Animal Rights Activists, branded terrorists and sold to bounty hunters

international | animal rights | news report

Saturday July 24, 2004 11:21

by Akrasia

Britains richest vivisectionists attempt to buy the freedom of concerned activists

There is now a £25,000,000 bounty on information leading to the conviction of 'animal rights fanatics' to 'sow dissent' in their ranks

(from "The Times" 24/07/04)

£25m bounty to combat animal rights terrorists
By Ingrid Mansell

City grandees offer cash reward for information leading to arrests

THE City is preparing a counter-attack on animal rights fanatics by offering a £25 million cash reward for information leading to the conviction of extremists.
A leading City organisation, whose members control pension funds worth £650 billion, is assembling a “steering committee” of six leading businessmen to prevent a repeat of the type of campaign that drove Huntingdon Life Sciences, the animal testing group, to the brink of bankruptcy and out of Britain.

The National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) is expected shortly to announce the names of the six who are believed to include chief executives and bankers.

A City lawyer close to the NAPF said that the offer of a huge financial reward would “sow the seeds of dissidence among the ranks”. He said that the City is also planning other tactics to combat the extremists.

The committee is considering multimillion-pound civil lawsuits against extremists who threatened company shareholders and executives, and extremists who destroy company property. “This is intimidation, which is a criminal offence, and should be dealt with by the police,” the lawyer told The Times.

“We are not trying to be an alternative to the police force, we are going to work to complement the efforts of the police and the bioscience industry. However, the option of civil remedies is still open to us.”

The lawyer, who asked not to be named, said that the NAPF had been looking at the problem of animal rights extremism for several years, but had finally “resolved to do something about it” in the face of the growing threat of animal rights terrorism.

Senior police officers have told The Times that an increasing number of animal rights supporters have passed on information about extremists inside their ranks who are planning attacks on leading figures in the research field.

Disillusioned supporters oppose the tactic of harassing opponents and their families at their homes, and fire-bombing companies that support or supply research centres.

This revelation comes as hundreds of animal rights activists are expected to stage their biggest demonstration in years at Oxford University today. The university is the latest target for their increasingly violent campaign as they try to stop building work on a research centre there.

This week Montpellier, the construction company, pulled out of a contract to build the £18 million research laboratory as a result of the campaign.

The move came after Cambridge University abandoned plans to build a neuroscience centre in January.

Montpellier was targeted by extremists last month, when a letter purporting to be from company directors threatened its shareholders with “prompt activity by the animal rights movement” unless they sold their shares. The shares then fell by 19 per cent to a four-year low of 18p.

RMC, the building materials supplier that was providing concrete for Montpellier, was also subjected to a series of attacks by the extremists.

Attacks on companies with links to animal testing research centres have risen in recent months, and more people’s homes have been targeted. Extremists pick on anyone who has anything to do with controversial projects, including shareholders of construction firms.

In the first four months of the year, the Home Office said that there were 117 arrests of animal rights extremists compared with 15 for the same period in 2003. There were 148 cases of damage done to property last year compared with 60 in 2002.

Perhaps the biggest worry for those working in this field is that visits by extremists to the homes of company directors and employees doubled last year to 259.

By April this year there had been 54 such attacks on people’s homes.

Groups such as the Research Defence Society want the Government to introduce new laws to protect those working in this field.

Mark Matfield, director of the Research Defence Society, said: “Extremists are terrorising people and getting away with it.

“While the Home Secretary threatens draconian moves against football hooligans and victims of race crime, those targeted for being involved in this vital field of research are never mentioned”.

save preference

Comments (12 of 12)

Wellity wellity wellity...

by Steve

Sun Jul 25, 2004 22:41

Edit that a bit so that it's at the reading level of a 6-year-old, and it could have come from The Sun.

Up the ALF!

Eco tantrums

by armchair tired

Mon Jul 26, 2004 17:23

There was a factory in the US burnt to the ground last week on the grounds that they were
...wait for it...
... polluting the air ..
(burnt to the ground)

Ha Ha Ha

Reminds me of when the ALF released all the little furry mink savages from the fur farm to ravage the indiginous wildlife for a season or two and eventually die.

Hearts are in the right place but ....
stupid.

Who are the animals?

by Arthur McKevitt

Tue Aug 03, 2004 02:04

It is quite disgusting that Britains richest vivisectionists would provide £25 million to combat animal rights campainers and describe them as subversives.

Recently Professor David Holmes, who has some connection with the proposed Oxford Lab, was asked if cameras would be allowed in. His body language and reaction was quite predictable and spoke volumes as to what would be going on there.

Any sane person with the slightest nature in them knows that there are biological links with our fellow creatures and that there is also no necessity for animal experiments in this day and age.

Unfortunately there is usually an endless supply of staff willing to service these establishments and we only have to be aware of the 'Unit 731' of the Japanese Army Doctors who post-mortemed human guinea pigs in plague experiments, in Manchuria, whilst they were strapped down and fully concious, to be aware the depths of depravity that lurks within human kind.

No war crime trials ever took place regarding 'Unit 731' as the data from the experiments was exchanged and traded to prevent this by the so called Western Democracies of that period.

People who support vivisection should see an experiment that was carried out on a monkey. His head was removed and artificially kept alive and concious on a tripod for three days and when a swab of liquid was put to its lips it's wee tongue came out and licked it.

This was most sickening and disgusting to see and totally unexceptable in this day and age. I would be convinced that British people would not stand for it.

Furthermore, if the Government supports this cruelty, it speaks volumes for the state of the economy when corporate bubbles can only be maintained through the suffering of animals.

The Home Secretary, Mr Blunkett, if he allows this vivisection by bringing in legislation in support of it, should be ashamed of himself as he relies on 'mans best friend' to assist him in daily life.

Animal Rights Movement

by Animal Lover - none

Sat Aug 07, 2004 14:13

makemecum at oxygen dot ie

www.animalactivist.com

Why dont they go away and give the 25 million to the homeless or indeed fund non invasive non animal testing research.

Believe it or not the animal rights movment is fast becoming the most effective, most popular most strong minded movement on this planet.

Come on guys the animals need us all......and believe it or not we;re just warming up ;-)

If the Animal nazis are so peaceful

by SABWATCH

Sat Aug 07, 2004 23:57

Why is Jerry Vlasek a californian animal rights activst being banned from Britan ?Vlasek claims there is a "moral justification" for using violence and killing of vivisectionists.

Why are the animal nazis preparing to conduct a training camp in Kent UK on the following subjects self defence,sabotage of hunts and shoots, and undercover infiltration. This is being organised by Greg Arvery a animal nazi with previous criminal convictions.
Very peaceful sounding indeed.
the FBI was right in declaring the ALF as the second most dangerous threat in the US after Al Quieda.
The sooner the rest of the EU govts move against these people the better.
Censor this Indymedia,because it doesnt fit the policy of PC speak

Sabwatch

Mon Aug 09, 2004 10:40

Did you support the war in iraq (at any time, even when the weapons of mass distruction lie was still possible to believe)

Our glorious leaders proclaim that the War in iraq was morally justified because it was killing for a cause (rhetorically, our protection and the freedom of the surviving iraqi people)

There are reams of philosophy treaties on the subject of Just war Theory, when exactly is a war justified. (or more to the point, when is the killing and violence that takes place in war justified)
The general consensus is that a war is sometimes justified to defend yourself from aggression, or to defend an innocent party from destruction by a beligerant nation.

Certain animal rights activists engage in theoretical discussion about their cause. They suggest that it might be justified to harm a small number of people in order to spare millions of intelligent, sensitive animals from brutal torture, degrading treatment and death solely for the profits of self interested individuals and corporations.
Of course, mainstream discourse refuses to engage with this discussion because we value 'stability' over everything else. So what if it's wrong, it'll be too desruptive to change things. (the same justifications against the ending of slavery)

Another strawman arguement

Mon Aug 09, 2004 13:47

From the Animal nazis. What the animal rights nazis are doing are terrorist tactics.By that I mean they want to use violent means to coerce people into their way of thinking.IE be vegan,and give unsentient beings as much rights as humans.So we have a minority group trying to force their opinions on a majority,by force if necessary.Actually the way any dictatorship[like the way Iraq was run,and by the current terrorists disrupting its attempts at recovery] works.

BTW have we forgotten the WMDs find in the shells and roadside bomb of a few months back?all the nerve gas and whatnot that supposedly not there in Iraq???

Vlasek banned himself from the UK by advocating criminal acts.Why do the animal nazis need a training camp?You never hear of anglers or hunters or whatever setting up paramilitary training camps to teach sabotage and terror tactics. So much for your theory chat shop.

Another strawman arguement ,the slavery arguement. Read some US history on the civil war in the US.it had not very much to do with slavery or blaxk emcipation,rather with the loss of a large chunk of real estate and resources.Slavery still exists in the world as well. "
Were this war about only the freedom of the negro,I would gladly offer my sword to the Southern cause." Gen Ulysses S Grant cmdr of the Union forces.

why so upset about the bounty issue?Should consider yourselves now ranked with Al Aueida as quite an achivement.

Unsentient? According to whom?

Mon Aug 09, 2004 16:46

You prove to me that Animals are unable to experience emotion or to think for themselves and then I'll stop supporting Animal Rights campaigners.

The 'WMDs' in Iraq, one shell that went off and didn't even injure anyone hardly qualify as a justification for war.
But that's got nothing to do with my arguement. The point is that you supported the invasion of Iraq which meant the inevitable death of innocent civillians. You justified this action in your own twisted mind because you percieved that Iraq was a threat to your safety or that Saddam was a threat to his own people.
Therefore you do not have an ideological objection to 'the end justifies the means' and you are not fundamentally opposed to harming other people to achieve that end.

Animal rights activists consider the willful torture of millions of animals to be a horrific crime and something that needs to be stopped. They are trying to stop it politically, academically and through direct action. So far direct action has been very successful.

Vlasek advocates criminal acts only because the crimes he opposes are not recognised by the establishment.
Criminal acts are not necessary wrong. It is not always wrong to steal, for example, if you saw somebody having a heart attack and there was no-one else around, you might be tempted to steal a car and drive the person to the hospital.
If you see a large man attacking a small man for no apparent reason, you might decide to intervene to protect the weaker person by assaulting the large man. Assault is a crime.

Animal rights activists sometimes have to break the written law to protect helpless creatures from violent slaughter and torture.

Onus of Proof

by Fergal

Mon Aug 09, 2004 17:07

"You prove to me that Animals are unable to experience emotion or to think for themselves and then I'll stop supporting Animal Rights campaigners"

Doesn't work that way. If your going to support terrorism, the onus is on you to prove that they do experience emotion and think for themselves.

It is not up to the mundane to defend itself from the absurd

Mon Aug 09, 2004 17:40

Animals clearly have emotions and intelligence. Dogs are capable of dreaming, Lab rats are capable of solving complex problems (that's why they're so good to experiment on)

I have never seen a single convincing non dogmatic philosophical arguement that suggests humanity has a soul/mind and animals do not.

Any suggestion that an animal only reacts in a pre-programmed way to external stimuli is also applicable to the way a human behaves.

The only difference between Humans and animals is one of degree. We happen to be more intelligent than animals. This does not maki it ok for us to torture and abuse them. It is not inconcievable that there is an alien race in existance somewhere in the universe who are more intelligent than we are. Would this justify them coming here and experimenting on us for their own benefit?

Dreaming Dogs

Mon Aug 09, 2004 19:36

"Dogs are capable of dreaming"

Hee hee. How do we know this? Did your dog say to you "Shit man, I had the weirdest dream last night". Or are you just making a bald assertion without evidence to back it up?

Animals should not be treated cruelly. But this is because cruelty is a bad thing, not because the animals have any rights. Rights are a human concept, and can be understood only in a human context. Do animals have property rights? Free speech rights? If arrested, do they have the right to remain silent? Do they get pissed off when these rights aren't upheld?

If animal testing is immoral, it's no worse than eating meat, and is far less prevalent. Any argument used to justify direct action against testing can equally be used to justify direct action against every butcher, resataurant or grocery shop in the country. You up for that?

Rapid Eye Movement

Mon Aug 09, 2004 20:22

Occurs in dogs and other large mammals when they are dreaming.

All those rights you mentioned are artificial and easily given or taken away. Animal rights activists propose that animals be granted the right to be treated with respect.
most activists would prefer to end all animal farming as well, I personally would settle for a society where animals farmed for their meat are given a decent life while they were still alive and slaughtered humanely. I don't view life as absolutely sacred. Death does not harm the individual who dies.

Number of comments per page

Upcoming Events

New Events

Other Press

User Preferences

Feeds

Blog Feeds

Anti-Empire

The Saker

Lockdown Skeptics

Voltaire Network

Animal Rights Activists, branded terrorists and sold to bounty hunters

Comments (12 of 12)