Animal Rights Activists Are a Public Health Menace

Toronto Star columnist Ellie Tesher recently made an interesting point about bioterrorism and the animal rights movement — if the activists had their way, there would be no viable antibiotic treatment for anthrax.

The two antibiotics best suited for treating anthrax — ciprofloxine and tetracycline — could never have been adequately safety tested without animal studies. As Bessie Borwein of the University of Western Ontario told Tesher, “We cannot make any single living cell in a lab, let alone an integrated body that would simulate the reaction in humans. Computers are in wide use in research but they do not substitute for a living body.” Especially when using antibiotics whose effects on the body can persist for relatively long periods of time.

In fact the discovery of anthrax is a result of some of the first systematic animal research. In the 19th century, Louis Pasteur proved that anthrax was caused by microorganisms in studies conducted on rabbits and guinea pigs. Pasteur used his research with animals to develop the first vaccine against anthrax.

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Animal rights fanatics are health hazard. Ellie Tesher, Toronto Star, October 16, 2001.

Two Activists Plead Guilty to Federal Weapons Charges

The San Francisco Chronicle reported this week that animal rights activists, Peter Schnell, 23, of Ocean, New Jersey, and Matthew Whyte, 18, of Orange, California, plead guilty to possessing explosive devices. Sentencing is scheduled for January 2002, with each activist facing up to three years in jail.

Schnell and Whyte were arrested at about 1 a.m. on January 23, 2001 outside the Capitola City Hall. Police found 11 one-gallon containers, along with more than 11 gallons of gasoline, matches and candles.

According to prosecutors, Schnell and Whyte agreed to a plea bargain and told prosecutors they had intended to make explosive devices as part of an Animal Liberation Front attack.

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Animal rights activists enter guilty pleas. San Francisco Chronicle, October 17, 2001.

Free Maps Courtsey of the CIA

For a couple years now I wanted to find country maps for every country in the world for a web site on overpopulation that I maintain. Moreoever, I wanted the maps without having to pay a lot of money.

Fortunately the 2001 version of the CIA World Factbook manages to meet this need perfectly.

Being a U.S. government publication, the maps are in the public domain — the only part of the document that can’t be reused is the CIA seal. Previous online version of the World Factbook also had country maps, but they had been low quality JPEGs which were difficult to repurpose. This time around, the CIA still went with JPEGs but used some pretty large files so they are a bit more versatile.

Feminists and the War Against the Taliban

In an op-ed piece for The Washington Post, Amy Holmes wonders why the National Organization for Women seems to be largely ignoring the United States’ war against the Taliban.

Holmes notes that NOW did put out a press release a few days ago quoting NOW Action Vice President Olga Vives saying, “In this time of national and global turmoil, the reasons we celebrate Coming Out Day are more visible and more important than ever,” but aside for demanding more money for Afghani refugee camps in Pakistan, NOW is silent about the U.S. attack on Afghanistan.

Which is weird since if you search on “Afghanistan” in NOW’s web search engine, you will find numerous press releases condemning the Taliban, including on urging the world to Stop the Abuse of Women and Girls in Afghanistan! But now that a Republican president is actually attempting to end the Taliban regime, there’s not a peep.

Holmes contrasts this with Eleanor Smeal and the Feminist Majority Foundation which maintains that “the United States has a unique obligation to end the Taliban’s atrocities toward women” and explicitly calls for the United States to remove the Taliban and replace it with a constitutional democracy which will guarantee the rights of women in Afghanistan. Though that may not be possible — although the Northern Alliance, the main threat to the Taliban, is certainly an improvement over the Taliban, they are hardly a group of liberal democratic constitutionalists.

Holmes doesn’t mention it, but the obvious question is whether or not NOW would maintain this weird silence over the war in Afghanistan had it been prosecuted by Bill Clinton or Al Gore. The few things NOW has released related to the terrorism attacks are meshed in with NOW’s theme of fighting George W. Bush and the Right. I suspect that for NOW giving Bush credit for trying a government run by misogynistic religious fanatics simply wouldn’t mesh very well with their theme that Bush is “like a vampire who will suck our rights away” as Patricia Ireland described him last October.

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Feminism goes to battle. Amy Holmes, The Washington Post, October 14, 2001.

Ms. Magazine: Rush Limbaugh is “Like The Taliban”

On its web site, Ms. Magazine recently posted an article in which it bizarrely compared Rush Limbaugh to the Taliban. The author of the article, Marcia Ann Gillespie, wrote,

No, they are not the Taliban. No, our internal terrorists aren’t named Osama bin Laden. Our homegrown terrorists have names like the Lambs of God and William Pierce (author of the Turner Diaries). And then there are the Jerry Falwells who clutch their holy books while spewing hate speech, blaming and damning and demonizing feminists and homosexuals for this assault on America. Or Rush Limbaugh who routinely and obscenely labels people who believe in the social, economic, and political equality of women and men — as the dictionary describes feminism — as “feminazis” on America’s airwaves. No, they are not the Taliban, but like the Taliban, the demonization and oppression of women to save us, or purify the race, or preserve the family, or uphold patriarchy is central tot heir beliefs. And like the Taliban, many of them use religion to justify their words and actions.

First, although he holds to some utterly disgusting views, it is a bit odd for Gillespie to label William Pierce a terrorist since he has never been convicted of an act of violence to my knowledge. Pierce certainly writes racist, inflammatory books and gives speeches that advocate violence, but as far as I know he’s never engaged in an act of violence or terrorism.

It was odd that Gillespie mentioned Limbaugh after first mentioning Falwell, because her comments about the radio commentator are just as absurd as were Falwell’s nutty claims that the terrorist attacks occurred because America had turned its back on God by allowing homosexuality and abortion.

Limbaugh is quite clear that “feminazi” applies to the leaders in the pro-abortion movement. Such euphemisms are repugnant, but Gillespie herself is engaging in precisely this tactic when she compares Limbaugh to the Taliban. Or, as kids on the playground might retort, takes one to know one.

The scary thing is that Gillespie refers to Limbaugh’s use of the term “feminazi” as obscene, which may just be rhetoric, but may actually be meant literally given that she characterizes Falwell’s comments as “hate speech.” It’s a bit incongruous to see someone decrying the Taliban while turning around and endorsing the idea of hate speech, which is much closer in accordance with the ideals of the Taliban than is Limbaugh’s euphemisms for abortion advocates.

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Ms. responds to the terrorist attacks of September 11. Marcia Ann Gillespie, Ms. Magazine, undated editorial, 2001.