In my last post, I covered CNN's story about PeTA killing animals.
PeTA President Ingrid Newkirk was clearly on the defensive, and did not come across at all well. In fact, this business of PeTA killing animals at their own facility, and the brewing scandal involving Adria Hinkel and Andrew Cook, both of whom are PeTA agents who've been indicted on charges of felony animal cruelty and felony "obtaining property underfalse pretense", as well as misdemeanor charges of improperly disposing of animal bodies, is having a big impact on the Animal Rights community.
What follows was written by one "Lindy Greene" who is a long time poster to Animal Rights fora, and who sent her note not only to President Newkirk, but to a whole raft of AR sites in her campaign to undermine PeTA ("LA Animal Rights"
But it gets better . . . much better . . .
Lindy Greene is apparently none other than Pamelyn Ferdin, who goofed and signed her real name to one of her recent posts! (Ooops . . . her bad . . .)
So who is Ms Ferdin?
1) Wife of Jerry Vlasak who himself is: i) a former spokesman for the PeTA-linked group, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine; a current Press Officer for the terrorist Animal Liberation Front; a person who believes assassination is morally acceptable for the AR cause; a person who has openly advocated the practice of assassination itself; a past or present board member of the Animal Defense League, LA, which recently succeeded in pressuring the Mayor of Los Angeles into firing his Director of Animal Services.
2) Current president of SHAC-USA.
3) A business-card-carrying member (or at least a past member) of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
4) A director of the extremist ADL-LA.
So now that you know all that, try this on for size:
December 18, 2005
Dear Ingrid,
I will always have a "soft spot" for PETA, because it was your organization that provided the segue for my entry into the animal rights movement eighteen years ago. You sent me a complimentary issue of your magazine. I cried and then signed up for a Farm Animal Day walk in Ventura County, California--and it snowballed from there.
Another thing that stands out for me is your unapologetic comparison of human and animal holocausts. I have always found it unfathomable how anyone who has, himself, been the victim of such an atrocity can fail to sympathize with another one--regardless of species.
I respect all the valuable work that PETA has done. However, I contend that killing animals is not the appropriate venue of an animal rights organization. It creates contention within the movement and discredits the organization in the eyes of the public.
Ms Ferdin, aka Lindy Greene, has a point: to the Animal Rights True Believer, the life of an animal and that of a human are of equal moral value. You don't kill animals unless you are willing to kill humans for the same reasons.
Oh wait! Maybe President Newkirk is willing to kill humans for the same reasons her PeTA kills animals!
President Newkirk: would you care to comment?
It's like a hunter saying that he kills animals for conservation. It's a conflict of interests, a perversion of your corporate mission, and a travesty of your pledge to protect animals to be instead engaged in their wholesale slaughter.
Well, it's not quite like that at all, is it Ms Ferdin/Mrs. Vlasak/Lindy Greene (and others?)?
In point of fact, the logic of the conservationist hunter — to kill some animals to protect against overpopulation and thus protect the habitat for members of all species of fauna and flora from catastrophe (an argument made by conservation-minded deer hunters) — is precisely the argument Mr. Dr. Hubby Jerry makes when he advocates killing some scientist to intimidate others into abandoning animal experiments: if you can take a few lives to save many, then you've tipped the moral scales decidedly towards virtue.
Of course, Mr. Dr. Vlasak's case is based on the AR premise that the life of a human and that of an animal are of equal value . . . but the logic still stands, does it not, Ms. Ferdin/Mrs.Vlasak/Ms Green (and others?)?
Most of all, it is a betrayal of the animals to publicly champion--but privately abridge--their rights.
This seems an auspicious moment to refer the curious reader to the ADL-LA website.
1) Go here.
2) Now click on the Stop the Killing link immediately above the bold letters ADL.
3) Now, in the orange left sidebar, click on No Kill Solutions
4) Finally, scroll down and read a few of the "no-kill solutions" the ADL-LA recommends:
Low cost, easily accessible and truly mandatory spay/neuter laws for every resident residing in the city of Los Angeles
Free spay/neuter services to all low income residents
A city-wide policy allowing free trap, neuter and return (TNR) programs for feral cats
Open all shelter spay/neuter clinics sitting idle immediately and enlist veterinarians to volunteer and “give back” to their community by doing a certain amount of free spay/neuters every month at these clinics (physician/surgeons are expected to do this by operating and then following up on the patients who don’t have health insurance; why shouldn’t veterinarians?)
So what Ms Ferdin/Mrs. Vlasak/Ms Greene (and others?) are telling us is that killing is wrong because it violates the right of animals to life, but spaying and neutering is okay . . .
Think about that . . . animals have rights, and should be treated as the moral equals of humans . . . it's wrong to kill either animals or humans because they all have the right to life.
But if we are to believe the ADL-LA, animals lack the right to reproduction! Here Ms Ferdin/Mrs. Vlasak/Ms Greene (and others?) are openly advocating forcing animals to undergo a surgical procedure that places them at unnecessary risk for the express purpose of depriving them of their reproductive rights.
Do animals not have the right of privacy to their own bodies?
Are they to be forced to undergo the surgical mutilation of their organs of reproduction, to forego the pleasures of sex and the delights of rearing offspring, and to have their natural behavior significantly altered towards passive, compliant creatures more easily controlled by humans, simply because it is inconvenient for Animal Rights people to figure out what else to do with a (putative) explosion in the births of dogs and cats?
Would the ADL-LA force humans to be sterilized for the same reasons they would force animals to be spayed and neutered?
As with the killing: you can't have it both ways. You can't proclaim that humans and animals are morally equal, and then kill animals unless you'd kill humans for the same reasons.
And you can't claim that humans and animals are morally equal, and then forcibly sterilize animals unless you'd do the same to humans for the same reasons.
Period.
Back to the letter written by Ms Ferdin/Mrs. Vlasak/Miss Greene or whoever the hell she now wants to call herself.
I saw the video in which your workers lied to a veterinarian and hoodwinked him into trusting them, based on what he thought was your good name. They falsely promised to find a home for a beautiful mother cat and her perfectly healthy young kittens. They took those unsuspecting animals out back to a waiting van and unceremoniously snuffed out their lives. Then, in a final gesture of blatant contempt, they dumped the bodies behind a supermarket.
You claimed that you did not hurt the animals. Under what nefarious delusion do you labor to conclude that taking their lives does not constitute hurting them?
One could ask exactly the same question of Ms Ferdin/Mrs. Vlasak/Ms Greene: Under what nevarious delusion do you labor to conclude that depriving an animal of his or her capacity to reproduce, by forcibly mutilating their organs of reproduction, risking their lives at surgery, exposing them to infection, and causing them the pain of a surgical incision does not constitute hurting them?
You stated that you are not an adoption agency. Then why do you have your workers pose as adoption agents? The two who took the cats from the vet's office are currently under arrest--and rightly so! However, our judicial system customarily gives animal abusers the obligate slap on the wrist and then sends them on their merry way to continue their crimes.
Ah! But it will be a lot easier to convict Ms Hinkle and Mr. Cook on the charges of "obtaining property under false pretense" than it will be to convict them of animal cruelty.
If you like irony, put this in your pipe and smoke it: Animal Rights people are constantly harping about abolishing the concept of animals as property, and making them wards of a person's care.
Had that been the case here, Hinkle and Cook might be able to argue that the animals were their wards, and that they were doing what's best for them. As things stand, the property issue looks like the best way to get a conviction. (Mafia boss Al Capone was nailed for income tax evasion, after all . . .)
Is that irony enough?
I read about animal abuse every day on the Internet--and each incident breaks my heart. When it comes from redneck, beer-swilling white trash, it's expected. When it comes from those who claim to sit on MY side of the fence, it is insupportable.
Whoa! Beer-swilling white trash are expected to abuse animals?
Hello!
That slop slop slop noise you hear is Ms Ferdin/Mrs. Vlasak/Ms Greene up to her ears in the smelly stuff, by her own choice of injudiciously stereotypical words.
What stunning contempt she has for the oppressed "other." And what a curiously elitist view from someone who preaches the ultimate in egalitarianism — that animals and humans are of equal value.
She either holds animals and humans both in complete contempt, or she's being a speciesist, valuing animals more than humans!
Methinks Ms Ferdin/Mrs. Vlasak/Ms Greene would benefit from some sensitivity training, to remind her of the virtues of tolerance for those less advantaged, less privileged than she herself is.
Ingrid, has PETA become nothing more than a front for euthing strays? I suspect you kill more animals than you save. It is deplorable. I say that you need to stop--or be stopped.
WHOA! A threat . . . or be stopped . . .
Coming from the wife of an ALF Press Officer who advocates murder, that has some juice to it, doesn't it?
Okay — so I'm going to take full credit for having suggested the possibility that ALF might target PeTA when, back on May 9, 2005, I wrote the post entitled PeTA Actively Kills Thousands of Animals. No! Really!, and said this:
[ . . .]
Or, perhaps ALF will take a page from the SHAC playbook, and mount a campaign to force PeTA's corporate bosses into cruelty-free compliance [to not kill] by terrorizing PeTA's employees, donors, celebrity supporters and suppliers by vandalizing property, demonizing individuals and posting personal information (kids' names, telephone numbers, addresses . . .) on web sites . . ..
How 'bout them apples?
Ms Ferdin/Mrs. Vlasak/Ms Greene continues:
Please write a letter to:
[email protected]
[email protected]
By jove, why not?
I guess the only thing to ask now is if ALF will target its own Press Officer, Dr. Jerry Vlasak and his wife Ms Ferdin/Mrs. Vlasak/Ms Greene, for violating the reproductive rights of animals, which would give whole new meaning to the term "consuming your own."
What more can I say, other than that there are loose cannons galore in the AR movement, and things are going to get increasingly interesting.
Yes. Interesting indeed.
Brian