Tag: Center for Consumer Freedom

Australian Minister Accuses PETA of Involvement with Terrorist Groups

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recently threatened to sue Australia’s Agricultural Minister Warren Truss after Truss accused the animal rights group of providing aid and comfort to animal and environmental terrorists.

Truss apparently cited testimony by the Center for Consumer Freedom about PETA’s alleged involvement with the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. CCF reprinted part of Truss speech which said,

But even more concerning, it has been alleged in a US Senate hearing by the same organization that PETA has provided aid and comfort to people associated with two groups considered domestic terrorist threats by the FBI — the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).

According to the FBI, the two groups have been responsible for more than 600 crimes since 1996, causing more than $43 million in damage. The ALF even brags on its website that the two groups committed “100 illegal direct actions” — like blowing up four-wheel-drives, destroying the brakes on seafood delivery trucks, and planting firebombs in restaurants — in 2002 alone.

PETA lawyer Jeff Kerr threatened to sue Truss calling the claims part of a smear campaign by a “discredited group.”

If the statements are untrue and part of a smear campaign, then why hasn’t PETA sued the Center for Consumer Freedom for making the same statements for several years now? Perhaps PETA doesn’t think it would help to go into court only to have CCF show PETA’s own 2001 tax return showing a $15,000 donation to the Earth Liberation Front. Or maybe it doesn’t want to be reminded of Ingrid Newkirk’s odd behavior in the Rodney Coronado case which was cited in the government’s sentencing memo (emphasis added),

Forensic evidence discovered during the investigation confirmed that Coronado played an important role in planning and executing the ALF’s campaign of terrorism. Investigators learned that immediately before and after the MSU arson, a Federal Express package had been sent to a Bethesda, Maryland address from an individual identifying himself as “Leonard Robideau”. The first package went to Ingrid Newkirk, PETA’s founder.

. . .

Significantly, Newkirk had arranged to have the package delivered to her days before the MSU arson occurred.

Not to mention quotes from everyone from Bruce Freidrich to Dan Mathews to Newkirk herself expressing approval for actual acts of violence and destruction and anticipation that more such acts might be forthcoming.

I suspect that this lawsuit will have the same sort of longevity as PETA’s lawsuit against New Jersey over another PETA attorney’s violent altercation with a deer.

Source:

PETA may sue over Truss’ terror comments. Australian Associated Press, March 3, 2005.

Not A G’Day For PETA Down Under. Press Release, Center for Consumer Freedom, March 4, 2005.

PCRM and Center for Consumer Freedom Get in Food Fight

The Miami Sun-Sentinel reported on an amusing war of words between the Physician Committee for Responsible Medicine’s Neal Barnard and Center for Consumer Freedom’s David Martosko.

The dispute started when PCRM issued a report rating the healthiest airport food, and singled out Miami international Airport has having the healthiest food of any of the top airports in the Untied States.

CCF responded with a press release noting that PCRM is made up of “anti-meat, pro-vegetarian nutrition zealots.” CCF also pointed out that PCRM is simply an extension of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animal, signified in this case by the fact that one of the nutritionists listed as compiling the report on airport food — Trulie Ankerberg-Nobis — spends much of her free time stripping as a publicity stunt for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Barnard replied that it is simply not true that PCRM is simply a front for PETA. You remember that group, Foundation to Support Animal Protection? Just to refresh your memory, Barnard heads up the group. PETA donates money to FSAP and then FSAP turns around and donates money to PCRM. Front group? Nope, just a coincidence according to Barnard.

Barnard complained that CCF are “stalkers,” telling the Sun-Sentinel,

Whenever any health organization does any kind of initiative, we hear from them with these absurd press releases.

. . .

The poor man [Martosko] needs to lose weight.

Martosko is quoted by the Sun-Sentinel a suggesting that Barnard “seek anger management therapy.”

In fact, CCF does seem to be getting under the skin of PETA and PCRM lately. Kind of funny to watch.

Presumably the reason PETA and PCRM can’t stand the CCF press releases is that they are used to surrounding themselves with people like Gary Yourofsky and Jerry Vlasak who outright advocate the murder of those they disagree with. So you just have to see it from their point of view — advocating murder or arson is one thing, but actually issuing a press release is something of a much bigger magnitude. Someone’s feelings might get hurt, after all, from a press release, but if you kill a researcher, well, they’re just dead.

That’s the problem with us anti-animal rights folks — we just don’t have this higher level of compassion and understanding that the animal rights people possess.

Source:

Praise for healthy meals at Miami airport turns into food fight. Noaki Schwartz, Miami Sun-Sentinel, November 18, 2004.

PETA: No Comment?!?

Eric Flack produced an interesting report on People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for WAVE3 TV in Louisville, Kentucky. What was most interesting about the report was that for once PETA did not want to talk to the media about their organization. Why? Because Flack had also talked to the Center for Consumer Freedom’s David Martosko.

The CCF has done an excellent job of chronicling PETA’s support and endorsement of animal rights violence, such as Bruce Friedrich’s statement at Animal Rights 2001 that,

I think it would be a great thing if, you know, all of these fast-food outlets and these slaughterhouses and 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, and you know everything else along the line. Hallelujah to the people who are willing to do it.

PETA’s apparently tired of answering question about such support for violence. According to Flack,

PETA, which runs to the media every time it has shocking video, ran from this story, refusing to be interviewed because it included criticism from the Center from Consumer Freedom. In an email, a spokeswoman writes: “CCF has an agenda we aren’t interested in helping them publicize.”

Yeah that CCF certainly has an agenda — imagine a group running around providing the press with quotes from PETA members. Could anything be more insidious?

Source:

PETA’s Ethics, Tactics Questionable. Eric Flack, WAVE 3 TV, August 5, 2004.

Paul Watson Attempts Takeover of the Sierra Club

Paul Watson’s announcement last summer at AR 2003 that he was just three seats away from controlling the board of the Sierra Club suddenly started getting a lot of media attention in early 2004 as the Sierra Club’s April election deadline comes closer.

The Sierra Club, of course, has a $95 million budget which Watson wants to control in order to push his agenda. According to the Center for Consumer Freedom, Watson said at that time,

One of the reasons that I’m on the, um, the Sierra Club board of directors right now is to try and change it Â… we’re only three directors away from controlling that board. We control one-third of it right now. And, uh, once we get three more directors elected, the Sierra Club will not, no longer be pro-hunting and pro-trapping and we can use the resources of the $95-million-a-year budget to address some of these issues. And the heartening thing about it is that, in the last election, of the 750,000 members of the Sierra Club, only 8 percent of them voted. So, you know, a few hundred, or a few thousand people from the animal rights movement joining the Sierra Club — and making it a point to vote — will change the entire agenda of that organization.

According to Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope, about 18 percent of Sierra Club members fish or hunt, and Pope worries that those individuals would be driven from the organization and that it would end up marginal,

It’s important to have hunters and fisherman in the Sierra Club. We are a big-tent organization. We want the Sierra Club to be a big-tent organization. We want the Sierra Club to be a comfortable place for Americans who want clean air, clean water, and to protect America’s open spaces.

The most amusing commentary on the controversy came from FARM USA’s Alex Hershaft who distributed a letter charging that it was, in fact, the hunters and fisherman who were trying to take over the Sierra Club rather than vice versa. According to Hershaft,

The Sierra Club, with 750,000 members and a $95 million annual budget, is being hijacked by the hunting, trapping, and fishing cadres in the forthcoming Board election. Their leaders have been urging members to join the Sierra Club in droves. We can not do any less.

Hershaft parted ways with reality long ago, so this claim should not surprise anyone.

According to Hershaft the three candidates the animal rights activists want to win are activists Kim McCoy and Robert Roy van de Hoek as well as Cornell University Professor David Pimentel.

Pimentel is part of the other group that is trying to hijack the Sierra Club — an organized effort by right wingers and extreme environmentalists to turn the Sierra Club into an anti-immigration organization. A few years ago this coalition managed to put up to a vote by the members a proposed anti-immigration stance that they wanted the Sierra Club would take, but that failed. Along with Dick Lamm and Frank Morris and promoted by racist web sites like VDARE.Org, the anti-immigration effort has also seen the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Morris Dees enter his name as a candidate for the board in order to protest and highlight the anti-immigration effort.

Sources:

Keep the Sierra Club Out of Hunters’ Clutches! Letter, Alex Hershaft, January 23, 2004.

Sierra Club: Ever More Radical. Center for Consumer Freedom, September 4, 2003.

Johns Hopkins' School of Public Health's 28 Deans Program — So Committed, They Won't Name Them

The Center for Consumer Freedom pointed out an amusing item involving Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health’s promotion of a “Meatless Monday” campaign which Johns Hopkins said was designed to help Americans reduce their fat consumption.

The Bloomberg School of Public Health distributed a press release in November 2002 claiming that 28 deans of public health schools around the country supported its Meatless Monday program. This claim of support from schools of public health was repeated in a Washington Post news story that opened with this lead,

Meatless Mondays.

That’s what a national consortium of 28 schools of public health want consumers to try as a step toward healthier eating habits, particularly reduction of saturated fat.

The claim that 28 schools of public health support the campaign is also repeated on the Meatless Mondays web site.

The only problem is that neither the media reports nor the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s own press release listed any of the deans or the schools of public health supposedly squarely behind this initiative.

Moreover when the Center for Consumer Freedom inquired to obtain a list of those involved in the campaign,

However, when the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) called the organizers of Meatless Monday, they would not provide a list of those schools. CCF was told: “The reason that we’re not releasing the schools of public health’s names is that some of the schools would come under pressure.” The individuals who could discuss what kind of pressure that might be, Meatless Monday’s representative said, were on vacation — the day after its most significant press coverage to date.

I have here, the names of 28 schools of public health known or suspected to have Meatless Monday connections . . .

Anyway, the fact that a list of the schools supposedly supporting this campaign is listed anywhere is downright bizarre. For example, in March 2003, Meatless Monday Campaign, Inc. did issue a press release titled “Public Health Schools Whet Appetite for Meatless Monday” that read,

In a strong show of unity, 28 deans from major U.S. public health schools have endorsed “Meatless Monday,” a national public health program to reduce meat and saturated fat consumption by Americans. The Meatless Monday Campaign, Inc., is a non-profit corporation working in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to launch this new national program.

But the only non-Hopkins school listed is the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. What sort of folks constantly trumpet the 28 schools that support them but then turn around and refuse to offer a list of said schools?

The Bloomberg School of Public Health should either name the 28 schools of public health backing the Meatless Monday campaign, or retract that claim.

Sources:

Public Health Schools Whet Appetite for Meatless Monday. Press Release, MeatlessMonday.Com, March 2003.

FAQ. MeatlessMonday.Com, Undated.

Lean Plate Club: Planting a New Habit. Sally Squires, Washington Post, August 18, 2003.

Johns Hopkins’ Meatless Utopia. Press Release, Center for Consumer Freedom, August 20, 2003.

Center for Consumer Freedom: Treat PETA Like Other Charities Who Support Terrorism

The Center for Consumer Freedom issued a press release on August 4 urging the government to treat People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals the same as other charities which have been accused of funneling money to terrorist organizations.

According to its press release,

As the frightening images of a massive August 2nd arson are seared into the minds of San Diego residents, many are left to wonder just who the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) is and who pays its bills. As law enforcement begins to look for answers, members of the public should know that the shadowy ELF enjoys financial backing from at least one tax-exempt, above-ground group — the activists at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

. . .

“Federal law enforcement has already shut down several American nonprofits because of their financial ties with overseas terrorists,” said David Martosko, Director of Research at the Center for Consumer Freedom. “Terrorism is terrorism, whether it’s international or domestic. PETA is funneling money to terrorists, and they shouldn’t be treated any differently.”

Source:

PETA Bankrolling Terrorist Group ELF. PRN Newsire, August 4, 2003.