Someone's Attack on PETA and My Response
1) PETA president and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk has described her group’s overall goal as “total animal liberation.” This means no meat, no milk, no zoos, no circuses, no wool, no leather, no hunting, no fishing, and no pets (not even seeing-eye dogs). PETA is also against all medical research that requires the use of animals.
2) Despite its constant moralizing about the “unethical” treatment of animals by restaurant owners, grocers, farmers, scientists, anglers, and countless other Americans, PETA has killed over 10,000 dogs and cats at its Norfolk, Virginia headquarters. During 2003, PETA put to death over 85 percent of the animals it collected from members of the public.
3) PETA has given tens of thousands of dollars to convicted arsonists and other violent criminals. This includes a 2001 donation of $1,500 to the North American Earth Liberation Front (ELF), an FBI-certified “domestic terrorist” group responsible for dozens of firebombs and death threats. During the 1990s, PETA paid $70,200 to an Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activist convicted of burning down a Michigan State University research laboratory. In his sentencing recommendation, a federal prosecutor implicated PETA president Ingrid Newkirk in that crime. And PETA vegetarian campaign coordinator Bruce Friedrich told an animal rights convention in 2001 that “blowing stuff up and smashing windows” is “a great way to bring about animal liberation.”
4) PETA activists regularly target children as young as six years old with anti-meat and anti-milk propaganda, often waiting outside their schools to intercept them as they walk to and from class-without notifying parents. One piece of kid-targeted PETA literature tells small children: “Your Mommy Kills Animals!” PETA brags that its messages reach over 2 million children every year, including thousands reached by e-mail without the permission of their parents. One PETA vice president told the Fox News Channel’s audience: “Our campaigns are always geared towards children, and they always will be.”
5) PETA has used a related organization, the PETA Foundation, to fund the misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a deceptive animal rights group that promotes itself as an unbiased source of medical and nutritional information. PCRM's president also serves as president of the PETA Foundation.
6) PETA runs campaigns seemingly calculated to offend religious believers. One entire PETA website is devoted to the claim-despite ample evidence to the contrary-that Jesus Christ was a vegetarian. PETA holds protests at houses of worship, even suing one church that tried to protect its members from Sunday-morning harassment. Its billboards taunt Christians with the message that hogs “died for their sins.” PETA insists, contrary to centuries of rabbinical teaching, that the Jewish ritual of kosher slaughter shouldn't be allowed. And its infamous “Holocaust on Your Plate” campaign crassly compares the Jewish victims of Nazi genocide with farm animals.
7) PETA has repeatedly attacked research foundations like the March of Dimes, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the American Cancer Society, because they support animal-based research that might uncover cures for birth defects and life-threatening diseases. PETA president Ingrid Newkirk has said that “even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we would be against it.”
Fuck PeTA, fuck Ingrid Newkirk, fuck their bullshit rhetoric!
Hi. I'm a vegan. And an anarchist. Fancy that. But I hope you will be open minded when I respond with the following:
1.) So? That's a good thing. Why would you be defensive about perpetuating the misery animals go through? This may sound bizzare to you, but animals are sentient beings; If you step on a cat's tail, it will yowel. I used to think veganism was overly bizzare, but then I did some non-PeTA research. And you know, it changed me. Look up mastitis, or what they do to male baby chicks. Factory farms are horrifying.
2.) This is true. This is horrifying and awful. I spoke to someone who had been affiliated with PeTA before that instance, though, and she said that the logic behind those killings was this: it is better to die than to live a life in a cage. (Check out the attrocious conditions of puppy mills or zoos as an example.)
3.) So? These arsonists and terrorists believe in direct action. Which does work. The reason I renounced leftism is that NOTHING GETS DONE WITHIN THE BOUNDARIES OF THE SYSTEM. I'm not kidding. I would never kill anyone, but I would definitely burn down a research laboratory if I knew it was hurting and/or testing on animals. I think it makes perfect sense. I know that most PeTA activists do not intend on hurting anyone so much as they intend on scaring them away, but I definitely believe in terrorism on the property level.
4.) Well, I didn't know one required permission to distribute propaganda. Do kids need permission to watch Fox, then? Or learn history through biased teachers in biased schools in biased states? Freedom of Speech and the Press insures PeTA's right to administer "propaganda", which, by the way, also means "facts which support one's cause".
5.) Just cause the PCRM doesn't test on animals doesn't mean they're biased. And it's good that they're not subjecting animals to torture for information we already know.
6.) Did a Christian write this? What a retarded argument. I don't think I'm even going to go here. I'm just going to say, chances are, if you like MSI, you don't like Christians either.
7.) Animal cruelty is still CRUELTY. Even if those aren't humans. Believe it or not. I think you should do some research on biology, viruses, and test subjects (and stereotypies), because I have studied all those things and can tell you that a.) disease is the human's last real predator, so it is therefore somewhat natural for humans to suffer from them; b.) almost all the diseases we have are from doing things we shouldn't with animals (AIDS came from fucking a simian, and domesticated cats, for example, get FIV, but wild cats do not, due to natural evolution); c.) antibiotics often lead to the evolution of a disease (example: multi-drug resistant teberculosis); and d.) how long have we been testing on these animals? And we STILL don't have those cures. We're fucking with those animals to such an extent, they develop mental instabilities and horrible deformations, but we're not even being serious about those cures. America would rather spend that money on weapons of war for Israel anyway.
Now, just to let you know, I'm not an advocate of PeTA, despite my active veganism. I am also not terrifically militant. I just don't think that your attack on PeTA is unbiased, or justified. You wouldn't care if someone was doing something essentially the same if it was for something you believed in, or even going the other way, as in pressing for meat. I hope you will consider what I have said seriously.
He countered with:
Thanks for your viewpoint I can see where you are coming from, and I can agree with on more than one account. Obviously America won't spend the money on finding cures but other countries may, things like the streamlining of cadaver research, and people selling their bodies for science also helps to find cures for diseases (antibiotics are not the only option for many diseases, and as much of the stronger ones we do need cures for, are beyond the reach of simple antibiotics).
I don't care what happens I think distributing stuff like that to children is wrong, at least parents have some guidance over what their children are exposed to in the home (TV and internet and the like).
My take on the "Total Animal Liberation" is the depravation of humanity of some basics, even animals, such as pets I have 3 cats and one dog, they care for me as much as I care for them, it might sound cheesy or bullshit but for a short time two years ago I was hospitalized, my cat after never really even being in my room (she is a pretty social one) spent the entirity of my hospital stay in there, and stayed even after I came back (she still sleeps next to me and such as do my other cats)
Arguement number six seems secular to me, an athiest. It just shows the actions of the organization that can offend religions (it even shows an event that offends Jews).
Aids may have come from monkey sex, but the only thing we can do about it now.
Humanity may be an entirely flawed race, but from what I've seen it's a race worth saving.
I support that you stand for something and as Voltiare said "I may not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it"
And I argued with:
I already mentioned that using animals to find cures for cancer and the like is unnecessary. Especially since stem cells cure cancer. How come we can kill and mutilate animals, but not fetuses? It's not like the fetus is alive. Also, what are the alternatives to antibiotics besides just waiting a sickness out? And you know cadavers are human bodies, not animals, right? (Well, aside from the fact that humans ARE animals.)
Here you and I differ yet agan. I do not believe in censorship on any level. Children are much more aware of many more things than you think. I know that as a six year old I already knew what sex was, and I also thought it was strange that there was a food AND an animal called "chicken". I guess I didn't understand they were the same thing for a long time, and children feel really betrayed when they find out they're eating and/or wearing the animals they so love in petting zoos and picture books.
If you care for these animals, you will want them to be happy and free. When that day comes, humans may well also be free, and you can still see and interact with animals. I also have a cat, and I rescued him off the streets of a scummy city in Los Angeles when he was only five weeks old--so small he fit in the palms of my hands. I love him to death, but I also know that he's miserable, stuck inside my house all day, especially since he can't go outside very often since the neighbors have taken a liking to poisoning our cats. (They will pay.)
Listen. Factory farm is to genocide as free-range farm is to murder. That works both proportionally and morally. Also, the pigs DID die for the sins of the eaters--they died in the name of GLUTTONY, one of the seven deadly sins. One doesn't NEED meat to survive--I am proof of that. Humans eat meat cause meat is a luxury item, but meat does humans harm. People eat meat not out of necessity, but gluttony.
As in, increase protection rather than deny it and preach abstinence instead?
What makes us worth saving? That sounds like "logic" from your selfish genes. (This is an allusion to The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, not an insult.)