New York Times editorial on CCF's PETA Billboard

[smbolisnch]

(I'll post all of it since registration is required)

The Story Behind a New York Billboard and the Interests It Serves

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

Published: July 24, 2005

Ever since May, a small black-and-white billboard has looked south into Times Square from the top of a building on Broadway. It says simply: "PETA Kills Animals.com." You would think that the visual chaos of Times Square would hide a modest black-and-white sign. But if anything, the colliding planes of color in the foreground - the pulsating staircase of signage - make this reticent billboard all the more visible.

Like an increasing number of the signs around us, this one merely points to another source of information - in this case, to a Web site whose name sounds like a headline: PETA Kills Animals. PETA, of course, is the activist animal-rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The sign assumes we know this and that an organization devoted to the ethical treatment of animals probably should not be killing them. But the sign also raises the question, what is PETA Kills Animals.com?

It turns out that this is one of a series of Web sites sponsored by the Center for Consumer Freedom, which describes itself as "a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the full range of choices that American consumers currently enjoy." We live in an age of organizations with anodyne names that conceal their real agenda, and the Center for Consumer Freedom is one of them. We're all consumers, and what could be better than freedom? But C.C.F. was founded by a Washington lobbyist named Richard Berman and is financed, according to at least one watchdog group, by many of the same meat, fast-food, restaurant and beverage companies that have hired him as a lobbyist. Seed money came from Philip Morris.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/opinion/24sun3.html

[Eric J in MN]

1. I'm glad they exposed "Consumer Freedom" as a

Corporate Freedom organization, run by a corporate lobbyist.

[kimchi]

2. I'm glad to see this.

I knew of the organization but didn't know the dirt behind it. I did however, strongly suspect that something wasn't quite right.

[The Stranger]

3. Extremely well-written piece. Nominated for greatest.

Wake up, America. Wake up.

[longship]

4. I thought it was "People Eating Tasty Animals"

Recommended.

:kick:

[smbolisnch]

5. .

:kick:

[flvegan]

6. GREAT article! No bias, no purchase, just facts. Excellent!

Nominated.

[Catchawave]

7. About time someone nailed CCF's butt,

great article :kick:

[Robeson]

8. Thanks for spotting this and bringing it to everyone's attention.

[friesianrider]

9. Typical Orwellian group...EXCELLENT article.

Thanks for posting this! PETA does save animals...this just goes to show the power of the meat industry and their determination to push outrageous pro-mass-animal-slaughter propaganda onto American citizens.

[Piperay]

10. Good article

THANKS for posting it! :thumbusp:

[livinginphotographs]

11. Good article.

kick

[leftchick]

12. thank you for posting this

It makes me want to give more money to PETA!

:)

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

14. i support PETA

[Robbien]

15. You don't like PETA. You don't like AAR and evolution is junk science

to you

Are you lost? I believe you want a board a lot farther to the right.

[livinginphotographs]

17. Really?!!!! Wow!!!

I haven't heard about this!!! Or discussed it at great length!!! :sarcasm:

Did you even read the response to the whole "Peta Kills Animals" thing? Or are you just making the rounds today posting anti-AR bullshit?

[Name removed]

23. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[livinginphotographs]

24. PETA starved animals?

Where do you get that from?

And I assume that you don't eat meat, and work in animal rescue. Otherwise, you'd be rather hypocritical for criticizing PETA for removing animals from a substandard shelter and euthanizing them in a humane way as opposed to leaving them on the streets, where they probably will starve.

[smbolisnch]

18. Did you even read the article?

Seriously.

[Catchawave]

21. Please read the article !

Thanks :hi:

[Moderator]

16. smbolisnch

Per DU rules, please limit your article to 4 paragraphs

Thank you

DU Moderator

[smbolisnch]

19. Sorry about that...

I posted the whole thing because you have to register to read it.
Won't happen again! :hi:

[belle]

20. I can see that CCF has its own agenda, but that doesn't mean Newkirk isn't

also a whackjob. Her own words and actions are damning enough. And no, *by their own standards,* euthanasia is not part of being "ethical." PETA argues against using animals to serve *any* human needs: not for food, not for clothing, not for experiments that might lead to the cure for cancer, nada. Period, end. When they protested deer hunting, for instance, when given the argument that deer would multiply out of control, the response was something like, "well, fine; let Nature take its course." (Which is *not* to say that I think, 'yay deer hunting;' bear with me). Newkirk has said herself that she originally stopped being a meat eater and formed her views when she realized that animals shelters were in fact killing those cute little cats and kittens.

Oh, and she's also said that her ultimate goal would be to not even have pets; that dogs and cats should return to the wild state.

So tell me: why is it suddenly okay for newkirk & PETA to decide whether free-running strays (that should be closer to what she envisions as right and proper than putting them in peoples' houses, right?) need to be killed? And who are they to decide which animals are "unadoptable?" It's not just CCF covering this, btw; the local news covering the story where the PETA employees were dumping the dead dogs and cats in dumpsters made it quite clear that 1) a lot of the animals appeared physically healthy, even including puppies and kittens, and 2) at least some of the people from whom PETA collected the animals were under the impression--and why not?--that PETA would at minimum not *kill* the dogs or cats.

It seems to me that if one truly has empathy for animals, as seems to be what Newkirk claims for herself, then that would include letting all strays decide for themselves if they wanted to live on the streets or die. It might be a greyer area if Newkirk & co only put down those animals that were obviously in horrible pain and dying; it's quite clear that they do not limit themselves that way.

Moreover, while CCF is clearly a partisan organization, they have obviously taken a lot of time to organize their stats, and they're pretty damning. They also use Newkirk's own words well, I thought: in her rebuttal letter she defends herself by saying that they spent something like $250,000 over the last several years to rescue pets and find them homes. Well, that does form a very small percentage of the actual money PETA works with--so what are their other priorities? Why is courting celebrities to do controversial ads and throwing paint on people more important than rescuing actual animals? Why not, as someone else pointed out, devote one's efforts in the stray animal field to sending them to places like Best Friends? (a resort for "unadoptable" animals in Utah; I've donated to them regularly myself). It *might* be cold hard numbers, as CCF claims. The other possibilities, to me, are worse.


From everything I've read about her, including quotes from her very self, Newkirk strikes me as more of a control freak as anything else, not genuinely compassionate at all, and not even consistent with her own admittedly unorthodox ethos. It would not surprise me if in fact part of the reason that she approves of euthanizing dogs and cats has more to do with her conviction that people suck, and therefore should not be rewarded by a "companion animal;" for her, it's more important to rage against the evils of the world than to actually make others' lives better, human or otherwise.

[Catchawave]

22. CCF talking points, eh?

I don't think she's a whack-job, and her organization does SAVE animals. Please read the highlights from 2004 at:

http://www.peta.org/feat/annual_review04/

It's several pages long, but starts with this letter from Ms.Newkirk:

When people come to the U.S. from other countries, they often say that we have everything here, from the Grand Canyon to the Great Lakes, from the plains to the mountains. That's true, and it often seems that there is every type of animal here, too, and every type of animal abuse. A sampling of what we have done in the last year is here before you, and it is certainly diverse.

How do we pick our battles? By trying to touch the public imagination, the public heart, and by choosing targets that will result in great change for large numbers of animals and set an example for others to follow when we win our battles with them.

Everyone eats, so we have done our best not only to reform the worst abuses in factory farming and slaughterhouses, but to promote a compassionate vegan diet, providing all the resources, from recipes to health tips, that a person could ever need. We have also revolutionized the way some companies do business, getting them to stop selling fur, boycott Australian merino wool, and abandon painful animal-poisoning tests in favor of sophisticated non-animal methods. We have shown how to prevent flooding without destroying beavers' homes and how to prevent birds from entering "big box" stores without using cruel glue traps. In the past year alone, former circus and zoo elephants were sent to sanctuaries, hog-dog rodeos were banned, and cruel companies were fined. We also educated millions of kids about animal rights through our teacher network and education programs.

It's a tough job, but we are up to the task because of our supporters, who encourage and fund our work to establish respect and understanding for animals.



Ingrid E. Newkirk
President

Board of Directors and Officers
Ingrid E. Newkirk - Michael P. Rodman - Jeanne Roush

[shockra]

25. A quarter of a million in Bertie County alone.

"Over the past few years, PETA has worked to provide training, personnel, money and supplies to help good people in struggling agencies in North Carolina clean up these pounds. The counties are impoverished, so there is a long way to go. We have spent more than $250,000 on veterinary and other services in Bertie County alone, and far more in Hampton Roads."

http://news.bestfriends.org/index.cfm?page=specialreports&catid=06617146-BDB9-396E-92D188A09A37E78E&mode=entry&entry=B0954764-BDB9-396E-94E6CE66BFE5347F

Just how much money is supposed to be poured into the state of NC before "PETA spends too much on one state/county and ignores the rest of the country! WAAAH!!! Every county should get that much!"