Let the hate go.
Invite him over for a steak and watch animals eating other tasty animals on the Nature channel. Let him know you think animals should be well-treated, and ask how you can help.
People Eating Tasty Animals means well. They are just naive and like most of us, need a cause to further their personal significance.
Your second cite is from a web site run by a pro-industry lobbying group. Even in the Pit you can’t get away with stuff like that.
I wasn’t trying to “get away” with anything. I know very little about politics so would not recognize any lobbying group. Does this fact mean that what they have to say has to be false?
No- chances are there’s a grain of truth to it. However, you could hardly hope to find anyone with a bigger axe to grind.
ETA: When you see a page like that, read the “about us” section before you pay any attention to what they’re selling/promoting/hating. In this case, you’d see:
Now, to understand exactly what sort of axe they’re grinding, you have to Google “Center for Consumer Freedom”… which brings you to their Wikipedia page (which itself redirects back to the ActivistCash page:
Not exactly a cite, but I worked in the circus for a time, although not with Ringling.
The animals I saw (lions, tigers, elephants, dogs) were treated extremely well. Doted on, even.
Having had some interaction with elephants, I doubt very much that one could get one to perform acceptably through methodical abuse. They’re quite amiable animals when they like you, so there’s not much to be gained by abusing them. But they’re only amiable to a point - they can and would kill a person they seriously dislike. So you don’t piss them off.
That goes double or triple for tigers. They are very unpredictable, even when trained. Anyone who abused a tiger and then locked themselves in a cage with it during performances wouldn’t last long.
This is to say nothing of the investment these animals represent. Elephants and tigers ain’t cheap. To abuse one would be like taking a sledgehammer to your Porsche.
Are there morons who’ve abused animals in circuses? Sure. Are animals systematically abused in circuses? Not that I’ve seen, and not in my opinion in general, unless you consider the basic premise of animals performing to be abuse.
nevermind
The thing is, they say pretty much the same thing as all of the other 40 bazillion unbiased (I assume) sites say. Even those with axes to grind can still report truth without slant. Like I said, all you have to do is Google PETA and the HSUS and you’ll see essentially the same message from a wide variety of interests.
When I googled “HSUS”, the third hit was “Hsu’s Gourmet Chinese Restaurant”. :eek:
The first three pages consist of variations on the name “Hsu”, pages operated by the HSUS, and four “anti-” hits. Two of the anti- results are ActivistCash/Consumer Freedom pages (including your original link), one is some dude’s blog, and one may or may not be indicative of anything, since it’s a link to a story in the Long Beach Telegram titled “Critic Speaks Out Against Humane Society” and requires subscription.
I’m not seeing much variety.
*For the record, I believe you’re probably right about HSUS, and everyone knows you’re right about PETA. I’m a little dubious about this “wide variety of interests” though.
That’s why I said the Google PETA and the HSUS. The HSUS is more “underground” than PETA is, so you need to combine the two to get information on how much alike the two organizations are.
Why?
I don’t feel it’s proper to treat the circus animals the way they are treated, so I don’t go to the circus.
I don’t belong to peta, and would never think of spreading my opinion to anyone in line at a circus.
If you don’t like it, don’t go.
I fail to see that as a negative for an execution. I wouldn’t want to see a public excecution, but I think they should exist. Because if we, as a society, think killing people is something to do, then we, as a society, should, in fact, air it openly so people know what is involved.
The PETA guy was an asshole, trying to confuse a little kid.
And poodles are historically german, really.
Really? Cool. I’d love to see more about that. Is there a citation you might be able to provide?
Unrelated- If you read this thread fast it starts to sound like a complaint about kids finding out how overpaid mortgage lawyers are maltreated in the circus by clowns and Babar.
I long time ago when the crazys were throwing paint on people fur coats and blocking health clinics, a few of us mild mannered guys on motor sickles would group up and ride the ladies to where they want to go. All the protesters with their paint cans just stood and watched. They did not throw their paint on us in our leathers or the ladies in fur coats or try to stop us delivering them to the clinics. It seems their outrage was only directed at unescorted women.
Fun times back then.
That kind of wraps up my view too - if PETA members don’t like the way circus animals are treated, don’t go to the circus and certainly don’t go about trying to force others to think the “right” way. Same with any religion, children or not, married or not, sexual orientation and on and on. Why do so many folks try to force their views onto others?
Attack from the 3rd dimension - WRT Poodles, see here Poodle - Wikipedia
I’m in the citing mood today. AKC says they’re German. Wikipedia confirms.
Also, as a completely meaningless bit of information, in the beginning of Goethe’s Faust, the eponymous (German) character is followed home by a black poodle, who in fact turns out to be the devil himself (which IMO proves that Goethe knew at least a couple Poodles. Nasty buggers.)
Whoosh?
Are you saying that there should be no penalty for abusing animals?
Whether the circus is mistreating animals or not, if a parent doesn’t want you talking to their kid then you shouldn’t be talking to their kid. There are plenty of more appropriate ways to oppose animal mistreatment.
Er…what? What, exactly, do you think PETA’s supporters ask/pay them to do?
Actually, that’s pretty much a defining aspect of the circus. Or do you have a cite to match the two that have been offered against your position?
You’re right. That’s probably why nobody ever trained elephants before the advent of modern psychology. That’s what they use to train elephants, right? I’m asking you because you seem to be the expert.
Yes…because they…hate animals? 
Anyway, how long have you suffered from this delusion? How, exactly, do you think a major political organization like PETA could secretly communicate its anti-animal agenda to all of its members while hiding it completely from the outside world? Do you have the slightest inkling of how a liberal political advocacy organization works?
I don’t, but if you have non-loony cites, I might not write it off as the ravings of a lunatic.
The text of the law is publically available if you doubt me.
Believe it or not, I actually agree with you. But since you asked a question, I’ll try to answer it, as a liberal activist (for mostly-unrelated causes).
Basically, widespread, comprehensive political education on the individual level is extremely important in a democracy. If people are educated about the issues, they have more power to make their own decisions. They may not make the exact decisions that we, the activists/educators, want them to, but they’ll make informed decisions. Once an individual voter has the facts, s/he may well decide to continue to support, say, the circus, or Coca-Cola, or Nike, or whatever, and that’s his/her prerogative. But that person also has the right to know the facts, so we (as activists/educators) make sure we’re out there to tell them the facts, as we see them. Our presentation of the facts may be biased, but the point is that it may turn someone on to something they had never thought about before, and hopefully that person will start doing the research on it. That person may end up making one decision or another, but at least s/he is (hopefully) a little more educated than s/he was when the conversation first started.
As for biased information, it’s important to look at the motives and biases of the people you get your information from, and not just accept the first thing you see as the gospel truth. I noticed that you assigned a lot of importance to which three websites came first in your search. More often than not, when contentious issues and/or monied interests are at play, the websites that come first are the ones with Search Engine Optimization, a euphemistically named set of technical hacks that the owners of that information paid someone to implement for them; and/or the owners of that information just paid someone to put their links first.
The people who want you to believe outlandish things about activist organizations and charities–because making people believe these things is good for their bottom line–often have more money to spend, and will gladly spend it on fooling you. That’s how Prop 8 got passed, you know. (Except for the bottom-line part; the proposition wasn’t really good for anyone financially. But you get the gist.)
Hostile Dialect,
Hostile Dialect, Narcissist
You don’t remember this?
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm?headline=2833
You don’t remember the dogs collected from shelters and killed, Hostile? It was fairly large news.
http://www.wvec.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8N1U67G0.html
Hundreds in this case alone, if I remember right. They promised they’d get them adopted. Instead, they killed the pets in the back of a van and tossed the bodies in a dumpster.
While this is a biased website, this appears to be a legit filing of PETA’s. Saying they killed 1815 animals in '07.
http://www.petakillsanimals.com/downloads/PetaKillsAnimals.pdf
I don’t remember setting dogs free in traffic. I do remember them letting minks free, which promptly killed all the wildlife in the area. Minks are vicious.