Author: Brian Carnell

Anti-HLS Activists Pleads Guilty to Death Threats, Child Porn

British animal rights activist Robert Moaby plead guilty this week to four counts of making death threats against people connected with Huntingdon Life Sciences and 17 counts related to the distribution and possession of child pornography which was found on Moaby’s computer after British police effected a search warrant of his residence.

Moaby had sent death threats to executives at the Bank of New York and the AIM Fund Management, both of which have been targeted by Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty for their connections with Huntingdon Life Sciences.

Detective Constable Tim Duffin told The Times of London,

Some of these e-mails were quite terrifying. They contained almost all the profanities you could think of and threats of sexual assault.

Moaby sent them saying he was representing SHAC, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty. The threats were very time specific and would say things along the line of ‘you will die this week.’

The targets of these threats lived in the United States and they informed the FBI who in turn passed along information about the threats to Scotland Yard which arrested Moaby on June 21, 2001. Moaby is scheduled to be sentenced on July 22.

Source:

Animal rights activist hoarded child porn. The Times (London), June 18, 2002.

Salon.Com and John Dean Chicken Out

After promising for weeks that it would publish a stunning e-book by John Dean that would finally out Watergate source Deep Throat, Salon.Com and Dean chickened out.

Dean was going to name White House Attorney Jonathan Rose, but Salon apparently feared a lawsuit from Rose and Dean claims a source told him at the last minute that Rose was definitely not Deep Throat.

So Dean’s book concludes that Deep Throat is Pat Buchanan. Or maybe press secretary Ron Zielger. And if not those two, then maybe White House aide Ray Price. Or possibly White House aide Steven Bull.

A better explanation — Woodward and Bernstein created Deep Throat as a literary device (which would better explain why the information supplied by Deep Throat was often erroneous).

The Immune System and Soy Formula

Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences threw more flame on the fire over the safety of soy-based products.

Researchers reported that infants who drink soy-based formula are exposed to 200 times as much genistein — a hormone-like compound — than are children who consume either breast milk or cow’s milk. The total amount of genistein from soy-based infant formula was 10 times that amount that an adult on a diet high in soy products would be exposed to.

Why should anyone care? Because genistein has been linked to suppression of the immune system in animals. Mice who were injected genistein saw an 80 percent decrease in the size of their thymus and an 86 percent reduction in the production of immune cells. Results were not quite so dramatic when mice were given genistein in their diet, but even in those mice the thymus size declined by 10 to 25 percent.

The researchers recommended that,

In light of our present results and other work suggesting potential immune, reproductive, and endocrine effects, the use of soy formula for infant nutrition and high soy/isoflavone intake by adults through the use of supplements needs to be approached with caution.

As I’ve said before, research in this area is intriguing but far from convincing. Much more research on soy in both animals and human beings will eventually clear up the situation, but in the meantime the evidence that soy-heavy diets are potentially harmful is sparse at best.

Source:

Soy-based infant formulas may hinder immune system. Rachael Moeller, Scientific American, May 21, 2002.

India: Hindu Nationalism and Animal Rights

Right-wing Hindu nationalism in India is forcing a number of changes in the use of animals in medical research, food and consumer products.

In May, Indian officials announced they were planning on labeling all cosmetics and personal hygiene products as to whether or not they were “vegetarian.” This came after officials had early proposed labeling medicines as to whether or not they were “vegetarian.” That proposal was ultimately rejected on the grounds that almost all medicine would have to be labeled “non-vegetarian” and might discourage strict vegetarians from accepting them.

But medical research in India has nonetheless been hampered by India’s Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act which centralized the ability to approve or deny experiments involving animals to a single committee chaired by Indian animal rights activist and welfare minister Maneka Gandhi.

A series of laws passed in the late 1990s further granted this Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals the sole power to import large animals. The result is that conducting medical research in India has to go through a number of time-consuming steps that has resulted in a drastic decline in the amount of research being conducted in the subcontinent.

When Gandhi is not busy blocking medical research, she is campaigning for Indians to abandon milk using the same sort of specious arguments cited by folks like Neal Barnard and Robert Cohen in the United States.

Gandhi and others don’t mince words about the purpose of such policies, which is explicitly to counteract fears of a growing Westernization of India. But India is not simply rejecting overt Westernization but rather it is turning its back on modernity in order to appeal to Hindus.

Nothing illustrates that more than the announcement in May that in a country with food problems and high levels of poverty, the Defense Ministry, which had been hit by bribery scandals a year earlier, would devote significant resources to translating an ancient Hindu military text that included folk recipes to make military assets invisible and invulnerable, and allow soldiers to see in the dark.

India Defense Minister George Fernandes actually claimed in all seriousness that information in the text included a recipe for a food substance that would feed a soldier for an entire month on a single serving!

India’s government appears to have abandoned all sense and reason, preferring instead to cater to right wing Hindu voters. Its increasingly tight regulation of animal industries is simply one symptom of that.

Sources:

Maneka kills research. The Economic Times of India, May 22, 2002.

India fashion ‘goes vegetarian’. Jill McGivering, The BBC, May 11, 2002.

India defence looks to ancient text. Shaikh Azizur Rahman, The BBC, May 14, 2002.

The Problem with Islam and Jerry Fallwell

The Rev. Jerry Falwell’s in the news again for supporting a Southern Baptist preacher who attacked Islam’s founder for being a “demon-possessed pedophile.” Rev. Jerry Vines, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, blamed religious pluralism in the United States for our nation’s many problems (what problems?) Vines said,

They would have us believe that Islam is just as good as Christianity. Christianity was founded by the virgin-born son of God, Jesus Christ. Islam was founded by Muhammad, a demon-possessed pedophile who had 12 wives, the last one of which was a 9-year-old girl.

. . .

And I will tell you Allah is not Jehovah, either. Jehovah’s not going to turn you into a terrorist.

And it’s not just Islam that Southern Baptist presidents have problems with. In 1987, former Southern Baptist president Bailey Smith told an audience that, “God almighty doesnÂ’t hear the prayer of a Jew.”

The real problem with Fallwell, Vines, et al is that they agree with the single worst aspect of Islam in completely rejecting secularism and a strict separation between church and state.

Source:

Anti-Muslim Remarks Stir Tempest Leading Evangelicals Back Baptist Preacher. Alan Cooperman, The Washington Post, June 20, 2002.

Newsflash: Fast Food Unhealthy! (Who Knew?)

My hometown paper, the Kalamazoo Gazette, had a small front space on the front page to fill so they rewrote an Associated Press story which in turn simply rewrote a press release from an advocacy group with an astonishing finding — it turns out that fast food isn’t good for you.

Now I know most of you think that when you order a Big Mac, a Supersized Fry and Coke that this is the ideal meal, but the folks at the National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity somehow learned that all of those supersized fast food value meals are in fact just loaded with excessive calories, fat and salt.

Moreover, those dastardly McDonald’s and Burger King chains are actually making it cheaper to get supersized meals! Apparently they missed the memo explaining that, for the good of the nation, food should be priced as expensively as possible to save us from our own bad habits.

I know I’m changing my habits — no more McDonald’s and Burger King. Besides, the Dairy Queen is closer.