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Other Animal Rights Issues. This page contains a collection of articles featuring reflections on animal liberation, animal rights reflected in religious scripture.

This page contains a collection of articles featuring reflections on animal liberation, animal rights reflected in religious scripture, and editorials by Gary, as well as quotations of authors, philosophers, and other famous people concerning animal rights.

To read these articles in your order of preference, just click on your chosen title from the list below. The Back to List link at the bottom of the page will return you to this list. You can also follow through each of the articles in order by clicking the Next Article link at the bottom of the page.

Animal Intelligence

Human babies are, without a doubt, some of the stupidest and most helpless of all beings. Yet no one other than a complete psychopath would agree that babies should be enslaved, murdered, or set on fire as routinely happens to dogs and pigs in modern-day-medieval burn experiments. When pain, suffering, and emotions are taken into consideration, all animals humans, four-leggeds, birds, snakes, fish and other aquatic creatures, amphibians and insects alike are equal. Therefore, it should be our goal as a society to reduce and eliminate the intentional pain and suffering we inflict upon innocent beings.

It s just dumbfounding that many of those who would grant rights to human babies in an instant won t even begin to concede the rights of other beings that are, by most accounts, far more intelligent than a human infant. Fortunately, Rene Descartes idiocy about animals operating like unthinking machines has been exposed a long time ago. All animals, including insects, are rational, aware, self-aware, intelligent beings. They experience an array of emotions, especially pain and happiness. Anyone who disagrees with this is displaying speciesistic, discriminatory, irrational thought.

If you re a social justice historian, you might recall all the idiotic discussions about the rationality and intelligence of certain humans, too when certain humans wanted their freedom and equality. Victimizers and oppressors always deny that victims suffer, feel pain or are intelligent. This allows enslavement and murder to happen nonchalantly and guilt-free. The victimizers mind-set goes like this: You don t count because you re stupid. You don t matter because you re dumb. I laugh at your suffering. I ll kill you when I want to. I ll sell you and your family. You re worthless. You don t think the way I do. Prove to me why I should be kind to you. Prove to me that you deserve to be free. So even though victims always look and act differently from each other bees, lobsters, cows, pigs, blacks, women, Christians, Muslims, Jews, witches, Gypsies, Rwandans, etc., they ve suffered equally because of the victimizers mind-set. It s so trite that a few enlightened folks have to continually explain why the majority of people shouldn t be enslaving and murdering innocents en masse. Something else that has always bothered me: Why do oppressors think they re more important than THE OPPRESSED. Why do tormentors believe they re more important than THE TORMENTED. What kind of sociopath thinks murderers are more important than THE MURDERED.

Ants, bees and the rest of the insect world are some of the most intelligent beings on the planet. Step on an ant near the colony, and watch the whole ant community go ballistic. They know when they re under attack. They easily TRY to avoid pain and death.

Here are three examples about insect intelligence. I could offer more but I don t believe in writing tomes about the obvious.

I once saw a Discovery channel show about ants. There was a flood. A few hundred ants carefully, methodically and rationally LOCKED LEGS to form a raft. Then, a few others escorted the queen ant to the top of the raft. The ant raft eventually floated to safety, killing all the raft ants, but SAVING the queen thus preserving the survival of the colony. Not only is this rational thought, it is ALTRUISM at its finest, something few humans are capable of.

When I was volunteering at SASHA Farm sanctuary in 2004, four of us went into the woods to throw out some old rotten hay. I accidentally stepped on a hornets nest as they often construct their hives on the ground. The hornets carefully, methodically and rationally attacked me and NOT the three folks who were with me. I had 12 bites methodically on my body; two on my head one on each side ; six across my chest and abdomen three on each side ; two on my thighs one on each leg ; two on my shins one on each leg. They were clearly trying to immobilize me. While my three companions frantically smashed the hornets off of me self-defense is always a valid excuse to kill anyone, the hornets buzzed off momentarily and then re-attacked me several times. They NEVER once went after the people who were swatting and trying to kill them because they knew I stepped on their home, not my three companions.

I am terrified of spiders. There was a huge spider in my apartment last summer. When I turned and saw him on the wall, I screamed in horror. The spider jumped in fear. His feet actually left the wall for a second. He ran around WILDLY in a circle for 30 seconds until he dove off the wall and found a hiding space in the corner. Why do you think he jumped and ran frantically. Spiders know what happens after a human screams. They get smashed to smithereens. This 8-legged critter didn t realize how lucky he was to be in a vegan household. He didn t receive the usual violent ending. I captured him in a glass and released him outside. You should do the same with ALL insects.

For some other amazing acts of animal awareness, intellect and altruism, go to YouTube and enter HIPPO SAVES IMPALA, DOG SAVES DOG HIT BY CAR, PENGUIN JUMPS INTO BOAT TO ESCAPE KILLER WHALES, and KRUGER BATTLE. This March 2008 article in The Independent, a British news site, tells the story of a dolphin helping a beached whale and her calf find their way back to the sea. This January 2011 article in The New York Times tells the story of Chaser, a border collie who possesses a vocabulary of over 1,000 words. If you re still wavering about the intelligence of animals, re-examine the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia. Over 200,000 humans died while only two non-domesticated animal corpses were found. All the animals carnivores and herbivores were on higher land a few miles away from shore. I am sure they were thinking the following about humans: With all your mathematical skills, extensive language and technology, you two-legged imbeciles still couldn t see that 100-foot wave coming. Idiots. And the animals weren t being instinctive when they fled the scene hours before the tsunami hit. They were simply paying attention. They were aware of their surroundings, unlike the instinctive human robots who stroll this earth. When it comes to technology, humans are brilliant. When it comes to decency, humans are on par with viruses.

If animals and insects aren t aware, then what are they. If they are NOT capable of feeling pain, then what do they feel. Eating, sleeping, drinking, surviving, procreating, looking for shelter, building a home, defending themselves and saving each other aren t instinctual behaviors. They are thoughts attached to actions. It s the human animal who operates instinctively. Very few people think for themselves and come to rational conclusions. Pulling into McDonald s for a Big Mac is NOT rational thought. It happens because the media and parents tell people to do it. If humans were rational, we wouldn t be killing each other, the animals, the earth and ourselves.

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Here s What s Wrong With Zoos:

Zoos are animal prisons. No more euphemisms.

When people say, But zoos save endangered animals, the truth is, 99 percent of all the animals at the zoo are UNENDANGERED. If zoos were only saving endangered animals, no one would complain. But zoos are a business. In fact, zoos are usually the 1 tourist attraction in every state.

No matter how natural they make the animals caged-in areas, once zoos RE-CREATE an area, it is NOW artificial and UNNATURAL. No amount of architecture can RE-CREATE a NATURAL habitat of old-growth forests, fallen branches, plant species and other animal species.

When people say, But the zoo is so educational for children, they learn so much, the truth is, The only thing kids learn at the zoo is that giraffes have long necks, zebras are black and white and the monkeys have pink butts. PERIOD. There is NO education taking place except the cruel education that teaches kids it is okay to dominate and enslave animals and put them on display for amusement, entertainment and follies. It is much more educational to read about animals from people like Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, who studied animals in the animals habitats and learned about THEIR natural behaviors. Or one can learn about animals through documentaries on National Geographic. But one cannot learn about animals who are in an UNNATURAL habitat displaying UNNATURAL behaviors from the stress of confinement and lethargy of captivity, which can also lead to neurotic behaviors like pacing and self-mutilation.

Zoos are created for PEOPLE, not animals. Take the Detroit Zoo and look at all the space for picnics and the refreshment areas and the trolley/train. Meanwhile, the animals are being driven insane in their TINY enclosures.

If zoos really cared about animals, then why do they serve DEAD animals at the refreshment areas. Seems to me that if the zoo was trying to teach kindness and respect for animals, the least they could do is make sure people aren t eating dead ones in a bun. The zoo would be an ideal place for vegan food.

When people say, But animals are being poached in the wild and they live longer lives in captivity, the truth is, longer lives never translate into happier lives. And poaching can be solved if we crack down on poaching, make hunting illegal since poachers are hunters and that s where they learned the bloodsport of killing animals with guns and arrows protect their habitat and start sharing this planet with our four-legged companions. The solution to poaching is NOT removing animals from their land; it is removing poachers from the land. It is also done through teaching people about the vegan lifestyle. If people were vegans, there wouldn t be a need for ivory, seal penises aphrodisiacs and whale blubber. It always comes back to veganism. And if the land is being demolished through sprawl, the solution is to STOP destroying the land, not removing animals from free places and putting them into an enclosure.

Zoos should be transformed into sanctuaries at this point in time. And that means no more visitors. No more picnic areas. No more huge walkways. No more refreshment areas. Let these animals live out their lives by giving them EVERY INCH of space on the grounds and then build ONE virtual reality auditorium where people can come and take a virtual ride through the jungles of Tanzania or the wastelands of Asia.

Nearly every zoo sells its surplus animals to canned hunting farms or research labs or circuses. And most zoos have circus acts where animals perform asinine tricks in mini arenas. Surplus animals are the older animals that no one wants to gawk at any longer. The reason there are breeding programs at zoos is to make sure there are always baby animals in order to attract a bigger crowd. No one wants to see old elephants or old zebras but EVERYBODY wants to see baby elephants and baby zebras. In the defense of the Detroit Zoo and Ron Kagan, Ron changed these practices at the Detroit Zoo. The Detroit Zoo no longer has animal acts or sells any animals to hunting farms, labs or circuses. Kagan is without a doubt the most progressive zoo director on this planet. In May of 04 Kagan even agreed to release the elephants at the Detroit Zoo to an elephant sanctuary.

Without freedom there is no reason to exist. Zoos have taken away the animals freedom and made them living skeletons. The pride is gone. The will to thrive has vanished. The feeling of happiness faded. The thrill of endless miles of roaming has been usurped. Every thing that is natural to an animal, has been made UNNATURAL by the state-sanctioned animal prison system that operates for one reason and one reason alone; the almighty dollar.

People love to talk about animals at the zoo having veterinary care as if that justifies their imprisonment. Prisoners have medical care, but that doesn t make people want to line up and book vacations to federal penitentiaries. Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have medical care and I don t see people planning Christmas vacations to Cuba. Of course animals at zoos have vet care. Without a product to put on display, one cannot make a profit. Animals are fed and watered and receive medical treatment. Still they have no freedom, and no forests.

Here s What s Wrong With Hunting:

The following essay was published as an editorial in the Detroit News on April 20, 2001. It subsequently appeared in the book Hunting: Opposing Views, published in 2008 by the Gale Group/Greenhaven Press.

NOTE FROM ME: Before you read the essay, I want to expound on a few points.

The Deer Range Improvement Program DRIP is still in existence. And every state has a program like DRIP. It might not be called DRIP but there is a DRIP-like program all over the US.

Here is a detailed explanation about sex-biased hunting. If we didn t have sex-biased hunting, there would be an even ratio of male deer to female deer. So, if someone took a sample group of 10 deer anywhere there would be five males and five females. The five males would impregnate the five females who would then give birth to five offspring. However, after decades of killing big bucks for their large racks, we now have ratios of 7-to-3, 8-to-2, or 9-to-1 FEMALE to male. Let s take the 7-to-3 ratio. We now have three males impregnating seven females we know males can impregnate as many females as they come in contact with. Then seven females give birth to seven offspring which means there are a minimum of two EXTRA babies per sample group of 10 deer because of sex-bias hunting. But, let s go further. Wildlife biologists have confirmed that when deer, and other animals, including humans during war times, feel their population is being decimated, as is the case after hunting season ends, the majority of all the females give birth to twins or triplets. So, let s take the twin scenario. Seven females are now giving birth to 14 babies instead of the original five if our society didn t hunt thereby having 9 EXTRA babies per sample group of 10 deer. When you multiply the extra babies over the entire Michigan herd, you have an extra 500,000 to 700,000 deer every year. And guess how many hunting licenses they issue every year. You guessed it, between 500,000 and 700,000. Plus, that s how the Michigan herd grew from 500,000 in the 70s to nearly 2 million nowadays. This scenario works in every state with the numbers only varying slightly.

The only excuse to kill and eat animals would be a pure survival scenario. But this scenario is rare. Inuit living in an icy environment comes to mind which is why I ve never traveled to Alaska to lecture. I ll never understand why people who reside in NON-ICY or NON-DESERT settings hunt, kill and eat the flesh of animals. Habit, tradition, convenience or taste are invalid, barbaric reasons to harm animals. MURDERING and COMMODIFYING animals are crimes. Murder is murder whether victims stand upright, walk on all fours, have fur, feathers, horns, beaks or gills. Self-defense or vicarious self-defense defending others who cannot defend themselves are the only justifications for murder. Commodification is when humans turn animals into inanimate objects and can t see them for anything else. Cows have been turned into shoes, briefcases and hamburgers. Chickens have been turned into buckets of wings. Deer have been transformed into unwilling participants of a bloodthirsty sport, severed-head wall-trophies and venison burgers. When humans are treated the way hunters treat animals, people scream Holocaust, genocide, massacre and bloody murder. Yet, according to the hunters mind-set, animals are game who deserve to be killed. This game is void of rational thought, decency and kindness. It is, quite frankly, sociopath behavior. I ve watched hunting/fishing shows on ESPN for more than 25 years. As a sports junkie, I have to wait for the blood-shows to end weekend mornings before GENUINE sports shows air. I hear excitement in the hunters voices before they pull the trigger or shoot the arrow. No need to fabricate the true reasons for deer-hunting, or any other animal-killing moment. Hunting and fishing are bloodsports, plain and simple. Additionally, hunters aren t exonerated from the killing because they do the killing themselves. It s makes them directly responsible instead of the accomplice meat-eater who pays someone else to commit the crimes. The latter is still unequivocally wrong and evil, but killing and harming directly shows more psychotic behavior than someone who cannot harm and kill directly.

_________________________________

I am the founder and president of Michigan s most outspoken and uncompromising humanitarian organization, ADAPTT. Nearly 80 high schools and universities have invited me to educate and enlighten students about animal liberation, ethics, justice and kindness.

Before I refute every hunting lie, let me begin with two quotes from some well-known animal rights activists.

The first one is from Mohandas Gandhi. The life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. The more helpless the creature is, the more it is entitled to protection from humans from the cruelty of humans

The second quote from the great philosopher Pythagoras. As long as humanity continues to be the ruthless destroyer of other beings, we will never know health or peace. For as long as people massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed those who sow the seed of murder and pain will never reap joy and love.

Now, contrary to the rosy picture hunters always paint about themselves the noble hunter, the honest hunter, the caring hunter, the concerned hunter let s run down a quick list of noble hunting adages:

Shoot more and shoot more often, I m a gut-pile addict, whack em and stack em, live to hunt/hunt to live and kill on.

And how about this comment from Ted Nugent, the world s most outspoken animal-killer and just about every hunter s hero: I contribute to the dead of winter and the moans of silence, blood trails are music to my ears. I m a gut-pile addict. The pig didn t know I was there. It s my kick. I love shafting animals. It s rock n roll power. World Bowhunter s Magazine, Volume 1, Number 4, May 1990, page 12

It s hard for animal rights humanitarians to discuss the truth about hunting when we re constantly dealing with lies about overpopulation, lies about kindness and lies about science.

ADAPTT is fed up with hunters, their government cronies and all of their sick mentalities. The so-called experts who work for the DNR and the NRC are not experts. They re hunters and hunt supporters.

And hunting is not sound science. It is only sound fun for unsound individuals who commit cowardly acts. And it sounds to me that any sound person who possesses a scintilla of sound sense would understand that soundly truth.

To appease hunters in 1971, the DNR began serious efforts to change the old forest situation in Michigan. There were around 500,000 deer at that time which wasn t enough to please the hunters. Therefore, the DNR instituted the Deer Range Improvement Program known as DRIP which called for the clear-cutting of 1.2 million acres of forest creating a more accessible food supply for deer and further stimulate reproduction. The DNR also has always issued a disproportionate number of licenses to kill male deer, because killing males instead of females causes the females internal reproductive mechanism to go haywire. Then, she ends up giving birth to twins and even triplets to keep the species going.

The DRIP program and sex-biased hunting has caused the deer herd to level out at around 2 million animals last year.

For the record, hunters cause an increase in deer-car accidents and contribute to crop damage.

In 1972, there were 10,742 deer-car collisions. Last year there were about 70,000. Gee, I thought hunters were hunting to reduce deer-car collisions. In 1996, The Michigan Farm Bureau even threatened to file a class-action lawsuit against the DNR for solely catering to the needs of hunters.

By the way, as deer-car accidents and crop-damage steadily increased over the years, here s what Dave Arnold, a DNR executive, had to say to The Detroit Free Press on January 1, 1980: Don t lose sight of the purpose of the program. When the DNR decided several years ago to try and increase the herd to about one million animals, we knew the auto collision rate and crop damage would rise.

Here s what Ned Caveney, a DNR state forester, had to say to the Northwoods Call a Charlevoix paper on May 26, 1991: In Michigan, we manipulate forest habitat to produce amazingly unnatural deer numbers --- up to two million of the critters some years. That probably approaches two million more that existed before man got into the act.

In the 90s, pro-hunting governor John Engler created The Hunting and Heritage Task Force in order to expand hunting and fishing opportunities to the public which is the same reason why the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service exists. By the way, the USFWS offers 290 hunting programs and 307 fishing programs on the 514 national wildlife refuges throughout the U.S.

Paragraph six of Engler s Hunting and Heritage Task Force edict states the following: While Michigan offers widespread opportunities to hunt and fish, more could be done to encourage participation, especially in high population centers. All divisions within the DNR should work together, making hunting and fishing more accessible on both public and private lands. Where possible, expand opportunities to hunt and fish within urban parks and recreation areas.

This was the sole purpose behind the recent deer killings at our metro-parks. Not because the deer were eating up all the trillium plants. The HCMA board of commissioners wouldn t know the difference between trillium and helium. Moreover, humans are the only animals who destroy land and take more than they need.

The metro-park killings didn t take place because the hunters wanted to donate food to the hungry. That s just a clever public relations gimmick to try and place a halo around those who murder animals for fun. It is far more cost efficient to feed hungry people spaghetti and stir-fried tofu, and you can feed more people that way too.

Everyone must understand that wildlife management is an illusory concept created around 100 years ago. There is no such thing as wildlife management. Humans cannot manage nature. The only managing humans should be doing is managing to stay out of the animals space.

And, once again, it is unjust, stupid and contemptible that the DNR and NRC made up entirely of hunters and hunt supporters make decisions about the fate of wild animals. That would be akin to allowing pedophiles to write child protection laws and misogynists pen domestic abuse laws.

Do hunters eat their kills. Yes. But do hunters hunt for food. No. They hunt for the thrill of the kill. They receive a rush. A super-shot of adrenaline. It s bloodlust and dominance. It s arrogance and selfishness. It s hatred and brutality. It s dishonor and viciousness. It s murder and it s obscene.

Hunters always use the excuse that deer are going to starve to death during the winter as if starvation wasn t a natural process and nature s way of controlling populations and the ecosystem s way of working.

Starving deer provides food for scavenger animals and is nature s way of weeding out sickly animals and allowing the strongest ones to reproduce.

A bullet to the head or an arrow through the chest is not a solution to starvation. But, furthermore, hunters don t even shoot starving deer. They don t make good trophies and don t have lots of meat.

I dare anyone to show me a photograph of one hunter last year who shot one emaciated deer. Just one. Hunters shoot big bucks with big racks for big trophies. Watch their TV shows on PBS and ESPN and TNN. That s all they talk about big racks and big trophies.

On April 17, 1989, in The Free Press, Nugent said this about hunting: I don t hunt for meat. I hunt to hunt.

In 1990, Nugent said the following in his World Bowhunters Magazine: Nobody hunts just to put meat on the table because it s too expensive, time-consuming and extremely inconsistent.

For the record, I never threatened to harm someone s child over the recent deer-killings in our metro-parks. I threatened to take a bullet for the deer and form my own deer-police unit to protect deer from hunters. But I did challenge about six sissified animal-killing hunters to show me how tough tough guys really are. I wanted to fight these bullies and put them in their place. Unfortunately, as usual, they refused to take me up on my challenge. If there s one thing that I ve learned in six years of intense activism, animal-abusers are cowards who would never fight someone who would fight back.

To obtain more info about the industry of hunting, check out

Here s What s Wrong With the Circus:

The circus is an animal-slavery enterprise. The issue of an animal-oriented circus being abusive is a moot point. In his book The Circus Kings, Henry North Ringling, a founder of the The Ringling Bros., stated, It is not usually a pretty sight to see the big cats trained. When the trainer starts off, the animals are all chained to their pedestals, and ropes are put around their necks to choke them down and make them obey. All sorts of other brutalities are used to force animals to respect the trainer and learn their tricks. The animals work from fear.

It is impossible to use positive reinforcement with purely wild animals like elephants, lions, bears and tigers. Violence is the only way to make wild animals perform unnatural tricks. Training sessions are comprised of beatings in order to establish superiority. Blackjacks, hooks, iron bars, whips and sticks are used to beat the pride out of animals. That s why all circus trainers carry weapons around with them like elephant hooks which are pick-axe like devices and whips for the lions, bears and tigers. In 1998, during a Shrine Circus protest in Detroit, a police officer even pulled out his gun and threatened to shoot ADAPTT Founder Gary Yourofsky for displaying an elephant hook to passersby. The hooks and whips are weapons.

In the wilds of Africa and Asia, elephants walk 20 to 50 miles a day and take mud and dust baths as part of their natural behavior. However, elephants in the circus have their front, left legs and back, right legs chained up at all times when they are not on stage doing idiotic tricks. Not only can they not walk 20 to 50 miles a day, they can t even take one step. For image reasons, some circuses have started keeping elephants behind electrical fences. But these areas are unsuitable for two pound toy poodles let alone 5,000 pound elephants.

Lions, bears and tigers fare no better. Circuses cage them like prisoners. The result of the constant confinement is sad. Most animals in the circus develop neurosis and exhibit neurotic behaviors. Elephants sway from side to side. Lions, bears and tigers pace back and forth in their cages and sometimes engage in self-mutilation.

The transportation process is ridiculous as well. Animals are shipped year-round from city to city in semi-trucks and railway cars. The semis and rail cars are without electricity, so every trip is in complete darkness, without air conditioning if it s warm and without heat if it s cold. Furthermore, if being chained up, caged up, dominated, humiliated and enslaved isn t horrible enough, larger circuses like The Shriners, Royal Hanneford and Ringling Bros. deny animals sunlight when they perform in Midwestern arenas, even during the spring and summer months. These circuses perform for 3-21 days straight at The Michigan State Fairgrounds in Detroit and The Palace in Auburn Hills and keep animals in the warehouse area during their Michigan visits.

Vegan civil rights humanitarian Dick Gregory once said, When I look at animals held captive by circuses, I think of slavery. Animals in circuses represent the domination and oppression we have fought against for so long. They wear the same chains and shackles. This quotation is excerpted from an editorial written by Gregory, published in the Marin Independent Journal, April 28, 1998, and which appears at the end of this section.

And an undercover investigation of the Carson Barnes Circus shows some of the most disturbing training footage ever. The audio/video shows Tim Frisco, of the Carson Barnes Circus, teaching future elephant trainers how to dominate elephants and make them submit. Frisco is caught on tape clearly saying, Make him scream. Don t touch him. Hurt him. If you re scared to hurt him, don t come in the barn. When I say rip his head off, rip his fucking foot off, it s very important that you do it. When he starts squirming too fucking much, both fucking hands BOOM as he swings the hook like a baseball bat right under the chin. When he fucks around too much, you fucking sink that hook into him and give it everything you got. Sink that hook into him. When you hear that screaming, then you know you got their attention. Right here in the barn. You can t do it on the road. I m not going to touch her in front of a thousand people. She s going to fucking do what I want and that s just fucking the way it is. I am the boss. I will kick your fucking ass. Don t take my word for it; this undercover footage appears near the end of this video. Frisco and his two brothers learned the trade from their father, Joe Frisco, who spent a lifetime beating elephants for many circuses, including Ringling Bros.

Only support all-human circuses like Cirque Du Soleil and Cirque Ingenieux.

The Circus: It s Modern Slavery

By Dick Gregory

When I worked as a civil rights activist with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., we sought justice through peaceful means. I was a participant in all of the major and most of the minor civil rights demonstrations of the early 60s, including the March on Washington and the Selma to Montgomery March. Under the leadership of Dr. King, I became totally committed to non-violence, and I was convinced that non-violence meant opposition to killing in any form.

I felt the commandment Thou shalt not kill applied to human beings not only in their dealings with each other war, lynching, assassination, murder but in their practice of killing animals for food and sport.

There are simple steps each of us can take to eliminate the exploitation of other beings. One is to refuse to go to any circus that uses animals. When I look at animals held captive by circuses, I think of slavery. Animals in circuses represent the domination and oppression we have fought against for so long. They wear the same chains and shackles. No matter what the circus folks tell us, there is no way to persuade an elephant to dance or a tiger to leap through hoops without some threat of punishment or violence. Big-cat trainers carry whips; elephant handlers use bullhooks a sharp, hooked metal tool used to poke and jab sensitive spots. Behind the scenes, trainers often use electric stunning prods and heavy sticks to make their point.

Circus animals may be fed regularly. They may even have a veterinarian to look after them. But this doesn t make life easy for them. They are caged and shackled and forced to work when the boss says so. They never have even a taste of freedom, but go from cage to circus ring to cage. They travel thousands of miles during the performing season, which means long hours in boxcars or tractor trailers with no room to stretch, let alone run.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum Bailey are two of the most famous and profitable circuses in the world. Even so, it has been cited for violating the Animal Welfare Act the only federal law protecting animals in performing shows more than 100 times.

This year already, two Ringling animals have died on the road. One was Kenny, a baby elephant forced to perform in two shows and appear in a third in one day even though he was ill. After the third show, he lay down and died. Kenny was only 3 years old and would have stayed with his mother in the wild for up to 15 years.

The other casualty was a tiger being used in a Ringling publicity photo shoot. When the tiger attacked one trainer, the other trainer on the scene returned the animal to his cage, got a gun and shot the big cat to death.

Both of these deaths could have been prevented, and not simply because the situations should have been handled better by those in charge. They were unnecessary because the animals should not have been imprisoned in the first place. As Alice Walker writes, The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men.

Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life. We don t have to be a part of it.

Bolivia Bans Wild and Domestic Animals in Traveling Circuses

Note from me: As you read this story, please recognize that none of the changes in these or related laws would have been possible without the efforts of undercover agents taking part in DIRECT and ILLEGAL activity on behalf of animals. Educating people about animal rights is necessary, but it s not sufficient.

LA PAZ, Bolivia, July 14, 2009 ENS Bolivian President Evo Morales has signed the world s first law prohibiting the use of both wild and domestic animals in traveling circuses.

This is the first national law to ban the use of both domestic and wild animals in circuses. To date, Croatia, Singapore, Austria, Israel and Costa Rica have all banned wild animals in circuses. Similar bans on animal use in traveling circuses in Costa Rica, Finland and Denmark only prohibit the use of wild animals or certain species.

The Bolivian law, signed earlier this month, was tabled by Congresswoman Ximena Flores of Potosi. It is expected to be published shortly.

The law arose as a result of evidence gathered during an undercover investigation by the nonprofit Animal Defenders International.

Investigators found lions confined in a tiny cage on the back of a truck two were pregnant but were forced to continue to perform. ADI videos show circus employees beating a lion in the circus ring with a baton and beating a caged lion with a metal pan. In one video, a caged lion was jerked by a chain around its neck by circus workers outside the cage, causing visible pain.

Three brown bears were kept in tiny compartments measuring just 2.5 x 3 meters 8.2 x 9.8 feet inside a cage on the back of a truck. Their only exercise was the walk to and from the ring for their short performance. There were no safety barriers to protect the audience as the animals were made to dance, play dead and ride a bicycle.

Other ADI videos showed circus employees beating a wolf and a llama in the circus ring.

The findings of the investigation were presented to the Bolivian Congress together with a report from Animal Defenders International on the scientific evidence of suffering of animals in traveling circuses, The Science on Suffering.

The new law bans the use of wild and domestic animals in circuses in the Bolivia, as their conditions and confinement are considered acts of cruelty.

The circuses will be allowed one year to adapt their shows to a humans-only program and during this time, the government will issue regulations on confiscation and monetary sanctions for any breaches of the law.

ADI Chief Executive Jan Creamer said, This is a truly historic day for circus animals. The undercover investigations, the scientific research and the hard work of our supporters in Bolivia have made a difference for animals that will reach around the world.

Bolivia is the first country to ban animal circuses in South America and the first worldwide to ban both domestic and wild animals in circuses, said Creamer. We applaud President Evo Morales for setting the highest standard for animal protection for South America, which the rest of the world now needs to follow. We also salute the efforts of Congresswoman Flores and all the local organizations and who along with ADI worked tirelessly to ensure that the bill became a law.

Groups in Bolivia that worked alongside ADI on the campaign for the new legislation include: Focomade, Vida Silvestre, Biosfera, Codac, Zooprama, Anima Naturalis-Bolivia, Gaia Pacha, EBA-Bolivia, and Animales SOS, among others.

Here s What s Wrong With Vivisection:

Humanitarian and British author George Bernard Shaw summed up vivisection best when he once proclaimed, Those who won t hesitate to vivisect, won t hesitate to lie about it as well.

Vivisection is the act of cutting, drugging, burning, blinding, shocking, addicting, shooting, freezing, infecting and surgically mutilating live animals. Vivisection also happens to be more than just bloody science. It s a bloody fraud. Every year in the US around 20 million monkeys, dogs, cats, pigs and rabbits, and 50-80 million mice/rodents are incarcerated and infected with mutations of human diseases, tortured in violent burn and brain-damage re-creation experiments, observed for meaningless data and killed.

First, let s understand that animals are a completely different bio-mechanical entity than humans. The anatomical, physiological, immunological, histological dealing with the cell structures and even psychological differences between humans and animals are too great to overcome. At this moment, a formula for making animal-derived research relevant to human health is non-existent. Animal research has not, can not and will not save a human lives because information cannot be extrapolated from one species to another.

Let me elucidate this point to you in a few ways. Everyday in veterinary schools all across this world, the fraud of vivisection is substantiated. After talking with several veterinarians who unfortunately have been fooled into believing that animal research can be beneficial to humans, I asked them, When you were in vet school studying feline leukemia which animal did you study upon. They all replied, Cats. I asked them why they didn t use dogs for feline leukemia research. They replied that studying dogs for feline leukemia didn t make too much sense scientifically. I then asked why dogs, cats and other animals are used for human leukemia research. Their silence exposed the scam. Veterinarians invalidate the widespread use of species-to-species extrapolation because they use cats for feline leukemia research, horses for colic research, dogs for canine distemper research and so on. They don t use dogs for cats, pigs for dogs, and monkeys for horses. For the record, I ethically oppose what takes place in veterinary schools. Understand, though, I cannot oppose it on scientific grounds because it is scientifically justifiable to research on the species in question when searching for treatments/cures for that species. However, when it comes to using animals as predictor models for humans, my opposition is ethical AND scientific.

No matter how diligently animal researchers try, they can never re-create the spontaneously-occurring diseases that humans get. They can only re-create symptoms and give mutations. Plus, the experiments are always done in a controlled, manipulative environment where researchers can produce whatever answer they re looking for. If researchers want to show that there is NO link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer, no problem, just bring in some dogs, hook them up to facial mechanical devices, and force them to inhale smoke with every breath. It s true that smoking tobacco does NOT cause lung cancer in dogs. Then again, I haven t met too many dogs who smoke Kools in the first place. How about showing that diet drugs are safe for humans. No problem. Bring in some rodents, gorge them until they become obese and give them large doses of fenphen. For the record, the diet drug fenphen passed all rat research protocols but was taken off the market years ago after killing several humans. Over the years, hundreds of drugs have passed animal research tests only to harm or kill humans later on.

Were you aware that every 2-3 seconds someone in the world dies from a disease the medical community has known how to cure for nearly two thousand years. That disease is malnutrition. But in early 98, with a hefty grant, The Detroit Free Press reported that animal researchers were close to identifying the hunger gene in rats. Huh. How many more meaningless, idiotic and wasteful experiments will researchers conduct and, more importantly, will society condone. The sad truth is that medicine - in its myriad of treatments - is a commodity. If you can t afford it, then you don t get it. Keep this in mind as well, not one of Jerry s Kids has ever walked or been cured of muscular dystrophy even though the telethons have taken in more than 50 billion dollars. And that s a generous estimate. It s probably much more. The money has come from kind people who have been duped by the animal research community s guileful, mendacious and insidious hook: this latest mouse experiment is hopeful and promising. Hopeful and promising - the two favorite words of a vivisectionist -can be translated into send more money so I can continue my lifelong mission of gathering useless information.

Dr. Christopher Anderegg, who received his medical degrees from the Yale University School of Medicine, explained, It is impossible to predict human reactions to drugs, vaccines and other chemicals by testing them on animals. Still, vivisectionists lie about the value of animal experimentation and remain unwilling to use the following 10 forms of true scientific research techniques; 1 human-based clinical research; 2 epidemiology study, causes and distribution of human diseases ; 3 cellular and molecular biology using human-based tissue and cell cultures and in vitro; 4 autopsy research; 5 biopsy research; 6 computer models using virtual reality, simulators and 3D programs; 7 mathematical models using formulas to determine drug concoctions and reactions; 8 case studies; 9 human-based DNA/genetic research; 10 trial and error methodology.

Fortunately, some people/organizations are responding to the truth. Dozens of charities like The Easter Seals Foundation, The American Kidney Fund and The International Eye Foundation, to name a few, only use the aforementioned methods of scientific research and, more importantly, refuse to perform or fund any form of animal research. So, if Easter Seals engages in essential non-animal-based research for birth defects, while The March of Dimes engages in vivisection because it claims that s the only way to conduct birth defect research, I ask you, Who s lying. I hope you feel the same way I do when asked to select between two diametrically opposed positions. Personally, I always side with the victims of injustice. Since healing human beings cannot be based upon violent protocols and human medicine cannot be based upon a false, duplicitous model, it seems clear to me who s lying. Polio victim Linn Pulis once eloquently said, I would not want to promote research on animals. Fortunately, only my back is twisted, not my mind.

Dr. Richard Klausner, animal researcher and former director 1995-2001 of the National Cancer Institute, a huge animal researching entity, once said, The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse. We have cured mice of cancer for decades and it simply doesn t work in humans.

For some amazing information on why vivisection is unscientific, please check out Americans, Europeans, and Japanese for Medical Advancement. It is the website of Dr. Ray Greek, the world s foremost expert in determining the value of all medical research. Also, as if to show how archaic animal models and experiments truly are, even the University of Pittsburgh, the American university which tortures the largest number of animals annually, has ceased using animals in one of its courses:

Dr. Jerry Vlasak: Physician, Activist, Anti-Vivisectionist

The following piece was written by Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a trauma surgeon in several California hospitals, and one of the world s grittiest animal rights activists. Dr. Vlasak has been arrested, and physically assaulted, simply for coming to the aid of Canadian seal pups during the annual Canadian seal massacres. You can e-mail Dr. Vlasak by clicking here. Read what Dr. Vlasak has to say about the inefficacy and moral bankruptcy of vivisection:

On a daily basis, animals are drowned, suffocated and starved to death; they have their limbs severed and their organs crushed; they are burned, exposed to radiation and used in experimental surgeries; they are shocked, raised in isolation, exposed to weapons of mass destruction and rendered blind or paralyzed; they are given heart attacks, ulcers, paralysis, and seizures; they are forced to inhale tobacco smoke, drink alcohol, and ingest various drugs like heroin and cocaine.

Those who perpetrate these still legal crimes, their utter and complete violence, callousness and indifference against non human animals, can t and don t want to see that what they are doing is not only a crime against God, Allah, Buddha, nature and life itself, but results in the suffering and death of millions of humans. The University and pharmaceutical industry s addiction to archaic and outmoded animal research results in millions of humans getting sicker, fatter and dying of completely preventable diseases.

With all the millions of dollars wasted and I repeat, wasted on the scientific fraud of vivisection, the only result is that over the past half century Cancer deaths are UP, Strokes are UP, Heart Disease UP, Diabetes UP, and Obesity way UP.

I became a surgeon, a doctor, in order to save lives. I spent many years in preparation of my being able to work as a doctor; four years of university, four years of medical school, a year of internship and then five additional years of surgical residency. I, like the rest of my fellow students, was naive and impressionable. We had been brought up and brainwashed by the meat and dairy industries to think that flesh and cow s milk made you strong and was good for you; and we had been brought up and brainwashed to believe that animal experimentation was a necessary evil and had to be done in order to save the lives of our patients. Like the billion dollar meat and dairy industry spin machine, the university system and pharmaceutical industry has done a very good job at taking young impressionable students and addicting them to outmoded and unscientific animal research.

I d like to tell you two short stories. The first is about a five-year-old girl who came into the emergency room with appendicitis. The little girl was so obese that her breasts were as large as a girl in her teens, and she weighed twice as much as a normal child her age. She needed an emergency appendectomy and the surgery I preformed was made much more difficult by her obesity. When patients are obese, their fat layers complicate not only the actual surgery being performed, but the complication rate after surgery drastically increases. The little girl already had type II diabetes, which is now common in American children. Type II diabetes is completely preventable and has historically been seen in adults who are obese themselves. But because of the meat, dairy and sugar industries, we have a new generation of children who are sick, fat and miserable. The little girl made it through surgery and when she was recovering I sat down with her and her parents and spoke to them about a low fat vegetarian diet and drinking soy milk instead of cow s milk, which as you know is linked to all kinds of illnesses.

I told her that a low fat vegetarian diet is proven to prevent the most common diseases that millions of people die from every single year; diseases such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and hardening of the arteries. The mother began to cry and said that her little girl was teased by the other kids and couldn t even play like a normal child because of her weight; that she was always coming down with ailments and that she was lethargic and fell asleep in school. Then the mother looked at me with tears in her eyes and asked Why hasnt any other doctor given us this information. This scenario is common in my practice, and is the direct result of the absolute power, greed and corruption of the meat and dairy industries.

The next story is about my introduction into the world of vivisection, while I was a surgical resident. I was told that I could make a name for myself if I published papers and experimented on animals; and I was told that universities were given LOTS of money by the government as long as they continued to do experiments on animals. Being the naive young doctor and wanting to follow the lead of others, I did a year of vivisection and visited animal labs throughout the country. What I learned and what I saw with my own eyes was mind-boggling. I learned that 85 of all the data gathered from animal experiments was literally thrown away because it was of no use to anyone, human or non-human; never even published, much less used to help people. Almost all of the remainder of this data was never found useful for human healthcare.

And that 1 or 2 of data that was possibly, one day, maybe going to be useful in helping people. That data could have been obtained more accurately and cheaply using modern, progressive non-animal methods. Then I learned that the pharmaceutical companies spent millions of dollars taking doctors out to dinner and paying for lavish vacations for them and their families, and in turn these researchers were to manipulate animal experiments to get the results that the drug industries wanted. Then I learned that the way universities get grant money isn t by coming up with the best and most scientific research methods, but by continuing to use animals as a model because of the billions of dollars made in the vivisection industry. I learned that the vivisection industry is like the mafia; the scientists and drug companies who engage in animal research will do whatever it takes to continue the practice even though it not only harms humans, but causes enormous agony and suffering to the animals being experimented on.

Greed, corruption and absolute power; these are the things that drive the vivisection industry; NOT saving lives or preventing disease. In a world that has discovered gene expression and can look at diseases on the cellular and molecular level, animal experimentation has no place and I repeat, NO PLACE in 21st Century science. We now know that based on molecular biology and gene expression, a drug that reacts a certain way in a male rat, may react completely differently in a female rat. But what about primates that share 99 of our DNA. It s not the 99 that s important, but the 1 that makes the difference in a non-human primate reacting totally differently to a medicine or surgical procedure than a human primate.

We are not going to save the lives of our fellow humans by using archaic, outmoded animal experimentation. The scientists who still use animals in their research are not only frauds, but are addicted to an outdated form of research. Colin Blakemore for instance, who has sewn kittens eyes closed for fun and profit, is no more of a true scientist than the mad scientists in the monster movies we watched in the 50s. Blakemore is not a doctor. Like most animal experimenters, he is simply a wanna-be medical doctor who didn t have the social skills nor the brains to make it through medical school. And those medical doctors who are performing experiments on animals are simply the instruments of a corrupt university system and the pharmaceutical industry.

Xenotransplantation

Xenotransplantation is an experimental procedure in which animal organs or tissues are transferred into human bodies. This is obscenely unethical because animals weren t created to be our spare parts, just like they weren t put here to be sandwiches. Trying to justify one unethical, immoral practice meat-eating with another xenotransplantation is vicious and invalid. It s like saying, Since children are molested, we might as well make child pornography films. One evil act should not perpetuate another. It s shameful and vile that humans have turned animals into commodities. We never seem to learn from past mistakes. Whites used to view blacks in the same regard. Men used to - and still do in many cases - view women as commodities. Discrimination is always wrong which means that speciesism is just as irrational and nefarious as racism and sexism. If America instituted Europe s PRESUMED CONSENT, there would be no shortage of organs, and people wouldn t be looking to exploit animals further. Presumed consent means that everyone who dies is presumed to be a donor UNLESS stated otherwise. So people have a right to opt out of organ donation, but one has to take the initiative to opt out. Xenotransplantation is also bad medicine. It has never been successful. Although both beat and pump blood, baboon hearts and pig hearts are physiologically dissimilar to human hearts. And no amount of medical tinkering can compensate for that inherent difference.

Anti-Vivisection Resources on the Web

Americans, Europeans, And Japanese For Medical Advancement: founded by Dr. Ray Greek, a physician and pre-eminent scientist who adamantly opposes medical research on animals

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine PCRM : a group of doctors who advocate preventative medicine and true scientific research

PCRM s Humane Seal of Approval: a list of charities that refuse to torture animals in archaic, barbaric and unscientific experiments

National Anti-Vivisection Society: this page provides a list of companies that do not torture animals in archaic, barbaric and unscientific experiments

Empathy, Education, and Violence: A Time for Everything

By Gary Yourofsky

NOTE: The following piece was first written in 1997. It was updated in 2005 and 2008.

For the first time in history, animal rights activists are facing an era of unprecedented repression by the US and UK governments. With active ALF liberators hard to find, those who publicly support the Animal Liberation Front ALF along with former ALF activists have been receiving the brunt of the discriminatory power that these governments routinely wield against social justice activists.

Terrorists or Freedom Fighters, a recent collection of ALF essays edited by UTEP philosophy professor Steve Best has ignited debate about the nonviolent liberation and arson tactics of the ALF, and the violent threats of injury or death aimed at those who directly abuse animals put forth by The Animal Rights Militia ARM, Revolutionary Cells, Justice Department and Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a California trauma surgeon who espoused violent views to Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes in November 05.

The US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works conducted a McCarthy-esque hearing on May 18, 2005, about Dr. Best and other activists including me because of our outspoken support of the ALF. On August 24, 2005, the British Home Office BHO permanently banned the Texas professor from entering the UK because of the intellectual justification he routinely gives on behalf of the ALF. Former ALF liberator Rod Coronado and Animal Defense League of LA activists Vlasak and Pamelyn Ferdin were banned by the BHO in 04. I was banned in 08.

Most people are unaware of this, but the great pacifist Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, I am only effective as long as there is a shadow on White America of a black man standing behind me with a Molotov cocktail. King s position on arson not just the fire of the incendiary Molotov cocktail might surprise most people as well. He believed arson was a nonviolent act because buildings made of brick, wood, metal or some other insentient material were incapable of feeling pain.

When it came to activists engaging in violence or people doing nothing at all, King and the other great pacifist Mohandas Gandhi both chose violence. Please do not misinterpret what they meant. King and Gandhi were the utmost pacifists and firmly believed in nonviolent activism. However, both iterated time and again that something violence would be better than nothing apathy.

I feel the same way. Without question, I prefer nonviolent activism like classroom presentations, tabling events, leafleting, sign-carrying protests, op-ed pieces, undercover investigations and civil disobedience. It takes a wider array of tactics, however, to achieve substantive change. Given the choice of apathy or someone liberating mink, burning down a research torture-laboratory, or killing a vivisectionist or other DIRECT murderer of animals, I will choose the aforesaid actions over apathy any day of the week.

Radical tactics have been righteously implemented throughout history to produce immediate results. The Allied Forces violently broke down the gates of Hitler s death camps, killing Nazis in the process, and forever destroying the gas chambers of Buchenwald and Auschwitz. When the North took up arms and violently killed thousands of Southern racists, those justifiable homicides committed on behalf of black slaves were unchallengeable. Gandhi achieved Indian independence even though many Indians killed British soldiers, rioted in the streets and routinely set fires. The Black Panthers tactics of intimidation and Malcolm X s by any means necessary philosophy did not hinder the civil rights movement or the exaltation of Dr. King. In fact, when asked to stop X s radicalism, King replied, Don t ask me to stop Malcolm X. Malcolm X will stop when racism stops.

As one of the nation s most outspoken animal rights activists, I take the same approach. When a meat-eater or news reporter whines, The ALF breaks laws and burns buildings and the ARM supports violence, I simply reply, The ALF and ARM will stop when the abuse and murder of animals stops.

Those who actively seek to end injustices should always be praised, not vilified. Gandhi once said, There have been murderers and tyrants, and at times they have seemed invincible. But in the end they always fall. Always. Arsons, liberations, or acts of intimidation and justifiable homicide cannot impede the animal rights movement because nothing can hinder the truthful, benevolent push to liberate animals from their human captors.

When the ALF liberates animals and makes an immediate difference in their lives, I am not sure how any rational individual does not side with the ALF. Should we instead wait for politicians and society to gradually find time to fit animals into their greedy, selfish agendas. In the same way Harriet Tubman s Underground Railroad liberated blacks by stealing the property of whites, the ALF liberates animals by stealing the property of furriers and vivisectionists.

Furthermore, during the hundreds of ALF arsons over the last 30 years, no human has ever been injured or killed. This spotless record of economic sabotage is not accidental either. Members of the ALF adhere to a strict code of nonviolence, and have risked their freedom harming no one in the process for the animals who have no freedom.

Tens of thousands of foxes and mink have been given the chance to avoid anal electrocution and neck-breaking by the reprobates who provide skin to the fur industry, while dogs and mice have been liberated from sick, vicious experimenters and placed in loving homes.

However, since violence is an essential part of activism, even if an abuser of animals perished during a fire or other form of direct action, I would unequivocally support that, too. Empathy is not for those who enslave and kill animals, the guilty victimizers. Empathy is for innocent victims, the animals.

Animal rights is not about being nonviolent to humans anyway, even though nearly every activist embraces a nonviolence-to-human-ethic. Animal rights is about freeing animals from violent, avaricious, heartless thugs who profit off of animal misery and murder.

It is important to remember that the animal rights movement has been completely nonviolent since its inception yet people still view us with derision. Luminaries, oracles and contemporaries like Pythagoras, Gandhi, Schweitzer, Tolstoy, Plutarch, da Vinci, Dick Gregory, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Alice Walker, Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez have espoused the compassionate message of animal rights. Animals still remain enslaved nations killed by the billion. If peacefully protesting and educating the masses were the sole factors for compassionate change, animals would have been freed by now. Sadly, love does not always conquer hate. Reason does not solely conquer ignorance, or flat-out stupidity. Nonviolent protest does not always conquer institutionalized violence.

Those who truly care about animal rights must begin to view all animals as family members. We should try and reason with those who enslave and kill animals in order to liberate our nonhuman family. But that process alone cannot produce freedom. The time has come to forcibly free our family members from their captors, even if that means injuring or killing someone in the process. It is not violent to physically stop someone from killing someone else. Using force to stop abuse or murder is a noble, justifiable act of vicarious self-defense.

Liberations, arsons or violence only evoke negative reactions because very few people activists included truly view cows, pigs, chickens, rabbits, mice and deer as family. Until everyone accepts that animals deserve the same treatment as our mothers and fathers, the killing of animals will not cease, and people will continue to condemn activists, instead of abusers.

Once animals are viewed as family, it becomes appropriate to do whatever it takes to gain their freedom and stop their torture. Society disagrees with liberations, arsons or violence on behalf of animals because no one thinks animals are worthy of such generosity. I ve often said that if I liberated children from a pornography ring in 1997, I would have been carried down the streets of Detroit as thousands cheered in support. Instead, I liberated 1,542 mink from an animal concentration fur camp, spent 77 days in maximum security and was branded a terrorist.

If mentally-retarded children were in tiny cages at the National Institutes of Health waiting to be mutilated, blinded, burnt and killed by a vivisectionist, the tactics of the ALF and ARM would be unassailable. If black people were being hung upside down at a slaughterhouse as someone sliced their throats and dismembered their bodies, society would embrace the tactics of the ALF and the Revolutionary Cells. If our mothers and sisters were traipsing through the woods as someone fired an arrow or a bullet destined for their chest, then we would all give thanks to the compassionate revolutionaries who call themselves ALF and Justice Department activists. If you honestly placed yourself in any animals position, anything would be acceptable to prevent your torture, enslavement and eventual murder.

This piece is not a call to abandon nonviolent activism and solely take up arms. The violent actions of past social justice movements were carried out by only a few, just like the violent actions of the animal rights movement that will one day be carried out by only a few.

Just to make everyone aware of my activism, in the late 90s, I was arrested 13 times for civil disobedience and direct action, including the ALF liberation of 1,542 mink from the Eberts Fur Farm in Blenheim, Ontario. As of 2008, I ve given 1,524 lectures about ethical veganism in 135 schools in 27 states to more than 35,000 carnivorous students because I believe veganism and education are the most effective forms of activism. I have yet to engage in violence but believe violence has its place alongside peaceful education and nonviolent protest. It is the amalgam of these methods that will result in the eventual freedom of animals.

What You Give Is What You Should Get

The following editorial appeared in The Shield the U. of Southern Indiana school paper on Thursday, January 24, 2008.

Ever since Pythagoras promulgated peace to our planetary companions some 2,600 years ago, the animal rights community has utilized pacifism in its attempts to facilitate substantive change. As a proponent of education, my activism is no different. Each year I give around 250 lectures on ethical veganism to over 10,000 students explaining that victims of discrimination, slavery and murder come in all shapes and sizes. Many students thank me for removing their blinders and subsequently eliminate meat, cheese, milk and eggs from their diets. After all, consuming the cut-up corpses of murdered animals and the things that ooze out of their bodies is hardly an enlightened way of living.

However, author Sam Harris explained a major flaw with pacifism activism: When your enemy has no scruples, your own scruples become another weapon in his hand.

So, while my lifestyle and lectures are based on compassion, those who refuse to stop harming animals force me to support eye for an eye and by any means necessary philosophies.

In a world full of lying politicians and deceitful public relations, I hope you ll appreciate my willingness to unapologetically say what I m about to say.

Empathy should only be reserved for innocent beings human or nonhuman. Institutionalized violence doesn t simply vanish with a peaceful protest, a dose of logic and a whole lotta love. If people continually deny animals their inherent right to be free, radical tactics are necessary and justified. Physically preventing an abuser from committing abuse and killing a murderer to stop the murder are noble, vicarious acts of self-defense.

This is why furriers who anally electrocute foxes or break the necks of mink deserve the same treatment in return. The same goes for anybody who wears fur. If you pay someone to commit acts of cruelty, then you are complicit and, therefore, just as guilty.

Rapists, murderers and child molesters should be vivisected, executed and dissected, allowing researchers the opportunity to gather useful information that would actually benefit human health for a change. I see nothing wrong with capital punishment because if you willfully destroy someone else s life, then you automatically relinquish yours.

I believe in God but am vehemently opposed to organized religion and its attempts to sanctify cruelty in His name. Harming or killing animals is Satan s milieu. Christians, Jews and Muslims need to represent their faiths through peaceful compassionate living, not the barbaric tradition of meat-eating or the inane rituals of singing songs to the sky, growing long beards, covering the head in cloth or dipping each other in water.

The next two paragraphs can be found on my adaptt.org website in the What s Wrong with PETA and HSUS. section. They re the reason why the USI administration canceled my lecture last year and why journalism Professor Chad Tew and his students fought to change school policy and bring me back. Tew knew I had a First Amendment right to speak on campus.

Sometimes I think the only effective method of destroying speciesism would be for each uncaring human to be forced to live the life of a cow on a feedlot, or a monkey in a laboratory, or an elephant in the circus, or a bull in a rodeo, or a mink on a fur farm. Then people would be awakened from their soporifc states and finally understand the horrors that are inflicted on the animal kingdom by the vilest species to ever roam this planet: the human animal.

Deep down, I truly hope that oppression, torture and murder return to each uncaring human tenfold. I hope that fathers accidentally shoot their sons on hunting excursions, while carnivores suffer heart attacks that kill them slowly. Every woman ensconced in fur should endure a rape so vicious that it scars them forever. While every man entrenched in fur should suffer an anal raping so horrific that they become disemboweled. Every rodeo cowboy and matador should be gored to death, while circus abusers are trampled by elephants and mauled by tigers. And, lastly, may irony shine its esoteric head in the form of animal researchers catching debilitating diseases and painfully withering away because research dollars that could have been used to treat them was wasted on the barbaric, unscientific practice of vivisection.

I ll be lecturing at USI on Tuesday, January 29, in the Mitchell Auditorium from 7-9 p.m.

Here s What s Wrong With PETA and HSUS:

Claudette Vaughan is the editor of abolitionist-online, an Australian animal liberation website. She has interviewed dozens of radical activists over the years, including Dr. Jerry Vlasak and Pamelyn Ferdin. Following is an interview of Yourofsky that she conducted in August 2006, in which Yourofsky discusses violence, PETA, HSUS and the state of the animal rights movement.

CV: What are your views on violence and the animal rights movement.

GY: Empathy, Education, and Violence: A Time for Everything answers this question clearly and unambiguously.

CV: The dismal failure of these heads of the animal rights and animal welfare organizations that couldn t or wouldn t offer resistance to the current state of things for animals has now contributed to this current cul-de-sac the movement finds itself in. Isn t it long overdue, especially now that new people are coming through, that we demand a regime change away the former administrators of the current animal rights movement, even though the media still churns out the same names as the radicals of the movement.

GY: PETA and HSUS are a hindrance to the animal liberation movement. Their endless compromises, persistent shenanigans and myopic tactics do NOT bring animals closer to freedom. I am tired of being silent about it. As long as PETA and HSUS exist, animals will remain enslaved by the billion. Ingrid Newkirk needs to be wiped off the face of the Earth right along with every other person who DIRECTLY murders animals with premeditation. Newkirk, a serial cat killer, goes out of her way to trap homeless, healthy cats in the Norfolk, Virginia area and then kills them in a shed located on the grounds of PETA s Norfolk headquarters. She has maniacally deified herself as the supreme arbiter of life and death, and convinced her clique that all homeless cats and dogs should be murdered.

Newkirk rationalizes her psychosis by claiming that if the animals die then they are no longer suffering. Everyone understands that dead animals and humans no longer suffer. But that approach is akin to America s invasion of Iraq. U.S. mercenaries continue to kill tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians all the while proclaiming that Iraqis won t be suffering anymore under the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein. Rational people want to end the pain and suffering that animals endure, and eradicate dictators like Saddam and his sons Uday and Qusay. However, killing innocent civilians in Iraq, and murdering homeless animals by preemptively assuming that one day they might suffer, or believing that they suffer without human companionship, is insanely delusional. If this movement rightfully condemns the meat and dairy industries for murdering cows and chickens, then this movement has to condemn PETA for the murder of homeless dogs and cats.

Sadly, I see no difference between Newkirk and a hunter like Ted Nugent, or a slaughterhouse designer like Temple Grandin. They all prey on innocent creatures. They all rationalize their homicidal acts with diabolical excuses. They are one and the same; skulking serial killers who wouldn t know the meanings of honesty, compassion or decency if Noah Webster came back from the dead and bit them on their asses. Newkirk has turned PETA into an efficient killing machine mirroring the companies like Neiman Marcus or HLS she claims to despise. Furthermore, under Newkirk s guidance, she has single-handedly turned the animal liberation movement into a mockery with her naked women campaigns and cartoon-costumed protests. And when rational vegans condemn PETA s irrational approach, Newkirk tries to fool everyone with trite lines about animals suffering without PETA or animals suffering from infighting in the movement. Those aforementioned comments are deceptive and only allow PETA to continue on its course of destruction.

Doing some good while intentionally doing bad is neither acceptable nor beneficial. Each person or group must always do good. You can make mistakes along the way, and rectify them wherever possible. Any sincere, well-meaning person might bring the circus placards to the vivisection protest, or misspell someone s name in an op-ed piece. Similarly, having once thought otherwise, people can come to realize that they should be focusing their efforts on education instead of lobbying, and finally understand that breaking laws is actually a valuable tactic to achieving liberation. But killing homeless animals by the thousand is more than a mistake. It is serial murder.

As for HSUS, they are just as destructive as PETA. Besides Wayne Pacelle s 300,000 annual salary as the new head honcho of HSUS, his obsession with lawmaking is a waste of time. He loves to cite examples about the value of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 19th Amendment of 1920 that gave women the right to vote. But he doesn t understand that these laws were only approved BECAUSE of all the violent and nonviolent protests, and because people took the issue of inequality to the streets FIRST. It was the culmination of violent and nonviolent protests, countless acts of civil disobedience, and thousands of marches that created WIDESPREAD, MASSIVE support for the laws to be passed and, most importantly, enforced. Pacelle wants to jump the gun and pass laws even though society doesn t understand the immorality of speciesism. It s all fucking backwards.

I will not deny that a few people have been prosecuted with anti-cruelty legislation, but no one has ever been prosecuted for any SERIOUS atrocities against the billions of animals killed in slaughterhouses or research labs. There are no Saddam Husseins on trial for the mass murder of animals. If anti-cruelty laws were effective, then everyone at a Smithfield slaughterhouse would be arrested and jailed. Every vivisectionist at HLS would be arrested and imprisoned for life.

Furthermore, what s the point of punishing someone after the fact anyway. It s only revenge. Don t misconstrue what I am saying. I enjoy revenge as much as the next person, but I want to get to a point where there s no revenge. Revenge becomes unnecessary when there is no wrongdoing in the first place. This is where we need to be. There will always be people who have no morals and no conscience and who will commit heinous acts like Nugent and Newkirk, and we need to be vengeful with these serial killers. But we have to enlighten the masses first via education, direct action, civil disobedience, and violent and nonviolent activism, in order to eradicate the majority of the killings. We can t seek to prosecute a few psychos who punch dogs in the face at vivisection torture-houses while billions of animals are being massacred for sandwiches, and billions of humans are mindlessly taking part in the massacre. If we opened people s eyes with education or violent force, then that would reduce the murders and be a BIGGER victory than any paltry law the HSUS got passed.

CV: It can be argued that the Humane Meat Movement led by Newkirk s PETA and Pacelle s HSUS has a case to answer in that the Humane Meat Movement, running along side the Animal Rights Movement is doing far more damage than what introducing violence into the AR Movement ever will.

GY: As ethical vegans, it s logical for us to proclaim that the only nice slaughterhouse is an empty slaughterhouse. This statement, however, is often challenged by those who believe that baby steps and compromise are the only ways to move forward. It is my belief that baby steps and compromise prevent any forward movement whatsoever. These tactics actually allow people to continue the killing with a clearer conscience. For example, in 2000 the state of Florida banned the use of gestation crates for sows. Florida, however, did NOT ban the abuse of pigs, the murder of pigs or the consumption of pig flesh. They removed one piece of torture, which is akin to asking a slave-owner 200 years ago not to rape female slaves on Sundays, nor beat male slaves on Fridays. The slavery problem would not have been solved if people spent their time asking for absurd baby-step concessions. The murder of pigs will not be solved by asking the murderers to no longer confine the females in gestation crates. People in Florida have a mistaken belief that pigs are no longer being abused because crates have been banned; therefore, it is okay to eat pork chops and ham.

When we deny every animal s inherent right to fly, swim and run freely via compromise and concession, we are being cruel and dishonest, because no animal would choose to be enslaved and killed. Many people who purport to care for animals rarely apply empathy to examine the issue from the animals point of view. Empathy allows people to understand an injustice without over-analyzing the issue, especially when those in power deem the victims unworthy and expendable, something Hussein, GW Bush, slave-owners, meat-eaters, and organizations like PETA and HSUS have all done to their respective victims.

In the book DOMINION, Matthew Scully explained that people have a choice to be radically kind or radically cruel. This illuminates the hypocrisy of the meat-eating animal welfare movement, which seeks to regulate the enslavement and killing of billions of animals via humane slaughter laws. By definition alone, slaughter is radically cruel. Therefore, it can never be humane. Taking an animal s life for profit or preference is a crime. Killing nicely does not exonerate a killer from the killing. Buying meat, milk or eggs from organic or free-range farms doesn t exonerate the consumer from complicity either. From the animal s point of view, the killer and the consumer are one and the same.

Fortunately, de-programming the perfunctory ways of meat-eaters is possible. During my annual vegan lecture tour 250 talks for 10,000 carnivores in college classrooms, thousands of people convert to veganism, vegetarianism or significantly reduce their meat, cheese, milk and egg intake. Reduction and abolition are the only options to ending a massacre. Regulating torture, abuse and murder does not reduce nor eliminate torture, abuse and murder. Regulations are an explicit stamp of approval to let the carnage continue unabated because compassionate ways of enslaving and killing billions of animals do not exist.

CV: In SATYA still waiting for that hard question from them March 05 article titled A Whole New Alternative Compassionate Meat At Whole Food Prices, Bruce Friedrich from PETA had the sheer nerve to say PETA we re trying to ensure that farmed animals are treated as well as dogs or cats until they re killed. First of all PETA kills pound animals cats and dogs and secondly I don t want Bruce Friedrich speaking on my behalf since there s a presumption even today that PETA is the voice of the international animal rights movement. What are your views Gary.

GY: It s a damn shame that PETA has become synonymous with the phrase animal rightsin the same way Kleenex has become synonymous with the word tissue or Levi s with the word jeans. PETA does not and should not represent the animal rights movement. They are an absolute embarrassment. They have become a destructive enterprise that murders dogs and cats, praises animal killers like slaughterhouse designer Temple Grandin, exploits and degrades women in disgraceful and ineffective naked campaigns, and believes that revolutions can be won in the boardroom instead of realizing that revolutions are only won in the classroom, on the street corner or in the jailhouse. PETA has turned itself into a corporation like the environmental corporation that Greenpeace has become, and the civil rights corporation that is the NAACP. All three groups used to be hungry for progress, and used to demand change, and never back down nor compromise. However, they all decided along the way to focus their crosshairs on wallets and purses instead of scumbags who commit injustice.

CV: Where s the cavalry. I mean where s the cavalry for the weak, the disabled, the innocent and the defenseless and why did it never arrive in the animal rights movement.

GY: Apathy, consumerism and complacency are powerful opiates. Even those who care enough to adopt a vegan lifestyle continue to selfishly love their jobs, houses and cars so much that they refuse to risk their freedom for those who have none. This is why there have been so few Gandhis, Malcolm X s and Cesar Chavez s. It s not that they were superhumans who possessed magical powers. They were simple humans who were determined to eradicate injustice at any cost. We all have the capacity to be a Gandhi, an X or a Chavez. We simply have to let go of that disgusting trait of selfishness and walk the talk. Be the epitome of altruism. Gurdjieff, the Great Russian Seeker of Truth, explained that life is the payment of promissory notes one makes while in a waking sleep. He said that humans spend the majority of life going through the motions, making promises marriage, employment that they never intended nor wanted, and then suffering from the burden of fulfilling those unintended commitments. Commitments to our jobs, our homes, to our spouses and family members are ignoble. The only commitment should be to justice by any means necessary.

CV: Has there been a deliberate ploy to dumb down Americans since the 1970 s. Take the media s analysis on Iraq for example. Anyone who resists Amerikan foreign policy is a terrorist as are animal rights activists within Amerika. And now the US has a president who embodies this overly simplistic analysis. Your comments on the current political state in the US today.

GY: The USA defines the word imperialism. GW Bush commits evil acts, such as lying and murdering, on a daily basis. But what s even scarier than Bush s iniquity is that 58,000,000 Americans voted him into office. Sometimes I am not sure if I am more embarrassed to be human or more embarrassed to be an American. Americans have been turned into walking zombies via religion, government, schools and the media. Buy this product or go to this university and you ll be happy. Wear this cologne and you ll get laid. Eat these dead animals and you ll be a man. Believe in this invisible being in the sky, and you ll go to a pretty place after you die. Sometimes I think that the only effective and productive method of destroying speciesism would be for each uncaring human to be forced to live the life of a cow on a feedlot, or a monkey in a laboratory, or an elephant in the circus, or a bull in a rodeo, or a mink on a fur farm. Then people would be awakened from their soporific states and finally understand the horrors that are inflicted on the animal kingdom by the vilest species to ever roam this planet: the human animal.

Deep down, I truly hope that oppression, torture and murder return to each uncaring human tenfold. I hope that fathers accidentally shoot their sons on hunting excursions, while carnivores suffer heart attacks that kill them slowly. Every woman ensconced in fur should endure a rape so vicious that it scars them forever. While every man entrenched in fur should suffer an anal raping so horrific that they become disemboweled. Every rodeo cowboy and matador should be gored to death, while circus abusers are trampled by elephants and mauled by tigers. And, lastly, may irony shine its esoteric head in the form of animal researchers catching debilitating diseases and painfully withering away because research dollars that could have been used to treat them was wasted on the barbaric, unscientific practice of vivisection.

CV: Is not the problem the age old problem where the real crime and criminal activity lies in complicity and the silence of the by-standers, vegan or not.

GY: The hate that humans have towards animals is matchless. It is impossible to overcome with compromise or entreaty. It is so vicious, aseptic and bitter that a thousand peaceful Gods and Goddesses couldn t eradicate it. This is why corporations like PETA and HSUS must be destroyed. And why their naked women campaigns and inane cartoon costumes must be stopped. This is why violence must be employed at some point, in association with education and civil disobedience and direct action. And this is why we must not love the enemies of animals. I firmly believe in trying to educate and deprogram the direct killers of animals the vivisectionists, the hunters, the slaughterhouse workers, the CEOs of every company in the meat, dairy and egg industries and the indirect killers of animals meat-eaters. However, when education and civil disobedience and protests do not work, actions have to be stepped up.

The callousness of the human species cannot be solely washed away with a leaflet and an op-ed piece. Humans need to be kicked off their pyramid of domination. As activists, we should realize that we work for the animals and the animals alone. We should NEVER seek human approval nor human adoration. We should care less about sanctimonious verbigeration vomited out from judges, prosecutors, police officers, media outlets and politicians. We should take action, and MAKE justice reign. We should not wait for change. We should not ask for change. And we should not beg for freedom. It must be demanded.

CV: How can total animal liberation occur without bloodshed and should the movement not turn away from this indisputable fact but instead accept it, if one is serious about engaging in the fight for animal liberation.

GY: Since the majority of people are closed-minded, rude, incoherent, incognizant and just plain mean, and since logic and compassion can not solely deprogram and educate the masses, it is time to resort to powerful tactics that make them understand. I ve said it before and I ll say it again: Love does not solely conquer hate, reason does not solely conquer ignorance or flat-out stupidity, and compassion cannot always eradicate institutionalized violence. Any thoughts disputing the latter are only textbook fantasies. The majority of Gandhi s followers rioted in the streets, killed British soldiers of oppression and routinely set fires. The Black Panthers and Malcolm X s BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY brand of activism were integral to the civil rights struggle. Vitriol was rampant. Even MLK s pacifist followers chose to riot and set fires in the streets after his assassination. So much for pacifism in the times of heated moments, huh. I am only bringing up these examples because so many people in the AR movement are naïve when it comes to substantive change. Power concedes nothing without demand. And unethical people don t always change their unethical ways with a smile and a dose of logic.

CV: Can you talk about your work on going into schools and talking about veganism.

GY: The ADAPTT Lecture Tour page of my website, www.adaptt.org, discusses my vegan education tour in detail.

About Yourofsky s Dissociation from PETA

In November 2005, PETA s decision to withdraw funding for Gary s lecture tour provoked a firestorm of letters to PETA and Gary. The letters vehemently criticized PETA s decision, and offered words of support for Gary s future endeavors. Click here to read the entire collection of letters.

Another Activist Speaks Out Against HSUS

In August 2008 Dr. Steve Best, philosophy professor at UTEP and author of several books, including Terrorists or Freedom Fighters. Reflections on the Liberation of Animals, posted an article in which he exposes HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle as a traitor to the animals and an enemy of the animal rights movement. Click the link at right to read Agent Wayne Pacelle, the Hypocrisy Society of the United States, and the Thrill Kill Cult. Also see Best s essays The Humane Society Crosses the Line and The Iron Cage of Movement Bureaucracy.

Fur, Liberations, and the ALF

The following essay is included in the book Terrorists or Freedom Fighters. Reflections on the Liberation of Animals, edited by Dr. Steven Best Philosophy Professor at UTEP and Anthony Nocella. To order the book, go to www.LanternBooks.com. To read more about Best, Nocella and the ALF go to www.drstevebest.org.

Abolition, Liberation, Freedom. Coming to a Fur Farm Near You.

For weeks after the events of 9-11, I was transfixed by the news media. CNN, MSNBC, FOX-News, The Today Show, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Brian Williams. Report after report. Image after image. The collision. The fireball. The smoke. The collapse. The rubble. The debris. Ground zero. The panic. The response.

As a national lecturer on animal rights, and one of the country s most outspoken animal liberationists, I believe I speak for the entire movement when I tell you that we have the utmost empathy for every innocent victim of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. We mourn human tragedy as much as animal tragedy. The notion that animal rights activists are anti human is an outrageous lie.

We choose to be activists for other species because billions of innocent animals are murdered without so much as a disquieting tinge of guilt from the masses. We are vegans because we realize that violence and hatred must be destroyed at its root, in our everyday habits of consumption.

Missed Opportunities

Shortly after the 9-11 attacks, my faith in humanity was restored temporarily because I witnessed such an outpouring of love, empathy, compassion, and community. The world was condemning evil and the taking of innocent lives. In our unity to find the perpetrators, I wondered if we would understand that murdering any living being was wrong. I hoped that, by a collective awakening to compassion, the terror that humans inflict upon innocent animals for food, clothing, sport, entertainment, and research would end or at least abate.

In a moment of optimistic speculation, I pondered whether the camouflaged-hunters lurking on American soil, skulking in the distance with guns and bows, waiting to terrorize and kill more than 200 million innocent animals annually might throw their weapons to the ground.

Would the animal researchers who terrorize 50 million dogs, cats, primates and mice annually in vivisection procedures have a revelation. The March of Dimes experimenters who sew shut the eyes of kittens and ferrets to see if blindness affects their brains would surely stop their barbaric acts of terrorism.

After the 9-11 bombardment, the researchers at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center who electro-ejaculate primates in order to obtain sperm for their breeding colonies would make the connection now. Surely, the animal research community was going to be arrested and charged with acts of terrorism.

Would terrorist fur-farmers and trappers be sent to prison for breaking the necks of mink, anally electrocuting foxes, genitally electrocuting chinchillas and catching wild animals in steel jaw leghold traps.

Would humankind realize that animals do not want to be our food, clothing, entertainment and research specimens. Would we finally understand the words of British Bishop William Inge when he said that if animals ever formulated an organized religion, the devil would be depicted in human form. And would we finally seek to change that image.

Would Gandhi s immortal words of peace The life of a lamb is no less precious than that of human be recited at every school across America.

But not a damn thing changed in human attitudes toward fellow animal species. The routine violence of human customs was swept even further under the rug. The repetitive talk of people revolting against evil sickened me because it was clearly hypocritical and deceitful.

Shamefully, it seems that the hatred that humans have towards nonhumans is so vicious, bitter and entrenched, that a thousand peaceful Gods and Goddesses couldn t eradicate it. For that brief moment, though, I saw a glimmer of hope. Reporters, civilians and government officials kept saying we will destroy the evil. Unfortunately, they were only referring to the evil people who disrupt the rest of society from performing its own evil deeds.

Each carnivore is responsible for the death and dismemberment of more than 3,000 land animals and thousands of marine animals throughout their lifetime. Annually, in the US alone, over 10 billion cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys and other animals live in concentration camps. Within the first year of their pathetic lives, they re sent to killing-houses where knife-wielding terrorists slit their throats, drain their blood and dismember their bodies, all-too-often while the animals are still conscious and aware. Sadly, I realized that any lesson learned in the wake of 9-11 was not going to change that.

Path To Liberation

If people truly want to end terrorism, then they should discard animal flesh from refrigerators, toss bows and bullets into the trash, insist that universities close down their vivisection laboratories, demand that department stores close their fur salons, make circuses shift to only human performers, abolish the rodeo once and for all, and support the courageous ALF humanitarians who liberate animals from places of terror. People who yearn for a compassionate world should have nothing but praise for these amazing altruists. Otherwise, any talk of peace, civilization and justice will remain the most hypocritical rhetoric that has ever existed.

Remember, just because an act might be classified as illegal does not make it morally wrong. And just because an act is legal does not make it the best avenue for facilitating substantive change. Laws have always been broken by free-thinking, radical individuals who realize that it is impossible to make progressive changes within a corrupt, discriminatory system.

Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau and Jesus, to name a few, were routine, radical law-breakers who went to jail many times for disobeying unjust laws. We see them as heroes today, but in their time they were considered by many to be law-breakers, villains and radicals. Radical has a negative connotation in society today. However it is simply the Latin word meaning root, and what radicals do is to bypass pseudo-solutions and get to the root of a problem. Everyone should realize that all social justice activists were considered radical in their time. It is only after social justice activists die and society begins to evolve and comprehend their actions that the radical is placed on a pedestal and embraced. Without question, ALF liberations are akin to Harriet Tubman and The Underground Railroad which assisted in the liberation of blacks from white slave-owners. In fact, a wise ALF adage from an unknown individual states: If we are trespassing, then so were the American soldiers who broke down the gates of Hitler s death camps. If we are thieves, then so were the members of The Underground Railroad who freed the slaves from the South. And if we are vandals, then so were those who destroyed forever the gas chambers of Buchanwald and Auschwitz.

One must understand that ALF raids have two goals; giving enslaved animals a chance at freedom and causing major economic damage. As a movement, we must stop living in fantasyland by believing that those directly involved in torturing and murdering animals, and profiting handsomely from it, will listen to reason, common sense and moral truth. The vast majority will not. If they did, there wouldn t be an animal liberation movement because they would have understood the cruelty of their ways by now and adopted a