Saving Private Bambi

By   |  January 17, 2009

As we’ve seen from recent world events, extremist ideologies never lead to or create anything good.  The mantra “everything in moderation” applies to more than just food, sweets, and booze these days; taking an idea too far can poison a mind. Most notable are radical interpretations of religion.  It seems we’ll now have to add “animal rights” to that list as well.

In 2008, a number of University of California animal researchers have faced violent harassment from animal rights extremists ranging from verbal harassment to firebombings of their houses.  Seeing their propaganda campaign as failed, these extremists have taken to more extreme measures, as their label implies.  Taking a page from anti-abortion extremists, animal rights extremists have now decided to move beyond targeting mere research facilities to going after the researchers themselves. Not only that, they’ve also taken to going after the researchers’ families and homes, particularly in California.  This physical targeting of animal researchers, as with abortion clinic workers, is simplified by extremists posting the researchers’ personal information on radical websites, ones that instigate members to exact violent retribution and to intimidate animal researchers.

Oh, but it gets worse than that.

In accordance with the aforementioned tactics, animal rights extremists firebombed the homes of two UC Santa Cruz biologists last August.  In February, six masked extremists stormed into a UCSC researcher’s home in the middle of a children’s birthday party and assaulted her husband. And in January of 2008, a UCLA researcher’s home was firebombed as well.  Reports of harassment included 20 reports of damage to researchers’ homes.

I myself don’t know where these Greenpeacers-gone-wild see the solution in spreading what is by definition domestic terrorism among people they disagree with.  We should be glad that the animal rights activists on our own campus are so overpoweringly and maybe a little frighteningly friendly.

Once the UC officials decided enough was enough, they drafted a bill designed to stamp out this trend of terrorism by extending the same protections abortion clinic workers and elected officials enjoy to UC animal researchers.  The bill, known as AB 2296, was introduced by Democratic Assemblyman Gene Mullin of San Francisco on May 19, 2008.  It banned online posting of researchers’ and their families’ personal information and pictures, threatened offenders with up to a year of jail time, and fines up to $25,000.  It also made it easier to obtain restraining orders and craft lawsuits against those who incite or execute violence against animal researchers.

All in all, it was a fairly solid bill.  It floated through the Assembly on a cushy  76-0 vote until it bumped into Senate Judiciary Committee Chairwoman Ellen Corbett, another Democrat from San Leandro, who then proceeded to eviscerate the bill last August.  Corbett, apparently an animal rights extremist herself, labeled AB 2296 unacceptable and introduced a newer, hollower version.  This version of the bill no longer forbade online posting of researchers’ personal info or calls for violence against them and made restraining orders and civil lawsuits a near impossibility.  The only weapon in its arsenal against extremists was the allowance for trespassing charges to be filed against extremists who go to researchers’ homes, an embarrassing derringer compared to the anti-terrorism cannon of AB 2296. The penalties of the new bill ran as high as a knee-knocking $1,000 fine or– that’s ‘or’, not ‘and’– six months of jail time.

What followed was a barrage of media criticism from papers like the San Diego Union-Tribune and the San Jose Mercury-News bashing Senator Corbett for endangering the lives of UC researchers.  Corbett’s fellow lawmakers, as well as the head of the US Humane Society, also offered a substantial amount of scathing criticism of the California Senator.  It was apparent to anyone that a simple grand or half year in jail wouldn’t do jack-diddly to dissuade animal rights extremists from continuing their terror campaign. The media knew it, and they knew Corbett knew it.  After enough criticism, a bill more akin to the Assembly’s AB 2296 finally reappeared some months after Corbett’s destruction of it.

I always find these cases of human degeneration interesting.  I don’t just mean these animal rights extremists but our own Senator Ellen Corbett. It appalls and rather disconcerts me that there are still people in this modern Western day and age who will still forego the safety of other people simply to further their own personal (and usually violent and/or corrupt) agenda. As for the extremists– the ones who bombed researchers’ homes, assaulted their families, and stalked them– they’re no better than the nutty Islamic extremists who committed the recent Mumbai atrocity.  I believe in kindness to animals, sure, but I don’t give one good God damn if these people want to save Bambi from Alzheimer’s experiments.  Extremism, be it animal rights or religious, is pure destruction.  Firebombing researchers’ houses and terrorizing their families is not the way to do it and it’s not going to help any animals.  It’s just going to make you look bad and turn you into the butt of lame jokes written up by journalists like me.  If you want change, you take it to the political lobbies like we as a human race have evolved and learned to do so you don’t set us back five hundred years.  I see little difference between extremists of any creed and the animals this particular group of extremists is trying to help.

~By Tinct

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4 Comments on “Saving Private Bambi”  (RSS)

  1. Sign…. good debate here… i felt sad for the kids …. but also for the animals…

  2. Good points, logic.

    Building on that: I have a dog myself. Golden retriever mutt. I love her very, very much and would visit horrible pain on anybody who raised a fist against her. It’s not just that these crazy hard-left wingers are hurting and terrorizing people in the name of rights for animals… it’s that they’re doing it at all. The reason doesn’t matter.

    We were given a horrible glimpse of extremism in its most extreme throes last November in Mumbai. A little research will reveal the same basic extremism has affected London, Britain, nearly all of the Middle East and most of the rest of Europe. Killing people, hurting people, or just scaring the bejesus of them is not a solution. It may have been one say, oh, about a thousand years ago. But humans and the human mind have evolved and developed since then. Extremism of any kind only creates more problems. Every time somebody turns to firebombing or kidnapping or beheading or good old fashioned murder as a tactic to push their own agenda, it sets the human race back to the medieval ages.

    We’re going way the hell back in time the way things are turning out these days.

  3. The simplest way of dealing with these people is to set up a web site of your own and call it something like, “Humans Against Psycotic Animal Lovers”, or whatever, and then post all of their names, addresses and telephone numbers. That way anyone who uses violent actions to defend animal rights might just get it returned in a like minded fashion, I wonder what Senator Ellen Corbett would have to say about that, maybe her details should be first on the list. Oh and to anyone who reads this, no I don’t believe in animal cruelty, nut if it is a choice between the lives of 100 rabbits or whatever vs the life of a child then sorry but the child comes first and frankly if truth be told most of these lunatics would be the same, unless of course they value a rabbit more than their own children.

  4. These terrorists, on behalf of animal-rights, consider themselves “humane” by attacking humans? Hey humanitarians, I’m going to beat my dog senseless IN PROTEST to your inhumane behaviour. My address is 3908 29th Street Vernon, BC (Canada). Come stop me, if you can get past my .303. That’s right, you heard me. I’ll use my .303 to show you REAL humane stuff… right up your humane-hole!
    Of course, my dog was born senseless (of course they’re senseless, they’re DOGS), so there’ll be no beatings… unless you chicken-fu-ummm-loving animal-rights prosterior-holes grow cahones large enough to actually pay me a visit, then you’ll see some terrorist-dogs get beat… but that’s it… so BRING IT!!!

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