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Michael Moore is making headlines with his controversial documentary, but one group is targeting the filmmaker for his waistline.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has selected the gadfly filmmaker as one of its “Flab Five” and is treating him to a Veg Eye for the Fat Guy makeover. “Looks like the ‘Downsize This’ author has been doing too much supersizing,” notes PETA.

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Incidentally, I lost 50 pounds on the Atkins diet, getting rid of potatoes, carrots, and some fruits. Which is neither here nor there, I suppose, but it just goes to show that veggies aren't the answer to everything.

Al Q, you have mentioned CHEESE, or what Mme Bong would call pseudo-cheese ...

But no surprise. Not only are PETA sexist, but grossly racist and/or indifferent to human rights violations (Holocaust ads and campaign based on murdered Aboriginal women), advocate bullying "different" children (trading cards) and surprise, make classist "fat" jokes.

I guess they'd say since Elvis and Michael Moore became wealthy class is not an issue there - personally I think otherwise.

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advocate bullying "different" children (trading cards)

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Can you expand on this, please, lagatta?

How can you be for compassion towards animals, and not towards fellow human beings? Apparently this represents the American model.

Or maybe they think that this is compassion.

[ 18 July 2004: Message edited by: steffie_slick ]

This, although I was certainly among those who suffered from dairy being pushed everywhere when I was a kid. There is more sensitivity now that not everyone can digest cow's milk than there was in the postwar period - and a lot of populations such as Asians where lactose intolerance is common.

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In 2002 PETA collected over $17 million from Americans, avoiding over $3 million in federal income taxes. Because this tax break amounts to a huge subsidy, every American taxpayer is footing the bill for PETA's behavior."

PETA has a 501(c)(3) federal tax exemption.

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I found the article that mentions the trading cards.

The PETA card site

[ 18 July 2004: Message edited by: steffie_slick ]

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I know at least three vegetarians (one of whom is a vegan) who are fat. Becoming a vegetarian is certainly NO guarantee that you'll be thin.

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Me too. I did not eat meat for a long while, and upon returning to the motherplanet - well, its probably a crime around here not to eat meat. I don't eat a great deal but everywhere I go they serve beef on a bun, many times without any veggie alternative. So hell ya I"m eating meat again and my weight hasn't changed at all.

Anyway, I have a problem not only with PETA's tactics but with their philosophy. It's got more holes than Swiss Cheese...

Basic question - how do you extend 'human' rights to 'non-humans' when the entire notion of a 'right' assumes a human member of a political community.

Are we going to give cattle the vote?

The cynic in me says we already have.

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Are we going to give cattle the vote?

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Originally posted by kuba:

I thought they already did. I have been blaming them for the past few weeks for all these damn cons that Alberta elected.

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Originally posted by John_D:
Beyond being offensive, I would guess that PETA's tactics are ineffective. At least, I know they are on me. Every time I see a new PETA campaign, I go out of my way to eat some ludicrous portion of meat, say make a triple cheeseburger or order fried chicken. If they inspire that much derision and spite in a person like me who is somewhat sympathetic to their conerns...

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Originally posted by Gir Draxon:

I agree, I think they are not only ineffective, but an active hindrance to legitmate promotions of vegetarianism. I hate having to explain to my friends that just because I choose not to eat meat it does not mean I will shout "NAZI MURDERER!!!" at them if we go out and they order a dish at a restaurant that contains meat.

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I absolutely agree. I can't even count the number of times that I have seen my fellow diners visibly stiffen and assume a defensive position when they find out I am a vegetarian. I know that this is not caused by anything I have said or done, but rather it is influenced by the activists like PETA. I make it a point to never bring up my vegetarianism unless asked, and certainly avoid debating others dietary choices. Unfortunatley PETA has created a group of "activist carnivores" who never fail to attack my choices.

For beings to be able to exercise the rights they have, they need to know they have them.

As far as I know, no other animal I've heard of has the capacity for being communicated with in an intelligent manner that it has certain rights (even monkeys have, as I recall, mastered a vocabulary of only 300 words compared to the several-thousand of comparably-aged humans) which cannot be trod upon.

Now, before anyone points out that children have rights yet they probably don't know it off the bat, I might point out that children in the vast majority of cases grow to be adult humans with the capacity for understanding that they have rights. No such similar phenomenon occurs for other animals.

That is not to say that there should be no basic consideration for the fact that other beings on this planet can feel happiness and fear, and that they should feel happy, not afraid. Factory farming is clearly a gross mistreatment of other animals on a large scale and needs to be halted. PETA's ad is grossly off the point, but makes the salient connection that if we treated humans the way we treat other animals some of us would be facing the 2004 Nuremberg Trials.

I find it interesting, actually, that even people here on babble who posit a precise equivalency of humans and other animals or even an apparent raising-up of other animals over humans recoil from PETA's use of that equivalency to directly compare the Holocaust and modern factory farming. Y'all might want to think about that when people like me get irritated at the apparent lack of concern for human rights violations worldwide while mistreatment of animals gathers much attention.

[ 19 July 2004: Message edited by: DrConway ]

Animals can be quite obstinate when faced with the "thou shalt not eat animals" directive. Many simply refuse to even consider the vegan alternative. Ironically, in some cases these animals even go so far as to kill or eat humans, the very architects of their 'rights'!

Another curiousity: I have known a few people who, when pressed, will state their belief that plants can feel pain (this has been propped up by a few studies, apparently), and in each case the person was a vegetarian. So while I know that animals can feel pain, and I eat animals, they basically admitted that they believe vegetables can feel pain, and they eat vegetables. Such is the nature of the world that unless you're a plant (specifically, a green one) you must kill or rob some other living thing to survive.

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I absolutely agree. I can't even count the number of times that I have seen my fellow diners visibly stiffen and assume a defensive position when they find out I am a vegetarian. I know that this is not caused by anything I have said or done, but rather it is influenced by the activists like PETA. I make it a point to never bring up my vegetarianism unless asked, and certainly avoid debating others dietary choices. Unfortunatley PETA has created a group of "activist carnivores" who never fail to attack my choices.

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I don't know how long PETA has been around, but I've been harangued by "activist carnivores" (read: pretty well everyone who isn't a vegetarian) since I quit meat about 15 years ago. They have their faults, but don't blame PETA for this.

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For beings to be able to exercise the rights they have, they need to know they have them.

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Then go and corner a racoon some night against the Stanley Park Observatory. When the animal is cornered creep slowly toward it, hammer in hand. At a certain point you will experience the animal's profound capacity to express rather convincingly what we might call ferocious indignation.

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As far as I know, no other animal I've heard of has the capacity for being communicated with in an intelligent manner that it has certain rights (even monkeys have, as I recall, mastered a vocabulary of only 300 words compared to the several-thousand of comparably-aged humans) which cannot be trod upon.

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Paraphrasing who here? Shaw, I think. The question is not if they share our capacity to reason, but whether they have the capacity to suffer.

Germany has to some extent entrenched certain rights to animals in their constitutional documents.

[ 19 July 2004: Message edited by: flotsom ]

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Rights are also reciprocal.

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That's a sort of biblical conception of rights. I think most modern, progressive people wouldn't think that my right to life depends on your having a right to life, except in the sense that it depends on everyone's having it; nor does my recognizing your right to life depend on your recognizing mine. What people might think is that if rights exist, then they are universal to a certain class of beings, irrespective of whether they are universally recognized by all such beings; and the question then becomes, how and why we demarcate that class.

[ 19 July 2004: Message edited by: rasmus raven ]

Anyhow there were a bunch of us in a training session and we went out for lunch one day. He couldn't even eat because it wasn't a vegetarian restaurant and a dead animal may have once been on the plate. So he just sat there with his water! But two of my friends who had had just about enough of the dirty socks, he constant harrassment about their lunches etc were on either side of him and they both ordered big dishes of steaming hot liver.

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I worked with a radical vegetarian who was also like really wierd. He would wear his sandals to work in the winter and then hang his wet socks over the cubical walls. Like, gross.
Anyhow there were a bunch of us in a training session and we went out for lunch one day. He couldn't even eat because it wasn't a vegetarian restaurant and a dead animal may have once been on the plate. So he just sat there with his water! But two of my friends who had had just about enough of the dirty socks, he constant harrassment about their lunches etc were on either side of him and they both ordered big dishes of steaming hot liver.

Me personally, I didn't like the looks of it either, but I thought it was hilarious

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:

Another curiousity: I have known a few people who, when pressed, will state their belief that plants can feel pain (this has been propped up by a few studies, apparently), and in each case the person was a vegetarian. So while I know that animals can feel pain, and I eat animals, they basically admitted that they believe vegetables can feel pain, and they eat vegetables. Such is the nature of the world that unless you're a plant (specifically, a green one) you must kill or rob some other living thing to survive.

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To the best of my knowledge, the studies that claim plants can feel pain (apparently reported in a book called The Secret Life of Plants) are not considered credible by most biologists, but then I haven't read the book so I can't fairly judge it. However, even if this claim is true (which I'm inclined to doubt) it is clearly true that more plants have to be destroyed to sustain a person on an omnivorous diet than a vegetarian (or mostly vegetarian) one. The reason, of course, is that at every stage in the food chain there is a loss of effective energy (owing to that great nemesis, the Second Law of Thermodynamics). Imagine how many people could be fed on crops grown on the land needed to sustain one cow.

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Originally posted by Dagmar:
PETA are a bunch of assholes, in my opinion, and have routinely run ads that are degrading to women for a number of years.

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It classed the missing/murdered women (most of whom were prostitutes) in the same catagory as pigs (in at least one ad). They go far beyond any tasteful or civilized boundary.

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But if you're doing the anti bikini photo thing, I guess you're pretty much in the MacKinnon-Dworkin camp.

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Uh, nobody's suggesting that a bikini = violence against women.

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To the best of my knowledge, the studies that claim plants can feel pain (apparently reported in a book called The Secret Life of Plants) are not considered credible by most biologists, but then I haven't read the book so I can't fairly judge it. However, even if this claim is true (which I'm inclined to doubt) it is clearly true that more plants have to be destroyed to sustain a person on an omnivorous diet than a vegetarian (or mostly vegetarian) one. The reason, of course, is that at every stage in the food chain there is a loss of effective energy (owing to that great nemesis, the Second Law of Thermodynamics). Imagine how many people could be fed on crops grown on the land needed to sustain one cow.

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This is precisely the reason that I'm a vegetarian. It has some small part to do with being squeamish about butchering processes etc., but mostly it's environmental, and conservationist. If we weren't so hell-bent on grazing cattle, we could be feeding people nutritious healthy food at a rate far exceeding our rate of meat production. It's just common sense. A good book to refer to on this topic is Diet for a Small Planet in which it is explained exactly how much food goes to waste so that people can eat meat.

I started reading the book you mention. It paints quite a picture, and is about more than a plant's ability to feel pain. It's an interesting book. Suggests that there is some mode of communication and cognition in plants, that they sorta think and feel and talk...but not in any way we humans really jump to recognize.

It may well be true, at least in some sense. All the same, I'm gonna keep eating vegetables.

[ 29 July 2004: Message edited by: Lizard Breath ]

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:

Uh, nobody's suggesting that a bikini = violence against women.

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Originally posted by Erik Pool:

I had previously pictured you as one of the less rigid NDP supporters. But if you're doing the anti bikini photo thing, I guess you're pretty much in the MacKinnon-Dworkin camp.

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They certainly make a valid point, the treatment of animals in North America is appaling. I'm no vegetarian, I've been for periods but am no longer, however I think somebody needs to wake people up to the reality of the multinational livestock industry.

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Originally posted by exiled_armadillo:
I have relatives who are vegetarian and have nothing against them (having been one myself at times) but PETA does nothing except push people away, its called gorilla marketing. I also know a PETA activist and I wish she'd treat her four kids as well as she treates her 38 cats!

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This sort of thing is exactly what gets in my craw about animal-rights activists. Oftentimes it seems that they emphasize other-animal rights and other-animal abuses to the point of elevating other animals over humans, when there are human rights abuses far more severe and far more pressing that get the barest of shrugs from a lot of people, as though the Balkan civil wars, the Soviet Stalinist era of purges and mass gulags, or the ongoing abuses in Iraq were merely inevitable.

The least animal rights activists could do to get more people on board is to emphasize the very real link that does exist between childhood abuse of other animals and later bullying and abusing of fellow humans. In addition they could make the (logical, although I don't know if this link is verifiable) case that in regimes where other animals are often mistreated, humans may very well also be subject to abuses and mistreatment.

How is the treatment of cats and dogs, for example, in Darfour, or Iraq? I can't imagine people taking time out to cuddle their pets when there's such appallingly poor treatment of humans going on.

I call myself the head of PETH (People for the Ethical Treatment of Humans) partly as an expression of my frustration and cynicism when it comes to people who seem to believe that human rights abuses are secondary to abuses of other animals.

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Originally posted by Erik Pool:

Well, maybe not here, but some sure have!

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I do get the impression that PETA doesn't like humans very much.

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That's a good comment, Lagatta. Something that focuses a bit more clearly (and in few words) what gets me with PETA. Sort of like the child-free zealots who talk endlessly about the legitimacy of being child-free (...not disputed) but who send out the subliminal message that they, in fact, just don't like children.

[ 30 July 2004: Message edited by: Hinterland ]

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In the letter, Berman said of PETA, "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has donated over $150,000 to criminal activists -- including the terrorist Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and individuals jailed for arson, burglary, and attempted murder. When asked by eight different media outlets to explain the purpose of a $1,500 gift to the ELF, PETA officers and spokespersons gave eight different and contradictory answers

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Last week, PETA vegetarian campaign director Bruce Friedrich was convicted of criminal trespass in Kentucky. Friedrich has previously publicly advocated "blowing stuff up and smashing windows" in order to win "animal liberation."

Berman's letter also alleged that PETA had a convicted felon and Animal Liberation Front terrorist on its payroll whose job was to speak to school students about the need for direct action to protect animals.

Of the illegal activities carried out by animal rights extremists, Sen. Hatch said, "Those who target and attack peaceful organizations and individuals do not legitimately advance their cause, and promise no breakthroughs to society. Instead, they only promote a grave threat to the well being and advancement of mankind."

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web page

[ 30 July 2004: Message edited by: statica ]

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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has donated over $150,000 to criminal activists

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I disagree with what you said about that, Hinterland.

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Originally posted by angrymonkey:
All you end up with are people calling themselves vegetarians that eat fish or chicken every other day.

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[ 30 July 2004: Message edited by: Michelle ]

The point is, with any of those acts/tasks, there comes a level of understanding; of appreciation.and though it applies to things such as laundry duty, and meal preparation, there is something quite moreso with being a part of converting a living animal into cuts of meat, fish or fowl. I was introduced to that as a 4 or 5 year old, and have experienced it many times. (though not in about the last 15 years). But yes, I could do so competently tomorrow, and in doing so, would appreciate that ground beef is not something that you just pick up vacuum packed at A & P. Yes, I do my own laundry, and insisted that both my son and my daughter learned to do the same. And yes, I can and have prepared Christmas and other holiday (and everyday)dinners; and believe that everyone should at least know how to do so.

"Only those who have a personal understanding of how livestock is raised, then slaughtered and dressed an animal should be permitted to eat meat."

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Only those who have personaly raised, then slaughtered and dressed an animal should be permitted to eat meat.

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Ah, the Omnivore's Burden. Does every vegetarian dream of this?

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A bus; well, not "from scratch", but find me an engine, and a big pile of assorted scrap, and a tool shop, and we'll have some sort of a functioning bus.

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True, but then you'd lack a complete and holistic understanding of the process of digging ore, smelting it and machining it. We can't have that.

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Ah, the Omnivore's Burden. Does every vegetarian dream of this?

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There's enough problems in the world with people forcing their beliefs on others.
People blather on about videogames and movies devaluing life, I think supermarkets with walls of packaged meat and "yum! I'm tasty" animal mascots is more effective at this. It's just a more unimportant form of life apparently.

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"Those who, by their purchases, require animals to be killed have no right to be shielded from the slaughterhouse or any other aspect of the production of the meat they buy. If it is distasteful for humans to think about, what can it be like for the animals to experience it?" --Peter Singer

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A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.--Leo Tolstoy

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Originally posted by Gir Draxon:

"Only those who have a personal understanding of how livestock is raised, then slaughtered and dressed an animal should be permitted to eat meat."

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This has been my sentinment for a while now... the way North Americans de-humanize themselves from the animals they eat is quite disturbing.

I remember growing up at the dinner table finding it strange that we mask what we eat in our language: veal/beef indeed of calf/cow-meat, or pork instead of pig-meat. The Chinese, for example, don't mask this, and they tend to live (or have family that live) very close to the animals they love to eat -- especially in Guangzhou province where most of the strains of flu's come from (a result of the geese -> pig -> human food chain, with geese and pig excrement cross contaminating each other, etc. etc.).

While backpacking in Southwest Yunnan Province, I distinctly remember hearing the 5am death-calls of pigs getting dragged from the pens to the slaughterhouse: they sound amazingly like human children, bacon just doesn't go down like it used to.

As for PETA, while they do employ nasty tactics, they DO make breakthroughs, having recently signed animal treatment agreements with the likes of KFC and others.

This one, in particular, tickled me:

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Dear Lord, I've been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee for the Christmas turkey before us... a turkey which was no doubt a lively, intelligent bird... a social being... capable of actual affection... nuzzling its young with almost human-like compassion. Anyway, it's dead and we're gonna eat it. Please give our respects to its family. --Berke Breathed, Bloom County Babylon

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The other ones are good too - they definitely make me think. Make me think...sigh...of getting back on the vegetarian wagon that I have sort of been semi-riding, semi-walking behind, and semi-jumping off.

This one's funny too:

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You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car. --Harvey Diamond

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[ 01 August 2004: Message edited by: Michelle ]

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Originally posted by Michelle:
You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car. --Harvey Diamond

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That is a good one...

Me thinks the rabbit will vigorously fight the baby over the apple though!

[ 01 August 2004: Message edited by: tomlovestrees ]

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I remember growing up at the dinner table finding it strange that we mask what we eat in our language: veal/beef indeed of calf/cow-meat, or pork instead of pig-meat.

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Blame it on Guillaume le Batard.

This split in terminology occurred following the Norman Conquest when the words, "pig", "ox/cow", etc., used by the peasants who raised the animals differed from words such as "veau", "bouef", "mouton", and "porc" used by the nobles who ate what was raised.

[ 01 August 2004: Message edited by: al-Qa'bong ]

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Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:
Yeah, babies love to eat compressed animal lips and rat feces.

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Correction; toddlers love to eat compressed animal lips and rat feces.

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Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:
Just wait, audra. When you are helping your forthcoming children with their science projects and taking them to music lessons you'll still be thinking of them as your babies.

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Heck I still CALL my five year-old "baby". Not in front of other five year-olds, of course. I don't think I'll ever get out of the habit.

OR

Apples are furry and adorable... and bunnies are now delicious?

The choice is obvious!

[ 04 August 2004: Message edited by: flotsom ]

In principle, I agree with the organisation's mandate. In practice, it disgusts me to the extreme. I hate their tactics, I hate their "celebrity vegan" praise (as if having famous people eat vegan/vegetarian food is more important than having steelworkers eat tofu stirfrys...) and I hate their attacks on people who are supposedly on the same side of the fence on the whole "social justice" thing (namely, Michael Moore) - don't they get that by poking fun at Mr. Moore's weight, they're saying he's less credible because he's overweight?

They do nothing to make vegetarianism more accessible and I agree with Michelle: I think they are funded by the meat industry. Why would a lobby group trying to convert the majority of the world's population to vegetarian use the tactics that they do? (They grab attention, but I don't know anyone who respects them.)

I also don't like their recipes or corporate endorsement of veggie-friendly products (TM).