Vandals Are Just Vandals

In the news, a group of environmental vandals who I haven't heard of before in Tucson Arizona. They have been cementing locks and water valves and slashing tires. They are targeting researchers who work for the University of Arizona and for a copper-mining company. These are terrorist acts. Even at that relatively low level of destruction the vandalism is intended to make people afraid to go to work and live their lives. These acts cost people money that they can't afford to spend even if they're getting a relatively good salary. They physically prevent people from going to work.

They also express total contempt for the law that they want to use to protect the environment. The fact is that it is still legal to experiment on monkeys and it is still legal to do research for a copper mining company. If being legal means anything it should mean that a researcher, a farmer, or a pet owner should be safe from harassment and property destruction. The point of a terrorist act is to show people that they are never safe from the judgment of the terrorist.

Whose judgement are we talking about? Some gang of young adults who may have read a few books, attended lectures on how to firebomb your neighbor's car, who have been exposed to PETA's propaganda in school, who are angry at the world because they didn't do well in school, or who just like to break stuff. We already know these people. It wouldn't be acceptable if these acts were masterminded by pillars of the community. It's just a little bit worse when your local environmental parasites are the same kids who steal your purse out of your car for drug and booze money. Their own report on their actions is laced with childish profanity.

The HSUS hired an environmental terrorist as their expert on dogfighting. John "J. P." Goodwin is a "former member of the A.L.F." as if there is such a thing as a former terrorist. I have no reason to believe that he respects the law now, or that his employers do, what with their fraudulent use of Michael Vick's dogs to gather money or their fraudulent gathering of money for Katrina victims. He spent time in jail for vandalism of fur farms and has taught people how to burn down buildings and cars.

The hiring of John Goodwin sends a similar message: The HSUS will not respect the law that they want to use against owners of animals. They hired a vandal and that sends the message that they will vandalize commercial breeders, farms, and other industries that use animal products. The law can be used to vandalize just as effectively as a gasoline bomb. Just forcing meat producers to change out all their equipment costs them a lot of money and hands an advantage to new operations. Any operation that was in compliance with the law before may lose the protection that compliance entitled them to. Staged videos and photographs, which might actually be filmed somewhere else, can also be used against facilities that lack the ability to prove their innocence.

The HSUS obviously condones vandalism against legal owners or John Goodwin would never have been hired. It's also true that his hiring is used by them to get a lot of us to focus on Goodwin and to say things like "HSUS is a terrorist organization." But we still have this problem. The HSUS gave a convicted criminal a cushy job for his work for the Animal Liberation Front, an organization that just took credit for setting a zoo and its animals on fire in Turin, Italy.

I really can't see the HSUS's actions as anything but an extension of animal rights vandalism and terrorism, any place, any time, any excuse.