This nasty little man has no place in the UK with his calls for violence.

Those in the UK who have followed the route of intimidation and hatred are the ones who have done so much damage to the AR movement in the UK.

Five years ago we were winning the politcial and mainstream argument with overwhelming support among all aspects of society now we are marginalised and branned as extremists. The losers ? The animals of course.

Forcing an animal breeder to drink in another pub is not a victory.
Throwing paint over a builders truck is not a victory.
Shouting at a 12 year old daughter of a Doctor outside her school is not a victory.
Three men hitting a women because she does the accounts at a lab is not a victory.

Legislation supported by the public was and is the route to stop animal suffering. Immature thugs pretending to care just make the day of animal liberation ever further away.

the recent arrests in Cambridge and elsewhere are a direct result of the state being able to brand animal activists as extremists and carry out actions against them with minimum objection from the wider populace. this would never have hapended at the time of the Dover objections and activities because ordinary people objected and got on the streets.

direct violent action always fails. Ghandi knew this 60 years ago.

Hello 'Real Animal Rights Fighter'. Just a couple of points:

1. Can you give sources of those incidents you cite (especially the men hitting the woman).
2. What sort of activism do you do then?
3. The battle has changed since 5 years ago. Now, we are criminalised by Injunctions that dis-allow legitimate protest. So how are we supposed to fight them? Send our MP's letters. Most people are too lazy to do this, so asking the general public to do so will not achieve much.


My point is that you should not criticise something that you have not done. It works, the companies are losing money and packing up. People's awareness of the issue is rising and people are complaining more.

Also, Dr Vlasak has been banned by the government due to the Observer newspaper twisting a comment he made regarding the restraint of the AR movement. This has then been taken as fact and he was banned. Why has his wife been banned? Why have other speakers been banned also? One (I can't recall the name) has been banned due to one of his books - which just states what has been happening in the USA regarding animal rights. Is this democracy? If people who can help issues by informing people of the truth behind vivisection cannot come to the country then how can we help people make moral judgements?

Vlasak has been arrested several times, and urges others to "get arrested." Referring to a violent subset of the terrorist Animal Liberation Front (ALF), he described himself during the convention as "heavily involved in the SHAC campaign." And then, in a stunning comment, Vlasak predicted a particularly violent future for his social movement:

It won't ruin our movement if someone gets killed in an animal rights action. It's going to happen sooner or later. The Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front -- sooner or later there's going to be someone getting hurt. And we have to accept that fact. It's going to happen. It's not going to hurt our movement. Our movement will go on. And it's important that we not let the bully pulpit of the FBI and the other oppression agencies stop us from what we're doing. They are the violent ones. They are the terrorists ... we have to keep doing what we're doing. (click here for video.)
At last year's "Animal Rights 2003" event, Vlasak specifically advocated the murder of doctors who use animals in their research, saying: "I don't think you'd have to kill -- assassinate -- too many ... I think for 5 lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million non-human lives."
Vlasak has represented PCRM on issues of animal testing. He writes for PCRM's magazine, and is identified in the magazine as "PCRM's Jerry Vlasak." In a February 2002 press release, Vlasak is called a "PCRM spokesperson."

Pamelyn Ferdin is an aging B-movie actress best known as the voice of the bossy Lucy Van Pelt on the "Peanuts" television specials. Vlasak and Ferdin are both officers of the Animal Defense League Los Angeles (ADL), which made headlines last year for waging an all-out holy war (including aggressive, at-home protests) against the Los Angeles bureaucrat in charge of the city's animal shelters. Ferdin told Animal Rights 2004 convention-goers:

We want to make people who walk down to a park, or walk their animals who are unaltered feel ashamed, feel humiliated, that they dare have a companion animal who is unaltered when there are thousands being killed in our city shelters because of this problem. (click here for video)
In addition to her affiliation with ADL, Ferdin carries a PCRM business card. Amazingly, it identifies PCRM's business address as the same location in Santa Monica, California where ADL receives its mail.
A look at ADL's board of directors fleshes out the bigger picture. In addition to Vlasak and Ferdin, its officers include Gary Yourofsky, a convicted Animal Liberation Front felon who openly advocates arson and murder. Yourofsky's most recent job was indoctrinating middle-school and high-school children on behalf of PETA. Also on ADL's board is Allison Lance Watson, the wife of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society pirate Paul Watson. When she is tried later this year, she will face five years in prison for lying to a federal grand jury about her possible role in a 2001 ALF arson. Jerry Vlasak is also Sea Shepherd's treasurer.

The broad connections among PETA, PCRM, SHAC, ADL, and Sea Shepherd suggest that few things on the animal-rights radical fringe happen in a vacuum. And with the movement's leaders openly advocating in-your-face tactics and outright violence, Jerry Vlasak's stunning prophecy may soon be realized.

I couldn't agree more about the evil acts that give us all a bad name. Anyone who uses this kind of violence should be locked away for ever - they obviously do not care about the animals at all, they just hate humans and love violence. It's great to see that many of them are getting what they deserve - for instance, Steve Christmas was almost killed whilst trying to save the life of a fox ( http://hsa.enviroweb.org/news/stevexf.html). A list of many more protesters who got what they deserved can be found at  http://www.violenceinanimalrights.co.uk/

And it's great to know that the press can easily discern between these terrorists getting what they deserve, and people involved in animal cruelty occasionally getting paint-stripper poured over their cars and so on - it's good to see that the former is never mentioned in the press.

sorry to be pedantic but as Gandhi is always being used by the passive-aggressive "non-violence" brigade i felt i should correct a point.

Gandhi ACTUALLY said that whilst he felt it was better to stand up for justice without violence, if people felt they couldn't then they should use violence because it was more violent to stand and do nothing.

i appreciate that's not what they teach you in school, kids, but try not to swallow the history books without digging a little deeper. Gandhi is so frequently portrayed as "heroically" non-violent for the same reasons that they tell you Martin Luther King was the voice of the black civil rights movement (whilst activists like MOVE still languish in jail and the armed struggle group the black panthers are mostly not talked about.) and for the same reasons they tell you the sufragettes chained themselves to railings but fail to mention their main activity was arson (MP's houses, postboxes, golfcourses) and smashing shop windows. indeed, as much a campaign of "violence" and "terror" than the much beligned animal rights movement.

the animal rights movement is getting seriously shafted at present, and it is naive and cowardly to join in the witch-hunt, especially as much of the repeated scare stories are from the government and from an industry whose interests it is to enforce even more draconian laws. i think the environmental network, the social struggles network and all those interested in liberty and rebellion should be standing shoulder to shoulder with the AR lot rather than hoping it's not our turn next.
first they came for the jews, and all that.........

for ecological anarchy.
xx