Kevin Kjonaas
Photo/Amirali Raissnia
Posted on 07/23/2002 7:22:55 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
PHILADELPHIA Kevin Kjonaas shed no tears when three masked animal-rights activists beat Brian Cass with ax handles outside Cass' home. Cass' company tests pharmaceuticals on laboratory animals.
Nor was he moved on another occasion when assailants sprayed a caustic liquid in the face of Cass' colleague as he stepped out of his car at home, then beat him as he writhed on the pavement in pain, his wife and daughter watching from inside their house.
Kjonaas, 25, is a leader of a New Jersey-based animal-rights group that the FBI says has an "extensive" history of violence in the United States and abroad. Its aim is to shut down a chemical and pharmaceutical testing company called Huntingdon Life Sciences, which uses rats, mice, beagles and other animals in research at its labs in England and in East Millstone, N.J., just outside Princeton.
SHAC attacks
Kjonaas says that his group, called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), uses only legal means to pursue its goal, and that the violence is carried out by unknown activists moved by their passion for animal rights, which he says have been brutally abused by the company. But the group's Web site reports new acts of violence, publishes the names of Huntingdon executives, and urges activists to "go get 'em."
Since the campaign against Huntingdon began three years ago, activists have firebombed 11 cars in England, swarmed into offices, broken windows in executives' homes, sunk a private yacht on Long Island, and committed other acts of violence, according to police and the company.
They say opponents of the company were responsible for the attacks in England on Brian Cass, managing director of Huntingdon, and his colleague, who was temporarily blinded and declines to be identified because he fears for the safety of his family.
They have jammed a Huntingdon creditor's cash machines with glue, and harangued executives of Huntingdon and employees of companies that do business with Huntingdon with loudspeakers outside their homes in the early morning. No physical attacks have occurred in the United States, where the violence has been limited to property damage.
More than a half-dozen financial-service companies have said they will no longer deal with the company. The company's stock price has plummeted more than 90 percent, from a high of $15 a share in early 2000 to less than $1 recently.
Kjonaas makes no apologies.
"If a car being blown up in a driveway or animals being liberated from a lab scares them, then I would say that fear pales by comparison to the fear that the animals have every day," Kjonaas, of Somerset, N.J., said in an interview. "The kind of true violence that these animals endure at the hands of people at Huntingdon leaves me with little sympathy."
Escape to EnglandKjonaas, who declined to answer a federal grand jury's questions about destruction of labs in 1999 and then moved to England for two years rather than face a second grand jury, says he sympathizes with activists who smash windows and firebomb cars. He spoke favorably of David Blenkinsop, a British animal-rights activist serving a three-year prison sentence for beating Brian Cass in February 2001. Cass was treated for multiple bruises and a 3-inch gash in his scalp. Blenkinsop, an acquaintance of Kjonaas' in London who participated in SHAC demonstrations there, also was charged in April with arson in several car attacks.
"David is a very passionate person, and what he did was done with the best intentions," Kjonaas said. "I don't feel any sympathy for people in England or America who have had their cars tipped or torched, because those cars were paid for out of blood money."
SHAC's Web site (www.shac.net) not only publishes the names and home addresses of workers at Huntingdon, but of executives of companies that do business with Huntingdon. It has suggested types of actions that sympathizers might take, while offering the disclaimer that it supports only legal activities.
The FBI says SHAC is part of a larger animal-rights and environmental-protection movement employing pressure tactics to achieve its goals. While it has not labeled SHAC a terrorist group, the FBI has accused other groups, including the Animal Liberation Front, of using terroristic tactics.
The bureau says that violent animal-rights and environmental activists have accounted for hundreds of acts of violence since the early 1980s, resulting in $43 million in damage.
The FBI says that to date no SHAC members have been charged with federal crimes.
But the bureau says it is working to identify those who have committed acts of violence in the campaign against Huntingdon and that it will bring charges.
The group's members believe that ends justify any means, said Richard Michaelson, chief financial officer of Huntingdon Life Sciences Group P.L.C., parent of the New Jersey company.
The objective is to get Huntingdon to stop using animals in its tests of pharmaceuticals and other chemical compounds used largely in agriculture. SHAC says that pharmaceutical companies that wish to test their products can use computer models and cell cultures rather than animals. But the Food and Drug Administration rejects the views of SHAC and other animal-rights activists.
Please link for archival reference
I suggest that Huntingdon Life Sciences Group P.L.C move across the Deleware River...
Given the strident behavior of the extremists, my guess is one of them would ultimately catch a bullet. A few martyrs is a good thing IMHO!
Some activists set free some lab mice into the wild.
The mice had been the subject of disease experiments , and were carriers of highly contagious, dangerous diseases.
Fortunately, the mice were all accounted for and no human fatalities resulted, because
A. The mice were domesticated, and stayed near the lab, being unfit for survival in the wild, and
B. they were WHITE, which made them pretty easy to pick out, both by human captors and by any predators .
Kevin Kjonaas
Photo/Amirali Raissnia
He first got interested in animal rights in high school. During a class called "social justice issues," he decided to give up eating at McDonald's because he says the company encourages ecological destruction. That led to his disavowal of eating any kind of meat, which led to his interest in progressive authors like Noam Chomsky and Peter Singer.
What a surprise, that he's into such deep thinkers as Chomsky and Singer. Looking at that picture, I stand by my assessment on the other thread - "spoiled little white-bread suburbanite bastards"...
Nicely put. Notice how the lamp shade seems to fit his head like a metal helmet, reminiscent of other lamp shades and other metal helmets from the past.
A very popular outdoor sports ( hunting,fishing, boating ) columnist supposedly received heavy duty threats from an animal rights group.Then the tires on his car were flattened, and something was put into his radiator, which caused it to boil over with a brown, syrupy foam.
My relative happened to be working in the writer's office, and heard him discussing the matter on the phone. He told the other party he had just received a telephone threat, saying " You're next. "
A few days after this, the writer was dead. Police surmised he had lost his house key, and was reaching up, over the mantle, to get his spare; lost his balance, and fell head-first off the 2nd floor balcony,breaking his neck.
PLEASE KEEP IN MIND , I don't even know who the writer is/was; don't know whether he was reporting an actual threat to somebody, and most assuredly don't know the truth of his death. My relative did NOT contact the police-or anyone else about this-mostly because she felt the circumstances were too "shaky" to justify making a report this late in the day.
I mention it only in view of reports some of the "activists" have begun using violence against persons; and to caution those who may be exposed to harm. Do NOT Under-rate These Groups !
Bet they won't take the hypocrisy challenge: Swear they'll never take a medication or submit to a medical procedure that was tested on animals.
Right. "No vaccinations for me, thanks!"
I can see the headlines now - "Polio, Measles Epidemics Ravage Animal-Rights Groups"....
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