Written by one of the most popular ARA Fanatics,this Oped shows,how warped the ARA proponents have become over the last few years. This oped is quite long but its lenght proves just how sick these people are becoming.



Oped News
Who's Afraid of Jerry Vlasak?
by Steve Best (Posted by Jason Miller)
May 3, 2009 at 23:59:57
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Who-s-Afraid-of-Jerry-Vlas-by-Steve-Best-090503-913.html

[Editorial note from Jason Miller: Who’s Afraid of Jerry Vlasak? Not
TPC! I am proud to announce that Dr. Jerry Vlasak has joined our
editorial collective as senior editor of animal liberation!]

By Dr. Steven Best
5/3/09

Dr. Jerry Vlasak is known for many things. He is a trauma surgeon in
Los Angeles, a militant animal rights activist, a former vivisector
turned renowned critic of vivisection, a scientific advisor to groups
like Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) and In Defense of Animals,
and a founder and Press Officer for the North American Animal
Liberation Press Office. He also has a lot of “former” roles on his
resume, such as former spokesperson for the Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine and former Board Member of the Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society. Vlasak has earned the exile status of “former”
for his controversial public defense of violence as a legitimate
tactic for the animal rights/liberation movement to use against those
who exploit animals for profit or “research.” He is also a former
visitor to the UK. In summer 2004, UK Home Secretary David Blunkett,
always acting in defense of the vivisection industry so important to
the British economy, saw it fit to ban Vlasak, along with Pamelyn
Ferdin, from again entering the UK because of his controversial
exercise of free speech rights. In effect, Blunkett’s action elevated
Vlasak from a mere (US) “domestic terrorist” to the more menacing
status of “international terrorist.”

Justifications for Violence
Vlasak has defended the use of violence on two grounds. On moral
grounds, he believes that any tactics – ranging from threats and
break-ins to sabotage and even assault or murder — are legitimate
given the suffering exploiters inflict on animals, the impossibility
of ending their misery through legal systems that cater to
exploitation industries and define animals as property, and the moral
imperative to save animals from the violent clutches of exploiters. On
pragmatic grounds, Vlasak believes that the use of violence would be
an effective intimidation tactic and would stop numerous individuals
from exploiting animals while preventing others from ever embarking on
that heinous path.

Both arguments require greater rigor and detail in their presentation
and response to counter-arguments, but Vlasak has put them on the
table in dramatic ways. He has brought unprecedented international
media attention to the cause of animal liberation as an underground,
illegal but totally valid means of defending innocent animals from
their violent oppressors. When Malcolm X said black liberation must be
won “by any means necessary,” he was not advocating violence as a
proactive tactic but rather reserving the right of self defense to
black people in a situation where cops are more likely to violate than
protect their human rights.

Similarly, when Vlasak urges animal liberation by any means necessary,
he is asserting the right of animals to self defense. But since they
cannot defend themselves (except for instances such as where elephants
or tigers justly kill their trainers), humans must act on their
behalf. And if violence is needed to save an animal from attack, then
violence is legitimate as a means of self defense for animals. If one
likes, this could be called extensional self defense, since humans are
acting on behalf of animals who are so vulnerable and oppressed they
cannot fight back to attack or kill their oppressors.

What I call extensional self defense mirrors penal code statues in
California and other states, known as the “necessity defense.” A
defendant can invoke this defense when he or she believes that the
illegal action taken was immediately necessary to avoid immanent and
great harm to someone, and the urgency and desirability of avoiding
the harm clearly outweigh the wrong of breaking a law, as well as the
harm that would have resulted had the action not been taken.
Certainly, the necessity defense could be used to justify unethical
and unwarranted acts of violence, but clearly the principles of law
and ethics do not always overlap and acts of civil disobedience,
sabotage, and even violence in certain cases may have a strong
rationale.

Vlasak appeals to situations in human society where violence is
legitimate as a means of stopping greater violence or a method of
self-defense. He argues that to dismiss the use of similar arguments
in defense of animals is sheer speciesism, as he himself draws the
logical conclusions others – including the vast majority of people in
the animal rights movement – cannot or will not draw. Vlasak simply
says what many are thinking or what logic dictates apart from the
constraints of speciesism. Vlasak is also somewhat unique in the
animal rights movement in his ability to situate animal liberation
struggles within the larger historical context of past human
liberation struggles. Vlasak underscores the hypocrisy of those who
condemn attacks on property but condone the appalling violence
inflicted on animals. He exposes the inconsistency where people rail
against the ALF as “terrorists,” even though in thirty years of
operation they have never harmed a single human being, while ignoring
what animal exploiters do to animals and the many occasions they have
harmed and even killed activists.

One can see Vlasak (along with Paul Watson, Rod Coronado, Kevin Jonas,
and others) as an example of “the transition of the animal rights
movement from compassionate to menacing,” as the anti-animal rights
people say. Or, one can see him as a vivid indicator of a planetary
eco-crisis where increasingly activists defending animals and the
earth are forced to adopt more militant positions and tactics to
effectively fight corporate exploiters. For they will destroy the
earth before they relinquish their control, and while Rome burns one
finds just too many fiddlers in activist movements.

Demonizing the Doctor
The demonization of Dr. Jerry Vlasak began once his remarks from a
question and answer session following his talk at the Animal Rights
2003 convention were widely distributed over the Internet by advocates
of violence toward animals who were shocked anyone would challenge
their monopoly on violence. When asked about his views on the use of
violent tactics to achieve animal liberation goals, Vlasak replied:

I think there is a use for violence in our movement. And I think it
can be an effective strategy. Not only is it morally acceptable, I
think that there are places where it could be used quite effectively
from a pragmatic standpoint.

For instance, if vivisectors were routinely being killed, I think it
would give other vivisectors pause in what they were doing in their
work - and if these vivisectors were being targeted for assassination,
and call it political assassination or what have you, I think if — and
I wouldn’t pick some guy way down the totem pole, but if there were
prominent vivisectors being assassinated, I think that there would be
a trickle-down effect and many, many people who are lower on that
totem pole would say, “I’m not going to get into this business because
it’s a very dangerous business and there’s other things I can do with
my life that don’t involve getting into a dangerous business.” And I
think that the — strictly from a fear and intimidation factor, that
would be an effective tactic.[1]

And I don’t think you’d have to kill — assassinate — too many
vivisectors before you would see a marked decrease in the amount of
vivisection going on. And I think for 5 lives, 10 lives, 15 human
lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million non-human
animals.

And I — you know - people get all excited about, “Oh what’s going to
happen when - the ALF accidentally kills somebody in an arson?” Well,
you know I mean — I think we need to get used to this idea. It’s going
to happen, okay? It’s going to happen.

For these words, Vlasak’s outraged braying critics transformed him
into the John Brown or Eric Rudolph of the animal rights movement.
Read carefully, it is clear that Vlasak is not advocating violence,
although he does think it is morally justifiable to use some violence
in order to save animals from a far greater level of violence. Mainly,
Vlasak is laying out an imaginary scenario where he speculates that
were someone to kill a certain number of vivisectors, it would in fact
have a positive benefit for animals, as it would intimidate many
actual vivisectors into ending their experiments on animals while
driving numerous potential vivisectors into other lines of research.
Basically, Vlasak is simply making a tautological statement, something
true by definition, telling us that 2 + 2 = 4.

Moreover, looking at the dynamics of many past human liberation
movements, Vlasak claims that someone in the animal liberation
movement, sooner or later, will use violence against animal
exploiters. Decades or even years from now, animal exploiters may
reminisce about the good old days when they only had to worry about
attacks on their property instead of their lives. Opponents of animal
rights also are saying this with increasing frequency as they too
recognize the struggle for animal liberation is becoming increasingly
tough and militant. So why the hysteria when the augur comes from
Vlasak? As shocking as an assassination of a vivisector, fur farmer,
corporate pimp from the Center for Consumer Freedom, or noxious
nuisance from the vile Animal Crackers web site might be, Vlasak does
not think the negative publicity will discredit or destroy the animal
rights movement as a whole, any more than the actions of Eric Rudolph
and other members of groups such as the Army of God threatened the
integrity of the anti-abortion movement or the pro-violence period of
Nelson Mandela’s activist career tarnished the current halo over his
head as he made the transition from terrorist to freedom fighter.

In making these claims, Vlasak certainly entered into controversial
territory, shocked and angered vivisectors and other speciesists, and
even got banned from the UK. But his words fall squarely within the
First Amendment of the US Constitution and therefore are
constitutionally protected. The very essence of the First Amendment is
to protect unpopular speech, words that many people might find
offensive and objectionable, statements such as Vlasak made at the
AR2003 conference. Everyone knows that exploiters of any kind love
free speech so long as they are the ones using it in honor of their
detestable motives and unconscionable actions. Had Vlasak actually
advocated violence against vivisectors in such a way as to incite and
possibly provoke immanent violence, he would have crossed a legal
line. Despite the frenzied distortions of critics who favor violence
toward animals but not toward humans, Vlasak in fact did not cross
this line.

Vlasak is speculating about the use of violence in the broader
historical context of past human liberation movements that often used
violence to end the violent oppression of one group over another. The
US War of Independence comes to mind. In a subsequent clarification of
his views after the radioactive fallout from his initial statement,
Vlasak said:

You cannot put the animal rights movement in a vacuum. You must put it
in a historical context. We are fighting for the right of nonhuman
sentient beings to not be exploited, taken against their will,
imprisoned, and then tortured beyond anyone’s comprehension for profit
and bad science.

In looking at other historical movements to end the obscenity and
egregious violence and death to innocent lives, including the fight
against apartheid in South Africa, the fight to free black slaves here
in the US, and the fight for the rights of indigenous cultures,
violence has been used and there have been casualties. People have
been killed over absolutely ridiculous things like oil, power, and
money. It would be “speciesist” of me to say that in a battle for the
moral and ethical high ground, in the fight on behalf of the most
oppressed, abused and tortured beings the world has even known, that
there will never be casualties. I’m not encouraging or calling for
this, I am simply stating that the animal rights movement is and has
been the most peaceful and restrained movement the world has ever
known considering the amount of terror, abuse, and murder done to
innocent animals for greed and profit. If by chance violence is used
by those who fight for non human sentient beings, or even if there are
casualties, it must be looked at in perspective and in a historical
context.

Vlasak reiterated these points countless times to various
international media, distinguishing between his view that violence is
a morally defensible tactic and a view that actually advocates
violence. In a July 26 2004 interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today
program, for example, Vlasak stated:

I am personally not advocating, condoning or recommending that anybody
be killed. I am a physician who saves lives. I spend my entire day
saving people’s lives. All I am saying, in a historical context, [is
that] violence has been used against us as animal rights campaigners
and against the animals and is no different from us using violence on
the other side. In any struggle against oppression, historically
speaking, from the days of slavery in America to the days of apartheid
in South Africa, violence has been necessary. I don’t see the animal
rights struggle for liberation as any different from any other
struggle that has gone on throughout history.

When interviewed on Australian TV in October 2004, Vlasak did not back
down from his positions, and had the following exchange with show’s
host:

JENNY BROCKIE: How far are you prepared to go though, because you’ve
been quoted as saying, I think, five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives
would save 1 million, 2 million, 10 million non-human lives. And
you’ve also said that violence is a morally acceptable tactic, and
that it might be useful in the struggle for animal liberation. Do you
stand by all that?

JERRY VLASAK: I do stand by all that. If you look at historically, at
all the struggles against oppression, whether it was against apartheid
in South Africa, slavery here in America, other struggles in Northern
Ireland, Ireland, Iraq, Vietnam - everywhere that there’s been
struggles against oppression and for liberation, violence has been
used. And, by the way, they are using violence on their side all the
time. They are using violence in laboratories where they kill all
these animals in slow tortuous ways, and they are using violence
against animal rights campaigners. At least a dozen animal rights
campaigners have been killed by the animal abusers, but yet no-one
seems to be talking about that.

JENNY BROCKIE: So would you take a human life to save an animal life,
is this what you are saying?

JERRY VLASAK: I am not saying that’s never going to happen.

JENNY BROCKIE: That’s pretty close to what you said in the quote.

JERRY VLASAK: Would I advocate taking five guilty vivisectors’ lives
to save hundreds of millions of innocent animal lives? Yes, I would.

Put in the hot seat on live TV, Vlasak did not equivocate on or parse
his initial statement in any way. Yet, unlike past interviews, Vlasak
here actually claims to “advocate” killing vivisectors to save animals
for the first time, saying something previously he denied. Perhaps he
misspoke, or perhaps his line is hardening. It is one isolated
advocacy of violence statement, the only one to my knowledge.

Vlasak clearly favors the lives of millions of innocent animals over
the corrupt humans guilty of torturing and killing them, and he has
the right to air his views. Even in this context, where he would
“advocate” the murder of vivisectors if it saved animal lives, he is
still within his constitutional rights for he is not inciting violence
in an inflammatory way. He is speaking in personal and hypothetical
terms, not urging others to go out and murder vivisectors.

Seal Wars
In April 2005, Vlasak accompanied Paul Watson and other members of the
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to confront sealers and thwart their
goal to kill over 350,000 seals. Vlasak’s views on violence were put
to a concrete test when he was attacked on the ice by an irate sealer.
Knocked down and his nose bloodied, Vlasak peacefully resisted the
attack and did not return any blows. Odd behavior for a Prophet of
violence.

In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Company (basically a
propaganda tool of the Canadian state), however, Vlasak moved from the
ice flows off Prince Edwards Island into the hot water of hostile
media attention. When asked if sealers were comparable in malice to
vivisectors, Vlasak unflinchingly replied, “Yeah, I think they’re all
abhorrent. The threat of violence would be another way to stop them
and I would be behind that threat.” [2]

In place of any mention of the barbarous carnage against the seals,
the CBC and Vlasak’s critics predictably seized on his comment. While
sealers unleashed a savage fury of violence against hundreds of
thousands of seals, the Canadian media vilified Vlasak as violent and
extreme. Much of the Canadian media actually defended the massacre of
seals as a noble tradition that used “humane” killing methods (such as
stripping the skin off a baby seal while it is still conscious and
alive). Enough hypocritical public pressure was exerted on the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society Board of Directors that the Board
removed Vlasak from his position.

While Vlasak clearly has paid a high price for airing his
controversial views, he is to be commended for the courage to take a
provocative stand and to consistently follow the logic of liberation
ethics and politics. Vlasak’s critics within the animal rights
movement can carp about the negative image of animal rights they
believe he is creating, but he has also garnered copious worldwide
media attention and the unprecedented opportunity to educate various
publics about the horrors of vivisection and seal massacres. As
demonstrated in the case of CBC coverage, however, it does not follow
from the fact that Vlasak gets media attention that it will be
positive and stay focused on the plight of animals instead of his
controversial words. It is a Catch-22 situation where one needs
provocative words and actions to capture the media spotlight, but the
media can easily focus on the spectacle of the speaker rather than the
references of his speech.

Thus, the challenge for Vlasak is to keep the message on animal
exploitation, and not his own words; to show that the real violence
and terrorism stems from animal exploiters, and not animal
liberationists. In virtually every speech act, indeed, Vlasak seeks to
expose the outrageous hypocrisy whereby critics accuse the animal
liberation movement of violence whereas exploiters soak the earth in
the blood of animals every year, as they assault and sometimes kill
nonviolent animal activists.

The Halls of Hypocrisy
While Vlasak is crucified for controversial remarks that challenge the
right of animal exploiters to monopolize the use of violence, the
abhorrent speech acts of others go unnoticed if they come from the
Right. The Right has a heart attack over Ward Churchill’s indelicate
remark that the victims of 9/11 were “little Eichmanns” in some sense,
but there was no outrage or talk of firing whatsoever when three star
marine general James Mattis, who commanded Marine expeditions in
Afghanistan and Iraq, publicly stated that “Actually it’s quite fun to
fight [Iraqis], you know. It’s a [Please excuse my language... I'm an idiot] of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot
some people.” Similarly, Alberto Gonzalez, a close friend of Bush and
the attorney who drafted the policies justifying torture of Iraqi
prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, not only was not fired for his
callous violations of international law and humanitarian policies, he
was promoted to the highest legal office in the land, Attorney
General.

Where is the rabid reaction to snarling pro-violence right-wing
commentator Ann Coulter whenever she spouts inanities such as, “My
only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York
Times Building”? For Coulter, it’s ok to kill people so long as they
are “liberals.” Where is the backlash for the outrageous remarks Ted
Nugent made at the March 2005 NRA convention, when he blared:
“Remember the Alamo! Shoot ‘em!”[3] he screamed to applause. “To show
you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I
want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. I want the bad guys
dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want ‘em dead. Get
a gun and when they attack you, shoot ‘em.” Nugent is advocating
indiscriminate killing and vigilantism, all without any legal due
process. No rights, constitution, court system, or justice of any
kind. Did Nugent pay a price for this fascist remark? Were his
supporters pressured to distance themselves from him? Of course not.
Nugent engages in the socially-sanctioned actions of murdering
animals, whereas Vlasak upsets the conventions of speciesist violence
to receive the full weight of opprobrium available from a sick and
distorted world.

It is one thing when troglodytes like Nugent espouse violence, but
recently threats of violence have come from right-wing members of
Congress. In the aftermath of the failed battle to save the life of
Terri Schiavo in May-April 2005, “pro-life” conservatives launched a
crusade against “activist judges” – namely, liberal judges – who make
decisions anything to the left of extreme right. Speaking from the
Senate floor on April 4, Republican Senator John Cornyn cited the
Shiavo case and the March 1 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed the
death penalty for juveniles as examples of “judicial activism.”
Anytime a judge with liberal sensibilities rules out of accord with
the agenda of the religious right, you have an example of “judicial
activism.”

In the painful aftermath of April 2005, when two judges were shot down
in Chicago and Atlanta, Cornyn remarked, “I don’t know if there is a
cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of
courthouse violence in this country. . . . And I wonder whether there
may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on
some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are
unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and
builds up to the point where some people engage in violence. Certainly
without any justification, but a concern that I have.”

As he meekly condemns the murder of federal judges from one side of
his mouth, from the other he is implying that it is acceptable to kill
“activist” judges for the sin of non-compliance with right-wing
agendas. Shortly before this menacing grandstanding, once various
judges turned down all legal appeals to save the life of Terri Shiavo,
House Majority Leader Tom Delay intoned ominously, “The time will come
when the men responsible for this will answer for their behavior.”

However Cornyn and Delay want to parse their statements, they are
threats and apologies for the murder of liberal judges allegedly out
of touch with “mainstream America” and the “pro-life” right-wing
values crusade that endorses homophobia, militarism, imperialism,
unlimited access to guns, and a broad application of the death
penalty. They are far more threatening than anything said by Jerry
Vlasak. Given the volatility of extreme right-wing sentiment in this
country, where Neo-Nazis, militias, rabid ant-abortionists and other
groups have a track record of violence and murder, the reckless
statements of Cornyn and Delay are far closer to actually inciting
violence than anything Vlasak said. And where Vlasak’s remarks might
apply to an underground liberation movement that has no record of
violence toward human beings, the ultra-right wing nation appealed to
by Cornyn and Delay endorses and uses violence, and is a powder keg
waiting to explode. Should someone feel vindicated by their remarks
and assassinate a federal judge, Cornyn and Delay must bear some
responsibility for the loss of life.

Warped Priorities
Let’s put moral outrage in perspective here. We are talking about the
difference between an animal liberationist abstractly discussing or
defending violence against vivisectors and people who make their
living by confining animals in small cages and concrete dungeons,
invading their brains with electrodes, pumping them full of toxic
chemicals, poisoning them with radiation, smashing their skulls with
pneumatic devices, mutilating their sex organs, sewing their eyelids
together, and on and on. The list of barbarities is endless and rivals
or surpasses anything Dr. Mengele did to his victims. We’re talking
about a trauma surgeon who out of compassion saves lives versus people
who with hatred and contempt take lives. The real violence, the real
terrorism, stems not from anyone like Jerry Vlasak, but rather fur
farmers, vivisectors, hunters, trappers, sealers, whalers, mangers of
factory farms and slaughterhouses, and the corporations that profit
from the misery and bloodbath of the ongoing animal holocaust.

Neither the UK nor the US has anything to fear from Jerry Vlasak. Let
every animal exploiter tremble at the mere mention of the ALF, but
citizens have nothing to fear from the dedicated, courageous, and
compassionate souls who will break through barriers and security
systems to rescue animals from their captivity and dire agony.

In bold contrast, the extreme right-wing US government has
conveniently excluded extreme right-wing political groups from the
“domestic terrorism” priority list. Unlike the ALF or ELF, militia men
and groups like the Army of God are a serious threat to people, for
they have a proven track record of hatred and violence. It is a more
serious crime in this nation to threaten the profits of a corporation
than to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma
City, killing 168 people and wounding more than 500; to set off a bomb
at the Atlanta Olympics, killing one person and injuring 100; to kill
doctors who perform abortions; to kill blacks, Jews, and immigrants;
to possess weapons of mass destruction such as anthrax, sodium cyanide
bombs, machine guns, several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition,
and remote-control explosive devices.

These are all crimes of the extreme right, whose myriad organizations
the state considers less a threat to citizens and homeland security
than the ALF. But the ALF threatens corporate profits, not people;
since in this demented society, profit is more valuable than life, the
ALF, along with the ELF, is Public Enemy Number One. On April 25,
2005, a Newsday.com article reported that, “A recent Homeland Security
document lists the Animal Liberation Front among groups that could
potentially support Al Qaeda as domestic terrorism threats.”[4] This
document constructs an absurd fabrication, misrepresentation, and
inverted distortion of the facts. The political views of the ALF are
Left anarchism and are diametrically opposed to the violent,
patriarchal, authoritarian, and fundamentalist outlook of Al Qaeda.
Whereas the ALF has no philosophical or organizational links to Al
Qaeda whatsoever, right wing extremists in the US are far more
predisposed to violent opposition to the US government and terrorist
attacks on American citizens.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, there are no known
operational links between domestic terrorist groups and al-Qaeda, but
monitoring organizations have noted that both American right-wing
extremists and Islamist militants spread similar theories about Jews,
Freemasons, and other groups conspiring to control the world.
Moreover, some white supremacists applauded the September 11 attacks.
“Anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a building to kill Jews
is alright by me,” said one leader of the National Alliance, a
neo-Nazi group based in West Virginia; “I wish our members had half as
much testicular fortitude.[5]

By linguistic fiat and domination of mass media and public opinion,
the Right and Corporate America control the definitions and discourse
of “terrorism.” Accordingly, by these golden standards, state
violence, corporate violence, and the human species violence against
animals are ruled out of the definition of terrorism, as property
destruction, documentation of violence and destruction, and other
tactics of animal rights and environmental organizations – as well as
dissent in general – are ruled in. Once the first act of power and
violence is exerted — that of linguistic terrorism — the
corporate-state complex can then attack those who challenge its
legitimacy with appropriate ferocity and repression.

The main threat facing the citizens of the US and, indeed, of the
entire globe, is the US government, the leading terrorist menace on
the planet. From Nicaragua to Chile, from Vietnam to Iraq, from Iran
to Indonesia, the US terrorist state has overthrown dozens of
independent or democratically elected governments, systematically
violated human rights, massacred tens of thousands of people at a
time, aided and abetted fascist governments and juntas, and sought by
every means possible – be it markets or bullets — to dominate the
entire planet.

For those with vested interests in exploiting animals, Jerry Vlasak is
a menace and extremist. For those fighting for a sane, just, and
nonviolent world, one that extends basic rights and justice to
animals, he is a champion of liberation. And perhaps he is an augur of
a dark future to come, where the civil war between those [Please excuse my language... I'm an idiot]-bent on
destroying life and the planet and those intent on stopping them
erupts into the kind of violence that has been a part of modern
liberation movements. As of yet, the animal liberation movement has no
John Browns or Nat Turners, and it is a remarkable testimony to the
restraint of activists who know the horrors and true extent of
violence that human sadists inflict on animals.

——————————————————————————–

1. “Dr. Jerry Vlasak Replies to Media Libel,”
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/07/295293.html

2. “Violence against sealers OK: activist,”
http://stjohns.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=nf-vlasak-seals-050419.

3. “Ted Nugent to Fellow NRAers: Get Hardcore,”
http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20050417/D89HEBO00.html?PG=home&SEC=news.

4. “FBI Investigating Radical Animal Welfare Group,” The oxymoronic
reference to “radical animal welfare group” is a good example of how
confused much media reporting on animal rights struggles is,
conflating, in this case, conservative welfare approaches to reducing
animal suffering within the limits of the law with the illegal tactics
and abolitionist philosophy of the ALF.

5. “American Militant Extremists,”
http://cfrterrorism.org/groups/american_print.html

Dr. Steve Best is TPC’s associate editor. Associate professor of
philosophy at UTEP, award-winning writer, noted speaker, public
intellectual, and seasoned activist, Steven Best engages the issues of
the day such as animal rights, ecological crisis, biotechnology,
liberation politics, terrorism, mass media, globalization, and
capitalist domination. Best has published 10 books, over 100 articles
and reviews, spoken in over a dozen countries, interviewed with media
throughout the world, appeared in numerous documentaries, and was
voted by VegNews as one of the nations “25 Most Fascinating
Vegetarians.” He has come under fire for his uncompromising advocacy
of “total liberation” (humans, animals, and the earth) and has been
banned from the UK for the power of his thoughts. From the US to
Norway, from Sweden to France, from Germany to South Africa, Best
shows what philosophy means in a world in crisis.

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