How many pet-owning PETA supporters actually know that PETA believes that pet ownership is equivalent with slavery, wants to abolish it and that its shelters have the highest euthanization rates because they consider killing domesticated animals to be a mercy.

Support your local SPCA.

Finally the reason it has the highest euthanization rates has nothing to do with mercy, but because it never refuses to take in any animals, period. Other shelters, especially no-kill shelters, achieve their objective by refusing to take in an animal when they reach capacity and they avoid reaching capacity in the first place by refusing animals that are unlikely to be adopted such as those that are aggressive, or old, or are injured.

PETA never refuses any animals and as such people go to PETA often as a last resort when no other shelter will take their animal. In cases where PETA comes to the same conclusion that a no-kill shelter will come to about the prospects of an animal finding a suitable home, and after PETA confirms that no other nearby shelter will take in the animal, instead of simply refusing the animal which often results in dumping, or further neglect of said animal, PETA euthanizes it. Consider that there are over 60 million stray dogs in the US roaming about compared to about 3 million dogs living in a shelter. It's simply not possible to shelter all abandoned animals, so either PETA euthanizes them, or the animal lives out in the wild where it ends up reproducing and introducing or exacerbating negative effects to its environment.

All of these are positions that you may disagree with and criticize without exaggerating or misrepresenting them.

In the no-longer-circulating Statement on Companion Animals, PETA said: "As John Bryant has written in his book Fettered Kingdoms, they [pets] are like slaves, even if well-kept slaves."

John Byrant's book was published by PETA. He writes: "Let us allow the dog to disappear from our brick and concrete jungles--from our firesides, from the leather nooses and chains by which we enslave it."

PETA's cofounder, Ingrid Newkirk, states: "Although we have, in theory, abolished human slavery, recognized women's rights, and stopped child labor, we continue to enslave other species who, if we simply pay attention, show quite clearly that they experience parental love, pain, and the desire for freedom, just as we do."

You may agree with such positions, but please don't lie about it. I misrepresent nothing.

And if you think any of this is radical, you haven't even heard what they've had to say about human beings yet.

Also, John Bryant, while being an animal activist who you quote as opposed to animal domestication, was never a member of PETA. I also doubt his book was published by PETA as it predates their founding. It looks like the publisher is Fern House.

Your quote from Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's cofounder had nothing to do with pets. I agree that PETA does compare certain forms of animal captivity to slavery, for example circus animals, animals used for experimentation, those used for factory farming, but not pet ownership in general.

Dark times ahead.

I don't think there's anything "modern" (or religious) about the fact that there's a wide range of opinions on how to treat others.

But we living in modern or /post+/ modern times. When there is knowledge about natural reactions then someone can do meta-action - abuse knowledge for some purpose. Like ad-business do all the time. Like politicans do. Or like seduction manuals describe. Heck, what sects do, there is even term "conventional brainwashing" !

And that "fake" activism have scale too - from personal to goverment and intelligence services doings.

So with humans knowledge and intelligence progression everyone should be caution for "mixed signals". Or just common scams like "Nigerian prince want your help" or "grandson in troubles".

Or "Green Party care for ecology" - actually brings anarchy to your country and such "activists" just look for easy living from "donations". Or even actively supporting some businesses, like described in that sub-thread...

But yes, there was a better times when captured soldiers give a word that they do not escape and they hold to it. Sometimes even they was allowed to keep theirs saber while being captured. But that natural honesty ended with communism in Russia and spreaded almost everywhere else.

Also there is strange following of ways of looser that as idol had other murderous idol (looser too), Machiavelli...

Edit:

And here are my gripes with psychology - useless like reading/writing before common education. People fall to sects where there are well know mechanism how they work and psychologians are straight guilty of neglecting to protect very often most volnerable parts of our societes, like kids. Big words but psychology basics should be learned in basic schools, IMO. Sadly psychologians are too busy with pushing bullshit on all fronts... Or making money from wasting time on listening or straight "improving" sport performances... Or deeppening movie scenarios.

O, btw: you hear about that "Maslow Pyramid" ? Someone even wrote how to apply it to software projects ! Looks damn usefull to explain eg. how poor peoples behave and how to help or self-help in such situations. But you know what ? I talked once to psychologian about Maslow pyramid and imagine my surprise when she look strangely on me and say: but, but modular programming is outdated ! Yep, exactly like this just insert Maslow Pyramid there... And modularity comes from 60's, predates very outdated "structural programming"... And such is psychologians lag in helping others.

    We at PETA very much love the animal companions who share our homes, but we believe that it would have been in the animals’ best interests if the institution of “pet keeping”—i.e., breeding animals to be kept and regarded as “pets”—never existed. The international pastime of domesticating animals has created an overpopulation crisis; as a result, millions of unwanted animals are destroyed every year as “surplus.”

    This selfish desire to possess animals and receive love from them causes immeasurable suffering, which results from manipulating their breeding, selling or giving them away casually, and depriving them of the opportunity to engage in their natural behavior. They are restricted to human homes, where they must obey commands and can only eat, drink, and even urinate when humans allow them to.

https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-peta-responsible-deaths-...

It's interesting though -- all of this is easily searchable online. If you really read into their own literature and statements of people behind PETA, you'll find some real radical takes. People hear all this, but still choose to disbelieve and not do their own research. They don't hide anything. They're open about all of it.

So that, by itself, doesn't really convince me of much. I do appreciate the links, however. Thanks.

> all of this is easily searchable online.

Searchable, yes, but only within an ocean of hot takes, tabloids and tweets.

I’m not convinced they’d be better off if they’d been born in the wild.

Because if they did, and the charter could not be amended, then a change in the opinion of people who support the mission on the optimal mechanism kills the organization and requires the costs of building a whole new organization.

The same reason why the whole of the law of a nation isn't fixed for all time out the outset.

I don't see why a non-profit can't work just like a legacy trust---fulfil the mission left behind by its founder, and manage its monies to do that and only that.

If a non-profit's mission is successful, it can disband. It doens't need to pivot with its current supporters to find new things to do. Additioanlly, it need top change to suit the whims of its supporters. The supporters can simply support someone---anyone else (non-profits are far more numerous and easy to start than a new country). The original non-profit will die on the vine.

To you, maybe. It is manifestly not to most of the people actually involved or they would do it more often. It's not like the space of degrees of flexibility has not been well explored.

> I don't see why a non-profit can't work just like a legacy trust---fulfil the mission left behind by its founder, and manage its monies to do that and only that.

It can, but real people founding them don’t usually want that because its not a legacy trust; the people making it are alive, know that they have evolving views of the precise parameters of the mission and the optimal mechanisms for pursuing it, and don't want the burden of inflexibility.

Feel free to start your own rigidly programmed NGOs if you want.

'We do longer believe in our founding principles, therefore we will dissolve and form a new entity and will evangelize according to this new set of principles, if you agree, come and join us. Those who believe in our old principles are free to re-form around the cause'.

Imagine a non-profit that believes in abolishing the death penalty. It has a change of heart at the top and decides it's for the death penalty. I think this deserves dissolution and forming a new non-profit or PAC, whatever.

It usually is for real people putting real resources in toward real efforts, which is why outside of exceptional things like campaign committees, people don't usually found orgs with purposes that are narrowly circumscribed and inflexible, and even when they do they don't narrowly and inflexibly prescribe the acceptable means of pursuing the purpose.

Nothing, but the "or any later later version of the GPL" clauses have protection against this scenario. Section 14 of the GPLv3 contains the nice sentence "Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.", which is essentially legalese for "if it differs in the spirit of the license, it is not considered a new version of the GPL and the upgrade clause does not apply".

This is particularly dangerous because in the anglosphere, open source licenses are by default bare licenses -- they do not have the force of contract, meaning they can be revoked at any time. An organization which released any code under the GPL or any open source license can revoke the right to use that code on a whim (yes, the GPL'd code itself, not future revisions of that code), meaning a hostile FSF can prevent use, distribution, or -- critically -- forking of Emacs.

Projects such as Linux without a CLA requirement are better protected against this because of their patchwork ownership. A single contributor has less to gain, and more to lose, by revoking their license to their contributions. That's not to say it's perfect protection but it does help.

Any example where this happened to back up this claim?

Because as they grow they become interesting for people with an agenda: 3 letter agencies, lobbyists. See how Greenpeace has evolved for example.

But another reason is that organization would probably just stop being funded when it upheld its hard-coded mission in ways that were unpopular. If the mission is that you must advocate for providing speech/payment platforms for someone who is saying heinous things, people will just stop donating to you. The org has to survive to execute its mission, and it needs to adapt to survive. That will always result in drift, decay, and death.

And the powers that be would not let such an organization gain enough ground that it could become independently wealthy.

Although I doubt this could successfully prevent slow drift in the mission of an entire organization (as we're seeing with the ACLU).

They can hardcode their nonprofit mission into their corporate charter, and many smaller nonprofits do.