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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...

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...

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...

Ian Wallace is a graduate student in anthropology in New York who has studied fossils in Kenya, combed excavations in Syria and France and written about his research in scholarly journals. But next week, he will be sentenced to federal prison for trying to blow up two buildings at a Michigan university in 2001 when he was a radical eco-saboteur. It is another case of federal agents catching up to people who formerly were passionate members of the Earth Liberation Front, known as ELF. "Ian Wallace's past has come back to harm him," The FBI contacted him in January 2007...

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...

Despite fears, most academics say they will not be intimidated by violent tactics.Two firebomb attacks last week on UC Santa Cruz scientists who conduct animal research have angered and worried academics throughout the UC system, who said their work has broad public support and that they will not be intimidated by bombers who crossed the line by targeting families. "It is outrageous when people's families are targeted," said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. "This is incredibly serious because it could have led to loss of life. It's chilling." But Block, a biologist who uses mice in his research on circadian rhythms,...

Investigators sifting the evidence of two firebombings targeting UC Santa Cruz biologists believe the potentially lethal devices are similar to ones used in the past by animal rights activists, authorities said today. The bombs were so powerful they were like "Molotov cocktails on steroids," said Santa Cruz police Capt. Steve Clark. One struck the home of assistant biology Professor David Feldheim on Saturday morning, forcing him to flee with his family. The other exploded just a few minutes earlier, gutting a car parked outside the campus home of a second researcher. Later, Santa Cruz County sheriff's deputies went to the...

A gasoline-filled device in a car bomb fails to go off. Authorities investigating another bombing incident find that after a first bomb exploded, a second bomb was timed to go off when first responders arrived. A recent event in the United Kingdom? Yes, but also in California. Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that a bomb was discovered outside the Westside home of Dr. Arthur Rosenbaum, the chief of pediatric ophthalmology at UCLA's Jules Stein Eye Institute. The car bomb failed to explode, despite apparent attempts to detonate it. In 2003, two bombs exploded at biotech firm Chiron's Emeryville...

Members of the ecoterrorism gang that torched buildings on Vail Mountain in 1998 will be sentenced in April, a federal judge ordered today. At a hearing in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore., two key members of the gang formally pleaded guilty to federal arson charges, although they already had admitted their role in the multimillion-dollar fires. They destroyed several mountaintop structures including the popular Two Elk Lodge, a restaurant that has been rebuilt. During the 10-minute hearing, Chelsea Gerlach and Stanislas Meyerhoff, both 29, acknowledged their guilt when asked by Judge Ann Aiken. Gerlach responded "yes," and Meyerhoff said,...

The constant calls, the people frightening his children, and the demonstrations in front of his home apparently became a little too much. Dario Ringach, an associate neurobiology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, decided this month to give up his research on primates because of pressure put on him, his neighborhood, and his family by the UCLA Primate Freedom Project, which seeks to stop research that harms animals. Anti-animal research groups are trumpeting Ringach’s move as a victory, while some researchers are worried that it could embolden such groups to use more extreme tactics. . . ....

Animal Rights Group Claims Credit for Botched Arson Attempt- (07/31) The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) web site is claiming responsibility for a failed arson attempt in Los Angeles. On June 30, an incendiary device, intended for the home of a UCLA psychiatry professor, was placed at the wrong address. Fortunately, for the elderly homeowner the device did not detonate and no one was injured. ALF claims that the intended target of the explosive device was keeping monkeys to study "psychological, psychiatric and social problems such as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, substance abuse, criminality and violence." Arson investigators stated that had...

America’s universities are both the major targets as well as the incubators of a rapidly growing class of criminals—eco-terrorists. “The Department of Justice named them the number one domestic terrorist threat,” Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, told a college-age audience at the Eagle Forum’s annual summit on Capitol Hill in Washington, D. C. “Their direct actions include bombings, stalking of individuals and teaching members how to commit arson.” “They attacked and destroyed a ski lift, an SUV dealership, and an apartment complex.” Four hundred tenants were evacuated from that complex. Sen. Inhofe chairs the U. S. Senate Environment and Public...

A federal grand jury in Denver has indicted four people on eight counts of arson for a series of eco-terrorism fires set at the Vail ski area in 1998. Those indicted are: Chelsea Dawn Gerlach, 29, Stanislas Gregory Meyerhoff, 28, Josephine Sunshine Overaker, 31, and Rebecca Jeanette Rubin, 33. Gerlach and Meyerhoff are presently in federal custody in Oregon, facing separate arson charges. The whereabouts of Overaker and Rubin are unknown. The Two Elks Lodge and other structures on Vail Mountain were burned to the ground on Oct. 19, 1998. Damage was estimated at $12 million. A group called the...

CROW CANYON - Alameda County Sheriff's deputies are trying to find out who sprayed the initials "ALF," along with some other graffiti, first discovered Saturday at a Castro Valley horse boarding ranch. "ALF" could stand for Animal Liberation Front, a group that goes after organizations and corporations they suspect of animal abuse. ALF has been called a terrorist group by the FBI. But Sheriff's Lt. Bill Gaudinier said neither his office nor the FBI have yet connected group members to the vandalism. Sheriff's investigators also have not ruled out involvement by that group. The first example of graffiti was reported...

Three environmental activists were cooking up plastic explosives and had planned to test a device the day they were arrested, federal prosecutors alleged Wednesday as they indicted them. The three face five to 20 years in federal prison if they are convicted of conspiring to use fire or explosives to damage property. The suspects planned assaults this spring in the name of the Earth Liberation Front, a 'loosey-goosey, sort of mist-of-the-fog kind of an organization' of environmental activists, U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said. Eric McDavid, 28, Zachary Jensen, 20, and Lauren Weiner, 20, remain in jail. They could enter a...

After a delay of nearly a month, a Flagstaff woman accused of being connected with the 1998 firebombing of a logging company in Oregon has been released from jail. Kendall Tankersley, 28, also known as Sarah Harvey, was released from an Oregon jail Jan. 10 on $150,000 bond. She is back in Flagstaff, ready to begin taking two classes at Northern Arizona University. Tankersley, a former employee at the university, was indicted in November by a federal grand jury in Oregon. She is accused of attempted arson and arson, acting as a lookout, in connection with a fire at U.S....

Given to environmentalist lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose fight for "green" energy apparently stops as soon as the results might spoil his view. Kennedy penned an irate New York Times op-ed in December, condemning the proposed building of wind turbines around the Nantucket Sound. While Kennedy criss-crosses the country in his jet-fuel-burning private plane stumping for alternative energy sources, he wants an exception for his own backyard. Greenpeace spokesman Chris Miller was not pleased, saying: "It's about a vision for healthy oceans, not the view from the Kennedy compound."

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) spokesman Dr. Jerry Vlasak openly endorsed murdering other doctors at an animal-rights convention, we expected some skeptics to give Vlasak the benefit of the doubt. Not any more. A stunning piece of audio surfaced ... Listen to Jerry Vlasak at the "Animal Rights 2003" convention as a PCRM representative. We forgave Doubting Thomases for wondering if our notes were accurate, or if we were perhaps making the whole thing up, even after U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) closed a Judiciary Committee hearing by reading, out loud, a letter from the Center for Consumer Freedom...

Earth Liberation Front claims no leaders or spokespeople When three buildings and four chairlifts on Vail Mountain went up in flames in October, 1998, the Earth Liberation Front, an underground environmental movement, proudly took credit for the arson. The Earth Liberation Front claims to be an underground movement with no leadership, membership or spokespeople... Anyone who commits an act of ecoterrorism or sabotage in the name of the environment is welcome to do it under the front's name... Call yourself an "elf" and you're part of the elite, invisible group. Last month, Chelsea D. Gerlach of Portland Ore. and William...

In yesterday's hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, former Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) spokes-doctor Jerry Vlasak waxed not-so-eloquent about the role that animal researchers should play in the search for AIDS and cancer cures. Speaking of scientists whose work requires the use of lab rats, Vlasak insisted that if they "won't stop when told to stop, one option would be to stop them using any means necessary." Asked by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) if he endorsed the use of deadly force, Vlasak insisted that murder "would be a morally justifiable solution." [click here...