Author: Brian Carnell

Indiana Poultry Plant Targeted by Arson

In the early morning hours of Friday, May 3, somebody tried but failed to set off a series of explosions at the Sims Poultry Co. in Bloomington, Indiana. The plant has a history of being targeted by animal rights activists.

The culprit rigged a refrigerated truck to explode and connected that truck to several others nearby with a trail of gasoline. The refrigerated truck exploded, but the other trucks failed to catch fire. Police and fire officials were called to the scene and extinguished the fire quickly.

Sims Poultry has been the target of animal rights extremism in the past. In 1993 a man was arrested for painting slogans such as “ALF” and “Meat is murder” in the dock area of the poultry plant, and the method used is consistent with previous Animal Liberation Front attacks as well as with techniques included in ALF-related guides available for download from the Internet.

Source:

No one has claimed responsibility. Paula Freund, Herald-Times (Indiana), May 4, 2002.

Authorities say blast at poultry plant was deliberate. Hoosier Times, May 5, 2002.

Explosions investigated at Sims Poultry. Bethany Swaby, Hearld-Times (Indiana), May 3, 2002.

Lawyer Who Cowed McDonald's Goes After Pizza Hut

Fresh from winning a settlement with McDonald’s over whether or not its french fries were vegetarian or not, Seattle attorney Harish Bharti is now looking to target Pizza Hut’s Veggie Lover’s pizza.

Bharti’s proposed lawsuit claims that Pizza Hut “intentionally market their pizza to the vegetarian community, knowing full well that the foods are not vegetarian.”

As with the lawsuit against McDonald’s, Bharti’s suit is weak but Pizza Hut might choose to settle, like McDonald’s did, for the public relations value of doing so. The problem is that the word “vegetarian” has a very loose meaning which Bharti himself illustrates when criticizing Pizza Hut. According to Bharti,

While they claim it’s a vegetarian product, they have a beef product in their cheese.

Cheese? The last time I checked, that was also an animal product.

As with the McDonald’s case, if there is any beef byproduct in the pizzas (and Pizza Hut claims there is not), it is used as a flavoring in the pizza sauce. Given that, for Bharti, vegetarians include people who eat animal products such as cheese, I don’t think Pizza Hut would face much of a challenge demonstrating that products which contain small amounts of beef byproducts for flavoring could nonetheless be described as vegetarian, and that consumers interested in products without any animal byproducts should be looking for those labeled as vegan.

Source:

Lawsuit claims ‘Veggie Lover’s’ pizza contains a ‘beef product’. Sam Skolnik
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 2, 2002.

Charles Eicher on Userland Support

Charles Eicher’s weblog was apparently going to contain a story about his role in the Rodney King trial this week. Instead, it has been devoted to chronicling yet another Dave Winer eruption.

The thing I will never understand is how Winer can be so arrogant even when it is his company that is at fault. Is it really surprising that when you have an outage going on for 7 days and a relatively buggy, inefficient application, that people’s tempers are gonig to flair? But Winer’s only reply seems to be that users should help themselves (i.e., $40/pop for Radio is not a good model for supporting a product).

Doesn’t Winer realize that he’s cutting his own throat, here? Just as I was dissuaded from going with a dedicated Manila server after one of Winer’s eruptions a couple years ago, so potential Userland customers are sitting back going “Holy shit, why would we want to have a business relationship with that guy?”

HSUS Honors Ex-Klansman

The Humane Society of the United States recently held a gala in honor of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.) and bestowed upon the senator a lifetime achievement award.

According to the HSUS’s Wayne Pacelle,

What distinguishes Sen. Byrd is his oratory. He took to the floor with criticism of abuse of animals, of factory farming, of forced molting . . . I do not believe any other senator has ever come to the floor to speak out about those issues.

Oh yes, Byrd is quite an orator. In 1964, Byrd used his powerful oratory skills to filibuster the 1964 Civil Rights Act for more than 14 hours.

All par for the course for a man who originally used his oratory skills in the 1940s as a recruiter or the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1946, Byrd wrote a letter to then-Mississippi Sen. Theodore Bilbo saying,

Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.

And, of course, although Byrd is now a respectable member of the Democratic Party, he seems to occasionally have trouble letting go of his racist views such as his comments to Fox News back in March 2001 that,

There are white niggers. I’ve seen a lot of white niggers in my time; I’m going to use that word.

Of course, Byrd is an ideal candidate for HSUS to adopt as their champion. Anybody that stupid should have no problem swallowing the contradictions and lies emanating from Pacelle’s cronies.

Source:

Group calls Byrd a ‘real champion’ for animal rights. Karin Fischer, Charleston Daily mail, April 30, 2002.

The Reciprocity Principle (Or, Do Unto Others . . .)

With the ongoing problems at Userland, some Radio Userland users are starting to post some rather uncomplimentary things about Userland and Dave Winer. Winer, on the other hand, is apologizing and asking for patience,

I apologize for this on behalf of the whole company. The outage is something we have to deal with, and we did a far less than perfect job doing that. Our next efforts are going to be focused on assuring the security of the servers, so we may not immediately be responsive to user-level questions. Please try, if you can, to help each other out, and if possible, give us the benefit of the doubt. Thanks.

The problem for Userland, of course, is that Winer himself rarely gives people the benefit of the doubt. In fact he seems stuck in blame-the-messenger mode when dealing with people who point out bugs or other problems with Userland software.

So when he asks people to “gives us the benefit of the doubt,” I don’t think he’s going to find much sympathy. Hint to Userland: don’t poison your well.

High Yield Conservation Coalition

A coalition of individuals involved with global food issues has issued a declaration calling for more research into high-yield farming and forestry methods in order to provide better food security for the developing world as well as avoid cultivation of environmentally-sensitive ecosystems.

Nobel Peace Prizes winners Norman Borlaug and Oscar Arias have joined with former U.S. Sen. George McGovern, former Greenpeace activist Patrick Moore, James Lovelock and others in support of the “Declaration in Support of Protecting Nature with High-yield Farming and Forestry.” The declaration reads, in part,

Therefore, we, the signatories to this declaration, hereby declare that additional high-yield practices, based on advances in biology, ecology, chemistry, and technology, are critically needed in agriculture and forestry not only to achieve the goal of improving the human condition for all peoples but also the simultaneous preservation of the natural environment and its biodiversity through the conservation of wild areas and natural habitat.

We invite all organizations and individuals concerned with human welfare and the conservation and preservation of our planet’s rich biological heritage to join us in support of high-yield agriculture and forestry by adding their names to this declaration.

Center for Global Food Issues director Dennis Avery writes in a column for TechCentralStation.Com, that the alternative to high-yield agriculture and forestry is environmental destruction,

The leader of the new coalition is Dr. Norman Borlaug, the Iowa plant breeder who won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Green Revolution. He and his fellow researchers saved a billion people from starving during the 1960s. But Borlaug was also the first to note (in 1986) that the higher crop yields saved billions of acres of wildlands from being plowed down for low-yield food. Today, the total of wildlands saved by high yield farming has risen to at least 12 million square miles (not acres), equal to the total land area of the United States, Europe, and South America. (Or 3,400 Yellowstone National Parks.)

Large amounts of land that is currently wilderness will have to be put into production if yields should taper off. It is good to see somebody fighting to avoid that possibility.

Source:

Declaration in Support of Protecting Nature with High-yield Farming and Forestry. Center or Global Food Issues, 2002.

High yield heroes. Dennis Avery, TechCentralStation.Com, April 30, 2002.