Further Fallout Over Off-Road.Com Article

In the past week several more
news outlets wrote stories about Lycos dropping Envirolink, host of many
animal rights web sites, after an article written by Norm Lenhart, senior
editor at Off-Road.Com. In general the subsequent articles have only reconfirmed
the suspicions expressed here last week about Lycos’ move.

An article at Wired’s web site
quoted EnviroLink founder Josh Knauer as confirming that EnviroLink’s contract
did not have any minimum hit requirements, leaving out EnviroLink’s apparently
low click through rate as an explanation. Wired also quoted Knauer as
saying he believes Lycos is in breach of its contract with EnviroLink.

The articles, unfortunately,
also demonstrated how willing the media are to let animal rights
extremism slide. In Wired’s story, for example, writer Steve Silberman
characterized Lenhart’s article as a “flame job” and spent two
paragraphs describing EnviroLink’s content by focusing on the allegedly
satirical Church of Euthanasia, completely ignoring Lenhart’s documentation
of the Animal Liberation Front Information Site articles on how to commit
arson located on EnviroLink’s servers — which was the real flame
job as far as this writer is concerned. Post-Gazette writer Michael Newman
didn’t even see fit to mention that EnviroLink hosts the ALFIS site in
his piece on the controversy.

The on-line animal rights
community continues to whine about Lycos’ decision. A message on a mailing
list maintained by the Humane Society of the United States said that,
“EnviroLink is experiencing severe funding problems due to what may
be described as a disinformation campaign.” Of course the author
of this message, like authors of several similar ones, never bothers to
point out any factual errors in Lenhart’s article.

An email posted on the animal
rights terrorist list “Frontline” summed up the controversy
this way:

10 short days after Off-Road.Com published a scathing slanderous attack
on the server Envirolink.org and several of it’s hosted environmental
and animal rights web sites, Lyco’s [sic] decided to drop its corporate
sponsorship of EnviroLink.

The issue is not whether
you care about the environment or animal rights but about Internet censorship
and and [sic] free expression on the Internet. What is next to be attacked?

Got that? When ALF members
firebomb a warehouse, that is peaceful, nonviolent protest. When Off-Road.Com
persuades Lycos to drop its sponsorship of EnviroLink, that’s censorship.

Animal Rights Protests Planned for August 22nd

On August 22nd animal
rights activists around the nation will gather at primate research centers
to protest and call for an end to medical research involving primates.
The level of information being distributed by animal rights activists
is amazing. One email on an animal rights news I saw suggested protesting
at a specific primate research institute and listed a specific researcher
who was doing research on alcohol tolerance in primates. When I contacted
the research lab, however, the director informed me the animal rights
activists might be disappointed — the primates this particular researcher
is using for experimental subjects happen to be homo sapiens.

If any animal rights activists
turn up at primate research centers in your area, a nice letter to the
editor about the importance of such research would be a nice gesture to
support these brave researchers threatened by animal rights ignorance.

Source:

Why be in Seattle on August 22nd? Coalition to End Primate Experimentation, Press Release, August 1998.

PETA continues protests against the Weinermobile Tour

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has gained itself a lot
of attention by sponsoring on ongoing campaign against the Oscar Meyer
Weinermobile. The Weinermobile is a 27-foot long vehicle shaped like a
hot dog. Oscar Meyer sends it to different cities to promote its products
and audition kids for an upcoming ad campaign. And at almost all stops
it’s been met by animal rights protesters.

Carrying signs with slogans
like “Pigs are friends not food” and occasionally featuring
protesters in pig costumes (how appropriate), PETA recites its litany
about the supposed health risks of eating meat, the “torture”
that animals slaughtered for food are forced to undergo, and occasionally
attacks on Oscar Meyer for “exploiting” kids. Much of the rhetoric,
in fact, resembles the rhetoric used against the tobacco industry. As
PETA’s Bruce Friedrich put it, “The Weinermobile is the meat industry
version of Joe Camel enticing kids into a practice that may well kill
them later in life.”

A typical example of the heated
rhetoric was provided by Brenda Sloss, a director of the St. Louis Animal
Rights Team, who told reporters when the Weinermobile visited St. Louis,

They [kids] deserve to know the truth. The truth is Oscar Meyer is
in reality a dead pig that has gone through torture … Every time you
bite into a hot dog you are biting into pesticides, animal feces, ground-up
animal parts and antibiotics that have been pumped into the animals.

Friedrich seems to think that
the Weinermobile campaign is “raising awareness” and he’s probably
right — like PETA’s recent claim that milk is a racist drink, however,
the effect is probably to alert the public to just how extreme PETA’s
agenda is. As Claire Regan, manager of corporate communications for Oscar
Mayer put it,

Kids love it [the Weinermobile], and we do the auditions like Hollywood.
Hot dogs are fun food; they bring people together at cookouts, fairs
and ballparks. People are out there to have fun. What happens is that
parents get upset when activists yell at them. Parents don’t want someone
making their child feel guilty because they don’t believe in a vegetarian
diet, and they don’t want their kids yelled at. Parents feel they have
rights to choose how they live.

Well said.

Source:

What’s The Beef? St. Louis, August 1998.

Fund for Animals lectures Dalai Lama about peace

People with only a passing
familiarity with the Dalai Lama — the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner — might
assume the religious leader to be a vegetarian. In fact not only does
the Dalai Lama eat meat, but recently he has told reporters he approves
of some medical experiments on animals. Sounds a lot like the animal welfare
position espoused by this site.

Well, of course, it annoys
animal rights activists to no end to have the world’s best known preacher
of peace not in their camp. On August 5, 1998 The Fund for Animals released
a letter it sent to the Dalai Lama urging him to issue a statement affirming that
“Buddhism’s compassionate opposition to all forms of animal abuse,
including the genetic manipulation of living beings and the use of animals
in scientific research.”

According to the letter, authored
by The Fund for Animals coordinator Norm Phelps, “By refusing to
make your [the Dalai Lama’s] body a coffin for slaughtered animals, you
can only enhance your work for world peace.” The letter does not explain how going vegetarian will convince the Chinese to withdraw from
Tibet.

No word yet on what the Dalai
Lama thought of the letter. Could it be that the Dalai Lama values the
life of a breast cancer victim over the life of a lab rat?

Source:

Animal advocates tell Dalai Lama that ‘peace begins in the kitchen. The Fund for Animals, Press Release, August 5, 1998.

San Francisco Board of Supervisors Commends Chinatown Merchants

A few weeks go, I reported
on animal rights activists who took Chinatown merchants to court to stop
live animal sales in local markets. Activists have been trying for years
to shut down the sale of live animals in Chinatown, but once again met
with defeat as a judge ruled that people have a right to sell live animals
for food. The merchants separately agreed to work with a local humane
society to monitor treatment of the animals.

At its August 10 meeting the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors took a swipe at animal rights activists
by interrupting their regular meeting to present the Chinatown merchants
with a commendation. Being that it’s an election year, the supervisors
scrambled to get their pictures taken with the merchants.

Source:

Board action spurns animal rights activists. Rachel Gordon, San Francisco Examiner, August 11, 1998.

Is Target training kids to kill?

A few weeks ago I mentioned
an animal rights group angry at the electronics chain Best Buy for selling
a series of Hunting-related computer games. Now Last Chance for Animals has put up a web site called TargetTeachesKids2Kill.Com attacking Target
for stocking similar software.

These games such as Deer Hunter, Big Game Hunter and Sportsman’s Paradise typically put the player in a first person view of a woods with the objective
being to track down and kill an animal such as a deer or bear. The games
tend to feature photo-realistic graphics (often incorporating digitized
video) and have proven extremely popular. Deer Hunter was
the number one selling computer game in the country for many weeks, which
is why Target and other stores stock them — their customers want to buy
them.

Last Chance for Animals objects
to the software claiming, “All of these programs teach computer users,
kids and adults alike, how to hunt and kill real animals.” Yes, of
course. And cookbook and recipe software, commonly available in the discount
bins at such stores, also teach both kids and adults how to cook and
eat dead animals. Should those be banned too? Will Last Chance for Animals
soon register a domain like TargetTeachesKids2EatMeat.Com?

Last Chance for Animals goes
beyond these claims to include charges that playing these games can contribute
to everything from school shootings to gang violence, of course without
providing any concrete evidence of any sort of causal connection. Their
view is summed up by a quote the group includes from a Kenneth Stoller,
MD:

How easy would it be for your children, or children you know, to commit
an act of violence against another living creature if any authority
asked them? Playing “Duck Hunt” (aka “Kill Ducks”)
on Nintendo that your parents gave you … is not that far removed from
bashing in the heads of helpless [animals] with your parents or scout
leader egging you on.

Huh? I’d say the two situations
differ vastly in both content and context. This is just a variation on
the nonsensical idea that eating meat isn’t that far removed from cannibalism
and animal experimentation is equivalent to torture. Somebody really needs
to wean these animal rights types from their arguments by analogy.

Fortunately Target doesn’t
seem likely to stop selling these computer games. Last Chance For Animals
wrote Bob Ulrich, the chairman of Target’s board of directors, but received
a reply from Target Guest Relations to the effect that it’s up to Target’s
customers — not Last Chance for Animals — to decide whether or
not to buy a hunting game. Three cheers for Target.

Source:

Public Alert. Press Release, Last Chance For Animals, undated.