Animal Crackers

Bogus E-mail

Animal Rights have all sorts of nasty ways to besmirch reputations and cause trouble. Here's another, this one in the form of an email that has been circulating far and wide. It falsely indicates it is from an HLS scientist looking to acquire rescued animals from "the Hurricane," with the obvious implication that the animals would be used for research. The email has been debunked by Snopes.

Here's the bogus email:

We will pay for rescued Cats and Dogs

Hello well intentioned people,
My company has an immediate need for 300 small dogs and 500 cats. De-clawed cats are fine! The animals need to be fairly healthy animals. They need to be alive for at least 30 days after our intake.

The price for these animals are as follows:

If we pickup in Arkansas or Mississippi $5 = cats, $9 = dogs

If animal is shipped to our home office in New Jersey (address to follow) $25 = cats, $29 = dogs

In addition to this, we are providing an incentive to the person who rescues the most animals for us. At the end of December, we will tally up the rescue efforts. The person who we conclude to be the greatest asset will win an all inclusive trip to Las Vegas, Nevada for two people for 5 days. This will include air transportation from Louisiana, hotel stay at 3 star or better resort, meal tickets for 2 meals per person a day, entertainment coupons including 1 fully paid entertainment concert, and $300 in casino comps spending monies.

We are really concerned about the well being of the cats and dogs after the Hurricane and want to do our part to insure the animals welfare.

For more information please contact:

Myself, Carol Auletta Sr. Toxicologist for HLS
732-873-2550, ext. 2960
aulettac@princeton.huntingdon.com

Our website is http://www.huntingdon.com
And our address is Mettlers RoadEast Millstone, NJ 08875-2360

LET US GET TO WORK!

Carol

This is what Snopes has to say:

Origins:   The

Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) company has long been a focus of protests by animal rights groups over HLS's use of live animals in its product testing. The e-mail reproduced above is evidently someone's attempt to stir up the issue by distributing a message purportedly written by an HLS scientist and offering to pay cash for New Orleans-area cats and dogs rescued from New Orleans after being separated from their owners by Hurricane Katrina, with a free trip to Las Vegas to be awarded to the person sending HLS the largest number of "rescued" animals. (The point of the message being that recipients would read it as a transparent attempt by HLS to obtain animals for experimentation purposes under the guise of being "concerned about the well being of the cats and dogs.")

We sent an inquiry to the scientist named in the above-quoted message and received a response from Huntingdon Life Sciences' general manager:

I am writing in response to your email to Huntingdon Life Sciences, and particularly about the email, alleged to have been written by Carol Auletta, that is making the rounds among several animal rescue list servers, indicating that Huntingdon Life Sciences is attempting to purchase rescued dogs and cats.

Allow me to state categorically that this is a complete hoax. We have no idea who engineered this farce, but it is typical of the type of misinformation disseminated by animal rights extremist to try and discredit our business.

Sadly, it is typical.

Thanks to Liz Ditz for the tip, and check out her blog I Speak of Dreams.

Brian

Agri-Business Worried About AR

I'd been meaning to get to this sooner, but time didn't permit.

Science and economics won't defeat activists, a Dordt College professor says.

Don't underestimate the power of the Professor's assertion: science, economics and facts are poor proof against a True Believer's ideology.

For the True Believers who are Animal Rights extremists, both those supporting violence and those "not condoning" violence, facts and logic are viewed through the prism of the core Animal Rights premise: that the life of a human and that of an animal are of equal value.

And nobody is a more convincing salesman, be it of cars, lawn mowers, bread or ideology, than someone who truly believes in his product.

Wes Jamison, an associate agriculture professor at the Sioux Center, Iowa, college, said the animal rights activism movement seeks to end animal agriculture as it's known.

Professor Jamison is correct — to the AR True Believer, to treat an animal differently from a human simply because the animal is not human, is to practice "speciesism." And speciesism is a moral transgression which is every bit as reprehensible as racism. (That's a perfectly reasonable moral position to take IF you begin with the core premise upon which AR ideology rests: that the life of a human and that of an animal are morally equal.)

When Professor Steven Best says he'd save his dog from a burning house before he'd save a human stranger, because his dog is more valuable to him than the human stranger (your child, spouse, parent . . .) is to him, he is merely following the logic of the AR premise to it's conclusion: both lives, the dog's and the human's, are equally valuable, so it's only important that one be saved first. Once he's logic-ed his way here, what's the argument against Dr. Best saving the the life that is important to him?

And when Jerry Vlasak, MD, finds it morally acceptable to assassinate a few scientists to save more animals, and openly advocates the practice itself, he, too, is merely following the logic dictated by the AR premise: if by killing "n" scientists you can save "n+1" animals, your moral scale points towards virtue.

The movement is winning, Jamison said, and will continue to do so unless agriculture establishes the moral and scientific high ground.

Of course, one of the reasons the AR movement is winning is because the core premise of its ideology hasn't been challenged often or consistently. When the human/animal moral equivalence premise is challenged, or at least exposed, Animal Rights is found to be incoherent and/or chillingly tyrannical.

For example, the same people who claim that the life of an animal and that of a human are of equal value — people like Dr. Vlasak's ADL-LA ("No Kill Solutions", left sidebar) and organizations like PeTA — also advocate that animals be forcibly spayed and neutered, a practice that deprives creatures that are, supposedly, "morally equal" to humans of their right to reproduce, the pleasures of the sexual act and the delights of rearing offspring. Spaying and neutering, because of the hormonal shifts accompanying the removal of ovaries and testicles, also alters the animals' behavior, making them more compliant, more dependent on humans, less like "nature intended them."

If speciesism is as great a sin as racism, it's reasonable to ask the AR side how they can reconcile spaying and neutering of animals with their anti-speciesism credo, other than by advocating that humans be forcibly sterilized for the same reasons that animals are.

And the same argument can be made for killing animals "as a kindness", a practice that PeTA engages in regularly and as a matter of course, killing a far higher percentage of animals they take into their "shelter" than the impoverished local shelters operating in their vicinity (PeTA is very wealthy, having collected donations amounting to about $29 million in in 2004, and according to PeTA President Ingrid Newkirk could become a no-kill shelter over-night. It's very disturbing that PeTA employees allegedly lied when asked what the fate of animals given them by shelters would, telling those who surrendered the animals that the majority would be put up for adoption when that was not the case at all.)

Would PeTA, the flagship AR organization, advocate killing humans for the same compassionate reasons they kill animals? If not, aren't they practicing "speciesism" when the kill?

Jamison spoke at last week's Agri-Growth Council meeting in St. Paul.

When the animal rights movement emerged in the 1980s, it was out for headlines, he said. Fur coats were spray painted red. People ran naked through the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Their formula for success was to exploit the vacuum between the perception and the use of animals. In modern society, there is a vacuum between animal use and public knowledge, he said.

I think that gap — that vacuum — exists and is as important as Jamison believes it to be. I'm sure there are a whole variety of reasons why there might be this vacuum, but the end result is that people are anthropomorphize animals now in a way they did not do a century ago, and some well-meaning, compassionate folks find it easy to blur the distinction between humans and animals.

Other folks understand such motivations, and cynically exploit them.

In the 1990s, the movement tested language to see what elicited a negative response. It learned to win locally by getting on local zoning boards and constant editorializing. It divided animal use groups with single-issue activism.

Their power is greatest at the local level where the power of animal agriculture is diffuse, Jamison said. They have more members, more civic support and are more organized and more intense.

For now, the movement is thwarted, but persistent at the federal level. Animal use groups are sensitized, but unfocused, he said. The goal of the animal rights movement is passage of the Federal Animal Welfare Act.

His view of AR strategy is spot on. The AR groups use language very effectively, and it's no surprise that AR people use such charged words as torture, neglect, cruel and abuse to characterize their targets and what they do, while using words such as pro-animal, anti-cruelty, compassionate and kind to characterize themselves and actions they approve of. Of course, they broaden and restrict definitions in order to sell their ideological bill-of-goods.

It's an effective technique: Once branded as an animal abuser, a person, an institution or an entire industry is in the impossible position of proving that they are not . . . And if an institution, like PeTA, is allowed to define itself consistently and without opposition as a compassionate organization, one wishing only to rid the world of cruelty, they can get away with any number of cruel things for the sake of compassion. (By "opposition," I don't mean just defence against PeTA and PeTA-equivalent attacks; I mean attacking the false image PeTA et. al. have been able to create for themselves.)

That's animal agriculture's Alamo, Jamison said. If it passes, confinement agriculture will cease.

The classical response of agriculture to convene a panel and pour money on the problem won't work to fix this one. They're winning in the court of public opinion because of pre-existing social conditions. Agriculture is an island in an urban sea, Jamison said.

Urban residents view animals as companions and increasingly as members of the family. No longer are animals experienced in an agrarian way.

Humans are projecting human qualities onto animals, he said, showing a photograph of a dog dressed in human clothes. Parents who've read Babe or Bambi to their children have infected their offspring with the virus of animal rights, he said.

Yup. As I mentioned above, the term is anthropomorphism

Stepping away from agriculture for a minute and looking at science and scientists, I can well remember Saturday morning TV cartoons in which evil scientists were out to dominate the world, and the world was saved by superheros and their magic.

That's a pretty powerful negative message about scientists to be sending very young kids.

And the point made by Jamison about the anthropomorphism is a no less-powerful message to folks whose only significant first-hand experience with actual animals is with their pet dogs and cats.

I'm not suggesting, by any stretch, a nefarious conspiracy in either instance. It's just the way things are, and "that" they are as they are is more important than "why" they are as they are.

Animal agriculture can't eliminate the vacuum, nor can it change the social forces, Jamison said. If animal agriculture hopes to win it must establish the moral high ground and tell people about it relentlessly. "Why should you be allowed by society to do what you do?" Jamison asked. "If you can't answer, society will increasingly seek to limit what you do."

I believe that animal agriculture should do more than defend itself. It should aggressively attack the ideology of Animal Rights: after all, ideology is the force that drives the AR movement, the common bond that unites peaceful and violent extremists alike, and one crucial key to combatting Animal Rights. It is the concept, the idea, that people rally to or against.

If the core "animal-life-is-as-valuable-as-human-life" premise of the AR ideology is clearly defined, and if the ideological logic that flows from it clearly traced, the concept of Animal Rights will be far less attractive than it presently is, there will be fewer people who find it philosophically appealing, and that will have an inevitable effect on contributions to above ground organizations like PeTA.

Secondly, it's important to show the links between above-ground radical organizations — like PeTA — with terrorists and terrorist organizations. It's necessary but not sufficient for those ties to be made public (indeed, they already are).

What's important is making them common knowledge, in the sense that whenever people think of (for example) PeTA, they think of PeTA's terrorist connections, not loopy people dressed as carrots.

Brian

ALF Sadism, Self-Imposed Legal Impotence

There's cruelty, and then there is sadism. I'll leave it to you to decide for yourself how best to characterize this, but to me it is downright sadistic:

Animal rights extremists have boasted of blowing up a car belonging to the widow of a pharmaceuticals firm director, even though he had died months before.

The Animal Liberation Front said on its website that it knew that Alexander Grant, the managing director of Roche, had died from a heart attack . . .

[ . . . ]

The website, Biteback, has been used to claim responsibility for attacks across the world. The statement said: "We have been keeping many senior personnel from HLS's customers and suppliers under intense surveillance.

"One was Alexander Grant, a senior director of Roche, who are a major customer of Huntingdon Life Sciences. We were planning an attack on Grant a few months ago but then realised that he had just died of a heart attack.

"In October we carried out the operation at Grant's address, planting two incendiary devices under an expensive four-wheel-drive, totally destroying it. People who sign contracts with or deal with Huntingdon need to realise that your decisions will come back to haunt you for ever - even when you have gone." "

How sick is this? How ruthless and sadistic?

Arson is bad enough — it sends a message that you have been targeted, and you have reason to fear for your life and the lives of your family. But when you target a family that is itself without the power to effect change . . . you terrorize them purely to send a message to others about how far you're prepared to go . . . wow . . .

And then, Jerry Vlasak, former PCRM spokesman, has upped the ante exponentially by justifying both the morality of assassination and advocating the practice of murder, a position he defended on Oct. 26, 2005 in testimony before a Senate committee and which he repeated most recently when interviewed by Ed Bradley for 60 Minutes.

Dr. Vlasak's advocacy of assassination means that ALF defenders can no longer argue that the threat of being deliberately killed, maimed or burned to a crisp won't happen because they're careful and such outcomes don't fit the ALF credo.

Such actions fit Dr. Vlasak's philosophy, and that's all that counts.

It is inevitable that some anonymous useful idiot will identify himself as an avenging angel, take courage and inspiration from Dr. Vlasak's words, and go about putting into practice what Dr. Vlasak advocates. (Actually, someone — allegedly fugitive Daniel Andreas San Diego — has already, though unsuccessfully, attempted as much.)

Those who find themselves targets of ALF actions can't be sure that they will be attacked by the kinder, gentler ALF operatives, those who draw a bright line between (prohibited) murder and such (permissible) "direct actions" as false accusations of paedophilia, bricks through windows, tire slashing, threats against one's family and children, "black faxes," paint stripper on cars, arson, and spray-paint graffiti. (All of these non-lethal "direct actions" and others were once explicitly included on a SHAC webpage under the heading Top 20 Terror Tactics.

Now, the target must live in fear that some anonymous ALF clunk will find his personal urge to commit murder legitimized in Dr. Vlasak's words, and put into practice the next logical step in the escalation of what is an ALF-permissible "direct action."

The chill doesn't stop here. No, not by any means.

The fact that the ALF heros of this story would continue to torment people who can in no earthly way correct what the odd ALF operative considers to be the transgression of someone who cannot redeem himself (he is, after all, dead . . .) makes it obvious that once having dealt with an ALF-proscribed target, even death won't bring relief to the family and friends of the hated "abuser."

And yet, that very tactic of perpetual, irredeemable personal guilt and guilt by association works against the goal ALF terrorists say they wish to achieve: if it is true that once having sinned you are beyond absolution ("your decisions will come back to haunt you for ever"), what is the incentive for abandoning the activity that has made you a target?

Is it just me, or is there a strongly religious flavor of "original sin" in this?

In any event, my sense is that these people are delighting in the raw, god-like power they can exercise over the lives of people who cannot fight back. And it is my fear . . . and my prediction . . . that it won't be too long before some annonymous thug will commit a murder that Dr. Vlasak would find "morally acceptable."

In an equally disturbing parallel story, we have this which announces the recent release of Keith Mann from 6 months in the slammer:

The early release from jail of an animal rights activist once described as a "ruthless fanatic" was today attacked by his victims and the science community.

Keith Mann was jailed for 18 months in April this year for breaking into an animal laboratory and threatening its head in court.

Wellllll . . . there's a little more to Mr. Mann's sentencing than that . . . As I wrote previously, the judge (Richard Price) passing sentence on him for this "conspiracy to burgle" charge had full knowledge of Mr. Mann's criminal background "which included a conviction in 1994 for 21 offenses, including arson, possessing explosives, and escaping from custody (for which he received a 14 year sentence, later reduced). If that weren't enough, Mr. Mann was convicted in 2003 for defrauding the government."

In spite of this, Mr. Mann was initially sentenced to 230 hours of community service on the "conspiracy to burgle" charge.

But that changed when: "On his way out of the court, his wrists already fully recovered from the slap, Mr. Mann proceeded to threaten Mr. Chris Bishop of Wickham Laboratories with the words: 'Your trouble is only just beginning. You need to look under your bed,' whereupon Judge Price reconvened court and sentenced Mr. Mann to 6 months in jail for contempt of court."

Judge Price's court had been insulted by Mr. Mann's threat . . . ("Judge Richard Price at Portsmouth Crown Court said: 'I will not have people leaving my court saying that sort of thing. This was a serious threat and a serious contempt of court'.")

Judge Price then gave Mr. Mann a slightly harder slap-on-the-wrist jail sentence for Mr Mann's contempt of Judge Price's court, which was to the judge a greater faux pas than the "conspiracy to burgle" conviction of the chronically criminal Mr. Mann.

The current article continues:

Mann, who was freed on October 31 after serving six months of his sentence, has been electronically tagged, and is now thought to be living with his girlfriend in Poole, Dorset.

The chairman of the Commons Science and Technology Committee, Phil Willis, said: "The scientific community will be worried by this.

"This is somebody who has got a very serious history of animal terrorism and terrorism against scientific laboratories and those carrying out that element of science and here we have somebody who has been let out for serious offences very early.

"Admittedly he is going to be tagged for a while, but we don't know the conditions of his tagging at all." He added: "That's my concern. It's the message that goes out that even hard core terrorists are treated relatively leniently."

The 39-year-old was originally given a 230-hour community punishment order, increased to 12 months in prison on appeal, for organising a raid on Wickham Laboratories in Hampshire and stealing 695 mice in December 2003.

As the activist walked free, he passed the public gallery and threatened the lab's technical director, Chris Bishop, saying: "Your trouble has only just started - you will need to look under your bed."

He was subsequently imprisoned for six months.

. . . of a twelve month sentence . . . which was precisely what he'd originally been sentenced to . . .

You have to wonder how much of the original 6 month sentence Mr. Mann would have served if it hadn't been increased to 12 months . . .

Mr Bishop said today security has been increased at the lab and added.

The early release of Mann, a ringleader of the Animal Liberation Front, comes in the wake of increased violence by animal rights militants.

"Early release . . . in the wake of increased violence."

Heh . . .

In July, an arson attack by the ALF caused major damage to Oxford University's Hertford College boathouse on the Thames. In a statement on its website, the ALF told the university it would "destroy every bit of property you own" to stop animal testing.

Animal rights extremists were also believed to have targeted the widow of a former senior executive of a pharmaceutical company by blowing up her car last month.

Mann was jailed in 1994 for 14 years for carrying out a terrorist-style sabotage campaign against the meat industry.

Mr Willis added: "When you look at how difficult it is to confront animal terrorists and how difficult it is to get them into court and to get them sentenced I think there will be many people in the scientific community saying that this is really not an effective way of dealing with a very, very serious terrorist threat." [My emphasis . . . ed]

As understatement go, Mr. Willis' is a beaut . . .

So I ask you . . . if the English legal system were deliberately trying to minimize the consequences to violent AR extremists, what would it do differently?

This does not bode well for British science.

Brian

Vlasak and Best Dissed by ALF

Interesting things are happening in the violent AR wing of the extremist AR movement: Dr. Jerry Vlasak and Professor Steven Best are being dissed by at least some ALF operatives, and Dr. Vlasak is being dissed by Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Dr. Vlasak, of course, is infamously known for advocating the assassination of some biomedical scientists, which he views as "morally acceptable," in order to intimidate the rest into abandoning the use of animals in research. He did so in his creepy testimony before a Senate committee on Oct. 26, 2005, and before that, he did so on Australian TV (you can watch Dr. Vlasak openly advocate assassination by following the link here).

Both Dr. Best and Dr. Vlasak are presently self-appointed "Press Officers" for the ALF.

But before that and until fairly recently, Dr. Vlasak was a spokesman for the PCRM (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine), which is tied closely to PeTA: PCRM President Neal Barnard and PeTA President Ingrid Newkirk are two of three directors of the PeTA Foundation, which funnels hundreds of thousands of dollars to PCRM (op cit).

The PCRM also has close ties with SHAC — PCRM President Barnard co-signed a letter with then SHAC President Kevin Kjonsas; and Dr. Vlasak's wife, Pamelyn Ferdin is the current President of SHAC — Ferdin carries a PCRM business card listing her as a PCRM employee.

So with all that for background and context, we can consider the comments of a putative ALF cell leader, a person interviewed by Mr. Ed Bradley as background for his 60 Minutes piece last Sunday (Nov. 13, 2005).

[ . . . ]

BRADLEY: Do you know Jerry Vlasak. You know who he is? Calls himself a spokesperson for the cause, for your cause. And he says it’s time to start killing people who do research on animals?

ALF CELL LEADER: Well, we appreciate that he likes to consider himself a spokesperson, but he doesn’t operate with our endorsement or our support or our appreciation, the support of the ALF. We have a strict code of non-violence. Not a single human being in the 20 to 30 year history has ever been harmed in an ALF action…. That’s not luck, it’s a pretty good record.

[ . . . ]

Ouch! This has got to hurt — one of the guys in the trenches saying that Dr. Vlasak "doesn’t operate with our endorsement or our support or our appreciation, the support of the ALF."

Translation: "That Vlasak dude is screwing up the good name of the ALF."

I ask you — how low can a punch be?

Parenthetically, the ALF cell leader suggests that the absence of harm to a human "is not luck" parallels what Rodney Coronado said on 60 Minutes: “The fact that nobody was ever injured in any of the actions that I’ve been accused of is not a coincidence.”

Perhaps . . . but Dr. Vlasak's pronouncement that assassination is "morally acceptable" and his open advocacy of murder has lowered the bar for human injury and murder, each of which is just that much closer to becoming but one other tool in the armamentarium of those claiming to operate in behalf of ALF (and who is to deny them their claim?).

It really doesn't matter what Mr. Bradley's ALF cell leader wants to happen or thinks is justifiable in the ALF name.

The whole structure of ALF — its secrecy, its insulated cell organization and its illegal activities specifically designed to instill terror in the minds of selected targets — is an open invitation for someone to make a name for himself in underground circles, or just to satisfy some dark inner urge, by going that one logical step further and committing murder in behalf of the ALF.

Dr. Vlasak's words have made it possible for useful idiot to legitimize his murderous urge in furtherance of the AR cause.

Who will stop the murderous him (or her)? The ALF credo? I don't think so . . .

Note to ALF cell leader: this is how slippery slopes work, fella. You and those who share your vision have lost control of your own "organization." Dr. Vlasak has seen to that. And the fact that you risked being interviewed to disavow Dr. Vlasak's strategy of murder shows how worried you are.

But, back to people dissing Dr. Vlasak.

As a second example of that, we have none other than Skipper Paul Watson, he of the financially-compromised Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS). By way of background, the reader should appreciate that Dr. Vlasak was was a member of the SSCS's Board of Directors until recently. Then, CBC reporter Peter Gullage did a series of stories on Dr. Vlasak (link, link), exposing his appreciation for murder's utility to the public.

Initially, Skipper Paul stood firmly behind Dr. Vlasak, right up to the point where another of the SSCS's Board (Elizabeth May) threatened to resign if Dr. Vlasak weren't sacked — which would have drawn still greater adverse publicity to the SSCS. At first, Skipper Paul said he'd accept May's resignation before he'd sack Dr. Vlasak. But that changed, and Skipper Paul ended up first, disassociating himself and the SSCS from Dr. Vlasak, then surreptitiously removing Dr. Vlasak's name from the SSCS website one dark night, then sacking him outright the following morning.

So here's what Skipper Paul of the SSCS now has to say:

On Sunday evening, Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a former Board Member of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS), appeared on CBS 60 Minutes to promote his ideas on acceptable violent threats and tactics in animal rights issues. Earlier this year SSCS had promptly removed Dr. Vlasak as a Board member after his interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Company, in which Dr. Vlasak made statements advocating threats of violence to protect animals.

Skipper Paul is being disingenuous . . . Dr. Vlasak was dismissed only because a board member went public with her outrage, and Skipper Paul had no choice. As I argued then, Skipper Paul made a decision because he couldn't afford having the SSCS's reputation publicly savaged, with the consequent drying up of contributions.

"SSCS adamantly opposes any action that would cause injury to any human being," says Captain Paul Watson, Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a marine wildlife conservation organization founded in 1977.

A former friend and colleague of Dr. Vlasak, Captain Watson upholds the decision to remove Dr. Vlasak from the Board of Directors of SSCS as necessary and consistent with Sea Shepherd's long-standing opposition to physical violence.

How revealing . . . "A former friend and colleague . . ."

There really has been a falling out, hasn't there?

Dr. Vlasak has isolated himself from everybody . . .

I predict that the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine will disown Dr. Vlasak presently — and they may even repossess the PCRM business cards Dr. Vlasak's wife flashes around.

Dr. Vlasak has single-handedly thrown the Animal Rights community into a nightmarish tailspin —

Go you, Jerry!

[ . . . ]

"Promoting a philosophy of violence makes it difficult on all of us," Captain Watson advises. "Not only will people be more likely to engage in unnecessary violence out of fear, but it also makes it more difficult to conduct legitimate conservation activities. We cannot support philosophies or tactics that threaten what I established SSCS to do -- preserve and conserve life."

Such sanctimonious words from someone who wouldn't have acted had he not been pressured into it . . .

But enough of Skipper Paul.

There is yet another ALF communique, this one posted on the ADL-Boston listserve:

We followed Kenneth J Greiner from his home at 105 5th Ave in NYC to his weekend getaway in the Hamptons at 4 Beaver Lane W in Westhampton. While Kenneth was turned in for the night we covered his Honda sports utility and Lexus with a new paint job, and a broken back window. His house was also covered with paint and the words "drop HLS" and "sell lsri.ob".

Kenneth is the CEO to Dalton Greiner an investment advisement company who holds over 615,000 shares of HLS' stock in client portfolios. We expect Kenneth's company to join the growing list of companies who have sold HLS' stock.

This action was an ALF action, and was done in solidarity with Peter Young whose unparalleled bravery serves as an inspiration to us all. As an ALF cell we need to take action to save innocent life whenever possible, and take all precautions necessary to avoid infringing on the safety of others. We as a cell are concerned by the rhetorical muddy waters being stirred up by armchair activists like Stephen Best and Jerry Vlasic. These individuals will never understand the ALF and their attempts to represent them in public are pathetic at best. They cannot rewrite the guide lines, period.

The ALF is not a scholastic discourse in academia.
The ALF is not violent, and never will be.
The ALF is the burning feeling in your throat on that quiet car ride to the lab.
The ALF is spending your weeks pay on a rental truck instead of rent or food.
The ALF is the smell of shit and dander on a cross country ride to a sanctuary.
The ALF is an animals first look at open sky.
The ALF is the tears you get when a creature once crippled by human selfishness takes her first steps.
The ALF is all around you.

So f**k post modernist, bad blazer wearing, womanizers and hollywood heart surgeons - we're taking it back.

xo the ALF

Dr. Vlasak has succeeded in driving a wedge into the violent, terrorist wing of the AR extremists. What we're hearing here is from people who are frightened by what Dr. Vlasak has loosed, and who have utter contempt both for him and Professor Best, both of whom live privileged lives and bask in the press-glory of the violent efforts of others.

It's interesting that these guys are calling to "take back" their movment.

How, I wonder, do they plan to do so? How are they going to prevent some useful idiot motivated by the murderous philosophy of Dr. Vlasak and his principal defender and sympathizer Professor Best from identifying himself, coming forward, killing someone, and claiming the ALF did it?

If the murderer claims that he killed in behalf of ALF, who is to say he didn't?

The ALF is Frankenstein's monster — or better — the monster created by the monster. The ALF created themselves out of self-righteous religious fervor. They escalated the tactics of protest from legal ones to illegal ones, with a trend that inevitably approached a logical milestone . . . the taking of human life.

And now they don't like it when Jerry Vlasak, MD, finds it acceptable to take the next step . . . the one dictated by their own loopy ideology: if each life is of equal value, animal and human, then it is morally acceptable to kill "n" people to save "n + 1" animals.

Brian

Hinkle/Cook Legal Proceedings Plod On

The legal proceedings against PeTA employees Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook plod on, with nothing new to happen until after the first of the year:

The case against two PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) employees arrested June 15 in Ahoskie now moves to the Superior Court level.

On Oct. 31, the Hertford County Grand Jury formally indicted Andrew Benjamin Cook, 24, of Virginia Beach, Va. and Adria Joy Hinkle, 27, of Norfolk, Va. on 22 felony counts each of cruelty to animals as well as three counts each of obtaining property by false pretense.

[ . . . ]

Cook and Hinkle are scheduled for a plea administrative hearing sometimes during the first two weeks of January, 2006. According to law, if they enter pleas of not guilty, they cannot be placed on the Superior Court trial docket for at least 30 days.

The pair was arrested by the Ahoskie Police Department late in the afternoon of June 15 after law enforcement officials, on a stake-out, observed a white van in which the two were operating stop in an area located behind Piggly Wiggly in Ahoskie’s Newmarket Shopping Center and toss several black bags in a commercial dumpster.

At that time, a traffic stop was initiated on the van, a vehicle registered to PETA.

The bags located in the dumpster contained 18 dead dogs, including one bag containing seven puppies. An additional 13 dead animals, including the mother cat and her two kittens, were found in the van.

Additionally, the van contained a tackle box filled with syringes and vials of liquid substances. Ahoskie Police Detective Jeremy Roberts, the lead investigator on the case, sent the items to the SBI Crime Lab. There it was confirmed the vials contained Ketamine and Pentobarbital.

According to Roberts, both are Schedule III drugs, each regulated by the Drug Enforcement Agency and are only available for purchase by a licensed veterinarian.

Dr. Cheryl Powell of the Powellsville Pet Clinic said Ketamine is primarily used as aesthetic drug that is used to sedate animals. She said the Pentobarbital was the sedative given to animals to euthanize them.

[ . . . ]

Thanks to reader Pita for the heads up.

Brian

Pharma and Law Enforcement Cooperating

Things are changing. Up until recently, opposition to Animal Rights violence has been fairly piecemeal. But in the last few years, violent Animal Rights activists have upped the ante both in rhetoric and in deed. For example, Jerry Vlasak, MD, former spokesman for the PCRM (a group closely tied to PeTA that has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from PeTA), former member of the Board of Directors of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and present self-appointed Press Officer for the terrorist ALF, finds assassinating scientists to be morally acceptable and openly advocates the practice itself.

And a couple of years ago, a violent Animal Rights extremist laid a two-bomb trap clearly intended to injure or kill people — the second bomb exploded an hour after the first, and was clearly timed to injure or kill first responders (police, firemen, paramedics, reporters . . .). A month later, someone planted a third bomb nearby, this one laced with nails — it was an obvious anti-personnel device. (op cit). Arson, of course, is and has long been a weapon-of-choice for the violent Animal Rights activist.

But it's not the violence that seems to be catching peoples attention, though it should be — it is the effectiveness of the "tertiary targeting" technique within which the violence is used that has people worried.

For those who don't know, the term "tertiary targeting" refers to identifying a primary target, most often a company or using animals in research. Once the primary target has been identified, the terrorists proceed to target individuals of companies supplying the primary target, and individuals associated with companies who are clients of the primary target. The logic is compelling: if you can separate your primary target from suppliers and clients, it will die. The actual tactics are chilling: using websites, post the identities and personal information about individuals who are associated with the primary target's suppliers and clients.

Demonize those people, post their addresses, telephone numbers, the names of their children and other relatives, their places of work, the schools attended by their children, etc. and let nature take its course. The individual will feel frightened if not terrified, and if some suggestible, anonymous useful idiot identifies himself as an avenging warrior-angel and pitches a brick through the target's window, places an incendiary device in a carport or paint strips his car, the company he works for will look to protect him and other employees by severing their connection with the primary target.

It works — the most recent one of many high-profile successes was when Catherine Kinney, President of the New York Stock Exchange, precipitously and at the last minute (literally) reversed an NYSE commitment to Huntingdon Life Sciences (a long-time target of violent AR extremists) and announced to the astonishment of all concerned that HLS would not be listed on the Exchange as planned and approved. By all accounts, Ms Kinney had correctly interpreted an episode of vandalism conducted against a yacht and threats made to NYSE personnel as the threatening message violent Animal Rights activists fully intended to send.

Successes such as this show the power of combining "tertiary targeting" with violence, and are apparently galvanizing the public and private sectors into cooperative action:

The drug industry is working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to thwart guerilla operations of animal-rights extremists seeking to stop biomedical research involving lab animals, United Press International has learned.

Animal-rights groups, such as the Animal Liberation Front, have intensified their actions in recent years -- even setting bombs and fires at research facilities -- and the FBI now considers them to be one of the biggest domestic terrorist threats.

An FBI agent recently briefed Caroline Loew, senior vice president for science and regulatory affairs for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, on the efforts the agency is taking to thwart the animal rights groups, PhRMA spokesman Jeff Trewhitt told UPI.

"Basically, what they're saying is get to know your regional FBI coordinator," Trewhitt said. "If any company perceives a threat from an animal terrorist, even if it's a minor, verbal threat, they should contact that local FBI office right away," he added.

"Pushing back" is only to be expected, especially in light of the success of the "tertiary targeting" technique.

In an interview with the Sunday edition of "60 Minutes," John Lewis, deputy assistant director for counter-terrorism at the FBI, said the bureau is aware of more than 1,000 attacks by animal-rights and eco-terrorist groups that have resulted in over $100 million in damages.

Jerry Vlasak, a trauma surgeon in Los Angeles who represents several extreme animal-rights groups, was also interviewed by "60 Minutes," and he urged activists to do whatever it takes to stop animal experiments, even if that includes killing researchers.

Vlasak told UPI he didn't mean to imply that activists should kill researchers, only that "it would be a morally justifiable tactic if everything else failed."

Dr. Vlasak either has a very poor memory, or he is being deliberately deceptive — he may well have said "it would be a morally justifiable tactic" with the qualification "if everything else failed."

But that's only what he said on one occasion.

On another occasion, Dr. Vlasak openly advocated the assassination of scientists on Australian TV. He was unambiguous. He was chilling.

But don't take my word for it — watch him yourself by following the link here (it's worth the 3 - 4 minutes of your time).

He added, "What we're doing now hasn't been working, so maybe its time to try something different."

What Dr. Vlasak means isn't that things aren't happening, but they aren't happening fast enough for his tastes . . .

Americans for Medical Progress, an industry-supported group based in Alexandria, Va., said in a statement that Vlasak's "call to assassinate research scientists ... is a call to action for Congress to give law enforcement the powers necessary to investigate and arrest those who would carry out such crimes."

AMP President Jacquie Calnan told UPI that animal-rights groups have intensified their attacks and have shifted their tactics to inflicting economic damage upon companies that conduct research on animals. The groups also have started targeting executives of companies and their families, including vandalizing their homes and stealing personal information such as credit-card and bank information and posting it on Web sites, she said.

"We're seeing a new generation of animal-rights activists," Calnan said. "The threats are intensifying and the personal nature of the threats are intensifying,"

I think Ms Calnan makes a very telling point: the violent AR people are making their attacks are as personal as it's possible to get.

And they aren't just confined to slandering one's reputation (a favorite AR tactic is to falsely accuse one of their targets of paedophilia) — they include a kind of internet stalking.

The target loses his privacy, and finds himself, his family and his friends laid bare to a focussed, deliberate, ruthless and persistent campaign of demonization and fear.

It's very personal — as the courageous Mr. Skip Boruchin so eloquently pointed out in his testimony before the Senate on October 26, 2005. (You can read a transcript of Mr. Boruchin's testimony or listen to his testimony by following the link here.)

It is the personal aspect of being targeted by AR thugs . . . the knowledge that you or someone you hold precious is in danger if you fail to comply with their demands . . . that is terrifying.

Which, of course, is precisely why the violent AR extremists use these tactics.

The FBI's Lewis testified before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in October that the bureau needed changes to existing laws in order to stop activists who target individual employees or attempt to damage a company financially.

Legislation called the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act has been introduced in both the House and Senate that addresses some of the difficulties in prosecuting animal-rights activists who use these tactics. The bill is not likely to pass this year, and parties on both sides are concerned it may infringe upon free-speech rights granted under the First Amendment.

First Amendment issues are a big deal: the more or less above ground groups like SHAC post their opinions about an individual on their website, which they have a right to do, and most if not all of the personal information they post is in the public domain — so there's nothing illegal about that.

And they are perfectly within their rights to post something like the Top 20 Terrorist Tactics — if they aren't actively encouraging people to use them.

With such information freely available, it remains only for some anonymous useful idiot to identify himself, motivate himself to action and to go out and do the actual deeds.

They — the people who operate the website — offer disclaimers at the bottom of their pages telling us that they don't condone violence and that what they're posting is to be used for information purposes only.

And, it is probably true that they probably don't know the identities of the people who carry out the acts, or know before hand who amongst the people they've identified will be attacked, what the attack will consist of, or when it will happen.

In this way, the website operators are legally separated from those who do the illegal acts, even though their postings almost certainly aid and abet the attacks.

(There may be a legal way around this conundrum, based on court decisions ("true threat" doctrine) made in response to attacks carried out against abortion clinic doctors in the 1990's.)

Lewis cited a group based in Worcestershire, England, called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty as having been "quite effective" at using these tactics to disrupt the operations of the animal-testing firm Huntingdon Life Sciences. More than 100 companies, including major pharmaceutical firms such as Johnson & Johnson and Merck, severed ties with Huntingdon. [My emphasis . . . ed]

It's also worth pointing out that HLS isn't the only company which has suffered setbacks by violent AR zealots: there's the Hall family, who recently abandoned raising guinea pigs for research; there's Oxford University, which is struggling to complete construction of a new animal care facility; there is Cambridge University, which abandoned their plans to build an animal care facility; and there is the mysterious lurch backwards by the NAPF (National Association of Pension Funds), an organization that initially had offered up to £10 million in rewards to combat AR violence, but then lamely reneged on their promise (because of threats from violent AR activists?).

The tactics that worked so well in England are now being employed here in the US — witness the example of Ms Kinney and the NYSE (op cit).

The FBI has had some success against SHAC, getting criminal indictments in New Jersey against the organization and seven of its national leaders on charges of animal enterprise terrorism, conspiracy and interstate stalking. A federal grand jury also indicted the seven leaders because of information posted on SHAC's Web site that resulted in vandalism, harassment and intimidation of companies and their employees. The trial is scheduled for February.

Frankie Trull, president of the Washington-based National Association of Biomedical Research, a group supported by industry, said she doubted the trial of the SHAC leaders would have much impact on the activists.

"The campaigns have been too successful," Trull told UPI.

UPI was unable to contact SHAC for comment on this story because the number listed on SHAC's Web site for its U.S. headquarters in Philadelphia was disconnected.

The NABR maintains a database of illegal actions it says animal-rights extremists have taken against companies around the world. The database includes 57 incidences so far this year, with U.S. actions ranging from filling out magazine subscription cards for executives of companies that do business with Huntingdon to spray painting and vandalizing homes of pharmaceutical executives to stealing research animals.

Trull said companies could consider moving their research facilities to other countries with a less hostile environment.

"Ultimately, you will see research and development move offshore if the environment is not safe," she said.

I don't see this happening immediately or precipitously, but unless the violent extremists are stopped, the process of relocation will happen slowly but surely, and overtures have already been made by the Institute of Primate Research in Nairobi to entice researchers away from England by offering them, in effect, an "Animal Rights free zone".

I also don't see the Animal Rights community being particularly concerned about the lack of animal welfare protection if the biomedical research community were to move off shore en bloc, away from the protection of strong animal welfare laws.

I think there's a reason for this: I think Animal Rights activists believe their own hyperbolic rhetoric, and consider that any use of animals in biomedical research is torture, and no such use is less immoral, less tortuous, than any other.

Brian

60 Minutes on AR Extremism — Thoughts and Transcript

First things first — I hope every reader of AC who saw tonight's (11/14/05) 60 Minutes story on AR and Eco extremists (Ed Bradley reporting) will take advantage of this opportunity and email their comments to CBS at 60m@cbsnews.com.

Mr. Bradley's piece included interviews with Rodney Coronado and Jerry Vlasak. Mr. Coronado served 4 years for having torched labs at Michigan State University, and Jerry Vlasak is infamous for having advocated killing human beings to save animals, most recently (until tonight) in testimony at a Senate hearing on Oct. 26.

Mr. Bradley's piece focussed on the overtly violent actions of the ALF and ELF, and included the perspective of the FBI.

Animal Rights activists will certainly claim that the violent ALF and ELF are but a small minority of their number, not representative of the AR movement as a whole, and they shouldn't be placed in the same category as the those using, advocating and justifying violence.

While it is true that most people who claim to be Animal Rights activists are not themselves violent, it is also true that they share the same ideology that the Jerry Vlasak's of the world believe in: that speciesism is as immoral as racism, that the life of an animal and that of a human are of equal value, and that animals deserve to be accommodated within the same identical moral framework as humans.

But more importantly, the flagship Animal Rights organization — PeTA — has very close ties with both arson-teaching Mr. Coronado and the murder-advocating Dr. Vlasak. And while the 60 Minutes story was a compelling look at ALF and ELF and how they think, what they've done, and how things are changing for the worse for their targets, 60 Minutes treated the ALF/ELF operatives and their violence as if they are completely independent of more familiar above-ground Animal Rights organizations (PeTA and the PCRM [Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine]).

That was a major shortcoming of Mr. Bradley's report. By not exploring this connection, Mr. Bradley let these two organizations off the hook, free to continue their deceptive game and to gather in donations. And he ignored what in my opinion is a far more important story.

For me, the real story is not that there are people who like to torch things, explode bombs and advocate murder for their extreme causes, but that these people are closely tied to extremist groups like PeTA who have maintained through their propaganda efforts a respectable face.

Thus, PeTA contributed $45,200 to the Rodney Coronado Support Committee (which was used to pay Mr. Coronado's legal bills) and floated an additional $25,000 loan to Mr. Coronado's father, a loan that as far as anyone knows, has not yet been repaid.

Why would PeTA do this? I don't know — maybe the answer is to be found in the governments sentencing memorandum (pdf), which states on pages 8 - 9 that Mr. Coronado sent packages by prearrangement to PeTA President Ingrid Newkirk and another PeTA employee before and immediately after the MSU fire he served time for setting. Perhaps this $70,000 was "hush money." What a pity Mr. Bradley didn't ask.

PeTA also contributed $1,500 to the Earth Liberation Front. What a pity Mr. Bradley didn't ask about this.

PeTA also has close ties with Dr. Vlasak, who until recently was a spokesman for the PCRM (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine). The PCRM has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from PeTA through The PeTA Foundation, which has 3 directors, one of them being PCRM President Neal Barnard, and another being PeTA President Ingrid Newkirk.

That's just the tip of the iceberg that 60 Minutes managed to miss.

Here is the transcript of the 60 Minutes AR-Eco extremist segment:

When they first emerged in the mid-1990s, the environmental extremists calling themselves the “Earth Liberation Front” announced they were “the burning rage of a dying planet.”

Ever since, the ELF, along with its sister group, the Animal Liberation Front, has been burning everything from SUV dealerships to research labs to housing developments.

In recent years, these so-called “eco-terrorists” have been responsible for more than a thousand crimes resulting in over $100 million in damage. And their tactics and rhetoric continue to escalate.

Things have gotten so bad, the FBI now considers them the country’s biggest domestic terrorist threat.

Correspondent Ed Bradley reports.

------------

The biggest act of eco-terrorism in U.S. history was a fire, deliberately set on the night of August 1, 2003, that destroyed a nearly-completed $23 million apartment complex just outside San Diego. The fire was set to protest urban sprawl.

“It was the biggest fire I have ever responded to as a firefighter,” remembers Jeff Carle, a division chief for the San Diego Fire Department. “That fire was not stoppable. At the stage that the fire was in when we arrived, there were problems in the adjacent occupied apartment complexes. Pine trees were starting to catch fire. Items on patios were starting to light up and catch fire. And we had to direct our activity towards saving life before we could do anything about the property.”

Hundreds were roused from their beds and evacuated. Luckily, nobody – including firefighters – was injured. By the time the fire burned itself out the next morning, all that remained was a 12-foot-long banner that read: “If you build it, we will burn it.” Also on the banner was the acronym: E-L-F.

When Carle saw the banner, he says he knew he had a problem.

A problem, because he knew what ELF stood for: the Earth Liberation Front, the most radical fringe of the environmental movement. It’s the same group that set nine simultaneous fires across the Vail Mountain ski resort in 1998 to protest its expansion, causing $12 million in damage.

And it is the same group that has left SUV dealerships across America looking like scenes from Iraq’s Sunni triangle, their way of protesting the gas-guzzling habits of American car buyers.

"Their way of protesting" are acts of terror, and are intrinsically very very dangerous . . . one can never be sure when some useful idiot (or "lone wolf" as the FBI puts it below) will decide to take Dr. Vlasak's message to heart and try his hand at assassination, and by its nature, a conflagration is immensely dangerous, not only to those who have to fight it, but to others who might be injured as first responders speed along the street to get to the fire, and to people who live near by the fire.

The ELF is a spin-off of another group called the ALF, or Animal Liberation Front, whose masked members have been known to videotape themselves breaking into research labs, where they destroy years of painstaking work and free captive animals. In recent years, they’ve capped off their visits by burning down the buildings. Still, they insist they are non-violent.

“For every arson that I've carried out, there's probably three or four that were not carried out for that fear of injuring somebody,” says Rod Coronado, a former ALF leader, who is widely-credited with introducing arson to the cause.

I guess we should all thank Mr. Coronado for his restraint . . . Mr. Coronado acts as if once started, his fires will act predictably and behave according to his wishes.

Right . . .

He spent four years in prison for setting six fires, including one at Michigan State University.

Why burn down a building?

“It's simply because after years of rescuing animals from laboratories, it was heartbreaking to see those buildings and those cages refilled within the following days. And for that reason, arson has become a necessary tool,” says Coronado.

" . . . a necessary tool . . ." to be employed selectively against SUV dealers, ski resorts, scientists and research institutions but not against PeTA, an organization that kills almost 80% of the animals it takes into its shelter . . .

Oh wait — I forgot! PeTA paid Mr. Coronado's legal fees and floated that loan to his father!

Coronado says the ALF and ELF operate in small autonomous “cells.” He says he usually worked with five or less people.

Asked how after choosing a target, a mission is carried out, Coronado says, “Those are the types of things that take nights and nights and weeks and weeks of reconnaissance to make sure that you know in the one hour that you're going to take action, that there will be absolutely no risk to any living being. The fact that nobody was ever injured in any of the actions that I’ve been accused of is not a coincidence.”

The fact that nobody's been hurt is dumb luck. It's going to happen . . .

There are dots here . . .

Coronado says these days, he’s simply an unofficial spokesperson for the ALF and ELF. And in that role, he travels across the country giving lectures on the groups’ philosophies and tactics.

Many in law enforcement believe Coronado is still active in the movement as an organizer and recruiter. He recently found a GPS tracking device under his Jeep, which he believes was planted by the FBI. And, he just happened to have a speaking engagement in San Diego the day after the fire.

Coronado says he knew nothing about the condo complex fire, yet he has traveled around the country and encourage people to do this sort of thing. [About here, Mr. Bradley asks him if he's trying to recruit "impressionable people" — a wonderful term . . . ed]

“Encouragement through explanation and demonstration of my own actions,” says Coronado. “I've showed them how I set fires. I showed them how the ELF and the ALF, what their mode of operation is.”

“I'm asking for people courageous enough to take those risks for what they believe in,” said Coronado.

60 Minutes was surprised when one of those people, a man claiming to be an active ALF cell leader, came out of the shadows to grant what he called “the group’s first on camera interview in 20 years,” as long as we didn’t see his face or record his voice.

He told us that his cell has conducted operations from coast to coast, and every one of them was what he considered to be non-violent because nobody was injured. He said under the mask he is a normal, otherwise law-abiding citizen, and that his friends and family have no idea about his activities. He said he thinks it’s “abysmal” that the FBI considers them America’s top domestic terrorist threat, because unlike neo-Nazi groups, the ALF has never hurt anyone.

First, there's a companion piece to the 60 Minutes segment which consists of a transcript of the interview with the ALF leader. I may comment on it in a later post.

Second, there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of terror.

Terror is a state of mind, and murder is one of many ways of creating that state of mind.

In other words, murder can be a means to a terrorists end, but the end itself is a terrorized mind. If you can cause a terrorized mind by threats rather than murder, the threats are just as much a terrorist tool as is murder. If you murder "A" and it causes some "B" to be terrified, then the murder is an act of terror. But if there is no "B" who is terrified by "A's" murder, the murder isn't an act of terror, however appalling, disgusting and gruesome it might be.

So claiming that "our techniques aren't terrorist because nobody has died" is downright stupid.

Even SHAC appreciates this, which is why when they once listed on their website their "Top 20 Terror Tactics", none of these was murder.

“Having the FBI chase you around is not a good thing,” says John Lewis, a Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism at the FBI. Lewis is the man charged with stamping out eco-terrorism in the United States.

Lewis says the bureau is aware of over 1,000 attacks and says these groups are considered such a threat is because they have caused over $100 million worth of damage nationwide. He says there are more than 150 investigations of eco-terrorist crimes underway.

Lewis says the arsonists who started the fires in San Diego and Vail remain on the loose. But he says investigations have led to “approximately 40 arrests or prosecutions” for other eco-terror crimes.

Lewis says these groups use the Internet to pass along information and to take credit for their crimes. He admits they’re not in the same league as al Qaeda but he says they’re ratcheting up their actions and turning up the rhetoric.

The information passed along consists of personal information about the target and his or her family and friends, demonization of the target, and, in the case of SHAC, a listing of the "Top 20 Terror Tactics", which once appeared on the SHAC web page (interestingly, none of those was murder.)

Taking credit for an attack makes future threats credible, and all the more terrifying to future targets.

Which, after all, is the point . . .

“There have been multiple statements made regarding assassination and/or killing of individuals involved in, for instance, biomedical research and that kind of thing,” says Lewis.

Case in point is Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a practicing trauma surgeon in Los Angeles, who also acts as a spokesperson for several extreme animal rights groups. Vlasak has told audiences that it’s time to consider assassinating people who do research on animals.

Vlasak has been quoted as saying ‘I think for five lives, ten lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, two million, ten million nonhuman lives.’

“I think people who torture innocent beings should be stopped. And if they won't stop when you ask them nicely, they won't stop when you demonstrate to them what they're doing is wrong, then they should be stopped using whatever means necessary,” Vlasak replied.

Of course, you have to understand that when Dr. Vlasak uses the word "torture" its meaning isn't confined to the sorts of activities that come to most people's minds. Dr. Vlasak's definition is an expanded one, and includes virtually every instance in which an animal is treated in a way one would not treat a human.

Vlasak says he is not going to do that, pointing out he is a physician. “My role in the movement is not to go out and do that, but to explain to the mainstream media and to the public in general why these people are doing what they're doing.”

Asked if Vlasak wants someone to go out there and kill, Vlasak says, “I want people who care about animals to do what's necessary to stop their exploitation, to stop their suffering.”

Vlasak says someone who believes that the life of an animal is not akin to the life of a human being is “species-ist.”

Species-ists, he says, are akin to racists or sexists. Animals, he says, should be accorded the same rights as human beings, despite their place on the food chain.

“Just like at one time black humans were considered property. Well, dogs, cats and all other animals in our society are still considered property,” Vlasak says.

I couldn't have said it better myself . . .

Of course, Dr. Vlasak isn't alone in his belief that speciesism is intrinsically as immoral as racism: that principle is the pillar upon which the entire AR ideology rests. When you honestly believe that the life of an animal is as valuable as that of a human, then what is the argument against killing "n" humans if you can save "n + 1" animals? And Dr. Vlasak is nothing if not an honest believer . . .

If you want to know a little more about what AR is and where it's ideology takes you, read this and this and this.

Asked who he thinks is fair game, Vlasak says, “Well, I think anybody that tortures animals for a living or for a profit and who won't stop when they're asked to and won't stop.”

Does that include researchers who are testing and performing tests using animals?”

“Animal researchers, slaughterhouse workers, the head of the corporation that slaughters hundreds of millions of chickens every single year for the taste of their flesh,” says Vlasak.

. . . the technicians at PeTA who kill so many of the animals they take in to their shelter, Ingrid Newkirk, PeTA President, who admits that PeTA could run a "no-kill" shelter . . . the possibilities are endless . . .

Well, people like chicken.

“People liked owning slaves too, okay. That doesn't make it right,” Vlasak said.

What an astonishingly dumb question . . . surely they could have edited that one out . . .

Vlasak says it’s very straightforward in his mind.

“We don't live in a country where it's okay to kill people if we don't necessarily like what they're doing. If we have someone who actively embraces this then what’s next?” says John Lewis.

What’s next, he says, is the emergence of a “lone wolf” like Eric Rudolph or Ted Kaczynski, something that has already happened.

A mysterious bomber was caught on surveillance camera in 2003 planting two sophisticated explosive devices late at night outside a company that makes vaccines in northern California, a company targeted by animal rights activists. One bomb was set to go off an hour after the first - after firemen and police arrived – but it was spotted by a night watchman. A few weeks later a third bomb went off outside another company, this one strapped with nails.

“Anyone from 50 feet of that particular bomb probably would have been killed or seriously injured,” says the FBI’s David Strange, who is in charge of the investigation.

Strange thinks the second explosive was designed to hurt or kill the first responders that show up to the scene. He says it was the first time he heard of eco-terrorists using bombs.

Strange says the FBI has identified the suspected bomber as Daniel Andreas San Diego, a 27-year-old animal rights activist from San Rafael, California, who is now a fugitive after he slipped an FBI surveillance team.

But he left behind a message, posted on a Web site sympathetic to the Animal Liberation Front. Part of it reads, “We will now be doubling the size of every device we make.”

“I'll ask you. Why does someone build an improvised explosive device with shrapnel, nails and such, if they're not intending to cause someone grievous harm if not worse?” says Lewis.

The rules are changing . . . which makes ALF/ELF threats all the more credible, all the more likely of causing terror.

There is a definite split in the movement when it comes to violence.

After torching a forest research station in Irvine, Pennsylvania, one ELF cell threatened to “pick up the gun.”

“I think it's sort off disingenuous to say ‘Well, we can burn down buildings. But we can't use explosives. Or we can use explosives. But we can't do anything that might harm a person.’ I think what we have to do is look at the big picture. We have to look at what works,” says Dr. Jerry Vlasak.

Isn't that chilling? Dr. Vlasak is willing to advocate whatever it takes to achieve the AR agenda, including murder, on his steadfast belief that his conscience is infallible!

Dr. Vlasak is his own god . . .

The FBI and other law enforcement agencies are also looking at what works. They’re winning longer prison sentences for convicted eco-terrorists. And they’re pushing legislation in congress that would make it a crime to threaten violence against any person or institution that uses animals to do business.

Well — I encourage you to write to CBS at 60m@cbsnews.com and express your views. Be polite, make your note short and sweet, and make only one or two quick points.

Brian

AMP Press Release on 60 Minutes Animal Extremist Segment

The AMP (Americans for Medical Progress) have issued a press release about tonight's forthcoming 60 Minutes segment, in which Ed Bradley will report on extremist Animal Rights groups. The segment will reportedly contain an interview with Jerry Vlasak, MD, who in his October 26, 2005 Senate testimony creeped the Senators out by reaffirming that animals and humans are "morally equal" and that assassinating some biomedical scientists was an acceptable tactic to use to intimidate others into abandoning animal experiments. Here's the AMP release:

CALL FOR MURDER OF SCIENTISTS SHOWS VICIOUS SIDE OF ANIMAL RIGHTS, SAY MEDICAL ADVOCATES
 
(November 13, 2005 - Alexandria, VA)   The call to assassinate research scientists, heard on Sunday’s 60 Minutes, is a call to action for Congress to give law enforcement the powers necessary to investigate and arrest those who would carry out such crimes, according to Americans for Medical Progress, a nonprofit organization that counters the animal rights threat to biomedical research.
 
“The outrageous statement by Jerry Vlasak is not new, and confirms what we in the biomedical research community have known for years: that there truly is a violent element among the animal rights movement that would stop at nothing – even murder – to achieve their agenda,” said John Young, Director of Comparative Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and chairman of Americans for Medical Progress. “We are seeing the dark, vicious side of animal rights activism and it is appalling.”

Actually, some of us — and I would count Dr. Young as one of us — have seen the "dark, vicious side of animal rights activism" for quite some time.

Hopefully, the 60 Minutes segment will reveal to the world what we have long known. And hopefully, a part of this segment will cover the links of Dr. Vlasak to the larger and well funded Animal Rights groups to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and PeTA, the group it fronts for. (Follow the links here.)

But why stop there? Why not show how the PCRM is linked to SHAC, and PeTA funnels money to the likes of the Earth Liberation Front and arsonist Rodney Coronado? (Follow the links here.)

In the 60 Minutes interview, scheduled to be aired on CBS Sunday, Vlasak, a spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front, told Ed Bradley that “If they won’t stop when you ask them nicely, they don’t stop when you demonstrate to them what they’re doing is wrong, then they should be stopped using whatever means are necessary.”

Of course, to Dr. Vlasak, "right" and "wrong" are based on the core AR premise that the life of an animal and a human are of equal value — that there should be a single moral standard that governs how we treat animals and humans. Dr. Vlasak believes that "speciesism" — treating a dog, cat, bird or mouse differently from a human simply because none of them is a human — is as great a sin as racism (Senate testimony - op cit).

To a a person who believes in Animal Rights, if it is immoral or unethical to do something to a human, it is equally immoral or unethical to do it to an animal (don't eat them, don't exploit animals for entertainment, don't hunt them, don't use them for experiments, etc.). Dr. Vlasak differs from other, more timid Animal Rights activists only because he has the courage to follow the AR logic to its conclusion, and to advocate what that logic dictates — if each life, animal and human, is morally equal, then if you can save "n + 1" animals by killing "n" humans, you're on the good side of virtue.

I also hope Mr. Bradley asks Dr. Vlasak to square the core anti-speciesism belief with his advocacy for spaying and neutering animals, which he ADL-LA (Animal Defense League — Los Angeles) he calls for as a "No Kill Solution" (left sidebar) to animal overpopulation on the ADL-LA's www.stopthekilling.net page.

In pressing that animals be spayed and neutered, is Dr. Vlasak violating his anti-speciesism core value, or would he press for the forced sterilization of human beings for the same reasons he'd spay and neuter animals?

This is the latest in a long series of threats against scientists who study research animals in their quest for medical advances.  Vlasak told an animal rights meeting in 2003, “I think for five lives, ten lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, two million, ten million nonhuman lives.”  At the time, Vlasak was a spokesperson for Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine, an animal rights group that works in close association with PETA.  Last month, Vlasak told a Senate committee that he stood behind that statement and in fact expanded his threat to include families of research scientists.  “These are not innocent lives,” he testified.

Ouch! But yes . . . I sincerely hope Mr. Bradley and his researchers have read up on this stuff and ask Dr. Vlasak about it.

Or better, that they interview someone who knows the AR game and can articulate it well — like AMP — who stand ready and available for interview (see below).

On 60 Minutes, the FBI confirms that there is a serious domestic terror threat posed by those willing to commit crimes for the sake of animal rights.  The FBI is concerned that the call by animal rights activists to kill scientists will be acted upon by “lone wolves,” and notes there may have been such an attempt in a series of bombings in California in 2003.
 
 “It is just a matter of time before someone is killed. The attacks against scientists are increasing in intensity. We aren’t talking about peaceful pickets: already there have been arsons, break-ins, thefts, bombs, even beatings on the doorsteps of scientists’ homes.  Biomedical researchers and their loved ones are being threatened simply because of their work, which is providing new treatments and cures for us all,” said Jacquie Calnan, president of Americans for Medical Progress. “Americans need to urge Congress and the President to pass laws to ensure that everything possible is done to protect scientists and their families.”

It is just a matter of time before someone is killed — and by advocating murder, Dr. Vlasak has lowered the bar for murder to happen.
 
NOTE TO REPORTERS:  John Young and Jacquie Calnan are available for interviews. Call (703) 836 9595 x100.  More information on the 60 Minutes report is available on the CBS News website: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/10/60minutes/main1036067.shtml

Well, there you have it . . . one hopes that reporters will avail themselves of just this opportunity, and contact the good folks at AMP.

Brian

Charlotte Laws Defends Extremist Campaign Against LA City Officials

Readers of recent AC posts will know that the Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, is under siege by local Animal Rights activists for his failure to fire Mr. Guerdon Stuckey, head of Animal Services. Leading the campaign is the ADL-LA (Animal Defense League — Los Angeles), an Animal Rights group which is led by Jerry Vlasak, MD and his wife Pamelyn Ferdin, the former child actress.

Ms Ferdin is the current President of SHAC-USA. SHAC a group that has perfected the fine art of "tertiary targeting." Tertiary targeting is a coercive tactic that seeks to bring down a principle target by intimidating people who the target depends on (suppliers or clients, for example) by posting their names on websites, demonizing them, and providing personal information about them and their families and friends which anonymous thugs can use to vandalize their property and threaten them and their loved ones. (SHAC recently scored a major victory when they intimidated Catherine Kinney, President of the New York Stock Exchange, into a precipitous last minute change of heart. Ms Kinney, on the morning that Huntingdon Life Sciences was to be listed on the NYSE, abruptly and without explanation, and to the surprise of the NYSE's Board of Directors, HLS executives and Kinney's own Press Secretary, reversed course and announced to the stunned HLS executives that the listing the NYSE had previously approved would be "postponed.")

Dr. Vlasak is a self-appointed "Press Officer" for the terrorist ALF (Animal Liberation Front). He is a former spokesman for the PCRM (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine), which is itself closely tied to PeTA (PCRM President Neal Barnard and PeTA President Ingrid Newkirk are two of the three Directors of the PeTA Foundation, a foundation that funnels hundreds of thousands of dollars from PeTA to PCRM).

What makes Dr. Vlasak especially noteworthy are his views on assassination. On Oct. 26, 2005 Dr. Vlasak testified before a Senate committee that animals and humans are "morally equal," and during that testimony reaffirmed his belief that assassinating humans is morally acceptable to bring about animal liberation. (Prior to the Senate hearings, Dr. Vlasak had openly advocated assassinating scientists on Australian TV.)

(When Dr. Vlasak says that animals and humans are "morally equal," he means that a single moral standard should be applied to the treatment of humans and animals — that it is just as great a sin to discriminate on the basis of species differences ["speciesism"] as it is to discriminate on the basis of racial differences [racism]. The notion that there should be a single moral standard for humans and animals alike is the defining characteristic of Animal Rights activists, and Dr. Vlasak differs from the garden variety AR activist only in his willingness to follow AR ideological logic to its inevitable conclusion — and talk openly about it.)

Knowing this background makes the point that for the Mayor of LA and other city officials and workers to be targeted by Dr. Vlasak, Ms Ferdin and the ADL-LA is no small matter: being so targeted carries with it a credible threat of violence and vandalism, and given Dr. Vlasak's interest in and advocacy of murder, those targeted by the AR/AL crowd have sound reason to fear for their lives, their property, their reputation and the safety of their family and friends.

Enter Charlotte Laws, Ph.D. Animal Rights/Liberationist activist, and an advisory board member for the radical CALA (Center for Animal Liberation Affairs — which was co-founded by Professor Steven Best, he of the Me First! ethic, and is a group benefitting from the efforts of volunteer Jerry Vlasak, MD). Dr. Laws has written an article in support of the campaign by ADL-LA against His Honor Mayor Villaraigosa.

The earth is starting to tremble in the Los Angeles animal community because Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has refused to honor his January 2005 campaign promise to fire the General Manager of Los Angeles Animal Services Guerdon Stuckey, and this broken promise has drawn attention to a potential scandal involving a loss of $1.1 million to the city over the next three years. Even fiscally responsible Angelenos who don't care about cats and dogs can be officially outraged.

His Honor the mayor did agree to fire Mr. Stuckey while he (the Mayor) was campaigning for office. He made a bad mistake in committing himself to such a position without knowing all the facts, and a worse mistake by making that commitment to an Animal Rights group, one that is about as extreme as it's possible to get. He should have investigated the devil he was negotiating with before striking a bargain.

I don't know anything at all about the "potential scandal" Dr. Laws refers to, but I take it with a grain of salt. Having said that, if there really is something to her accusation, then those responsible should be held fully accountable.

Animal advocates might have let the mayor out of the doghouse on his pledge if Stuckey had reformed the department, fostered relationships with the community and saved animal lives. But according to an October 27, 2005 L.A. CityBeat article, a poorly negotiated contract by Stuckey for a spay-neuter van "may have robbed the city of half its needed spay-neuter services" and will endanger animal lives.

First, "animal advocates" is code for "Animal Rights Activists/Liberationists." AR/AL people believe that the life of an animal and that of a human are of equal value, which is why Dr. Vlasak feels free to advocate assassination: if you can save "n + 1" animals by killing "n" scientists, your moral scorecard shows you to have a "plus one" in the virtue column.

Dr. Laws is very active in the AR/AL community — not the Animal Welfare community — and is deliberately obscuring the nature of the group she's defending. (If you don't know the difference between Animal Rights/Liberation on the one hand and Animal Welfare on the other, read this first and then this.)

Additionally, by referring to "animal advocates" as she does, Dr. Laws creates a subtle but false us/them distinction: if you agree with her and the ADL-LA crowd, you are an animal advocate and want to help animals. By implication, if you do not agree with her and her fellow travelers, you aren't an animal advocate and aren't interested in helping animals.

That's a pretty clever use of language, isn't it?

Finally "may have robbed . . ." is pretty thin stuff. One could say exactly the same thing by inserting a negative, as in "may not have robbed . . ." "May" and "may not" are different phrasing to same the same, identical thing.

Dr. Laws' use of "may" rather than "may not" is a classic propaganda technique, designed to trap the unwary into agreeing with the position of the author.

Due to a shortage of van operating hours combined with the high spay-neuter quota, anesthetized animals will have to be whipped on and off the operating table at great risk to their health. The District Attorney has been asked to investigate.

Any time you — or an animal — undergoes surgery, there is a risk. We don't know if Dr. Laws' concerns will be realized or not, because, apparently (and in spite of her loaded rhetoric — "whipped on and off" . . . "at great risk" . . .) there are no figures.

I suspect that only perfection — a 100% success rate for 100% of the animals — would stand a chance of passing muster in Dr. Laws' mind, though I suspect that even that wouldn't be good enough . . . after all, given all the whipping on and off tables and the great health risks, dozens of animals might start dying next week, or next month, or next year . . .

And I wonder who might have asked the District Attorney to investigate?

Many animal community moderates--such as the dignified and caring former L.A. Animal Commissioner Erika Brunson--who were originally unwilling to jump on the clamorous "we want Stuckey fired" bandwagon, are now steering their own wagons through the streets picking up angry passers-by, such as the fiscally responsible crowd.

I would not describe Ms Brunson as being an "animal community moderate." She contributes to several environmental and Animal Rights groups, including PeTA, The Jane Goodall Society, the "Humane Society" (HSUS?) and Greenpeace.

An "animal community moderate?" Heh . . . I don't think so . . .

The "Reasons to fire Stuckey Email Series" has been circulating for months. Reason number 61 warns the Democratic mayor--who may hope to land in the Governor's office someday—that animal advocates will begin cc'ing the California Republican Party with their complaints. Villaraigosa could be one misstep away from tarnishing his dapper suit with controversies much like those that haunted the Hahn administration.

I suspect the "animal advocates" will be recognized for what they are by the Republicans, who might be tempted to try and take advantage of the situation. They (the Republicans) should be very, very careful about any such thoughts.

The mayor says he has decided not to fire Stuckey at this time because the Animal Liberation Front (ALF)—a "direct action" animal rights group that has not injured a human or animal since its inception in 1972–recently planted a smoke bomb at Stuckey's apartment building, making him look like a victim. He says he will not fire an employee who is being threatened or vandalized.

First, we don't know that the ALF hasn't injured any animal . . . we know that they've taken them from labs and fur farms, but we generally don't know what they've done with them — we just have to take their word that the animals are in a better place. And, of course, we have an ALF communication in which the liberators of some foxes released them into the countryside with, literally, the hope with all their hearts "that some make it." A hope for survival isn't exactly my idea of the best way to insure that freed animals aren't hurt, but I guess that's good enough for Dr. Laws.

Second, any time ALF lights a fire, it endangers first responders who must fight the conflagration, and everyone on the streets along which the first responders travel to get to the fire. (Is there any driver who hasn't felt that sick knot in their stomach when they hear a siren, don't know where it is, and watch cars ahead of them careen unpredictably about?)

Third, if it is true that the ALF hasn't hurt any person, it isn't for lack of encouragement by ALF "Press Officer" Jerry Vlasak, a colleague of Dr. Laws at the CALA, who advocates murder.

His Honor the Mayor is to be commended for his backbone for not caving to AR threats and intimidation. His courage is to be contrasted to the cowardice of Catherine Kinney, President of the NYSE, who did (op cit).

Not only is his courage admirable, it is sound policy as well: if His Honor gives the impression that he can be intimidated into compliance by any two-bit extremist organization, it encourges every two bit extremist organization to take their shot at him, and no end to his grief.

Appeasement gets you nothing with people who cannot be appeased.

It is understandable that the mayor would want to protect city workers. But in an attempt to be tough on crime, Villaraigosa is being weak on his convictions. If he truly believes Stuckey should be fired, why is he allowing himself to be controlled by the Los Angeles ALF?

Having made their demands of the Mayor, he can either buckle to them and fire Mr. Stuckey, or not. If he buckles, he has been controlled by the ALF. He's not buckling, so he's being controlled by the ALF!

See why you can't deal with these people?

His Honor did get himself into a mess by promising to fire Mr. Stuckey during his campaign. But the fact that he made one bad mistake doesn't mean that he should compound it and cave to the ADL-LA. A sober person would do just what he's evidently doing: giving Mr. Stuckey an opportunity to implement the Mayor's animal policy before he decides whether or not to fire him.

That's fair, though not to the liking of the AR/AL community.

[ , , , ]

Despite media hype that makes it seem scary, the ALF's credo prohibits injury to humans and animals. The ALF recently took credit for sending cabs, pizzas and prostitutes to the home of an unsuspecting animal services veterinarian. Although one may disapprove of these tactics, they resemble high school pranks more than crimes.

Dr. Vlasak is a "Press Officer" for the ALF. Dr. Vlasak openly advocates murder. That doesn't square too well with Dr. Laws assertion that the ALF credo prohibits injury to humans . . .

I'd like to hear what she has to say about that . . . does she support murder? Does she condemn those who do, or just "not condone" murder?

Anybody want to guess?

Villaraigosa's new "ALF policy" is good news for those city employees who fear job termination. Anyone whose porch falls victim to a puff of smoke cannot be fired. At-risk employees who fail to command the attention of the ALF might be tempted to place a suspicious package on their own doorstep.

This is unconscionable . . . to ignore the fear these folks must feel knowing that Dr. Vlasak has openly advocated murder for his cause, and then to besmirch their integrity by suggesting that they might stage attacks against themselves for personal advantage is beneath contempt.

Dr. Laws, have you no shame at all?

The City Council has become so concerned about the ALF and the L.A. protest group called the Animal Defense League that it has approved a plan which provides taxpayer dollars for surveillance equipment at the private homes of animal services employees. With high tech cameras, these workers can weed out door-to-door salesmen and pesky in-laws—again on the taxpayer's dime--under the pretense that the big bad wolf, also known as the animal activist, might show up with a feral cat flyer, order them a fake cab or protest on the sidewalk with a sign. Although city workers have a right to feel safe, this measure amounts to another questionable use of limited resources for a city that had 31,000 violent crimes last year.

And here again, we see the trivialization of the fear these people must feel . . .

Let's not lose sight of the fact that Pamelyn Ferdin is President of SHAC-USA, and that SHAC is the group that, in addition to identifying individuals as targets, demonizing them, and posting personal information about them on their (SHAC's) website, likewise posted the "Top 20 Terror Tactics" . . .

According to the Department of Justice, those tactics included (op cit):

invading offices, vandalizing property and stealing documents; physical assault, including spraying cleaning fluid into someone's eyes; smashing windows of a target's home or flooding the home while the individual was away; vandalizing or firebombing cars and bomb hoaxes; and threatening telephone calls or letters, including threats to kill or injure someone's partner or children.

When you add that to Dr. Vlasak advocating murder, it is unconscionable for Dr. Laws to portray the frightened people targeted by ADL-LA and ALF as manipulative, petty and self-serving, whose only use for the security equipment installed for their peace of mind would be frivolous — to weed out door to door salesmen and pesky relatives . . .

What an outrageous suggestion . . . especially from someone who would have us believe she is draped with the moral superiority of a kinder, more compassionate ideology . . .

The mayor continues to react to the "ALF threat." He recently removed Erika Brunson from the Los Angeles Animal Commission and replaced her with surveillance expert Glenn S. Brown. The Commission, which is endorsed by the humane community, provides a compassionate and intelligent voice for the powerless victims of our public shelters: the animals The current commissioners—except for Mr. Brown--may not be experts on installing cameras to detect fake pizza deliveries, but they are experts on how to combat the violence perpetrated against the dogs, cats and other animals that we have a responsibility to protect.

"The humane community" includes Dr. Vlasak, he who advocates assassination, and his wife, Pamelyn Ferdin, she who is president of SHAC, they of the "Top 20 Terrorist Tactics."

Do you get the sense that there might be just a little bit more going on here than what Dr. Laws has included in her essay?

If Mayor Villaraigosa fails to honor his promise to fire Mr. Stuckey and to hire a compassionate and experienced General Manager who can implement a no-kill plan and reform the department, he may find that the animal community is politically-speaking, more bite than bark. A decision to retain Stuckey is likely to become a permanent smudge on Villaraigosa's finely tailored lapel.

The animal community expects the mayor to do the right thing. But in case he doesn't, they have forwarded this article to the Republican Party.

"The animal community . . ." How grandiose, especially when it refers exclusively to the most extreme of the extreme, a tiny fraction of those of us who love animals.

For my part, I think His Honor is doing the right thing, at least for the time being, after having made a horrible mistake during his campaign when he made a promise he shouldn't have made to a group he shouldn't have been negotiating with in the first place.

Oh — in my opinion, His Honor has made one other mistake: he is continuing to negotiate with these people. In my opinion, he should tell them right up front: "The ALF is a terrorist organization, and Dr. Jerry Vlasak is an ALF Press Officer. Dr.Vlasak is an ADL-LA director, and has publicly advocated the assassination of people to fulfill his ideological fantasy of animal liberation. Pamelyn Ferdin is President of SHAC-USA, and all that implies. I refuse to negotiate with terrorist organizations, their representatives or people who advocate murder. Period."

Thanks to Tom P. for the tip.

Brian