“We definitely did have plans to use violence against hunt people. But that got thwarted by our arrest … I remember seriously wanting to go along those lines.” In a chilling interview, Animal Liberation Front (ALF) miscreant John Curtin discusses burning buildings, raiding laboratories, desecrating graves, and plotting violence against people — all tactics in ALF’s vicious pursuit of animal rights. When asked if he ever received support from the above-ground “animal rights movement” while serving jail time for his crimes, Curtin responds: “The two are inseparable, really. [An] enormous amount of support … sometimes an embarrassing amount of support.”
America’s most notorious animal rights fugitive is still on the run from authorities. Daniel Andreas San Diego has been featured prominently on America’s Most Wanted and is sought in connection with the 2003 bombings of the Chiron and Shaklee Corporations in California. He is even accused of leaving a “secondary device,” timed to go off once fire and rescue workers arrived on the scene. San Diego allegedly targeted those companies because of their business ties with a laboratory that uses animals in pursuit of cures for AIDS, breast cancer, and Parkinson’s disease. According to the FBI, San Diego penned threatening emails directed at both companies under the moniker “Revolutionary Cells”:
A court-ordered search of San Diego’s apartment turned up several horrifying items, including ammonium nitrate and methyl ethyl ketone (the two chief ingredients in Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing); an empty handgun case; several boxes of Black Talon 9mm “cop killer” bullets; books on bombs, fire, and animal rights; ALF t-shirts; a book called “Joy of Revenge”; and copies of violence-oriented activist videos produced by PETA grantee Josh Harper.
Two years ago, animal rights activist Volkert Van der Graaf gunned down Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn just days before a scheduled election. The BBC reported at the time that he was “angered by Mr. Fortuyn’s stated plan to lift restrictions on fur farming if elected.”
Infamous Animal Liberation Front ringleader and convicted arsonist Rodney Coronado is another violent face of the animal rights movement. In 1995, Coronado was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison for the 1992 arson of a Michigan State University research laboratory. In a 2002 speech, Coronado openly confessed to at least six other arsons. Now Coronado conducts a sort of terrorist lecture circuit. Last year he demonstrated for a crowd of college radicals the “correct” way to build a firebomb out of household materials. Like John Curtin, Coronado also has “enormous” support from the animal rights movement. While the FBI was intensively investigating Coronado, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals gave him over $70,000 in outright grants and forgiven “loans” from its tax-exempt coffers.
Tonight at 10pm (all times zones) on the Showtime cable network, all this and more will come to light in a hilarious yet devastating half-hour documentary. “Penn and Teller: Bullsh*t” will debut its second season by shining a bright spotlight on People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The Center for Consumer Freedom is featured prominently in this groundbreaking series that “debunks popular shams and scams.”
Even PETA’s self-styled “total press sluts” would probably prefer to avoid this type of publicity. Especially when it exposes their own little scam, and the part it plays in America’s “ target=_blank>domestic terror” plague.
