Animal Liberation Front: Complete Diary of Actions, the First 30 Years

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On May 3, 2011, two Los Angeles-based animal rights extremist cells falsely claimed that letters, each containing "a dangerous present," had been sent the previous week to Edythe London, a UCLA scientist, and Joaquin Fuster, a retired UCLA scientist. The hoax was claimed jointly by the "Justice Department," a group that has mailed contaminated razor blades to animal researchers at other U.S. universities and injured several people using letter-bombs in the 1990s, and the Animal Liberation Brigade (ALB), which claimed responsibility for setting off pipe bombs at the offices of two companies tied to animal testing in 2003. Both are offshoots of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), the most active extreme animal rights movement in the country. Some forms of animal treatment, Singer tells us, have improved somewhat. Certain countries began to better regulate animal research as the animal rights movement gained steam in the 1980s. In response to activism and changes in public sentiment, the European Union banned testing of cosmetics on animals, and the US National Institutes of Health ended its support for harmful research on chimpanzees. The direct action or militant faction includes in its activities property damage, animal releases, intimidation, and direct violence, aiming to change society through force and fear. Animal rights actors often reject this faction, pointing to violence as a counterproductive tactic that invites repression (e.g., the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act) and does not economically or politically challenge extant systems. [5] [8] a b "Germany guarantees animal rights in constitution". Associated Press. 18 May 2002. Archived from the original on 23 September 2009 . Retrieved 26 June 2008.

Barbarash was an established figure on the extremist scene. He served four months in prison for releasing cats from a University of Alberta laboratory in 1992; in 1998, he and Canada-based activist Darren Thurston were charged in Vancouver with sending letters filled with razor blades to 22 hunting trip guides. The charges were later dropped because the prosecution did not want to jeopardize other investigations, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but the incident helped establish Barbarash's bona fides in the ALF subculture. The Animal Liberation Front is an animal rights group committed to ending the abuse of animals by carrying out direct action campaigns against the organizations they believe are the perpetrators of exploitation and cruelty. They believe that all animals have the right to live a life free of suffering and particularly target those who seek to exploit animals for financial gain.February 2005: Christopher McIntosh, a 22-year-old New Jersey man, was charged in U.S. District Court with setting a fire on the roof of a McDonald's near the Space Needle in Seattle in January 2003. The FBI apprehended McIntosh after identifying his fingerprints on a spray-paint can left at the scene. McIntosh also allegedly left a message on a Seattle arson hot-line, saying, "There was an ELF ALF hit at McDonald's across from the Space Needle."

The movement is no longer viewed as hovering on the fringe. [21] In the 1980s and 1990s, it was joined by a wide variety of academics and professionals, including lawyers, physicians, psychologists, veterinarians, and former vivisectionists, [17] Singer claims that a position like his, which appeals only to rational argument, is both sturdier and more persuasive than arguments that admit some role for human sensitivity. Some philosophers, however, deny that moral reason can be so radically distanced from feeling. Indeed, arguably part of the persuasive effect of Animal Liberation Now is the combination of careful logic and language that, although restrained, is not without feeling.

Philosophical disputes

It's had effects around the margins, of course, but they have mostly been minor. When I wrote it, I really thought the book would change the world. I know it sounds a little grand now, but at the time the sixties still existed for us. It looked as if real changes were possible, and I let myself believe that this would be one of them. All you have to do is walk around the corner to McDonald's to see how successful I have been. [9] There is a growing trend in the American movement towards devoting all resources to vegetarian outreach. The 9.8 billion animals killed there for food every year far exceeds the number of animals used in other ways. Groups such as Vegan Outreach and Compassion Over Killing devote their time to exposing factory-farming practices by publishing information for consumers and by organizing undercover investigations.

University of Iowa (UI), November 2004: ALF took credit for pouring acid on research documents, destroying computers and removing more than 400 animals. In the communiqué released afterwards, ALF described the act as "a methodical effort to cripple the UI psychology department's animal research. ALF also sent copies of the video tape of the incident to the FBI and media. The movement aims to include animals in the moral community by putting the basic interests of non-human animals on an equal footing with the basic interests of human beings. A basic interest would be, for example, not being made to suffer pain on behalf of other individual human or non-human animals. The aim is to remove animals from the sphere of property and to award them personhood; that is, to see them awarded legal rights to protect their basic interests.

Other objections

On June 3, 2008, ALF claimed responsibility for the firebombing of a UCLA commuter van parked overnight in a park-and-ride lot in Irvine. Since then, several other vans have been vandalized and stolen by various groups targeting UCLA. The contemporary movement is regarded as having been founded in the UK in the early 1970s by a group of Oxford university post-graduate philosophy students, now known as the " Oxford Group". [10] The group was led by Rosalind and Stanley Godlovitch, graduate students of philosophy who had recently become vegetarians. The Godlovitches met John Harris and David Wood, also philosophy graduates, who were soon persuaded of the arguments in favour of animal rights and themselves became vegetarian. The group began to actively raise the issue with pre-eminent Oxford moral philosophers, including Professor Richard Hare, both personally and in lectures. Their approach was based not on sentimentality ("kindness to dumb animals"), but on the moral rights of animals. They soon developed (and borrowed) a range of powerful arguments in support of their views, so that Oxford clinical psychologist Richard Ryder, who was shortly to become part of the group, writes that "rarely has a cause been so rationally argued and so intellectually well armed." [11] [12] Wood, Robert T. (1999). "Nailed to the X: A Lyrical History of Straightedge". Journal of Youth Studies. 2 (2): 133–151. doi: 10.1080/13676261.1999.10593032.