Posted on 05/18/2005 10:11:53 AM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
By FRANK ELTMAN, Associated Press Writer
Wed May 18, 8:46 AM ET
COMMACK, N.Y. - Last month, animal rights extremists followed the wife of a pharmaceutical company executive to her job, rifled through her car and stole a credit card. They used it buy $20,000 in travelers checks, which they then donated to four charities.
A Web site announcement boasting of the act included a more sinister threat:
"If we find out a dime of that money granted to those charities was taken back we will strip you bear (sic) and burn your (expletive). This is OUR insurance policy."
The actions by the radical Animal Liberation Front appear to be the latest salvo in an ongoing battle pitting scientists, businesses and labs involved in animal research against those intent on stopping them — at almost any cost.
The president of the Foundation for Biomedical Research, a group backed by institutions that rely on animal research, said ALF members operate like terrorists.
"These are unbelievably mean-spirited people who operate under this delusion that they are on a higher moral ground than the rest of us," president Frankie Trull said. "They operate in a classic terrorist organization mode. There are individual cells, and, as we understand it, one doesn't know what another is doing. Regrettably, I think this is actually a growing industry."
ALF's credo on its Web site claims the group "carries out direct action against animal abuse in the form of rescuing animals and causing financial loss to animal exploiters, usually through the damage and destruction of property."
The FBI is investigating a number of incidents over the past year that ALF claims its members committed against Manhattan-based Forest Laboratories and its executives. Forest, which employs 3,000 people in several Long Island communities, specializes in medicines for depression, anxiety, Alzheimer's disease and hypertension.
ALF wants Forest to end ties with the British company Huntingdon Life Sciences, which it says kills animals in testing. A Huntingdon spokesman did not respond to requests for comment, but the company has said it does not violate laws in its experiments. Forest officials also did not return requests for comment.
Jerry Vlasak, a physician and ALF sympathizer who operates a Web site in California that posts the group's communiques, said some of its members claimed responsibility for making the $20,000 donations with the stolen credit card of a Forest executive's wife.
Vlasak — who said he is not an ALF member, although he supports many animal welfare initiatives — said the group also has claimed responsibility for vandalizing a Forest plant in Inwood, on Long Island, last June.
ALF also claims it used a bullhorn at night for a week last October to harass a Forest Laboratories executive, glued the locks on the homes of other company executives in Nassau and Suffolk counties and spray-painted their homes and cars with words like "puppy killer" and "murderer."
The Foundation for Biomedical Research on its Web site has a 44-page spreadsheet detailing incidents of vandalism and other crimes across the country allegedly committed over the past several decades by ALF and other groups, including Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty.
"The Internet has been a huge boon for their kinds of activities," Trull said. "You can get people to promote their messages above ground, and it's easier to coordinate tactics via e-mail."
The targets don't even need to be directly involved in animal testing or research, said Tim Horner, managing director of the international security firm Kroll Inc.
"Their tactics don't just target a CEO or chairman of the board," he said. "They go after assistants, engineers, lab technicians ... it could be anybody."
Seven people are scheduled to go on trial next month in federal court in Trenton, N.J., for operating another Web site that encouraged the terrorizing of Huntingdon Life Sciences and businesses associated with it.
Prosecutors say the defendants encouraged vandalism in July 2002 at the Meadowbrook Golf Club in Jericho, on Long Island. One of the players in a charity tournament scheduled there was an executive of a company that insured Huntingdon.
"There is no question that the fringes of the animal welfare and environmental rights movements have become increasingly radicalized," said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project. "These sectors see themselves in a war against the entire government and industrial democracy itself."
Although ALF says it dissociates itself from actions that harm people, Potok said it's "fairly miraculous" no one has been injured, noting that some ALF members have allegedly set fire to homes and factories.
Trull was not optimistic the situation will change soon.
"My fear is that in this climate they have managed to drive away really brilliant minds from this endeavor," she said. "Is the next lab they target the one that is about to find a cure for Alzheimer's or cancer?"
and why isn't our beloved homeland security department running a full blown investigation into this "domestic terrorism" ?
They're too focused on....IDing American citizens and such.
good question.
In CA they are being arrested left(no pun intended) and right. Recently they caused several fires around the northern part of the state and the crew responsible were arrested. Surprising for CA. They burned apartements, some of them were occupied at the time. Can't remember the date but it was just a few months ago. Terrorists Pr**ks.
Anybody but somebody who won't take their SH**. In the early 1980's while on active duty in Washington State, I had a close encounter of the granola kind with some anti-hunting types. My buddy and I were after Elk at the foot of Mount Rainier, just outside of the national park. I think we were on Weyhauser Land by permission. But these little soft hippies braced us where we parked the cars and said they were going to spoil our hunt by dogging us, making noise and scaring off the game.
A hurried conference with my compadre and we decided to have a bit of fun, but to postpone the hunt until the following day. So we set off, we two young infantry studs. We ran those kids straight up and straight down mountainsides that's make a billy goat stumble. Right thrrough the nastiest swamps we could find. Within 45 minutes they were lagging behind, so we'd stop and wait for them to catch up. Inside of 90 min they were crying, and we led them deeper into the woods.
When the sun went down and they realized how LOST they were, we broke out the night vision scopes we'd checked out of our units. The hippies huddled together for warmth (what kind of idiot wanders around the woods and not prepared for darkness, weather and navigation? Much less unarmed?)and cried. Then we started chunking rocks at them using the starlight scopes. They really cried then. Next moring we led them right back to their little VW vans with the flowers on them and they trembled and cried as they started their cars and crept home to Seattle. We waved buh-BYE and we started our hunt.
We got back to our unit and told the tale and both our platoons wanted to go back our and run the hippies around the woods for more sport. We were going to make it an exercise with chopper support and everything, but our boss nixed the idea as being bad for the image of the US Army. ~sigh~ At least we got our elks and had a B-I-G unit barbeque at the battalion HQ!
That is the funniest thing I've heard in a long time!
A small but satisfying victory to the right side. You, sir, are AWESOME!!!
Hopefully, we can counter all of these fascists in our society-or not have a society at all.
WHoo Hoo. best story ever !
reminds me one time where someone made a comment "ever notice how these type throw paint on women with furs, but never hells angels in leather jackets?"
Dunno, I've never seen that show. I stopped watching stuff like that after Beavis & Butthead was cancelled.
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