Posted: Mar 04, 2010 11:57 pm
Thanks for putting that together, HughMcB - I hope it's just pouring out of a file you have somewhere, and that you haven't spent hours doing detective work just 'cos little me asked a question!
I supported PETA for, I dunno, a decade; still get their mailings, though I haven't sent them money for ages - more through laziness and lack of disposable income than turning against them.
Some of the implied criticisms above slide off - "involved" in this, "supporting" that. Disagreement with their take on the importance of animal suffering is just that, disagreement: a discourse in progress. I have no problem with their anti-fur ads, their (albeit tactless) media opportunism, even their holocaust comparisons: all these are talk, free expression at work.
However, the euthanasia - more particularly, the substantial increase in the proportion of animals they euthanise - is kinda damning. They can make an argument that these are animals no one would take as pets, but why the increase in animals that fall into that category over a timescale of just a few years? That looks strangely like they can't be bothered. And as mentioned, keeping them alive and looked after is kinda what people donate for, certainly part of it. In the absence of other options, tens of millions should easily cover a sanctuary!
The links with law-breakers are more serious still. I remain uncomfortable with both the moral and scientific arguments for vivisection (much less factory farming), but I don't see criminal acts as a constructive or, overriding that, acceptable way forward. Even if your conscience compelled you to release lab animals (which after all are not aided in their plight right now this minute by the prospect of reform in twenty years), that is still a far cry from actively causing destruction and endangering lives. To my mind, folks who do that are acting out a self-dramatising desire for thrills and power, using a dogmatic flavour of animal rights as their pretext: much the same as how the 9/11 hijackers made a specious meaning for themselves inside a religion.
I'm sorry to find that PETA don't seem to see it that way, so kinda glad I've vaguely drifted out of what appears to be a moral morass. A position that justifies a risk of inflicting (human) suffering as a means to prevent (animal) suffering has lost its coherence: the use of suffering to prevent suffering is what they are supposedly against.
PETA don't get as much publicity in Europe as I suspect they do in the US. I dare say the criticisms of their actions are better known over there? (Although of course animal rights organisations are always criticised, no matter how they act: the vast majority of the populace and media have a vested interest in disparaging them.)
I supported PETA for, I dunno, a decade; still get their mailings, though I haven't sent them money for ages - more through laziness and lack of disposable income than turning against them.
Some of the implied criticisms above slide off - "involved" in this, "supporting" that. Disagreement with their take on the importance of animal suffering is just that, disagreement: a discourse in progress. I have no problem with their anti-fur ads, their (albeit tactless) media opportunism, even their holocaust comparisons: all these are talk, free expression at work.
However, the euthanasia - more particularly, the substantial increase in the proportion of animals they euthanise - is kinda damning. They can make an argument that these are animals no one would take as pets, but why the increase in animals that fall into that category over a timescale of just a few years? That looks strangely like they can't be bothered. And as mentioned, keeping them alive and looked after is kinda what people donate for, certainly part of it. In the absence of other options, tens of millions should easily cover a sanctuary!
The links with law-breakers are more serious still. I remain uncomfortable with both the moral and scientific arguments for vivisection (much less factory farming), but I don't see criminal acts as a constructive or, overriding that, acceptable way forward. Even if your conscience compelled you to release lab animals (which after all are not aided in their plight right now this minute by the prospect of reform in twenty years), that is still a far cry from actively causing destruction and endangering lives. To my mind, folks who do that are acting out a self-dramatising desire for thrills and power, using a dogmatic flavour of animal rights as their pretext: much the same as how the 9/11 hijackers made a specious meaning for themselves inside a religion.
I'm sorry to find that PETA don't seem to see it that way, so kinda glad I've vaguely drifted out of what appears to be a moral morass. A position that justifies a risk of inflicting (human) suffering as a means to prevent (animal) suffering has lost its coherence: the use of suffering to prevent suffering is what they are supposedly against.
PETA don't get as much publicity in Europe as I suspect they do in the US. I dare say the criticisms of their actions are better known over there? (Although of course animal rights organisations are always criticised, no matter how they act: the vast majority of the populace and media have a vested interest in disparaging them.)