More SHAC Activists Jailed in Great Britain

According to the North American Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network, three more activists affiliated with Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty have been jailed in Great Britain.

A December 7 ELP Bulletin said that Sarah Gisborne received 12 months in jail, and Jonny Able-White and Gillian Bradley each received 9 month sentences for criminal acts related to animal rights extremism.

Meanwhile, British animal rights activist Robin Webb is having difficulty obtaining release after his arrest at the December 1st protest against Huntingdon Life Sciences in the United States.

Webb was jailed on a $50,000 bond. Activists managed to raise the bond, but the court also demanded that Webb surrender his passport as well as furnish his birth certificate. As this writing, Webb has been unable to comply with the court’s requirements and so remains jailed.

Source:

Urgent ELP! Bulletin. North American Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network, Newsletter, December 7, 2002.

Center for Consumer Freedom on SHAC

The Center for Consumer Freedom published an excellent report this month on Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty’s recent protests against Huntingdon Life Sciences designed to coincide with the company’s 50th year in business (though, the activists got it wrong and it was, in fact, Huntingdon’s 51st anniversary).

The report included the following “unedited quotes, taken directly from videotapes of the recent SHAC protests,”

“Animal liberation is not a campaign. It is not a struggle. It is a war! It is an all-out bloody war!”
-Robin Webb

“As long as we emptied the labs of animals, they are still easily replaced. So that’s when the ALF in this country, and my cell, started engaging in arson.”
-Rodney Coronado

“We’re a new breed of activism. We’re not your parents’ Humane Society. We’re not Friends of Animals. We’re not Earthsave. We’re not Greenpeace. We come with a new philosophy. We hold the radical line. We will not compromise! We will not apologize, and we will not relent! Vivisection is not an abstract concept. It’s a deed, done by individuals, who have weaknesses, who have breaking points, and who have home addresses!”
-Kevin Jonas

“We’ll sweep the police aside. We’ll sweep the government aside. We’ll sweep Huntingdon Life Sciences aside, and we’ll raze this evil place right to the ground.”
-Robin Webb

Source:

Special Report: The New ‘Nonviolence’. The Center for Consumer Freedom, December 5, 2002.

Why I Don’t Vote Republican

Every so often I consider taking the leap and start voting Republican, but inevitably some completely idiotic turn by the GOP leaves me on the sidelines again.

For example, it is simply inconceivable to me that Trent Lott could have said of Strom Thurmond,

I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.

Thurmond, of course, ran for president in 1948 as the candidate of the Segregationist Party which was committed to the segregation and “racial integrity” of whites and blacks. The Washington Post has a quote from Thurmond announcing his candidacy by saying, “All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches.”

And Lott thinks “we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years” if Thurmond had been elected? Leave it to the Republicans to have their incoming Senate Majority Leader endorse segregation as what this country needed all these years.

Lott should resign, period. Not just as Majority Leader, but from the Senate as well. If Canadian and German officials can be shamed into resigning for calling George W. Bush stupid, surely Lott should be able to see the wisdom in stepping aside for his racist comment.

I doubt Lott will resign, but if Republicans allow him to retain his Majority Leader position, they will be morally bankrupt.

And Lott’s spokesperson Ron Bonjean just compounds Lott’s problems by dismissing criticism of the remark by saying,

Senator Lott’s remarks were intended to pay tribute to a remarkable man who led a remarkable life. To read anything more into these comments is wrong.

Translation: Lott didn’t really mean what he said. I guess it depends on the meaning of “proud”, eh, Senator Lott?

Source:

Lott Decried For Part Of Salute to Thurmond. Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post, December 7, 2002.

Get Back in the Kitchen and Make Me Some Pi

Japanese researchers have calculated PI to 1.24 trillion places. The previous record was a mere 206.158 billion places. Both marks were set by teams lead by Tokyo University professor Yasumasa Kanada.

The computer program that generated the number only took 400 hours to execute, but Kanada’s team spent 5 years designing it.

This is actually important beyond the simple feat of calculating X trillion places to PI. As David Bailey of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory tells the Associated Press, calculating PI to that many places would be impossible in any sort of human-relevant timespan with all previously used methods. The innovations that Kanada has introduced to make his PI calculations achievable are also broadly applicable to other calculation problems.

Source:

Japan Pi Value Calculation Earns Record. Associated Press, December 6, 2002.

Mandela’s Pathetic Backpedaling on AIDS Drugs Testing

Reuters reports that Nelson Mandela has backpedaled on testing of AIDS drugs and is now endorsing Thabo Mbeki’s ridiculous position that further safety testing of AIDS drugs is necessary because, as Reuters paraphrases his position,

. . . conditions in Africa were different from those in the developed world, where the drugs have proven beneficial.

Mandela does say that the government should provide the drugs to patients with the warning that they are awaiting further safety tests, but how can Mandela seriously call on South Africa to “smash to the superstition” about AIDS while endorsing this part of Mbeki’s pseudoscientific view of AIDS and AIDS drugs.

Source:

Mandela backs studies into safety of AIDS drugs. Reuters, December 1, 2002.