PETA – People Exhibiting Terrible Attributes
Written by Paul Walfield
Imagine how great life would be if you could spend all of your time,
money and energy pursuing what you loved to do. Think of all the
things you could do. Then think about wasting it all away. On top of
that, say you were entrusted with other people’s money to pursue what
you thought was important, but was just plain wasteful, wouldn’t that
be a shame?

Well, if you are an animal rights activist working for PETA, you can
betray a trust, pursue dim, and utterly worthless pursuits, get
publicity for your cause and probably get even more donations from
even simpler minds.

PETA is an animal activist organization that survives by receiving
donations from people who like animals. The people at PETA claim to
like animals and appear to hate humans. The same humans that give them
money to pursue their quest to free the world from human domination
and install a more natural order of things. Humans being the most
unnatural of all things on the planet.

One of the ways PETA spends your donated money is by paying off city
officials of offensively named towns to change their names to more
vegan friendly names. The Associated Press reported on April 23, 2003,
that PETA sent a letter to the town of Hamburg, New York offering the
city $15,000.00 worth of meatless hamburgers for their schools if the
town changed its name to “Veggieburg.”

At first glance, we might dismiss this act as not being a real effort,
but according to PETA spokesperson, Joe Haptas, “''Our offer is
serious as a heart attack.”

Let’s see, PETA is the same organization that equated the millions of
innocents who were slaughtered in concentration camps during World War
II, with chickens on farms. They are also the same people who wrote a
respectful letter to Yassir Arafat to be more careful in his use of
suicide bombers so as to just target men, women and children and not
donkeys. It is true. Ingrid Newkirk, one of the heads of PETA
complained to the PLO that their suicide bombers had been careless in
their aiming to murder people in Israel on January 26th this year, and
had accidentally killed a donkey. She wants them to be more careful
and only kill people from now on.

PETA also complained to the American military. In March of this year
PETA demanded that the American military stop using animals in Iraq.
“Our troops deserve the best defense possible, but PETA opposes the
use of dolphins, sea lions, or any other marine mammals.” It seems the
military believes that using dolphins and sea lions is the best way to
ensure the safety of our troops and uses them. PETA doesn’t think so.
Of course PETA has no alternative to the use of sea mammals but they
just know it’s not the best idea, and our willing to sacrifice our
troops and humanitarian aid till we come up with something better, if
ever.

PETA views human needs as unnatural but the needs of a chicken are not
only natural, but paramount. KFC is now in the sights of the ever
vigilant animal activists. PETA believes that KFC is cruel because it
just gives enough space to the birds and feeds them too much causing
the poultry to grow too fast. KFC must be stopped.

Then there are the people of North Carolina who have been told by PETA
“He Died For Your Sins. Go Vegetarian.” PETA has a 36 foot wide
billboard on interstate 40 that shows a pig next to the 12 foot tall
letters. PETA sure knows how to endear itself to the folks in the
Bible Belt. As Reverend Mike Parnell of the Burgaw Baptist Church,
located along Interstate 40 north of Wilmington said, “I wish it had
come at some other time, other than Easter.”

Then there is the civic minded side of PETA and their demand that meat
and fish be taxed. PETA is demanding that the state government in Ohio
place an 8 cent per pound tax on meat and fish, “It's something PETA
has been pushing for awhile, said Nathan Runkle in the April 17th
edition of central Ohio’s Times Recorder, adding, "Now there are taxes
on cigarettes and alcohol, so we feel this should be the next step.”

To show that they are willing to jump on any bandwagon, PETA is
reported in Salon.com to have offered $10,000.00 to Al Jazeera, the
Arab network to air a 30 second commercial showing “cows hanging
upside down in a slaughterhouse after their throats had been slit,
goats being killed and a chicken thrown violently at a box.” PETA
offered the money to Al Jazeera because of its willingness to show
bloodied humans during their coverage of the war in Iraq. PETA will
never be accused of missing an opportunity.

And not to ever be thought of as leaving any stone unturned, there are
PETA’s allegations, in their ads targeting south and central Asians in
the US, explaining that eating meat, well, “gets you down.” The ad,
which was reported on April 11, 2003, in the Indian Express in an
article entitled, “PETA is aiming below the belt,” quotes Alka
Chandna, campaign manager with PETA’s international grassroots
campaigns department as saying, “I’m afraid, it’s very true… Here, in
the US, most people know that heart disease and stroke are the result
of constriction of blood...too much cholesterol in one’s diet has the
potential of clogging the blood vessels - arteries to the heart,
arteries to the brain, arteries to organs, and arteries to the
genitalia.”

Next time you get the urge to donate your money, time or energy to a
worthy cause, a cause that wants to defend the rights of animals to be
treated ethically, try the ASPCA. They at least so far, don’t think
humans need to be treated unethically, to get their message across.

Paul Walfield is a freelance writer and member of the State Bar of
California with an undergraduate degree in Psychology and
post-graduate study in behavioral and analytical psychology. He
resided for a number of years in the small town of Houlton, Maine and
is now a California attorney. Paul can be contacted at