SeaWorld Admits Using Employees to Spy on Animal Rights Activists
Gee. I wonder if other -- perhaps even more powerful -- corporations would do this kind of thing?
Admission by CEO follows 2015 claim made by PETA
by Andrea Germanos, staff writer
Common Dreams, Thursday, February 25, 2016
SeaWorld CEO Joel Manby has for the first time admitted that the company's workers have posed as animal rights activists to spy on critics of the park's treatment of captive marine creatures.
Manby made the admission during an investor relations call on Thursday, saying, according to the Orlando Sentinel, that the company's board has "directed management to end the practice in which certain employees posed as animal-welfare activists. This activity was undertaken in connection with efforts to maintain the safety and security of employees, customers and animals in the face of credible threats."
His statement was also posted online.
The acknowledgement follows a claim in 2015 by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) that animal rights activist "Thomas Jones" was, in fact, SeaWorld employee Paul T. McComb, who had "work(ed) his way into a network of San Diego-area activists concerned with the company's ongoing orca captivity and breeding programs," animal news site The Dodo reports. Jones was
fond of inflammatory rhetoric and appeared to be trying to incite the activists to violence. "It's time for Direct (sic) action against #seaworld," one tweet (by Jones) read. "I need to find a way to personal [sic] stop them. I will be coming…"
"There were a number of red flags relating to this individual," Lindsay Rajt, spokesperson for PETA, told The Dodo at the time. "Any genuine animal advocate is not on social media saying things like, 'Burn SeaWorld to the ground and drain the tanks.'"
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/02/25/seaworld-admits-using-employees-spy-animal-rights-activists
Now where would an honest, hard-workin' corporation learn to do such a thing as sendin' out agitators disguised as protesters?
= new reply since forum marked as read
...salt water, smaller than most, but still it was mine and I kept it up every day.
My prize pet was a yellow tang. One day, the tank's tiny crab went crazy and attacked an anemone for some solid food I had given it. The crab's attack tore up the anemone, limb from limb and cell from cell, polluting the water and killing all the animals, except itself.
I was devastated. I was a teen at the time. This was mid-70s. Then I learned how collectors like me were impacting the populations of marine life in tropical seas. I stopped collecting and get my kicks via photography and the occasional visit to the dentist's office.
Remember these guys?
British commandos arrested in civilian clothes after shooting dead an Iraqi policeman who'd approached their car, which, for some reason, was filled with bomb-making gear. Rather than explaining it to a judge, the British sent in tanks to bust them out of jail.
Iraqi prison stormed by British tanks and helicopters
"It works the same in every country." -- Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Göring
