Terrorizing Animals and Children: How Low Will They Go?

[Guest guest]

http://thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/terrorizing-animals-and-children-how-low-will-they-go/Terrorizing Animals and Children: How Low Will They Go?Posted by thomaspainescorner on May 10, 2010PhotobucketBy Jason Miller5/10/10Several months ago, one of my allies and I disagreed on a very fundamental issue. They supported leafleting the school of a vivisector’s child with specific information about the vivisector and their heinous acts. I told them that I would not support a tactic that impacted children, regardless of how reprehensible their parents were.Ironically, or perhaps not, nonhuman animal exploiters have stepped across the line that I said I wouldn’t. No strike that. They ran and took a flying leap across it. While I took the very reserved position of refusing to support shaming

a child in front of his peers due to their parent’s moral primitivism, Negotiation is Over recently reported that “With freakish expressions etched into their soulless faces, pro-animal exploitation parasites launched a campaign against one dedicated activist, Ghazel Tajalli, and her 5-year-old daughter:â€PhotobucketChants included “Who’s daughter is a terrorist? Ghazal’s.â€PhotobucketClick this link for a complete accounting:http://negotiationisover.com/2010/05/09/call-to-our-community-to-respond-abusers-target-activists-child/While this perverse attack on a five year old child hasn’t persuaded me to withdraw my opposition to actions that adversely impact the children of nonhuman animal exploiters, as a parent, I feel a tremendous amount of ire and rage well up inside me when I view those photos and consider this situation.Attacking children is so far below the belt that even some of

the most aggressive activists won’t go there, including me. Yet apparently nonhuman animal exploiters hold little or nothing sacred. Which would, of course, account for the existence of factory farms, puppy mills, vivisection labs, sport and trophy hunting, tanneries, and fur farms.Those of us who are Animal Rights activists and proponents of social justice face marginalization, hatred, retaliation, intimidation, harassment, discrimination, arrest, and sometimes prison. Yet this is the first time I’ve seen retaliation directed at our children. To say that I am morally outraged would be putting it mildly.Our enemies, cowardly bullies that they are, thrive on hiding behind potent social, political, legal and economic forces that support their sick obsession with abusing animals AND they thrive on attacking the innocent, vulnerable, and ridiculously out-numbered, be they nonhuman animals, nonviolent Animal Rights activists, and now even

children. Hence, as I have done on a number of occasions through my platform on Thomas Paine’s Corner, social networking sites, and a number of other websites and publications, I am reiterating my agreement with fellow North American Animal Liberation Press Officer and ally, Dr. Jerry Vlasak, in his philosophical support of violent militant direct action as a potential tactic of our Movement:As our Movement gains momentum and pushes harder for our society and culture to finally allow nonhuman animals to enter our repulsively exclusive moral circle, nonhuman animal exploiters and law enforcement push back more forcefully and more viciously. At some point the fact that AR activists have to fend them off and deal with the frustration of the their recalcitrance, deceit, and irrational opposition to legitimate alternatives to nonhuman animal exploitation could lead to some ugly and tragic acts.Self defense and extensional self defense (a

concept developed by the preeminent AR philosopher, Dr. Steve Best) are two natural human responses to the Animal Holocaust’s systemic violence of nearly immeasurable proportions. Thus far, members of the AR Movement have held those responses in check admirably.Let’s hope the AR Movement can stop this 10,000 year holocaust without shedding human blood. But if it happens, you won’t see me shedding any tears.[Jason Miller, the Senior Editor and Founder of TPC, is a tenacious vegan abolitionist and animal rights activist who lives in Kansas. He has a boundless passion for animal liberation and anti-capitalism. Addicted to reading and learning, he is mostly an autodidact, but he studied liberal arts and philosophy at the University of Missouri Kansas City. In early 2005, he founded the widely read radical blog, Thomas Paine’s Corner. Jason is an accomplished, prolific essayist and his writings on social and political issues

have appeared on hundreds of alternative media websites over the last few years. He is a press officer for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, an editor for The Right to Have and Arm Bears and Canine Crusaders, and the founder of Bite Club of KC, a grassroots animal rights activist group which he started in Kansas City in 2009 and through which he and his allies give animal exploiters some serious hell. You can reach him at willpowerful]