This is scary. Really.

[Donf]

Took 4 days to help a buddy and spent some time with the youngest fruit of my loins.
Now this kid is a vegan out of a cruelty to animals perspective rather than for an supposed health reasons. Rescues feral cats, carries cat/dog food in his car incase he sees a hungry stray. outraged at the whole Cecil thing. So I see a stack of magazines on a bookcase and, just looking at the covers, am shocked to see that he has seemingly become a radical jihadist! But no, these magazines are printed by the Animal Liberation Front (yeah, ALF - what were they thinking). You don't subscribe - you just send cash (only) and they send a magazine. All very semi anonymous (addresses guys!) . Now what they do is animal activism - basically stealing laboratory animals or feed animals, or God only knows what else. The have a monthly list of the crimes the have committed worldwide in every issue(and yeas - they're almost universally criminal)

here are some pictures I found of these folks, same one in the magazine. They NEVER show their faces Would you want to look like this? Personally, they kinda scare me.


(version I should have posted - sorry for the cruder one)


British reporter Graham Hall, who in 1998 infiltrated a British cell of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF—see 1976) with a hidden camera and captured footage of ALF’s British spokesman Robin Webb giving a bomb-making manual to activists and suggesting a target, is abducted, apparently by ALF members. They blindfold Hall and threaten to kill him, then brand the letters ALF on his back before throwing him out of a van onto a deserted road.

[thewalrus]

I have a good deal of respect for Activists and Protesters who put themselves at risk for their ideals (even if I may not fully agree with those ideals). I especially respect people who will put themselves in harms way to protect animals who are incapable of protecting themselves.

I have no respect, at all, for people who try to advocate for their own personal believes by harming others, or putting others at risk (these guys for instance...people who spike trees, destroy equipment, and so on). They're as despicable as all terrorists.

[Donf]

I guess i aleays thought it was a few nutjobs spraying paint on fur coats. But they seem so far gone that they have lost touch with reality .


Notice that their "action" is almost entirely destructive rather than actually freeing animals.

[Raza]

The ALF is a terrorist organization, which has burned vehicles and equipment in the past.

EDIT: Whoops, apparently I was thinking of ELF. They're the ones that burned those Hummers, not the ALF.

[Jeannie]

Extremists of any sort are always disturbing.

Jeannie

[CanadianStraps]

[Raza]

Have you thought about secretly sneaking meat into your kid's food? I remember in a TV show, in order to make a veggie burger taste better, a chef used beef broth. He was boycotted and framed for murder, but I got a kick out of it. Secretly feeding meat to vegetarians.

Once he gets a taste for it, I'm sure he'll turn right back around.

[Matt]

I have a friend who works for a company that tests drugs. Until a few years ago they would do the first live trials, testing for toxicity and interesting side effects, on animals. Now courtesy of the pressure from the anti vivisection lobby and the spiralling costs associated with action by people like the ALF they now do these trials in the third world on people, offering pay, pensions and life insurance to those desperate enough to take them. I'm honestly not sure who I'm more angry with.

The bottom line is that anyone, anyone at all, who wants to change the world, in any way, through violence and thinks that the ends, especially ends in the far future 'when their actions have changed the whole world' justify means, should start with themselves, because the world will always be better off without them.

In fact, the idea that there is some overriding good, whatever it may be, that justifies any action, is one of the few ways that decent people can be turned into the sort of evil that it usually takes a childhood of physical or psychological abuse to achieve. Gandhi nailed it when he said 'in this cause I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill'. I read that this way: there are plenty of causes that are worth fighting for, worth dying for, but if that fight involves giving up respect for the lives of others, in fact just respect for others, then it's a fight you have already lost, although perhaps not in the way you thought.

Obviously there are times when there is an evil so terrible that it needs to be fought, but even there, the world religions, who have a world of experience of trying very hard to be decent while in service of a good they see as overriding, have some very helpful rules to try to avoid becoming the thing they oppose. The rules of Just War and Jihad for a start, are designed to allow evil to be fought without becoming evil. If only people who claim to be Muslim or Christian ever bothered following their own bloody rules the world would be an infinitely better place. If people like the ALF followed them, then not only would they stop being evil, they might do some good.

[geoffbot]

My wife went to a dog meat protest the other day - huge banner depicting horrible dog torture (which is what she disagrees with as opposed to the eating of them per se) and tanoy. She definitely has it in her to set fire to an animal testing lab...

[Perseus]

Have you thought about secretly sneaking meat into your kid's food? I remember in a TV show, in order to make a veggie burger taste better, a chef used beef broth. He was boycotted and framed for murder, but I got a kick out of it. Secretly feeding meat to vegetarians.

Once he gets a taste for it, I'm sure he'll turn right back around.

Ha ha. That reminds me of a Seinfeld episode where George puts lobster (which isn't kosher) into scrambled eggs to get revenge.