It's not vegans or animal rights, but PETA that people simply don't like

[Modem Butterfly]

Ooooh, that rhymes.

But seriously, when are people going to realize that you can support animal rights, you can be a vegetarian/vegan (or just support them) and STILL be turned off and disgusted with PETA?

[Bunny]

1. Well, the PETA people will never realize that.

You're either with them, or you're a sadistic animal torturer.

[Emops]

2. Your avatar is a picture of a bunny with a pancake on its head.

You are a sadistic animal torturer.

[Bunny]

6. Not so fast, there!

How do you know that the bunny didn't LOVE the pancake? I have it on good authority that he enjoyed every bite. ;)

[expatriot]

5. you have no idea....

they are masters of incrementalism, of gradualism...

What are you basing your opinion on?

[Bunny]

8. Years of watching them do stupid-ass things.

Look, if you're now a true believer, good for you. I'm not, and likely never will be. So save it for someone else.

[Bouncy Ball]

13. So then there's nothing much to talk about, right?

:shrug:

No one here was trying to "convert" anyone to PETA's point of views. In fact, the OP was by someone who does NOT agree with them.

[Bunny]

16. I'm aware of that. I was responding to the poster who has started

at least two other PETA threads in the Lounge, and in yet ANOTHER thread accused me of believing animals don't suffer. Which I of course never said. He is a new convert to PETA, and I think that's great. But I won't have words put in my mouth, or be told that I don't understand the issue.

[expatriot]

18. I accused you of thinking animals don't suffer? when?

[Bunny]

21. Does this ring a bell?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3478735&mesg_id=3480720

[expatriot]

25. that was in response to this thing you said

"They are so ridiculous that I immediately disregard any message they may have."


Once again, how can they be SO ridiculous that immediately disregard any message they may have?

Do you disregard that animals can suffer or that we cause their suffeirng or that we should reduce the amount of suffering they cause?

[crispini]

27. It's called "credibility."

A person (and an organization's) words and deeds over a lifetime builds up a relationship of trust between me and that person (or organization). If that person or organization does or says SOME things that I no longer consider credible, then the rest of their message may or may not be good -- I don't know. I no longer have a basis for judging. In other words, my trust is broken and each and every one of their messages must be judged individually and are automatically suspect.

Comparing a slaughterhouse to the Holocaust is completely indefensible. I am extremely offended at PETA's (and your) trivializing the deaths and suffering of millions of human beings. Try watching SHOAH sometime before you do so again.

[expatriot]

31. the only difference between the meat industry and the Holocaust is that

the victims of the Holocaust were human.


Almost everyone believes that animals suffer, feel pain, feel fear. So how can you say with any definitive proof that human pain and suffering is worse that animal pain and suffering?

I am not saying that a life of a squirrel is worth the same of a baby human, obviously we place more importance on the life of the human but I don't see how you can't at least accept the VISUAL metaphor of a slaughterhouse to a death camp.

Will you at least accept that a slaughterhouse is a death camp?

[crispini]

34. NO IT'S NOT THE ONLY DIFFERENCE.

Do you know NOTHING about the Holocaust? Nothing at all? You are INSANE to make this comparison. Please study some history.

LOOK AT THESE PEOPLE. NO ANIMAL IN A SLAUGHTERHOUSE IS STARVED AND TORTURED LIKE THIS:



"Then you see these mothers coming down with little kids, and they're...and they're trying to pull these kids out of their mother's hands. And you know, when you try to separate a family, it's very difficult. It's very difficult. People put up fights. It...it, there was so much screams. So, there was a truck. I remember that truck. So the parents, the...the mothers that wouldn't give up these children and they, they were beaten up, and the kids got hurt, so they grabbed these kids and they threw them on the truck, and they really didn't look how they were throwing them on the truck. So at that time we saw that something horrible is happening--the way these people were behaving to little children, to little babies. And of course on that truck there were people, you know, very sick people going, you know, they were throwing sick people there and...and...and these children that gave them a tough time. They were just thrown on the trucks. And there were so many mothers that were running after the trucks, and of course they beat them and they pushed them back."

Several days later we arrived to Bergen-Belsen. And Bergen-Belsen was hell on earth. Nothing ever in literature could compare to anything what Bergen-Belsen was. When we arrived, the dead were not carried away any more, you stepped over them, you fell over them if you couldn't walk. There were agonizing...people begging for water. They were felling...falling into planks that they were not pulled together in the barracks. They were crying, they were begging. It was, it was hell. It was hell. Day and night. You couldn't escape the crying, you couldn't have escaped the praying, you couldn't escape the "Mercy," the, it was a chant, the chant of the dead. It was hell.

[redqueen]

36. Their version:

[Modem Butterfly]

42. Wow. That has to be the most anti-semetic thing I've ever seen on DU

Yikes.

[shockra]

37. Indefensible, but supportable?

The book PETA based its Holocaust exhibit on, Charles Patterson's Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust, has a page listing organizations that support the ideas in his book.

http://www.eternaltreblinka.com/support.html

[crispini]

39. Every single one of those organizations

are animal rights organizations, and I saw many chapters of the Animal Liberation front, which is even more extreme than PETA. Not one of them is a Holocaust Survivor's organization. How does that list go any way at all towards defending the point?

[Bunny]

30. How do you take my words and turn them into me

believing animals don't suffer? You're making quite a leap, and again, putting words in my mouth. That is your standard MO, but I ain't biting.

[expatriot]

15. you have to ask yourself whether PETA is keeping you from....

...fighting for the animals or whether you are. That is the simple question. If you want to continue to blame your inaction on PETA's action then good for you. Save it for someone else.

[Bunny]

19. That's a comical way to frame the issue, but you go ahead and

tell yourself that, if it makes you feel better. Whatever you say, hoss.

[expatriot]

26. no really, what's your response?

If you believe animals can feel pain you either think it is okay to cause them to suffer or you do not?

Now you can believe it is okay to cause them to suffer because you think it is okay to eat them. IF so, that's fine. Just say so.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

20. How bout I just act AND hate PETA?

Why are the two mutually exclusive in your book? Is it more convenient for you to label all "nonbelievers" as such?

[Bunny]

23. Again, it's the old "you're either with us, or against us" theory.

[expatriot]

29. Okay, forget about PETA... do you support animal rights?

Animal rights being the belief that animals suffer and that human exploitation of animals causes much of this suffering and therefore we should work to abolish these industries of exploitation?

[Bunny]

32. What animal "rights" are you talking about?

There are all sorts of things that come into play in your clever little question. Food, clothing, cosmetics, medical research, etc. What rights are you referring to?

[expatriot]

28. there are other groups you can ACT with but we all know that is not

what people are talking about.

The people bashing PETA are not involved with In Defense of Animals or some other animal rights activist group. To a huge majority of Americans, PETA represents animal rights and so if you dismiss PETA you can dismiss animal rights.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

43. Isn't that just all the more reason for PETA not to be so damn radical?

[Skip Intro]

3. I love 'em

more power to 'em.

And a lot of the anti-PETA stuff I read here, and elsewhere, is exaggerated and based on half-truths.

Like the guy at that KFC that turned the sprinklers on the three protesters. He told them, if I remember correctly, that they'd never succeed in that town.

But they weren't protesting KFC killing, dismembering, and selling fried chicken body parts, they were protesting the torturous treatment of the animals in the process.

Why would anyone root for KFC over PETA in that instance?

Of course, everyone's entitled to their own opinion.

[expatriot]

4. I'll tell you story.

Before last weekend I may have posted something that sounded like what you just posted.

I've watched my wife become more and more into animals rights over the last 2-3 years. When we both met neither one of us were even vegetarians over 8 years ago. I remember she used to fix us up little cornish hens whenever I visited her in college (I was at another college). I was barely an activist then but was only a political activist. a few years ago she became a vegetarian and I, at first, reluctantly followed suit. She started watching the videos, etc. and we got more and more into it.

I found myself almost apologizing for her and her activism a lot among my (non-animal rights) activist friends, I saw everything from an overly-politically pragmatic standpoint.

But then this weekend came, she drug me up to a PETA conference for the weekend and it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Ingrid Newkirk was there, the founder and a bunch of PETA's senior staff and about 200 attendees. It was some powerful shit. They explained why they did the outrageous stunts and all the stuff they are doing behind the scenes. And of course the videos. I am now first and foremost an animal rights activist.

[Modem Butterfly]

9. No convert like a new convert

That explains it.

[Bouncy Ball]

12. Their videos are what tipped me over to being a vegetarian.

I can't believe anyone in good conscious would treat sentient beings that way. It was horrific and all they were doing was filming what normally goes on.

I don't go around telling people what to eat. But I made this decision for myself. I cannot support that industry at all.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

14. Sure does.

[expatriot]

22. Wow, that makes it easy doesn't it!

Hear no evil, See no evil...

[Modem Butterfly]

40. Indeed!

[Bouncy Ball]

7. Well, I've got nothing against PETA.

They aren't the enemy, far from it.

[miss_kitty]

10. so if you hate PETA so much

why bother with a thread about it? If you don't wanna do what they say, ya don't have to. How could PETA possibly affect your life if you ignore them?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

17. Heaven forbid someone participate in a discussion, right?

Isn't it at all possible that someone might want to discuss things?

[miss_kitty]

24. I find threads like these aren't really conducive to discussion

why the defensive posture, Vash the Stampede? You weren't the OP

:popcorn:

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

45. Comments like yours really annoy me.

It's not so much a defensive posture as an offensive one. Why do you wish to stifle discussion so much? What's in it for you? If someone wants to sound off over something, why can't they do it? Why can't YOU ignore instead if it bothers YOU so much?

[Modem Butterfly]

41. Who said I hate PETA?

PETA has jumped the shark and is nearng self-parody territory. That being said, I am very uncomfortable with the attempt to conflate criticism of PETA with endorsement of cruelty to animals.

[miss_kitty]

44. Sorry. I drew an inference from "...turned off and disgusted with PETA"

of course you're not actually saying 'hate' there. A lot of the people who DO criticise PETA do it with 'humour' resembling the "endorsement of cruelty to animals." I think that's from where the conflatation (conflatation?:woohoo:) may arise

[MadHound]

11. To me, it's all a matter of balance

And PETA provides a serious balance to corporate agriculture and their government sycophants. So from me, an omnivore, good on PETA and their works.

[expatriot]

33. I'm going to be late to work. Bye. nt

[SnowGoose]

35. I'm a vegetarian who doesn't dig PETA

I don't eat meat or factory eggs/dairy because I think the way the industries are run is more cruel than it has to be... it's not that I think killing animals is morally wrong, either, it's just a matter of how much pain I want to contribute to the world.

That having been said, I am royally pissed off about what has been done to science by the increasing level of regulation. Here's what chaps my ass - it's getting *very* hard to use animals for research (the forms are dozens of pages long) and anything that might hurt (even things that we routinely do to humans with only mild analgesics are challenged if we want to do them to mice).

Then it hit me in the store the other day, when I happened to spy mousetraps. Holy shit! There are people all over the city killing mice, some with glue traps that cause the mouse to die of thirst, some with poison, and some with a horrifically violent trap that could break an unlucky human finger. They don't have to ask permission, take classes, fill out forms, or justify what they are doing to anyone. Usually they just don't want the mice around.

In universities and research hospitals all over the country, there are people who, like me, are trying to do research that will SAVE HUMAN LIVES. No joke - no hyperbole. We take classes and study to be able to do these things correctly and carefully so as to cause minimal suffering, and then we have committees bulked up with non-scientists telling us "No, it's not clear that this experiment will work" or "there's a chance the animal could experience pain").

Well sheeeeit! So I could go home and torture these critters to death for no good reason other than I don't like 'em living in the basement, but should I want to do something friggin useful with them, I have to move mountains to get permission.

It's just asinine.

Flame away.

[LynneSin]

38. When PETA compared Meat Eating to the Holocaust

They lost me completely.