Rage Against the Machine? Pointless…

Synchronicity never fails to amaze and fascinate me. Lately, it appears many folks are looking about and seeing the world as a sad, brutal and all around miserable place. Without a single doubt, it certainly can and appears that way. The problems seem insurmountable and as a lumped mountain of human evil? The problems are insurmountable. No one person, nor even a group of people can make a discernable dent in that mountain of suffering. As people we need to get over ourselves, first. We simply cannot stop war. We cannot stop the abuse of the vulnerable or diffuse a suicide bomber with a hug.  

Petitions to despotic governments are not worth the time it takes to write or type our names. Sending money to huge charitable corporations are great for easing our own conscience but when you really take a look at their spreadsheets? Most of the money is used to ensconce many of them in cushy offices, pays for first class plane tickets to yet another swanky fundraising affair.

As a species, as members of a society, we all need to stop and look around. Find a way to spread a little caring near to us; where we can actually make a difference. Imagine if everyone did just one small good deed per day – imagine the impact this could have. The real and tangible impact. Not simply filling out a cheque, mailing it off and hoping that the charity of our choice knows what to do with it. Few do.

The SPCA for example, in my hometown, would send my mother all sorts of gifts in order to secure another donation. She kept returning them with a note to stop sending the gifts, that the money spent on these items would be far better spent feeding and housing an unwanted animal. To no avail…the gifts kept coming until she finally decided that this was a very ill-managed charity and decided to send her donation elsewhere, to shelters that manage to subsist without CEO’s and ill-conceived fundraising campaigns. She told me, I told my family, they told people and as a result, I imagine the SPCA lost a number of donations which were re-directed to other charities, also involved with animals but without the obviously, over inflated budget of the SPCA.

A co-worker of mine has decided that she will celebrate her birthday by working at a homeless shelter kitchen, providing food to the homeless. This action makes a difference. It isn’t a monumental, media grabbing charitable work but it has far more meaning than huge media campaigns, glossy envelopes or yet another colour of ribbon.

I ceased donating money to a particularly large Breast Cancer charity; they keep sending me large, embossed envelopes stuffed with highly glossed newsletters. I know how much this would cost to send out. I know the impact of the chemicals used to create those glossy pages. I know the impact of the decimation of the trees required to manufacture the paper. This represents money that could be put to far better use than to provide yet another photo op for the directors of the charity. I donate money to a local hospital. I donate money to no-kill shelters that operate locally. I donate to local homeless and women’s shelters. I refuse to donate to any charity that resorts to heavy duty mail-outs. I watch their expenses through a variety of different web sites that help to interpret who is and who is not spending my money wisely.

Making the world a better place requires an examination of our ego. Letting the light shine in on our own lives as we are bombarded virtually every minute of every day, with death, destruction, rape and torture is a Herculean task. Wandering about, sad and disheartened will only serve to create an apathy, a dangerous apathy; one that says to us, “Why bother? There’s nothing I can do!” Sure there is.

Lower your opinion of yourself and look around you. There is suffering in your own neighbourhood, in your own city. If you are religious? Every single religion teaches that charity begins at home; Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and even the various Neo-Pagan paths teach this simply message. Share yourself with those that have-not.

Charitable corporations are not the “have-nots” – they “have”, by and large, more than any of us could ever dream of acquiring. Do what you can to lighten the burden of someone else. If you don’t have money? Do what my co-worker is doing – take a few hours out of a day and bring a little sunshine, a little hope for the human condition to a shelter – homeless if that’s what you want, an animal shelter if that is where your heart leans. Help an elderly person carry their groceries. Do a kindness of some sort every day and it becomes a part of your personality. It becomes who you are and lightens your own burden. The way to change the world, is through our own actions. Through grassroots. Not through the corporate structure of larger-than-life “charities”. Take a look at this article, the act of one man, granted, one incredible man and how he has brought hope to so many through HIS personal actions. http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-73-year-old-tamil-nadu-librarian-donated-rs-30-crore-to-the-uneducated-poor-1928555

We can all make a difference when we learn the meaning of altruism. Do a kindness with no expectation of recognition or pat on the back; that isn’t what kindness or charity is about. Make your own little corner of this reality a little brighter; if we all do this? Then the light will shine on more and more of us. We’ll never rid ourselves of those who create the dark, the evil but we can offer a place of refuge to those who seek to escape it.

Donate to PETA? You Fund Killing Pets.

Ethical? Not by a long shot. PETA is interested in one thing and one thing only – money. And the big money comes in, right about now; the seal hunt off the Eastern seaboard in Canada.

And every year, they haul out the same old photo of a seal pup. The big eyes and the pure, virginal, innocent white fur – sure fire money maker is that photo. It has worked for them for over 20 years. People who donate to PETA are, by and large, totally ignorant of PETA’s agenda. They don’t want anyone to have pets. No dogs, no cats, no birds, not even a hamster. They want all testing on animals stopped. They do not want anyone to eat any meat or animal by-product. Yet, their own shelters are the worst of the worst when it comes to euthanizing animals.

Thanks to http://www.petakillsanimals.com/petasdirtysecret.cfm for the stats.

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 2009, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) killed over 23,000 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.

Year     Received†     Adopted     Killed     Transferred     % Killed     % Adopted

2009     2,366                8                2,301         31                   97.3         0.34

2008     2,216                7                2,124         34                   95.8         0.32

2007     1,997              17               1,815          35                   90.9         0.85

2006     3,061              12               2,981         46                    97.4         0.39

2005     2,165            146               1,946         69                    89.9         6.74

2004     2,655            361               2,278           1                    85.8         13.60

2003     2,224            312               1,911           1                    85.9         14.03

2002     2,680            382               2,298           2                    85.7         14.25

2001     2,685            703               1,944         14                   72.4          26.18

2000     2,681            624               2,029         28                   75.7          23.27

1999     1,805            386              1,328          91                   73.6         21.39

*1998      943             133                 685        125                   72.6          14.10

Total     27,478       3,091           23,640          477                 86.0         11.25

* figures represent the second half of 1998 only

† other than spay/neuter animals

» Skeptical? Click here to see the proof.

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?

WARNING – GRAPHIC CONTENT! PETA IS A FRAUD.

So PETA stands up for the ethical treatment of animals?

The real truth is far from that. Ask yourself, where was PETA when this occurred?

This travesty happened in Colorado. Not in some far off place and it continues to happen; in the U.S. and in Canada, most notably the seat of the country’s government – Ontario.

Do you donate to PETA? Then you are as guilty as the people who committed the atrocity pictured here because PETA euthanizes animals that have the horrible misfortune of coming under their care.

While these beloved family pets are being slaughtered simply because of their breed and for no other reason, ask yourself when did you hear PETA shout out about this? The answer would be “Never” because they are perpetrating the same crimes in their facility in Virginia.

PETA doesn’t want people to have animal companions. They don’t want people to share their homes with birds, the popular smaller rodents, reptiles, amphibians and even fish would be verboten if PETA had their way.

They want all medical testing on animals to cease, even at the cost of human lives. Medications that can save a cancer patient, someone suffering from Aids, diabetes, all the diseases that plague mankind – testing would be stopped if PETA had their way. Testing on animals is a necessary evil. There is no other way, PETA lies. And yet, while they beat their breasts for the poor lab animals, most of whom receive better care than the majority of their human brethren on this good earth, they euthanize harmless cats and dogs. For no reason other than it is too expensive to house and see them adopted out.

Their spokesperson? Pamela Anderson? Drives a Viper with all leather interior. Those sacks on her chest that imitate real breasts? Tested on animals. The hair colour? Tested on animals. The make-up? Again, tested on animals. The collagen and BOTOX? Tested on animals.

Do you donate to PETA and abhor animal testing? Do you wear make-up or use shampoo? Do you use soap? Deodorant? Mousse or hair spray? All of these things are tested on animals before put on the market. You know those labels that proclaim the company does not test its products on animals? It is true, they don’t. They CONTRACT the testing out to specialized labs. They have to do this otherwise their products would not be approved for the marketplace. So keep that in mind the next time you write a cheque to PETA, as you dash out of the house to have your nails or hair done.

Should puppy mills be banned? Absolutely. Dog fighting? Without a doubt, it should be halted and huge jail terms imposed. Should the sale of animals be prohibited in “pet stores?” Definitely. Should the sale of animals through such online market places as EBay, Craig’s List or Kiijjii be stopped as well? That’s a no-brainer – of course it should be stopped. Want an animal companion of some sort, go to a REPUTABLE breeder.

If you aren’t a responsible, reputable breeder, for the love of all that’s good? Have your companion spayed or neutered, immediately. Do you want any animal winding up under the “care” of PETA? To be euthanized simply because he/she exists? If you can’t afford the operation, then perhaps you should have thought more clearly about the responsibilities of owning an animal. Adopt a dog or cat, from a no-kill shelter – most of them have these creatures spayed and neutered already.

Take a good, long, hard look at these photos and remember them as you write out that cheque for PETA. Remember their statistics and their oh-so-loud silence on the subject of Breed Specific Legislation.