PETA video shows Ringling Bros. circus handlers beating elephants

[Popeye]

I know people get down on PETA for some of the outlandish stunts they pull, but they also serve a function, that of exposing animal cruelty at places such as factory farms or as in this case the Ringling Bros. circus. I know I made a vow long ago never to give my money again to a circus...they are nothing but venues for the abuse of animals..

The world-famous Ringling Bros. circus faces fresh accusations of animal abuse today after undercover videos show handlers beating elephants before they enter the ring.

The tape, made by a man who posed as a stagehand for six months, is likely to stir outrage and give animal rights activists new ammunition in their campaign against the circus that bills itself "The Greatest Show on Earth."

A worker with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals used a secret camera to document what the group calls the abuse of animals as they're led from holding pens to the stage.

The animals are seen herded together, wearing headdresses, while trainers stand around, appearing to randomly whip them with bull hooks across the head, legs and body.

Loud cracking noises can be heard.

In one scene, a handler curses an elephant, saying, "F--- you, fat ass" before using his whip to nonchalantly strike its trunk.

The elephants are led with a bull hook - a long pole with a metal point at the end - used to pull them by the trunk.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/200...handlers_beating_elephants.html#ixzz0M1JjajVc

 

[pocketfullofshells]

makes you feel better when a elephant stomps one out....

 

[Pandora]

I really hate PETA but if they can find proof someone is hurting an animal and expose them...

I am glad they are around.

I did not watch the video Popeye, I can not stand to see animals get hurt but thanks for posting about it. I hate PETA a little less now

 

[Popeye]

I really hate PETA but if they can find proof someone is hurting an animal and expose them...

I am glad they are around.

I did not watch the video Popeye, I can not stand to see animals get hurt but thanks for posting about it. I hate PETA a little less now

I'm glad to hear you're an animal lover, perhaps it's a generalization but it seems like the right has far less empathy for the plight of animals....glad to see you're an exception.

PETA needs to stick to the undercover work they demonstrate in this video, it's not only more important, but they'll be taken a lot more seriously that way. Just remember that there's a large scale campaign, largely funded by the meat and restaurant interests, to discredit PETA....

 

[Pandora]

I'm glad to hear you're an animal lover, perhaps it's a generalization but it seems like the right has far less empathy for the plight of animals....glad to see you're an exception.

PETA needs to stick to the undercover work they demonstrate in this video, it's not only more important, but they'll be taken a lot more seriously that way. Just remember that there's a large scale campaign, largely funded by the meat and restaurant interests, to discredit PETA....

You are right about PETA, they need to stick to stuff like this. I would love them and support them with money and praise if this is all they did.

I love trees too and nature but I hate the groups that tend to advocate for them.

Do you know what Wild Life Safari is? Its in Winston, Oregon. They are a huge mass of land that keeps wild animals. Not in cages but in huge areas. People can go visit but you drive through with your car. I like that much better than a zoo. http://www.wildlifesafari.org/

There should be strict laws about hurting animals but I think the laws should apply to people too. Some people love animals so much but ignore a person in the same situation.

For instance, the week that Terri Schiavo
died of starvation and dehydration a group who advocated removing her feeding tube was tube feeding dolphins who were sick in the same city. I find that strange.


But yes, I love.. actually I adore animals. When I am sad or having a bad day just holding a puppy can change everything.

 

[Bunz]

makes you feel better when a elephant stomps one out....

It reminds me of the situation in Honolulu. A horrible series of events.
This is not for the faint of heart.

 

[Bunz]

I'm glad to hear you're an animal lover, perhaps it's a generalization but it seems like the right has far less empathy for the plight of animals....glad to see you're an exception.

PETA needs to stick to the undercover work they demonstrate in this video, it's not only more important, but they'll be taken a lot more seriously that way. Just remember that there's a large scale campaign, largely funded by the meat and restaurant interests, to discredit PETA....

I dont disagree when it comes to show animals in some circumstances, but for the most part PETA is against just about everything I am for. Hunting, fishing, trapping, a non vegan life, among other things.

Frankly I get tired of the annual PETA efforts up here. The anti salmon and fur campaigns are simply unrealistic and not well argued. This is not to forget the all to often mentioned uproar when it comes to aerial wolf control.

 

[GenSeneca]

You are right about PETA, they need to stick to stuff like this. I would love them and support them with money and praise if this is all they did.

Some things you may be interested in knowing before you support PETA with your money.... It won't go to helping animals, it will go to advertising, lavish dinner party fund raisers and killing animals.

PETA's Dirty Secret

Hypocrisy is the mother of all credibility problems, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has it in spades. While loudly complaining about the "unethical" treatment of animals by restaurant owners, grocers, farmers, scientists, anglers, and countless other Americans, the group has its own dirty little secret.

PETA kills animals. By the thousands.

From July 1998 through December 2008, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) killed over 21,000 dogs, cats, and other "companion animals." That's more than five defenseless creatures every day. PETA has a walk-in freezer to store the dead bodies, and contracts with a Virginia Beach company to cremate them.

Not counting the pets PETA spayed and neutered, the group put to death over 90 percent of the animals it took in during the last five years. And its angel-of-death pattern shows no sign of changing.

On its 2002 federal income-tax return, PETA claimed a $9,370 write-off for a giant walk-in freezer, the kind most people use as a meat locker or for ice-cream storage. But animal-rights activists don't eat meat or dairy foods. And during a 2007 criminal trial, a PETA manager (testifying under oath) confirmed the obvious -- that the group uses the appliance to store the bodies of its victims.

In 2000, when the Associated Press first noted PETA's Kervorkian-esque tendencies, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk complained that actually taking care of animals costs more than killing them. "We could become a no-kill shelter immediately," she admitted.

PETA kills animals. Because it has other financial priorities.

PETA rakes in nearly $30 million each year in income, much of it raised from pet owners who think their donations actually help animals. Instead, the group spends huge sums on programs equating people who eat chicken with Nazis, scaring young children away from drinking milk, recruiting children into the radical animal-rights lifestyle, and intimidating businessmen and their families in their own neighborhoods. PETA has also spent tens of thousands of dollars defending arsonists and other violent extremists.

PETA claims it engages in outrageous media-seeking stunts "for the animals." But which animals? Carping about the value of future two-piece dinners while administering lethal injections to puppies and kittens isn't ethical. It's hypocritical -- with a death toll that PETA would protest if it weren't their own doing.

PETA kills animals. And its leaders dare lecture the rest of us?

 

[Popeye]

Some things you may be interested in knowing before you support PETA with your money.... It won't go to helping animals, it will go to advertising, lavish dinner party fund raisers and killing animals.

Lets check out your source..

The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) (formerly called the "Guest Choice Network") is a front group for the restaurant, alcohol and tobacco industries. It runs media campaigns which oppose the efforts of scientists, doctors, health advocates, environmentalists and groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, calling them "the Nanny Culture -- the growing fraternity of food cops, health care enforcers, anti-meat activists, and meddling bureaucrats who 'know what's best for you.' "

Over 40 percent of the group's 2005 expenditure was paid to Rick Berman's PR company, Berman & Co. for "management services. As part of its operations CCF runs a series of attack websites, including "consumerfreedom.com, activistcash.com, cspiscam.com, animal-scam.com, fishscam.com, obesitymyths.com, physiciansscam.com [and] PetaKillsAnimals.com.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Berman


http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Consumer_Freedom

 

[Pandora]

Some things you may be interested in knowing before you support PETA with your money.... It won't go to helping animals, it will go to advertising, lavish dinner party fund raisers and killing animals.

Does PETA have anything to do with the fish hatchery’s?

It bothers me when the hatchery fish are beaten on the head then the females cut open for eggs and the males squeezed for sperm because its easier to get the eggs exc. The way they just gut them and toss the body really bothers me, and when asked why not let them spawn with the other fish they say they don’t want them to mix with the native. Why not they are all salmon. I can see gathering some eggs and sperm to keep the program going but they kill every one of them even though they don’t need all the eggs and sperm just to keep them from mating with the native ones. The groups that do this every year as the salmon return “claim” to be animal lovers but they don’t act like it. I do not know if they are part of PETA or not.

I am also bothered by the mass killings of dogs and cats. But I have to admit they treat the animals more humane than human children in an abortion are treated, at least they put the dogs and cats down with a pain free gas. I still don’t like it. All the money donated to them should be used to find families for homeless pets not gassing them.

I would never give them money unless the only thing they did was expose people who hurt animals and found adoptive families for homeless pets.

 

[GenSeneca]

Lets check out your source..

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Berman

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Consumer_Freedom

Which does absolutely nothing to discount the claims made by the source...

But that's what you Progressives do, you try to discredit a source (attack the messenger) so that you can ignore the message.

PETA is against the no kill movement and euthanizes most of the animals surrendered to them.

PETA was criticized in 2005 when police discovered that over the course of a month, at least 80 animals had been euthanized and left in area dumpsters. Two PETA employees were seen approaching a dumpster in a van registered to PETA and leaving behind 18 dead animals; 13 more were found inside the van. The animals had been euthanized by the PETA employees immediately after taking them from shelters in Northampton and Bertie counties.

PETA has since purchased large industrial freezers where they store the bodies of the animals they kill and hold them there till they can be cremated.

PETA kills animals en mass then cremates them in massive ovens and has the audacity to refer to those who oppose them as Nazi's...

 

[Pandora]

Which does absolutely nothing to discount the claims made by the source...

But that's what you Progressives do, you try to discredit a source (attack the messenger) so that you can ignore the message.



PETA has since purchased large industrial freezers where they store the bodies of the animals they kill and hold them there till they can be cremated.

PETA kills animals en mass then cremates them in massive ovens and has the audacity to refer to those who oppose them as Nazi's...

Are the animals in pain when they die? Is it the same kind of gas a vet uses? My dog got gassed, I still feel just terrible about it. But I stayed with him when they did it and he did not seem to have any pain and it was quick. I still think I am horrible that I let that happen to him.

 

[Popeye]

Which does absolutely nothing to discount the claims made by the source...

But that's what you Progressives do, you try to discredit a source (attack the messenger) so that you can ignore the message.

By the same token, your "information" from a front group for the restaurant, alcohol and tobacco industries does nothing to invalidate the original point of this thread...that of the abuse of elephants at the Ringling Bros circus.

Are you a supporter of animal abuse? To be honest with you, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if you were.

 

[GenSeneca]

Are you a supporter of animal abuse? To be honest with you, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if you were.

Are you a supporter of gassing Jews and cremating them in large ovens? Given your anti-Israel position, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if you were.

Are the animals in pain when they die? - Pandora

If you're asking about whether the animals are in pain and need to be killed, No. Most of the animals they kill are perfectly healthy and adoptable. PETA kills them "humanely" but a large portion are still puppies and kittens when they are destroyed.

 

[Popeye]

Are the animals in pain when they die? Is it the same kind of gas a vet uses? My dog got gassed, I still feel just terrible about it. But I stayed with him when they did it and he did not seem to have any pain and it was quick. I still think I am horrible that I let that happen to him.

Nobody's suffering, at least not anymore. PETA refers to themselves as a "shelter of last resort" Here's an example of a couple animals PETA has euthanized, I guess the meat industry front group counts these as 2 PETA should have kept alive..

I always wonder how anyone cannot recognize that there is a world of difference between painlessly euthanizing animals out of compassion—aged, injured, sick, and dying animals whose guardians can't afford euthanasia, for instance—as PETA does, and causing them to suffer terror, pain, and a prolonged death while struggling to survive on the streets, at the hands of untrained and uncaring "technicians," or animal abusers.

----

Most of the animals we took in and euthanized could hardly be called "pets," as they had spent their lives chained up in the back yard, for instance. They were unsocialized, never having been inside a building of any kind or known a pat on the head. Others were indeed someone's, but they were aged, sick, injured, dying, too aggressive to place, and the like, and PETA offered them a painless release from suffering, with no charge to their owners or custodians.

http://blog.peta.org/archives/2009/03/why_we_euthaniz.php

I've made it clear I don't agree with everything PETA does, but some of these smear tactics, funded by groups such as the meat industry, that have an obvious vested interest in making, not just PETA, but all animal rights organizations look bad are outrageous.