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Justin Solondz, 32, was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to seven years in prison for his role in the 2001 arson at the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture. Damage in the fire was estimated at more than $6 million. Solondz pleaded guilty in December to charges of conspiracy and arson under a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, who agreed to recommend the seven-year prison sentence. The defense also sought a seven-year term. A former student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Solondz was arrested last July 6 in Chicago after his expulsion from China,...

Tre Arrow, enviro-nut Portland police today arrested Tre Arrow on an allegation of domestic-violence related fourth-degree assault. An officer arrested Arrow, 38, at 9:01 a.m. in the 5100 block of Northeast 28th Avenue. He was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center an hour later and is being held on $5,000 bail. Arrow is on the ballot as a candidate for Portland mayor. He became publicly known as the man who sat on a 9-inch window ledge for 11 days at the U.S. Forest Service's Portland headquarters in 2000. Arrow last month filed a prospective nominating petition with Portland's...

Is $26 million worth the reputation of a venerable, 1.4 million member environmental group ? The Sierra Club may be about to find out. the 120-year-old organization’s hushed financial marriage to the natural gas industry — and its just-as-secretive divorce — have left some long-time supporters feeling angry, betrayed or misled. The news cut especially deep for activists who have spent years fighting the spread of shale gas drilling in states like New York and Pennsylvania. The Sierra Club quietly accepted $26 million in donations from gas industry interests from 2007 to 2010 — years when the group’s national leaders...

COALINGA, Calif. – Animal rights activists are taking credit for setting fire to and destroying 14 cattle trucks at California’s largest beef producing, feeding and marketing ranches. The North American Animal Liberation press office posted an anonymous letter on its website from activists claiming full responsibility for the arson. “We were extremely pleased to see that all 14 trucks ‘were a total loss,’ with some being ‘completely melted to the ground,’” the statement reads. snip Casey told Foxnews.com that some of the trucks that were destroyed from the fire had sleeper units where truck drivers can sleep during off time,...

Animal rights activists are behind the burning of cattle trucks at the Harris Ranch truck lot early Sunday, according to a statement from the purported arsonists. The statement, released Monday, describes how the fire, which heavily damaged 14 tractors and several trailers, was set and says the attack was aimed at "the horrors of factory farming." Spokeswoman Nicoal R. Sheen of the Animal Liberation Press Office, which released the statement, said the office doesn't take part in illegal actions but distributes communiqués from those who do. Fresno County sheriff's spokesman Chris Curtice said detectives are looking into the claim. He...

The device that exploded inside a car in Lafayette on Saturday afternoon, sending a husband and wife to the hospital with serious burns, was inside a paper bag with the victims' names written... Lafayette police this morning issued a news release with fresh details of the crime, which remains under investigation. As of 8 a.m. today, no arrests had been made, although ... investigators were looking at a possible suspect. Allyson Stone, 44, and her husband, Christopher Stone, 59, walked out of their home at 337 Lodgewood Point just before 12:56 p.m. Saturday when they saw a package "described as...

Over the past decade, attacks and plots by homegrown US terrorists have increased, the work of extremists from across the political spectrum, says an analysis by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) based at the University of Maryland. Key finding from the analysis are published in the Global Terrorism Database and include: * Between 2000 and 2010 there were 213 terrorist attacks in the United States. Seventeen of these, including the four 9/11 attacks, were fatal. * Since Sept. 11, 2001, 32 people have been killed in terrorist attacks in the United States....

One of the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists, Daniel Andreas San Diego, may have been seen in Northampton, Mass., and the FBI is asking for the public's help in capturing him. The 33-year-old San Diego is an alleged animal rights extremist and is wanted in connection with two domestic bombing incidents that occurred in 2003.

SALT LAKE CITY — There was a lot of contention in federal court Thursday over whether Walter Bond rose to the level of a "serial arsonist." But U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart didn't seem that confused before sentencing the 35-year-old to more than seven years in prison — 12 considering that Stewart ordered the sentence to run consecutive with a five-year sentence handed down for arson in Colorado. "I will be the first to admit that I am a serial arsonist," the judge said, quoting something Bond wrote in February. "He does take pride (in what he's done). The court...

From the Center for Consumer Freedom: 7 Things You Didn't Know About HSUS 1) The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is a “humane society” in name only, since it doesn’t operate a single pet shelter or pet adoption facility anywhere in the United States. During 2006, HSUS contributed only 4.2 percent of its budget to organizations that operate hands-on dog and cat shelters. In reality, HSUS is a wealthy animal-rights lobbying organization (the largest and richest on earth) that agitates for the same goals as PETA and other radical groups. 2) Beginning on the day of NFL quarterback...

The Animal Liberation Front has claimed responsibility for Friday's fire attack at a hamburger restaurant in Gothenburg... In a posting on the animal rights activists website Bite Back Magazine, those allegedly responsible described how they smashed two windows with hammers at the burger restaurant at the Scandinavium Center, poured ten liters of petrol in and set it alight. The posting continued, “We were in a hurry as the sun had risen and it was light outside, so we threw the containers with written ALF-messages on them and some lighted matches into the restaurant and it went up in a big...

An animal rights activist who burned down a Colorado sheepskin store as well as a leather store and restaurant building in Salt Lake City, pleaded guilty to federal charges Wednesday. Walter Edmund Bond, 35, pleaded guilty to felony counts of arson and violence involving animal enterprises. He has already been sentenced to five years in Colorado and could face between five to 20 years for the Utah fires when sentenced Sept. 19. Prosecutor John Huber said the government will argue to make the Colorado and Utah sentences consecutive to one another. "He is unapologetic. He is an unrepentant serial arsonist,"...

TACOMA — Briana Waters, the California violin teacher who was facing retrial for her role in the 2001 arson at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture, pleaded guilty Tuesday to several charges related to the attack. Waters, 35, pleaded guilty to four counts, including arson, conspiracy to use a destructive device, possessing a destructive device and use of a destructive device. The last count carries a penalty of up to 30 years to life. She also agreed to pay the UW and the state nearly $7 million in restitution. Waters had maintained her innocence even after a federal...

In January, U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy issued an “Order to Show Cause” to parties in a lawsuit (CV-08-14-M-DWM, filed January 2008) by Defenders of Wildlife. Defenders sued, claiming that wolf-management regulations the government issued under Endangered Species Act Section 10(j) authority allow too many wolves to be killed via management actions. Case 14 was stayed in April 2009 while the larger wolf delisting issue was fought out in another lawsuit from Defenders ... So what, and how, is Judge Molloy thinking? Before becoming a judge in 1996, Molloy was working a case for Trial Lawyers for Public Justice,...

A Salt Lake City man connected to animal rights activism faces up to 20 years in prison for setting fire to a Denver-area store that sells products made from sheepskin. Thirty-four-year-old Walter Edmund Bond ...also faces federal charges in Utah for fires at the Salt Lake City Tandy Leather Factory Store, and the Tiburon Fine Dining restaurant in Sandy.

Vegan activist Walter Edmund Bond, of Utah, today pleaded guilty to felony counts related to an April fire that burned down the Sheepskin Factory in Glendale. Bond, 34, was arrested on July 22, accused of using fire or explosives to damage property involved in interstate commerce and of using force, violence or threats involving animal enterprises. The blaze caused more than $500,000 in damage to the Sheepskin Factory in the early hours of April 30. On July 28, Bond pleaded not guilty to the federal charges. By changing his plea today, he may be eligible for a shorter prison sentence....

The North American Animal Liberation press office says Briana Waters was released from prison Saturday. The 34-year-old Waters was connected to a cell of radical environmentalists based in Olympia and in Oregon who carried out attacks throughout the West from 1996-2001, causing more than $80 million in damage. Last month, an appeals court overturned Water's conviction of being guilty of helping an ecoterror attack that destroyed a University of Washington research center, concluding the judge made mistakes that cast doubt on the fairness of her trial.

MOLALLA, Ore. -- A posting on a website that conveys information for the Animal Liberation Front says animal activists removed a large section of fencing at a deer farm at Molalla. The message says the raid last Saturday was intended to allow deer to escape into the surrounding forest. Owner Richard Bentley told KGW-TV he's raising 80 European Fallow deer for meat, but there were no animals on the land where the fence was cut. He wonders why animal activists would want to release tame deer during deer hunting season.

Every now and then, an animal rights activist will toss aside all pretenses to common sense and make a truly inane (and frighteningly candid) statement. Today’s case in point: Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a part-time trauma surgeon who was at one time a spokesperson for the PETA-linked “Physicians Committee” for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). He’s also been affiliated with the pseudo-pirate Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and a public defender of the terrorist Animal Liberation Front. When asked recently about whether we should take steps to eliminate mosquitoes, Vlasak spouted off with a radical anti-people solution. As Wesley J. Smith reports on...

  Briana Waters The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the conviction of Briana Waters in the 2001 arson of the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture. The 32-year-old Californian was sentenced in June 2008 to six years in federal prison and ordered to pay $6 million in restitution by U.S. District Court Judge Franklin Burgess. A unanimous three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that Burgess made several errors that raised questions about the fairness of her trial, The Associated Press is reporting. The panel said the judge should not have admitted certain articles...

They are over and done with the topic of James J. Lee, despite the mounting number of attacks committed in the name of environmentalism.   Whether or not James J. Lee, who invaded the corporate offices of the Discovery Channel Wednesday armed with explosives and a gun, was a terrorist or not would seem to be open to debate. Certainly PJM has been unable to discover any ties between Lee and any known ecoterror group — despite his radical environmentalist manifesto. At the same time, groups such as the Animal Liberation Front could be expected to disavow any connection to...

Walter Edmund Bond was taken into custody Thursday in Denver after allegedly telling an informant that he started the Glendale fire and two fires in Utah because they were businesses that "profited from animals." At the time of his arrest by FBI and ATF agents, Bond was carrying a backpack, according to an affidavit by Rennie Mora, a special agent for the ATF. Agents searched the backpack and found literature titled, "The Declaration of War - Killing People to Save the Animals and the Environment - Strike a Match Light a Fuse We've Only Have the Earth to Lose." Bond...

Police investigating a fire that destroyed a Denver-area business say they're seriously considering a claim by an animal rights activist who takes credit for it. Glendale Police Chief Victor Ross says his department is looking closely at a claim on a website associated with the Animal Liberation Front. The posting by "ALF Lone Wolf" ... The Animal Liberation Front is aligned with the Earth Liberation Front, whose members were convicted in a 1998 fire at the Vail ski resort that did $12 million in damage.

Santa Cruz police are working with the FBI to investigate the vandalism of a car belonging to a University of California at Santa Cruz researcher on Sunday morning. The spouse of the researcher, whose name is being withheld, found the car at about 11 a.m. Sunday with its brake lines and cables to the emergency braking system cut, police said. The damage had left the braking system inoperable. Officers responded to the victim's home in the 1200 block of Laurent Street and after speaking with the 55-year-old researcher, determined the motive behind the vandalism may be related to the victim's...

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s excuses for his decision to try major terrorists in domestic courts in New York City are becoming increasingly absurd. ...For at least 10 months, Mr. Holder has been claiming that "our federal 'supermax' prisons ... hold hundreds of convicted terrorists." His logic is that if civilian trials were OK for those 300-plus convictions he claimed, they should be OK for Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other top terrorists. ... The department included in its count all its convictions for a catchall list of potential offenses that included "animal enterprise terrorism," "immigration fraud"...

Unfortunately, there are dangerous kooks, trigger-happy wackos, and lone gunmen out there. Bad people exist. Crazy people exist -- and every so often, one of them snaps and there's a resulting body count. To most people, this is just a tragic fact of life. However, to liberals in the media who are forever baffled by events that the average person has grasped since he was a child, these killers tend to break down into three groups. If they're devout Muslims and are connected to terrorists, then they must have killed for some reason OTHER than their religion. If they're...

Having sat three months now in an Iowa jail, Carrie Feldman of Minneapolis is a hero to scores of animal-rights defenders around the world. But to the U.S. government, the 20-year-old left-wing political activist is a potential witness who may know something about a daring break-in more than five years ago at a University of Iowa laboratory. When she refused to testify before a grand jury, a judge ordered her jailed Nov. 17 for contempt of court. She's been in a cell ever since and could legally be held 11 months if she continues her silence. Her attorney and supporters...

You might remember the 2004 animal-rights attack on a University of Iowa animal laboratory, carried out by the terrorist Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Here’s the scene: 55-gallon drums filled with acid-soaked research documents, 401 “liberated” laboratory animals, the continuous harassment of researchers, and a warning to “stop or be stopped.” So what does a former PETA lawyer who works for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) have to do with this? That’s likely the question a prosecutor has for HSUS attorney Leana Stormont, who was subpoenaed Monday to testify before a federal grand jury about the raid.Who...

A federal magistrate judge agreed Wednesday to temporarily stay the release of a Minneapolis man facing federal conspiracy charges in connection with the 2004 animal-rights vandalism on the UI campus. Scott DeMuth, 22, will remain detained until at least 4 p.m. Monday, a federal magistrate ordered. The emergency stay of release will allow federal prosecutors a chance to appeal a release order issued Tuesday. The release order would have allowed DeMuth, a University of Minnesota graduate student, to return to Minneapolis while the federal case is pending. As part of that release, he was to be placed on home detention...

U.S. District Judge Dee Benson on Thursday rejected a plea bargain that called for a Layton man to serve six months in prison for releasing hundreds of mink last year in support of animal rights. Instead, Benson said he plans to sentence William James Viehl to at least two years behind bars and could go even higher. The law allows a maximum of five years imprisonment. The judge said he generally deals leniently with offenders who have no criminal record. But he said Viehl's actions -- letting more than 600 mink out of their pens at the McMullin Fur Farm...

A federal grand jury in Davenport is investigating a nationally publicized, animal-rights-related break-in at a University of Iowa lab in 2004, according to a 20-year-old woman from Minneapolis who says she is a possible target of the inquiry. Carrie Feldman refused to testify when she was subpoenaed to testify at the federal courthouse on Oct. 15, she said. She will refuse again at a second ordered appearance on Nov. 17, she said. Ultimately, she could be held in contempt of court and taken into custody. At least four masked people released hundreds of animals and caused hundreds of thousands of...

BOSTON — Six Harvard University medical researchers were poisoned in August after drinking coffee that was laced with a chemical preservative, according to university officials. In an internal memo first reported in the Boston Herald's Sunday editions, the school said the coffee came from a machine near their lab that later tested positive for sodium azide, a common preservative used in labs. The six reported symptoms after drinking the coffee Aug. 26, ranging from dizziness to ringing in the ears, and one passed out. They were treated at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and later released.

SANTA CRUZ - A year ago today, UC Santa Cruz molecular biologist David Feldheim and his wife woke up at 5:45 a.m. when a firebomb exploded on their front porch of their town home on Village Circle, a small enclave of modest housing near campus. The couple and their two children, then 2 and 4, fled the flames by climbing down a second-floor fire escape. Feldheim bruised his feet as he scrambled to safety, but the rest of his family was unharmed. Minutes later, outside a cluster of faculty residences on campus, a second firebomb ripped through an unoccupied Volvo...

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Many animal-rights and welfare organizations pose serious threats to all animal agriculture, the livestock sector and production agriculture in general. Altogether, they have combined annual budgets of $300 million. The ones that pose the greatest threat are the Humane Society of the United States, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Sierra Club, Citizens for Decent Agriculture, the Dust Police, and the Animal Liberation Front. This group actually supports elimination of all animal agriculture, turning all domestic animals loose to roam, and even goes as far as to advocate assignation of people to free all farm animals. This group...

It was 4 o'clock in the morning when David Jentsch, a neuroscience professor at UCLA, awoke to a loud bang and the sound of his car alarm. He hurried to his bedroom window and saw the orange glow of his new Volvo luxury sedan burning in his yard. He suspected immediately that it was the work of animal rights activists. "Enough of my colleagues had been attacked that I had a feeling they were responsible," Jentsch said about the March 7 torching of his car. "Two days later the Animal Liberation Brigade took credit for it. The irony of the...

An American vegan who has made it his life’s mission to shut down a British animal-testing company has become the first domestic terrorist to be listed on the FBI’s most-wanted list of terror suspects. The name of Daniel Andreas San Diego, who is accused of carrying out the 2003 bombings of two US companies affiliated with Huntingdon Life Sciences, of Cambridgeshire, is listed alongside the likes of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Adam Yahiye Gadahn. San Diego, who is shown on the FBI’s most-wanted poster with short brown hair and glasses, is said to have several unusual tattoos that...

Vandals who claim to act in the name of animal rights and the environment are expanding their targets from laboratories and constructon sites that offend them to homes and cars of those with whom they disagree. On Feb. 19 in Tucson, a UA researcher had her water valve cemented shut and a mining company employee had her car tires flattened and her windows etched with hateful sayings. A press release posted on the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center site by a group calling itself "Tucson H.A.A.N.D." or "Hooligans Attack at Night, Duh," claimed responsibility for the acts. It...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://sanfrancisco.fbi.gov/pressrel/2009/sf022009.htm FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 20, 2009 Four Extremists Arrested for Threats and Violence Against UC Researchers On February 19 and 20, the Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested four animal rights extremists suspected of terrorizing University of California researchers. A complaint filed in federal court in San Francisco on Thursday alleged Adriana Stumpo, 23, of Long Beach, California; Nathan Pope, 26, of Oceanside, California; Joseph Buddenberg, 25, of Berkeley, California; and Maryam Khajavi, 20, of Pinole, California used force, violence, or threats to interfere with the operation of the University of California in...

Bandera local farmers and rancher charge that the I-69 Trans-Texas Corridor Tier One Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) has failed to meet important environmental standards. Barbara Mazurek, Bandera County Farm Bureau President says that these failures are indicative of the problems that exist with the entire Tran-Texas Corridor (TTC). “Because these environmental standards have not been met, the Texas Department of Transportation should seriously consider alternatives to its current model,” Mazurek said. According to Mazurek, there are three main reasons that the DEIS is flawed. • It limits its analysis to alternatives that fit the TTC “vision” of a multimodal...

Terrorists have struck again. In the predawn hours one morning last month, they used an incendiary device to destroy two cars. You may not have heard about this, even though it followed a series of firebombings of homes and other vehicles. The attack didn't take place in Mumbai or Baghdad but in Los Angeles. Yet the news couldn't break through the reports on the holiday season and our economic woes. The intended target of this violence, a researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles, was a scientist who uses animals in his work. But the terrorists, reportedly from...

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block condemned violence by animal rights activists in a university statement last week after two vehicles were torched outside of a Los Angeles home on Nov. 20. Students and Workers for the Liberation of UCLA Primates claimed responsibility for the attack which targeted a UCLA researcher. “Through these reprehensible tactics and reckless behavior, anti–animal research extremists demonstrate repeatedly that they are willing not only to risk the lives of those who spend their careers working to help others but also the lives of the unsuspecting general public, including children,” Block said in a UCLA statement. An improvised...

Los Angeles, CA (AP) -- Anti-animal research activists are claiming responsibility for torching two vehicles they thought belonged to a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles. Activists connected to the Animal Liberation Front say they destroyed the vehicles on Nov. 20 to protest the work of Goran Lacan, a researcher who used animals while investigating treatments for morbid obesity and eating disorders. The group accidentally targeted the wrong address, . . .

We need your help in locating these four fugitives. Click on their names or photographs to see their wanted posters. It has been 10 years since a group known as “The Family” torched a ski resort in Vail, Colorado, causing $26 million in damage and drawing international attention to eco-terrorists—those who break the law in the name of the environment and animal rights. Since that time, we’ve joined our federal, local, and state law enforcement partners in establishing Operation Backfire to bring these criminals to justice. Our efforts have been successful, but four individuals under indictment remain at large. At...

FBI Warns of Potential Terror Attacks The FBI and Department of Homeland Security today issued an analytical "note" to U.S. law-enforcement officials cautioning that al-Qaida terrorists have in the past expressed interest in attacking public buildings using a dozen suicide bombers each carrying 20 kilograms of explosives. Authors with the U.S. Office of Intelligence and Analysis added that they have "no credible or specific information that terrorists are planning operations against public buildings in the United States." The FBI and DHS analysts said they were releasing the note because "it is important for local authorities and building owners and...

KAYSVILLE - Three Utah members of the Animal Liberation Front claimed credit Monday for breaking into a Kaysville farm early Sunday, destroying property and releasing thousands of minks. A statement posted on the ALF Web site states that the group entered the farm, released the minks and destroyed all breeding records. It states that they destroyed an electrical fence, vandalized trucks and equipment and cut about 100 holes in the perimeter fence. Juan Becerra, spokesman for the the FBI's Salt Lake City office, said his bureau was assisting local detectives, but that it was too early in the investigation to...

The chair of the Connecticut College history department, Catherine McNicol Stock, has suggested that Sarah Palin is somehow associated with Pacific Northwest hate groups such as Posse Comitatus and the Aryan Nations. Her proof? Well, because Palin lived in areas with low "diversity." I kid you not. Here is the professor's "learned thesis" presented in a Philadelphia Inquirer opinion column melodramatically titled, "Intolerance thrives in Palin's Pacific Northwest" (emphasis mine): Despite her efforts to portray herself as an average, small-town, "folksy" American, Sarah Palin's political views - ardently pro-gun, pro-censorship, antichoice and antigay - make John McCain's conservative credentials pale...

St. Hedwig has homes on large lots and a longtime tradition of rural living. And folks there want to keep it that way. “We want to be able to maintain as best we can the reason we moved out here in the first place,” said Kathy Palmer, the city’s planning and zoning commissioner. But a new master plan and recently updated zoning maps are no match for a proposed route of Trans-Texas Corridor 35 that would slice straight through the city of about 2,000 people and create headaches for several city departments, officials said. With neighboring Wilson County, St. Hedwig...

While the remains of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and Washington, DC's Pentagon are "ground zero" for the horrible destruction wrought by foreign terrorists, the nation's forests, research labs, resorts and housing developments have long been "ground zero" for domestic environmentally-driven "ecoterrorists." There may be diabolical links between the two forces. There is a strong possibility that Animal Liberation Front (ALF) terrorists have come into possession of Anthrax as the result of having invaded laboratories that have been researching the disease. This certainly merits investigation as a source for the Anthrax attacks. The fact ...

A Spokane woman was sentenced Tuesday to three years in federal prison in the May 2001 firebombing of the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture. Lacey Phillabaum, 33, of Spokane, is one of five people -- members of a domestic terrorist group called the Earth Liberation Front -- who were accused by federal prosecutors of the arson attack that destroyed the building along with precious samples of rare and endangered plants species being cultivated for reintroduction into the Cascades. The ELF cell, dubbed "The Family," acted on the erroneous belief that a scientist at the center was doing the...