theory. “It amazes me that with places being burned down and firebombed by animal rights groups, the public has become immune to that.

“Without public outrage to these things anymore, we allow people who use these tactics to achieve their goals.”

Robinson goes on to suggest a lame “ARAs and the ag. industry should try to find common ground”, but avoids the obvious that running a parody from The Onion as fact is the sort of unethical tactic that the American Egg Board would loudly condemn if animal rights activists pulled this sort of stunt.

The way to beat the animal rights movement is to take the high road and avoid engaging in such ridiculous tactics. McNamara could have reprinted plenty of accurate stories about AR terrorist attacks, such as the smoke grenades set off in a pair of Seattle office buildings in July. Running a fake story on purpose does not do much to inspire confidence in future claims by the American Egg Board.

Credibility is a commodity that is hard to acquire. The American Egg Board and other groups shouldn’t be so quick to call their credibility into question.

When people see Photoshopped pictures at VegSource.Com they are right to be skeptical of things that appear on the site. And people will now be asking whether the American Egg Board is playing it straight or bending the rules to make a point.

Source:

Moos on the loose: 71,000 cows freed from “human captors?’. Ryan Robinson, New Era (Lancaster)/LancasterOnline.Com, August 5, 2002.

Moby Doesn't Use Products Tested In Animals — Not!

On AR-NEWS an animal rights activist conveniently posted an excerpt from a book, Teen People: Real Life Diaries, which features a section by techno artist Moby explaining his reason for being a vegan and what that entails. According to Moby,

IÂ’ve been a proud vegan for fourteen years, since I was twenty-one. That means I donÂ’t eat meat or chicken or even fish (they have feelings too). And I donÂ’t eat products that come from animals, like milk (unless, of course, itÂ’s soy milk) or cheese. As you can probably guess, you wonÂ’t catch me wearing leather or fur. But thatÂ’s not all. I also refuse to buy products that have been tested on animals.

Really? That’s interesting because in early January of this year Moby was attacked by a stray cat he came across in New York City and was briefly hospitalized. According to numerous reports on the incident, Moby received a tetanus shot and antibiotics while hospitalized — all products which were extensively tested in animals.

Apparently in Moby’s book all animals are equal, some — such as pop singers — are just more equal than others.

Source:

Moby: The Voracious Vegan. Excerpts from TEEN PEOPLE Real Life Diaries. by Moby, as told to Linda Friedman.

Moby ends up in hospital after stroking stray cat. Ananova, January 4, 2002.

Alan Caruba on U.S. Double Standards

The usual suspects were up in arms recently when Israel (appropriately) killed terrorist leader Salah Shehade. The action was roundly criticized because Shehade happened to be staying in Gaza among civilians and the same attack that killed Shehade also killed several children.

Of course under the rules of war, it is Shehade who is responsible for those deaths since he choose to cowardly and illegally conceal himself among a civilian population while being an enemy combatant. But, of course, this is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so the tragic death of civilians killed as a side effect of a legimater military action will always trump the hundreds of civilians that Shehade intentionally targeted (he was responsible, among other things, for a suicide bomb attack on a Sbarro’s).

The odd thing was that the United States also deigned to criticize the attack as “heavy handed”? Huh? Alan Caruba notes,

The U.S. called the action “heavy-handed.” An odd rebuke from a nation that killed more than 600 and wounded thousands of civilians during its pursuit of Noriega in Panama. This from a nation that bombed a neighborhood in Somalia, killing more than a thousand civilians, after it lost fifteen soldiers. When we invaded Afghanistan, the “collateral damage,” i.e., civilians, was simply the cost of war. However, if Israel, in its effort to defend itself, kills the leader of Hamas Al-Qassam Brigade, the whole world joins in the condemnation of the action.

Since he doesn’t seem to read much, maybe somebody should screen Blackhawk Down for Bush.

The Corruption/Hunger Chart

Here’s a little chart I put together to highlight the connection between corruption and hunger in Africa. While the FAO and World Food Program end up asking for tens of millions of dollars in Western aid to feed Africa every year, estimates of money lost to corruption in Africa every year are in excess of US $100 billion.

Country	Corruption	Food Insecurity Problems
Angola	US $1 billion in 2001 oil revenues “missing”(FAO appeals for $5.2 million aid)	1.4 million people need “urgent assistance” (FAO)
Malawi	Corrupt government officials sold 160,000 tons of grain last Fall; $8 million in European Union aid diverted — EU demanded return of the money in July 2002 (FAO appeals for $1.6 million aid)	168,000 families at risk (FAO)
Swaziland	$2 million aid diverted for down payment on $55 million presidential jet (FAO appeals for $1.4 million aid)	21,000 families at risk (FAO)
Zambia	Ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world by Transparency International; hundreds of millions stolen in the 1990s (FAO appeals for $2.6 million aid)	62,000 families at risk (FAO)
Zimbabwe	President orders seizure of white-owned farms, causing food crisis; millions $ US aid money missing (FAO appeals for $16 million aid)	600,000 families at risk (FAO)