PETA Wants To Sue Anonymous HuffPo Commenters 590
MarkWhittington writes, quoting himself: "PETA is incensed over an article in the Huffington Post that details that organization's unsettling practice of euthanizing animals in a Virginia facility that many have assumed is a no kill shelter. According to the New York Post, PETA wants to sue some of the people who have left comments on the article. The problem is that, following the practice of many on the Internet, many of the comments are under assumed names or are anonymous. PETA is attempting to discover the true identities of their critics so that it can sue them for defamation."
And with this move... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A name for PETA (Score:5, Insightful)
It's only defamation if it's false. How do you sue people for telling the truth?
hypocrisy (Score:4, Insightful)
euthanizing an animal is good
euthanizing an animal and using its protein is evil
now excuse me while I use the protein of a lovely and beautiful and once-free-and-frolicking sea kitten
Re:And with this move... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A name for PETA (Score:5, Insightful)
Comments were indeed lies (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair to PETA, at least one example from TFA is absolutely false:
it objects to terms like "animal Kervorkians,"
It is completely false and unfair to compare PETA to Dr. Kevorkian. Dr. Kervokian only killed people who volunteered to die. PETA, on the other hand, is killing animals who have not volunteered to die. PETA is an organization animal murderers (the meat goes to waste, therefore it is murder and not food) while Dr. Kevorkian assisted patients in committing suicide. Big difference.
Let's tell it like it is (Score:5, Insightful)
PETA is attempting to discover the true identities of the supressive persons [wikipedia.org] so that it can sue them for defamation.
FTFY. Like Scientologists, these people and free speech don't get along.
Re:And with this move... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would probably never have known anything about this if it weren't for this. I will never donate to PETA again. Streisand indeed.
Re:Oh brother (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:vs the James Rosen / Stephen Kim story (Score:5, Insightful)
is this accurate? im really confused.
I think you may be mistaking what are actually contrasting and often contradictory statements of discrete individuals across several communities for a monolithic statement of belief by a single collective mind.
Re:And with this move... (Score:4, Insightful)
You donated to PETA before this?
Re:Oh brother (Score:4, Insightful)
Think of PETA as the environmentalist equivalent of the Westboro Baptist Church, and suddenly it all makes sense.
Re:Oh brother (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh brother (Score:4, Insightful)
Then you're not really paying attention.
While the NRA wants to be pretty much free from the dictated rules of others, PETA wants to be the one dictating.
NRA: Leave us alone, we're doing our thing.
PETA: Stop what you're doing or we'll harass you.
See the difference?
LK
Re:Oh brother (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lets try logic (Score:5, Insightful)
due to the typically brutal lives that wild pets usually endure fighting disease and competing for territory and food
Otherwise known as "nature"...
Re:And with this move... (Score:5, Insightful)
So... The dude made a mistake. Feels bad and is going to stop making the same mistake, and you come down all medieval on his arse calling him a dumbass and "not bright." Nice... Have you ever noticed what this makes you look like? Or that in any discussion, this sort of approach will have the opposite affect of what you desire? You're clearly not "sorry". Just, to be blunt and frank a bit of an ass.
PETA has a fairly effective brainwashing technique. Most of the PETA supporters won't believe a word of this no matter how much evidence you show them. It is completely stupid and inane drivel they spout, but if you never look deeply into it (for whatever reason), it is quite possible you'll never see it. The GGP might simply have taken them at their word, "we help animals." Sure he should have checked, but not everyone has time or is quite as cynical as you might be.
As for myself, I only support the People Eating Tasty Animals variety of PETA. But I have made donations I have deeply regretted when I found out more. Never anything substantial, but I $2 here or there can add up to a nice steak, and I like my steak.
Re:Oh brother (Score:4, Insightful)
PETA is and always has been such a joke.
PETA is an organization that pretends to love animals.
What PETA really is is an organization that hates people. Their fundamental position is that basically, no animal would ever voluntarily want to even be on the same planet as the evil horrible creatures known as "humans", that simple proximity to humans is intensely stressful to them, and that all humans are good for is to exploit, torment, and kill animals.
Their ignorance of what the animals themselves actually want and need is outright appalling. When they go full-on "rescue", the poor animals might as well be in an abattoir. They turn the phrase "killing with Kindness" quite literal. In fact, abattoirs have are often more humane. At least abattoirs are set up for relatively quick and painless death as opposed to panicked animals being smeared all over the highways and general mayhem.
I strongly believe in respect for animals. But to truly show respect, you need to gain understanding, not arrogantly assume you know best.
Re:A name for PETA (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the news that PETA kills a far higher percentage of the animals it receives than ASPCA, for example, is not widely publicized.
Because PETA is the darling of the bleeding-heart liberals, assumed to value all living things except humans.
Re:A name for PETA (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, AFAIC no person should be paying income taxes and if he is forced to then he is in captivity, relative slavery. Applying PETA position in this case would mean it's better to kill people that pay income taxes than to have them suffer this way.
However if somebody actually ASKED those people that end up in that situation, I bet almost without exception they would prefer to stay alive even if they are forced into that relative slavery (after all, most of the actual slaves that were owned by specific people, not by a larger system, even they didn't want to die).
So PETA's position is indefensible, it's complete nonsense, extremely stupid and very selfish, because they are not in fact asking those animals if they want to die at all.
Re:A name for PETA (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is wrong,. It's only defamation if it's false AND the author knew it as false at the time it was authored.
The truth is an absolute defense of course. Another defense is no reasonable reader would have taken what was said as a matter of fact - factual truth- and not rampant speculation or snide remark or political statement or matter of opinion not likely to be based in fact. If the target is a person in the public eye, you have to affirmatively say, in effect "X is the actual, real facts" and know that it's not.
A famous case involving the National Enquirer and Carol Burnett springs to mind. She had to prove that the paper knew the allegations (about her being drunk) were false. She was able to do that in that case and the paper lost.
Mostly you can have at it WRT to famous people or undefined grouping of people "all lawyers' or "that industry" no lawsuit is going to be won, although of course anyone can sue anyone anywhere at any time for any reason.
For instance, if PETA sued someone in New York State because they were arguing against PETA in a public discussion forum, then that person could sue PETA back under New York State's SLAPP Law (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation ) protects people from being sued by (and gives legal recourse against ) entities if the action that person is being sued for was participating in a public forum on a matter of public interest.
PETA appears to me to be pulling a Scientology here and trying to get the word out to *everyone* that it's "dangerous" to say anything negative against PETA .
On the internet, this is known to be the opposite of a good strategy and PETA now has two PR disasters on its hand, one considerably worse than the other. They could have talked their way out of the first one (the Humane Society puts animals down also, it's just a logistical fact about animals and the amount of money and space to take care of them) .
But suing Susie Homebody because she said a bad thing about your big organization? That's just cyber bullying and everyone knows it. This is going to backfire on PETA big time and probably a lot of people are going to start posting statements online just to spite them, like :
"Ingrid Newkirk is well known to masturbate using lobster tails"
or
"PETA is listed as an organization likely to be associated with terrorism because it's radical members have been linked to bombing of animal labs in universities and one of their founders, Alice Newkirk has written that no movement for social change has ever succeeded without what she calls the militarism component, saying things like:
"Thinkers may prepare revolutions," she wrote of the ALF in 2004, "but bandits must carry them out."[95]
and
"Not until black demonstrators resorted to violence did the national government work seriously for civil rights legislation ... In 1850 white abolitionists, having given up on peaceful means, began to encourage and engage in actions that disrupted plantation operations and liberated slaves. Was that all wrong?"
from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_for_the_Ethical_Treatment_of_Animals [wikipedia.org]
More from Wikipedia on the PETA - TERRORISM connection:
In 2004 The Observer described what it called a network of relationships between apparently unconnected animal rights groups on both sides of the Atlantic, writing that, with assets of $6.5 million, and with the PETA Foundation holding further assets of $15 million, PETA funds a number of activists and groupsâ"some with links to militant groups, including the ALF, which the FBI has named as a domestic terrorist threat. American writer Don Liddick writes that PETA gave $1,500 to the Earth Liberation Front in 2001â"Newkirk said the donation was a mistake, and that the money had been intended for public education about destruction of habitat, but Liddick writes that it went to t
Re: A name for PETA (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, this happens routinely (discoveries of significant numbers of sick and neglected animals) - and shelters and humane societies around the country cope. They call in volunteers, they call up their usual supporters, they call in help from adjacent municipalities shelters and humane societies, they contact any nearby private shelters and any applicable breed rescues, they hit up the local media to ask for additional bodies, cash, and supplies.
They sweat and they bleed and they cry - but they cope and they do their damnedest for the animals. And they do it without immediately euthanizing the majority of them. That is what makes PETA so monstrous in this ongoing situation... they don't even try. Even when handed healthy animals.