Written by PETA
Sculptor Antony Gormley has launched a new artistic endeavor, the One & Other project, in London. He's recruited 2,400 "living sculptures" to stand atop the famous "Fourth Plinth" in Trafalgar Square. Each person gets an hour on the 8-meter-high plinth (which is usually used to display artwork) to do whatever he or she would like—and one lucky PETA Europe supporter was granted a place!
Natalie Simpson sparkled as a sultry mermaid who asked people to go vegetarian.
We're so proud of Natalie for daring to show a little skin in order to save the skins scales of other thinking, feeling beings. If you want to be like Natalie and stand up for animals, take our Pledge to Be Veg for 30 Days and give a fish-friendly diet a try.
Written by Liz Graffeo
Indonesian bachelor Sumanto really digs older women. Digs them up, that is. Yes, I'm talking about corpses, not cougars.
According to news reports, Sumanto dug up a grave and feasted on the flesh of an old woman's corpse for a "cheap and tasty meal." Fresh out of prison after serving time for this crime, he's promised that his people-eating days are over, vowing that he now just wants to "taste love" (I wonder if that's what he'll put on his Match.com profile). While his neighbors are giving him the cold shoulder, the kind folks at PETA Asia-Pacific are willing to offer him a hand in kicking corpse cuisine for good.
Instead of turning over a new grave, they're suggesting that Sumanto turn over a new leaf and go vegetarian. Like humans, animals are made of flesh, blood, and bone. They have the same capacity to love, and they experience fear in the face of death. When animals die, their families grieve too. To help with this transition, PETA Asia-Pacific is sending Sumanto a copy of The Compassionate Cook, PETA's first vegetarian cookbook, which is chock-full of "cheap and tasty" meals that won't cost him or anyone else an arm and a leg.
I highly recommend the Mock Chopped Liver, a dish that tastes so much like the real thing that it could fool even the most die-hard cannibals.
Written by Amy Elizabeth
Here's an idea that hockey star and seal defender Georges Laraque would probably like to take credit for: We're planning to place a giant version of our Olympic Shame 2010 logo under the ice at several Canadian skating rinks. After all, denizens of the Great White North love their icy sports. Once they start slipping and sliding around the rink, they won't be able to miss our message that the 2010 Olympics will be hopelessly tarnished if the seal slaughter isn't permanently canceled before Vancouver's big show. Pretty slick idea, if you'll pardon the pun.
Written by Jennifer Cierlitsky
So, Michael Vick has been reinstated, although so far, there are no takers.
Vick has served the reduced sentence negotiated by his high-priced team of fancy lawyers, and the law says that he is entitled to walk free. But that doesn't mean it is acceptable to put him in the position in which children will look up to him as a role model and wear any new jersey that bears his number. For the sake of all the young football fans and all the dogs he electrocuted, drowned, slammed to the ground, and hanged, we will watch carefully to see if he is a newly contrite, kind man these days or still just a lout. Meanwhile, please add your voice to ours in our request to the NFL to add "cruelty to animals" to its personal-conduct policy as an offense that won't be tolerated. Doing that might reduce the likelihood that such lowlife violent crime will happen again.
Written by Shawna Flavell
A few months ago, we told you about a vote by the European Union (E.U.) to end the sale of seal products. Well, now is the time to do a little victory dance, because the ban has just been finalized! According to the AP, Canada exported about $5 million worth of seal products to the EU last year, so this ban is another big blow to the country's annual seal massacre.
Since most of Europe has denounced the shameful slaughter of baby seals loud and clear, you'd think that Canada's government would finally get a clue and take action to end the annual bloodbath, right?
Think again.
Sorry to say, but once again, instead of enacting the ban that good people around the world—including a great many in Canada—are demanding, the Canadian government continues to pour all its efforts into keeping the massacre going. Until the last minute, it was still lobbying the E.U. to change its mind.
Canadian bureaucrats can be pretty thickheaded, but we are determined to keep the pressure on them until they can't ignore it any longer. That means pushing the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic Games to get involved, buying American maple syrup instead of Canadian, and spreading the word to get other folks involved too!
Written by Jeff Mackey
When we heard that the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) is selling cheap outdoor ad space to nonsponsors, you can be sure that only a few seconds passed before we signed up to place a billboard during the 2010 Olympic Games.
VANOC claims that the soft economy has created sluggish ad sales, so it's scrambling to make back some of the millions of dollars it spent stockpiling billboard space. Could it be that corporations are reluctant to spend their advertising dollars to support the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games when the word "Canada" is now synonymous worldwide with "baby seal slaughter?"
One thing is for certain—if VANOC accepts our offer, our billboard will be slated to educate visitors from all over the world about Canada's Olympic Games shame.
Written by Karin Bennett
With President Obama's push to reform health care gobbling up reams of newsprint lately, we decided that the time was ripe to put forth our modest proposal for lowering health care costs: raise insurance premiums for meat-eaters.
Now, before you Hardee's fans reach for your defibrillators, hear me out. Insurance companies charge you higher rates for other risky behaviors, such as smoking and skydiving, so why not charge you for chowing down on burgers and brats? After all, a Chili's Big Mouth Bites meal (which includes four "mini" bacon cheeseburgers) packs a whopping 2,350 calories! That's more calories than most people should eat in an entire day.
PETA has written to the top two medical insurance providers suggesting that they stick it to raise rates for meat-eaters while simultaneously lowering rates for vegetarians. In our letter, we point out that compared to meat-eaters, vegetarians are less prone to a myriad of ailments—including heart disease. (Heart disease, for those who are taking notes, is America's number-one killer disease.)
But hey, why wait for your insurance company to start charging you extra for those Buffalo wings and Philly cheese steaks? You can start doing your part to slash health care costs today by ordering a free copy of our "Vegetarian Starter Kit."
Written by Alisa Mullins
What's the motto of Dallas, Texas—America's unofficial big hair capital? "Live Large. Think Big." Dallas property whiz Ari Nessel makes that motto his maxim. He encourages residents to "live large" at swanky apartments refurbished by his company, Nessel Development, and he "thinks big" about animals and the environment when developing new rental properties.
How so?
For his efforts to promote animal rights and protect the environment, Ari Nessel has earned PETA's "Compassionate Company" Proggy Award.
He joins other caring individuals, companies, and charities—such as U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich, and Payless Shoe Source—that are working to make this world a better place for the people and animals who inhabit it.
When I was eight years old, I swore off aquariums forever after my dozen or so guppies committed suicide in the middle of the night. Rather than remain in a crowded, dirty tank, they leaped to their slow, suffocating deaths on the carpet.
The guilt that I carry around because of those poor fish has recently been rivaled by my anger and sadness at learning that Brookstone stores are hawking the "Frog-O-Sphere," a tiny aquatic prison that comes stocked with two African frogs and a snail (called "the janitor").
Brookstone tells its customers and employees that these frogs only need to have their water changed twice a year and to be fed twice a week. I can only imagine that those frogs will try to jump out of their cruel confines the first chance they get, so that they don't starve to death or die from poison.
Brookstone is offering a one-year warranty on the lives of the frogs, who can survive for five to 15 years in the wild. I guess that when the snail dies, the customers (and the frogs) are SOL—"the janitor" gets chucked into the garbage. And when customers place a complaint with the company, Brookstone offers up lame reasons why the Frog-O-Sphere is fine for these animals—reasons like "This species of frog will not out-grow the aquarium," and "when in the wild the African Dwarf Frogs generally live in a very small area of a pond or a stream." Then the company sends 'em 10 bucks.
PETA is squaring off with Brookstone, and we need you to write polite letters to the company urging it to join Magic Beans, "Tarjay," and other retailers that have stopped selling similar products prisons.
For anyone who insists on owning a portable, inexpensive, low-maintenance "aquarium," I have two words: "Koi Pond."
Check out this stellar tweet from My Name Is Earl star Ethan Suplee:
Way to spread the word, Ethan!
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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