Animal Rights Activist Justifies Violence/Murder
Animal Rights Leader Justifies Violence - Los Angeles Times
One of the leading animal rights activists in the Los Angeles area [Dr. Jerry Vlasak] has taken his campaign to the national stage in recent weeks, saying that it may be “morally justifiable” to kill people to stop medical research on animals.
What a loon. Would it be reactionary of us if we said that we’d love to see this guy on the wrong side of a pit bull?
When he’s not advocating murder and mayhem, Dr. Vlasak claims to be a trauma room doctor. Tip: if you see that name on a badge as your are being wheeled into an ER, wheel yourself right out of there and get a doctor with a little higher regard for human life–even King/Drew would be better than this nut.
Additional reference: Check out the Animal Liberation Front website. Graphics and layout is circa 1995. Is there not one graphic artist in the movement? It’s hard to take someone serious when 10-year old girls have sites on My Space that are superior to ALF’s site.
Update: I just found a book defending Dr. Murder and his whacked out friends, it’s called
Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?
Reflections on the Liberation of Animals
And the book’s forward was written by none other than Ward Churchill! Birds of a feather really do stick together.
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November 15th, 2005 at 1:15 pm
Here are my thoughts of the 60 Minutes story on AR and Eco extremists (Ed Bradley reporting).
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……