Apparently "Holocaust On Your Plate" Isn't Shocking Enough

On August 6 a story appeared in the Spokesman Review (Spokane) newspaper chronicling the appearance of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animal’s “Holocaust On Your Plate” display which appeared at the Spokane County Courthouse for a day.

The reporter sent to write a story on the exhibit described the display thusly,

One panel shows a large photo of emaciated Jewish prisoners on one side; a picture of a cow with its ribs showing is on the other. The words, “Walking Skeletons,” appears over the panel.

“During the seven years between 1938 and 1945, 12 million people perished in the Holocaust,” another panel reads. “The same number of animals is killed EVERY 4 HOURS for food in the U.S. alone.”

It encourages people to adopt a vegetarian diet “to help end this holocaust.”

Most commentary about the “Holocaust On Your Plate” display has focused on the shocking nature of the Holocaust imagery juxtaposed with imagery of animal slaughter. But apparently at least for one vegetarian who turned out to show her support, it wasn’t graphic enough. The Spokesman-Review reports (emphasis added),

“It’s about the only way you’re going to shock people out of the lethargy of meat eating,” said Chris [Anderlik, a local animal rights advocate], who eschews nearly all meat products. She said she occasionally eats the eggs of a friend’s pet chickens.

So it’s wrong for the rest of us to enjoy a nice steak, but this “vegetarian” can make a snack out of eggs stolen from this enslaved chicken? Fine, then I’m a vegetarian who occasionally eats a steak from my local restaurant’s pet cattle.

Source:

PETA exhibit shocks friends, foes alike with graphic images. Adam Lynn, The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Washington), August 6, 2003.

If You Liked John Kerry, You’ll Love Wesley Clark

Apparently Wesley Clark is running for president because the country needs a politician willing to change his positions even more frequently than John Kerry. Here’s Clark on Sept. 18 on whether or not he would have voted to go to war with Iraq,

I don’t know if I would have nor not. I’ve said it both ways because when you get into this, what happens is you have to put yourself in a position — on balance, I probably would have voted for it.

And on Sept. 19,

Let’s make one thing real clear, I would never have voted for this war.

This is consistent with Clark’s claims about that call he supposedly received on 9/11 telling him to connect Saddam Hussein to the attacks. Here’s Clark on NBC on June 15,

CLARK: There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein.”

RUSSERT: “By who? Who did that?”

CLARK: “Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, ‘You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.’ I said, ‘But–I’m willing to say it, but what’s your evidence?’ And I never got any evidence.”

Then a slightly different version on Hannity & Colmes, responding to a question about who specifically told him to connect 9/11 and Hussein,

CLARK: It came from many different sources, Sean.

HANNITY: Who? Who?

CLARK : And I personally got a call from a fellow in Canada who is part of a Middle Eastern think tank who gets inside intelligence information. He called me on 9/11.

HANNITY: That’s not the answer. Who in the White House?

CLARK: I’m not going to go into those sources.

Clark waited until July 18 to send a letter to the New York Times acknowledging that no one from the White House had called him,

I would like to correct any possible misunderstanding of my remarks on ‘Meet the Press’ quoted in Paul Krugman’s July 15 column, about ‘people around the White House’ seeking to link Sept. 11 to Saddam Hussein. I received a call from a Middle East think tank outside the country, asking me to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. No one from the White House asked me to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11. Subsequently, I learned that there was much discussion inside the administration in the days immediately after Sept. 11 trying to use 9/11 to go after Saddam Hussein. In other words, there were many people, inside and outside the government, who tried to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11.

Finally the Toronto Star has an article including quotes from the mysterious person from the Middle East think tank who made that call to Clark,

[Thomas] Hecht said he called Clark either Sept. 12 or Sept. 13 — not the morning of the attacks, as the former general said — but he merely passed on information he had received from Israel which drew a purported link. Hecht said Clark called him in Montreal Sept. 7 this year to clarify the conversation the two men had, perhaps in anticipation of the question being raised again as part of his campaign. “I told him the Begin-Sadat Centre is a center for strategic studies in Israel and has made various studies on the Iraqi threat to the state of Israel and therefore we have carried out analyses of what connection there could be between Saddam Hussein and other militant Islamic groups,” Hecht said. “I don’t know why I would be confused with the White House. I don’t even have white paint on my house,” he added. “I saw those comments he made and I just chuckled.”

In an appearance in Iowa, the New York Times reported that Clark seemed ready to run an Arnold Schwarzenegger-style campaign,

“I don’t know enough to give you a comprehensive answer at this point,” he said in response to a voter’s question about universal health insurance. What he did say, over and over, was how happy he was to be in Iowa. He exulted over the egg-white omelette a waitress put in front of him — “Now this is an Iowa breakfast!” — and complimented a woman’s overalls — “That’s a real Iowa outfit!” — and said, literally, “some of my best friends from the military are from Iowa.”

That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it. At least for the next few days.

Wow — It’s Cheaper to Kill than Create

Philip Greenspun has an idiotic essay in which he is apparently shocked that it is more expensive to build things and create wealth than it is to murder civilians.

If you wanted to have Greenspun assassinated, it would probably cost at most a couple thousand dollars — far less, I assume, than Greenspun chargers his employers. It doesn’t follow that Greenspun’s hypothetical killer his more efficient than he is.

Why Is Wesley Clark Running, Again?

Apparently Wesley Clark doesn’t realize that before he can become president he first has to win the Democratic Party nomination. Does Clark really think he’s going to have much chance winning Democratic primaries with stuff like this,

Clark, relaxed and chatty, portrayed himself as a different kind of Democrat, one without strong partisan impulses. He said he “probably” voted for Richard M. Nixon in 1972 and backed Ronald Reagan. He did not start considering himself a Democrat until 1992, when he backed fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton. “He moved me,” Clark said. “I didn’t consider it party, I considered I was voting for the man.”

Hmmmm… Dean’s ahead of Kerry by 10 points in Iowa on an anti-war theme, so it’s hard to see the Democrats-for-Reagan movement really pulling one out there. On the other hand, most of his statements about Iraq are still a bit out there like this one,

“We are trapped in a jobless economy and an endless occupation” of Iraq, Clark told the crowd.

The U.S. occupation of Iraq is just a few months old and it’s already being characterized as “endless”? Sheesh. (How long before he backpedals and says a mysterious Middle East think tank made him say that?) Finally, Clark echoes another theme about the war that Joe Lieberman and others have also agreed with that I find perplexing,

Clark said his views on the war resemble those of Democratic Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) and John F. Kerry (Mass.), both of whom voted for the war but now question President Bush’s stewardship of the Iraqi occupation. “That having been said, I was against the war as it emerged because there was no reason to start it when we did. We could have waited,” Clark said during a 75-minute session with four reporters.

Okay, then when exactly would Clark, Lieberman, et al have gone to war? Would it have been better to wait four more years, for example, and risk the sanctions falling apart enabling Hussiein to better equip and arm his armed forces? I’d like to see a timetable from these folks on when the ideal time to have conducted this particular war would have been (other than the obvious answer which is when they were president rather than Bush). Given how ridiculously quick Iraq fell to American forces and the extremely low American casualty rate, this appears to have been the perfect time to have invaded Iraq. Source: Clark ‘Probably’ Would Have Backed War. Jim VandeHei, Washington Post, September 18, 2003.

To Offer Discussion Groups Or Not

One of my favorite weblogs, Boing! Boing! was rendered significantly less useful recently when the powers-that-be removed the discussion group feature which used QuickTopic.

There was no announcement that the discussion system would disappear, nor any explanation as to why, though there is a thread over at CoolTool.Com that speculates two of the problems that plague most discussion systems finally became too much to deal with for the Boing! Boing! folks — identity impersonators and idiot flamers.

When it comes to the identity impersonators, QuickTopic would put a star graphic next to administrators, so someone theoretically couldn’t post as Cory Doctorow — if it didn’t have the star next to his name, then it wasn’t Cory. But apparently someone figured out a way to spoof the star and posted some entries posting as Xeni Jardin. Establishing identity is still a major problem in most discussion systems.

As far as flaming goes, much of that was directed at Jardin, especially after the over-the-top coverage of SARS-related art. I though the SARS-related stuff was stupid, but hey, it’s their blog. But some posters acted as if Xeni’s stuff was the advent of the apocalypse.

The key to flamers, of course, is to simply ignore them. Life’s too short to waste time trying to moderate an active discussion system (except for the truly vile stuff). A distributed Slashdot-style moderation system with trusted users (rather than wide open as in Slashdot) might work, but when you’re stuck with something like QuickTopic, best to develop a thick skin and move on.

But the real problem is that even with the flames and the impersonators, the QuickTopic discussions were often as interesting and valuable as the weblog posts were. The site before and after the discussion group is like the difference between sitting through a lecture and participating in a small group discussion.

Michael James Scarpitti (AKA Tre Arrow) Remains Loose One Year Later

In August 2002 a Portland, Oregon grand jury indicted Michael James Scarpitti (AKA Tre Arrow) and three others for their role in a June 2001 arson attack at a logging company. Although Scarpitti was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted List in December 2002, so far Scarpitti has eluded capture.

Police in Tigard, Oregon, spent a couple hours in early August searching a wooded area near a mall after a man reported seeing Scarpitti in the area. The witness said he recognized Scarpitti from pictures in the media. The witness said Scarpitti was walking with another man, but the search was called off after two hours without finding the fugitive.

One of Scarpitti’s alleged accomplices, Jacob D.B. Sherman, plead guilty in December 2002 for his role in that and another fire, and will be sentenced in September. He is expected to receive about three-and-a-half years for the arson.

With Scarpitti on the run, Sherman apparently used the Tre-made-me-do-it defense, with The Oregonian reporting that,

Federal court papers indicate that Arrow helped mold Sherman in his likeness, radicalizing the younger man’s environmentalism. And aside from environmental beliefs, Sherman followed Arrow in adopting a vegan diet, shunning bathing and going barefoot.

Scarpitti was apparently in excellent physical health and used to spending days and even weeks at a time in trees to protest logging, so there is some speculation that he may be emulating recently captured fugitive Eric Rudolph in remaining as much as possible in wooded areas where he is less likely to be spotted.

There is a $25,000 reward for anyone who offers information leading to the capture of Scarpitti. People with such information should call their local FBI office.

Sources:

FBI still chasing Tre Arrow. Bryan Denson, The Oregonian, August 11, 2003.