UPDATE: 12/26/05. I've revisited the issue of "PeTA's Terrorist Connections" and expanded significantly on the present post here. I did so in response to the hue and cry raised by the ACLU over the feds surveiling PeTA. I think the feds would be derelict in their duty were they not to surveil PeTA — but read the update, then you make your own call.
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So today is the day when People Eating Tasty Animals (PETA) — and I count myself a member of this group — will be consuming flesh to show our solidarity in opposing the faux Animal Rights "morality" in general, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) in particular.
The blogosphere is a more festive and celebratory place than usual today, because we bloggers have an opportunity to mock what appears to be a loopy organization (PeTA), one that appears to pride itself on being able to profoundly offend just about everyone by exceeding conventional mores with a limitless and unrestrained repertoire of tasteless and incoherent moral equivalencies, the "Holocaust on Your Plate" campaign being but just one.
PeTA certainly makes an easy target — but then, that's their goal, and frankly it's disturbing to me that the blogosphere is distracted by PeTA's deliberately flakey image, and fails to notice what is the substance of PeTA's core: PeTA is an organization with longstanding and glaring sympathy for the tactics of terror, and financial ties to at least 2 terrorist organizations, to a person who served time for a terrorist arson attack, and a person who openly advocates killing scientists to stop the use of animals in biomedical research, not to mention a variety of other unsavory sorts.
And it is the terror connection that we bloggers should be talking about, not how offended we are at PeTA's offensive campaigns, or how self-satisfied we might be to eat meat today to defy PeTA in an act that may be a powerful symbol, but an act that garners PeTA more publicity and doesn't weaken them one iota.
So — here is a partial (and I emphasize partial) summary of PeTA's unsavory connections:
1) PeTA contributed $1,500 to the Earth Liberation Front in the year 2001. If you don't believe me, check here to download a PDF file of PeTA's 2001 Form 990 tax return). The ELF has been designated a terrorist organization by the FBI.
And PeTA is a tax-exempt organization.
2) Rodney Coronado is an Animal Liberation Front operative who served some 4 years for having torched a Michigan State University lab on Feb. 28, 1992 (the ALF has been designated a terrorist organization by the FBI.). If you take the time to peruse the Governments Sentencing Memorandum (available as a PDF here), you will learn much history about extremist Animal Rights groups. More interesting, immediately before and after the MSU fires, Coronado mailed two packages, one to PeTA founder Ingrid Newkirk, the other to PeTA member Maria Blanton, who Newkirk had asked to receive the package. Records found at Blanton's home showed that Coronado planned additional attacks on universities, one of which involved Alex Pacheco, another PeTA founder. A footnote states: "Significantly, Newkirk had arranged to have the package delivered to her days before the MSU arson occurred."
The sentencing memorandum is easily read. I've read it several times, and each time I find it absolutely gripping, not to mention damning of PeTA.
And PeTA is a tax-exempt organization.
3) PeTA contributed at least $45,200 to the Rodney Coronado Support Fund.
And PeTA is a tax-exempt organization.
4) UPDATE 1/11/06: Familiarize yourself with the putative administrative and financial connections of PeTA and PCRM by browsing this, then look at the links here. Finally, read this, taking note of what Newsweek said about the PCRM, and what this link says about Dr. Jerry Vlasak.
5) On its own website, PeTA likens the ALF to the Underground Railway and to the French resistence, defends violent actions (including vandalism and arson) in the name of animal liberation, and conveniently overlooks the injurious and life-threatening hazards to first-responders, pedestrians and motorists created when emergency vehicles dash to the conflagrations created by ALF "freedom fighters," and when firefighters fight the arsonist's blaze.
And PeTA is a tax-exempt organization.
Of course, there's a ton more stuff I could write about PeTA's terrorist connections, not to mention PeTA's sympathy for terrorism, including a plethora of quotes. But you get the idea.
And PeTA is a tax-exempt organization.
Now, I'm as much up for revelry at PeTA's expense as the next guy, and I'm a strong supporter of eating "something that had a mother" today, to paraphrase Meryl Yourish's delightfully irreverent quip.
But I also think that we ought not to let ourselves become distracted from what lies beneath PeTA's veneer of hellishly offensive — but legal — speech. Indeed, PeTA's goal in life is to attract attention to itself by being as offensive they can be, a trap we fall into at our peril.
The blogosphere should be highlighting what PeTA doesn't want us to talk about: its terrorist connections, which are real, substantial, long-standing and are virtually ignored.
PeTA has established a dark pattern here, and it just seems a shame that we should allow ourselves to be distracted from it.
If you're interested in doing more than feeling good about symbolically defying PeTA, sign this petition requesting that the PeTA's tax exempt status be withdrawn.
And, after you've signed the petition, don't mention PeTA without referring to their connections to domestic terrorism. Make it impossible for their prospective donars to think of PeTA without also thinking of Jerry Vlasak, Rod Coronado, and ELF.
Help change the terms of the debate and hit PeTA where it hurts!
Brian