PETA in Bangkok: know the truth

They're back again. Semi - naked women in cages outside KFC in Bangkok. They will most likely shock or offend some people but they don't feel remorse. In fact, shock is what they want. PETA love to shock and upset people. Intimidation and violence is what they do best. Luckily, their campaigns in Thailand have had little effect. Thai people treat PETA activists in exactly the right way: they look at them, laugh, and walk into the restaurant.

About a year ago I wrote a piece on PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). The piece was prompted by a TV show and a PETA protest in Bangkok. Sadly, I inadvertently deleted the article. The sight of women in cages (without enough room to dance) outside KFC in Bangkok jogged my memory but for some reason, I find it tedious and difficult to re-write any article.

So here is a greatly abridged and sloppy (my apologies) re-typed version of an article on PETA:


The sight of almost naked females enclosed in tiny metal cages was confusing to most Thais. Doubtlessly the traditionalists found it offensive or shocking. Youngsters probably found it sexy and amusing while others just exercised the traditional Thai tolerance and looked the other way. I'd be surprised if few got the real message: PETA was back in town.


PETA are ostensibly an animal rights group. They enjoy wide membership and popularity in the US, with a number of Hollywood stars and pop singers jumping on board to lavish in the trendy left wing section of the political spectrum. Many youngsters follow the group, politicians pay them lip service and their campaign adverts are hard to miss yet even harder to forget. But how many people know the real truth?

PETA's advertising campaigns can tell us a lot about them. They seek to shock and cause offence. It doesn't matter if you are scared, insulted or outraged as long as they have your attention. And no, this isn't an anti-smoking or anti drink driving campaign that uses shock value to bring the safety message home, this is purely their own self righteous extremist agenda.

PETA approve of drink driving. They launched a "Got beer?" campaign aimed at encouraging university students to drink beer instead of milk (do students need the encouragement?). The crusade was scrapped after complaints from anti - drink driving groups. PETA then switched to campaigns comparing the slaughter of chickens to the holocaust (with juxtaposed pictures to boot) and a children focused campaign called "Your daddy kills chickens!". The latter featured pictures of a "evil scientist" looking man wringing a chicken's neck. How well the young children must have slept at night thanks to the warm message from the kind PETA gang.

PETA take some hard line stances. The organisation actually oppose ownership of any domesticated animals. Founder Ingrid Newark repeatedly claimed the goal of her group is total "animal liberation". If you own a goldfish - and PETA class that as an animal - than you are the enemy. The group are also completely opposed to all animal testing, despite the fact that vice president Mary Beth Sweetland is insulin dependant diabetic. Yes, you read that correctly. The vice president of the extremist mob who oppose all animal testing is still in this world thanks to a drug derived from experiments on dogs.

It gets darker still. Despite the claim on their website that "the animal rights movement is non violent" PETA have a history of direct involvement in terror. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to call PETA a terrorist group. Animal Liberation Front (ALF) member Rodney Coronado was given no less than seventy thousand dollars in grants (tax free, the group are a charity) from PETA while he was under FBI investigation for arson. He has since been convicted of arson of a university research laboratory and openly confesses to six other acts of the same crime. Coronado was described by Ingrid Newark as a "fine young man" just a month after the ALF firebombed McDonald's in Chicago using a milk jug recipe given to them publicly just a few days earlier by Coronado.

The group frequently advocate acts of terrorism and violence in public speeches. Jerry Greenwalt of the L.A.'s Department of Animal Services saw his family and himself suffer death threats, mob protests outside his home, vandalism of his home and car and insults delivered over loudspeakers in his neighbourhood, all delivered by PETA terrorists. His wife suffered a heart attack after the first protest.

What was his crime? Running an animal shelter that was too small to take in all the stray animals in LA. The group strive to take care of as many as possible and last year they achieved a six percent decrease in euthanasia killings. Sadly, twenty five percent of animals still need to be put down. Compare that percentage to PETA's dirty little statistic we shall soon discover.



But the most revealing fact of all about PETA is stunning: they kill animals. They slaughter them in mind number quantities. The TV show "Bulls**t!" featuring the duo of Penn and Teller revealed that PETA killed ....wait for it.....fourteen thousand four hundred animals at its headquarters in Virginia. The group also claimed a tax refund on a giant freezer clearly purchased to store the bodies in. The animals had been taken into the "care" of PETA after being "rescued" from animal centres. In one year, almost two thirds of animals taken in by PETA were killed.

PETA members were charged in 2005 for leaving eighty dead animals in a dumpster. The animals had been taken from shelters and euthanised by PETA employees.



PETA take nearly twenty nine million dollars per year in donations.

A selection of PETA quotes from Activistcash:

“I love fire, be it around a campfire with friends or when consuming an empty fur farm, animal laboratory or luxury condominium built on the homes of my animal relations.”

— Former ALF member and PETA grantee Rodney Coronado in Earth First! Journal

“Arson, property destruction, burglary, and theft are ‘acceptable crimes’ when used for the animal cause.”

— PETA co-founder Alex Pacheco lists the “acceptable” tactics to fight for animal rights, Associated Press

“I plan to send my liver somewhere in France, to protest foie gras (liver pate) ... I plan to have handbags made from my skin ... and an umbrella stand made from my seat.”

— PETA President Ingrid Newkirk speaking to onMilwaukee.com

“I have very conflicted views on everything. I'm a proud member of PETA and I got leather boots on my feet, you know what I'm saying?”

— Singer Pink's nuanced support of animal rights, on MTV.com

“Did we euthanize some animals who could have been adopted? Maybe.”

— PETA's Domestic Animal Issues & Abuse Department director Daphna Nachminovitch, in The Virginian-Pilot

“Crimes of compassion that every animal advocate should support.”

— Coronado’s description of two 1991 arsons at Oregon State University and the Northwest Farm Food Cooperative in Edmonds, Washington, as described in his 1995 Federal Sentencing Memorandum

“[I see] a spark of hope in every broken window, every torched police car.”

— The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“I will be the last person to condemn ALF [the Animal Liberation Front].”

— The New York Daily News

“Getting together three or four friends of mine, we came back a week later to that farm, we broke into the main laboratory, we trashed every single piece of equipment, we stole documents and lists of fur farms across the nation. And we started a fire in an experimental fur farm, an experimental feed building, where they manufactured the experimental diets which were the focus of research at this farm. And that fire destroyed all the equipment, and in the ensuing raid, the raid that happened caused enough damage that six months later that lab was forced to shut down. That was five people, folks -- once again maybe like twelve hundred dollars, a couple weeks of planning, five people. But that wasn’t the end. I knew I had to continue, and for the next -- oh gosh, a little over a year -- we took out, one by one, every recipient of what’s called the Mink Farmers Research Foundation. It’s a foundation whose sole purpose is to aid research to benefit the fur farm industry.”

— SHAC rally, Edison, New Jersey

“Throughout the late ‘80s, me and a handful of friends just like you people here, we started to break windows, we started to slash tires, we started to rescue animals from factory farms and vivisection breeders, and we graduated to breaking into laboratories … As long as we emptied the labs of animals, they were still easily replaced. So that's when the ALF in this country, and my cell, started engaging in arson.”

— SHAC rally, Edison, New Jersey

“When you see the loss of 9 billion [animal] lives each year, it's inappropriate to hold a sign or pass out a petition. It's appropriate to go out and burn down the factory farm.”

— The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Damaging the enemy financially is fair game.”

— Washington City Paper

“Humans have grown like a cancer. We're the biggest blight on the face of the earth.”

— Washingtonian magazine

“Probably everything we do is a publicity stunt ... we are not here to gather members, to please, to placate, to make friends. We're here to hold the radical line.”

— USA Today

“Would I rather the research lab that tests animals is reduced to a bunch of cinders? Yes.”

— New York Daily News

“As a direct-action warrior, it made a lot of sense to me to attack institutions in the fur trade … We need to destroy them by any means necessary.”

— "Conference on Organized Resistance," American University

“A lot of people think that -- Oh my god, that’s going too far, you know. People can support bringing animals out of labs, but they can’t support arson. Well, I’m sorry. I’m not here to, to please people. I’m not here to win the support of people. I’m here to represent my animal relations who are suffering this very second. And I don’t care what anybody says about what I do to achieve their freedom.”

— SHAC rally, Edison, New Jersey

“More than anything we applied arson, and effectively we destroyed -- um, let’s see -- the Northwest Fur Breeders Cooperative in Edmonds, Washington, which we hit a week later after OSU. We hit Washington State University’s Eastern Washington experimental fur farm. We did get seven coyotes out of there, six mink, and ten mice … We burned down a fur farm that was on the market to be sold, in Oregon also. We went to the Michigan State University’s experimental fur farm program and destroyed thirty-two years of research, by using fire once again, and rescued two mink from there.”

— SHAC rally, Edison, New Jersey

“Here’s a little model I’m going to show you here. I didn’t have any incense, but -- this is a crude incendiary device. It is a simple plastic jug, which you fill with gasoline and oil. You put in a sponge, which is soaked also in flammable liquid -- I couldn’t find an incense stick, but this represents that. You put the incense stick in here, light it, place it -- underneath the ‘weapon of mass destruction,’ light the incense stick -- sandalwood works nice -- and you destroy the profits that are brought about through animal and earth abuse. That’s about two dollars.”

— "Conference on Organized Resistance," American University

“Every time a police agency pepper-sprays or uses pain-compliance holds against our people, their cars should burn.”

— "Conference on Organized Resistance," American University

“I think [food producers] should appreciate that we’re only targeting their property. Because frankly I think it’s time to start targeting them.”

— "Conference on Organized Resistance," American University

“There is no hidden agenda. If anybody wonders about -- what’s this with all these reforms -- you can hear us clearly. Our goal is total animal liberation. [emphasis added]”

— “Animal Rights 2002” convention

“[Eating meat] is not your personal decision, any more than, you know, whether somebody beats their child is their personal decision.”

— “Animal Rights 2002” convention

“We feel that animals have the same rights as a retarded human child because they are equal mentally in terms of dependence on others.”

— The New York Times

“In the end, I think it would be lovely if we stopped this whole notion of pets altogether.”

— Newsday

“I don’t use the word 'pet.' I think it’s speciesist language. I prefer 'companion animal.' For one thing, we would no longer allow breeding. People could not create different breeds. There would be no pet shops. If people had companion animals in their homes, those animals would have to be refugees from the animal shelters and the streets. You would have a protective relationship with them just as you would with an orphaned child. But as the surplus of cats and dogs (artificially engineered by centuries of forced breeding) declined, eventually companion animals would be phased out, and we would return to a more symbiotic relationship – enjoyment at a distance.”

— The Harper's Forum Book, Jack Hitt, ed., 1989, p.223

“The bottom line is that people don't have the right to manipulate or to breed dogs and cats... If people want toys, they should buy inanimate objects. If they want companionship, they should seek it with their own kind.”

— Animals

“One day, we would like an end to pet shops and the breeding of animals. [Dogs] would pursue their natural lives in the wild ... they would have full lives, not wasting at home for someone to come home in the evening and pet them and then sit there and watch TV.”

— The Chicago Daily Herald

“Pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation.”

— Harper's

“Perhaps the mere idea of receiving a nasty missive will allow animal researchers to empathize with their victims for the first time in their lousy careers. I find it small wonder that the laboratories aren’t all burning to the ground. If I had more guts, I’d light a match.”

— The Chronicle of Higher Education

“Even if animal tests produced a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.”

— PETA president and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk, in the September 1989 issue of Vogue

“Six million people died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses. [emphasis added]”

— The Washington Post

“I am not a morose person, but I would rather not be here. I don’t have any reverence for life, only for the entities themselves. I would rather see a blank space where I am. This will sound like fruitcake stuff again but at least I wouldn’t be harming anything.”

— The Washington Post

“There’s no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all animals.”

— Washingtonian magazine

“I wish we all would get up and go into the labs and take the animals out or burn them down.”

— "National Animal Rights Convention"

“We’re looking for good lawsuits that will establish the interests of animals as a legitimate area of concern in law.”

— Insight on the News

“I openly hope that it [hoof-and-mouth disease] comes here. It will bring economic harm only for those who profit from giving people heart attacks and giving animals a concentration camp-like existence. It would be good for animals, good for human health and good for the environment.”

— ABC News interview

“Eating meat is primitive, barbaric, and arrogant.”

— Washington City Paper

“[I]t’s like letting the World Bank or the Ku Klux Klan open up a booth here.”

— Bruce Friedrich complaining about meat being served at the 2004 World Social Forum

“McVeigh's decision to go vegetarian groups him with some of the world's greatest visionaries.”

— Bruce Friedrich praising Oklahoma City bomber and mass-murderer Timothy McVeigh, for choosing a vegetarian last meal

“Our campaigns are always geared towards children and they always will be”

— PETA vice president Dan Matthews, on the Fox News Network

“We are complete press sluts.”

— Ingrid Newkirk, in The New Yorker

“It may have been ELF, but then, I sometimes get them confused with ALF, the Animal Liberation Front. And then there's Earth First! and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). There's a lot of cross-pollination between them, and some people here are probably members of two of those groups, or more.”

— Santa Cruz Police Lt. Joe Haebe, speculating about those responsible for a crime spree, in the San Francisco Chronicle

“Our nonviolent tactics are not as effective. We ask nicely for years and get nothing. Someone makes a threat, and it works.”

— Ingrid Newkirk, in the April 8, 2002 issue of US News & World Report

“… the Shining Path of activist groups.”

— CNN "Crossfire" host Tucker Carlson

“Serving a burger to your family today, knowing what we know, constitutes child abuse. You might as well give them weed killer. ”

— Toni Vernelli, then-coordinator of PETA’s European operations

“If we really believe that animals have the same right to be free from pain and suffering at our hands, then, of course we’re going to be, as a movement, blowing things up and smashing windows … I think it’s a great way to bring about animal liberation … I think it would be great if all of the fast-food outlets, slaughterhouses, these laboratories, and the banks that fund them exploded tomorrow. I think it's perfectly appropriate for people to take bricks and toss them through the windows ... Hallelujah to the people who are willing to do it. [click here to listen]”

— Bruce Friedrich, PETA’s vegan campaign coordinator, at the “Animal Rights 2001” conference