Four Legs Good...
Nuttiness is hardly unusual in the animal rights world, but last week our cup runneth over. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) president Ingrid Newkirk has fired off a letter to Velupillai Prabhakaran, an international thug wanted by Interpol for terrorism, murder, organized crime, and terrorism conspiracy. Prabhakaran leads the infamous "Tamil Tiger" militants in Sri Lanka. The violent separatists launched grenades near a zoo on February 5, wounding four people and zero animals. Newkirk begged him "to leave animals out of this conflict" without noting that Prabhakaran's rebels have already killed more than 90 civilians this year. (Click here for one chilling example.) This isn't the first time Newkirk has reached out to violent leaders. And we're not talking about the ones her own group has directly funded (click here, here, here, and here). In January 2003, Palestinian militants detonated a bomb near Jerusalem as a bus-load full of Israelis passed by. The bomb was carried by a donkey (which didn't survive). Newkirk faxed then-Palestinian-leader Yasser Arafat a plea to "leave animals out of this conflict." Public outrage ensued. When asked by The Washington Post whether she considered asking Arafat to persuade his people to stop blowing up Israelis as well, she replied: "It's not my business to inject myself into human wars."
The Elephants In HSUS's Living Room
As fallout from the nation's largest beef recall continues to float through newsrooms and school districts, Americans have begun to ask hard questions about the safety of our beef supply and the character of the people who bring it to market. We have a few questions of our own. First, why did the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) sit on its shock-value video for several months? The group has claimed that it spent six weeks "investigating" a Chino, California slaughterhouse and two more weeks looking at the videotapes before giving authorities "extra time" to weigh their options. HSUS also insists that it "is the last entity that would ever want to sit on the results; we had no incentive to do so. We were methodical in how we handled the investigation, and how we publicized it, too." We're not buying it. An organization interested in the welfare of cattle would have taken the very first example of animal abuse it found, the very day it was filmed, and showed it to the plant manager. "Clean up your act today and fire these few employees," a responsible advocate would have said, "or the Sheriff will be our next stop." The drawback of this approach for HSUS, of course, is that no fundraising bonanza would result. (How's that for an "incentive" for being "methodical" instead of acting with urgency?) And Californians wouldn't have been politically sensitized to the issues wrapped up in a coming ballot initiative to ban farm-animal-handling practices HSUS doesn't like. (HSUS has already put over $1.4 million into the effort). Reacting immediately might not have helped HSUS, but the animals going through that slaughterhouse in the last few months would certainly have been much better off. Remember them, HSUS? The animals? One other nagging question. HSUS president Wayne Pacelle told the Associated Press yesterday that he chose this particular slaughterhouse at random. What he hasn't said, though, is how many facilities his workers had to infiltrate before they found one with a problem worth videotaping. Could it be that HSUS has been planting employees inside California meatpackers since June 2003, when the group first floated the idea of an animal-rights ballot initiative in the Golden State? Inquiring minds want to know. Especially since it now looks like the current problem was the exception—not the rule.
Breaking News
Here's a sampling of other stories that have caught our interest today. To see a one-week archive of these items, click here.
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