Controversial UTEP professor Steve Best risks much in fight for animal rights

University of Texas at El Paso philosophy professor and activist…(Mark Lambie / El Paso Times)

By Adriana Gómez Licón

Simulposted El Paso Times

2/8/2010

ANTHONY, N.M. — People have judged Steve Best many ways during his 30 years in academia.

Some have called him a troublemaker, a radical, and even a domestic and international terrorist because of his vocal and often confrontational stance on animal rights.

He said it is his tenured position that has kept him on the payroll as a philosophy professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

But even Best knows he is gambling with his career when he protests against the school’s environmental policies with a bullhorn outside UTEP President Diana Natalicio’s office, or when he openly supports a movement that undertakes criminal activities to save animals from research laboratories and slaughterhouses.

“Hey, if Martin Luther King was not afraid to lose his life, I shouldn’t be afraid to lose my job,” Best said.

WHAT’S REALLY BEHIND SERIAL-KILLING INDUSTRIES “TERRORIST” DIATRIBES: REBUTTAL TO FUR COMMISSION’S LIBELOUS PRESS RELEASE

Photo: This skinned mink was the victim of the truly violent, terroristic, murderous elements within our society—those who enable and carry out the nonhuman animal holocaust that tortures and murders 50 billion sentient beings per annum….

The analysis below the Fur Commission propaganda is by Brennan Browne

2/7/10

-Fur Commission USA Press Release-

[Libelous material within the article is CAPITALIZED]

TERRORIST SETS HIMSELF ABLAZE IN ATTEMPT TO TORCH SHOP AND THOSE INSIDE Jan. 29, 2010

On January 27, the day of President Obama’s “State of the Union”
address, a man set himself on fire in Portland, Oregon, a town with an unemployment rate of almost 12%.

While screaming about animals dying and the world ending, the flaming man pushed on the unlocked door of a cold-weather clothing shop that only carries natural fibers. Only that one must “pull to enter”
prevented this terrorist from setting the shop ablaze and injuring or killing all those inside.

When he couldn’t get the door open, he ignored a police officer’s direction to “stop, drop and roll” and ran down the street. A bystander threw his coat over him to extinguish the flames, while a Portland police officer mistakenly used pepper spray, instead of a fire extinguisher, on the man.

Not just no, but HELL NO!

2/7/10

The Kansas state legislature is currently considering two bills that would enable more wanton slaughter of wildlife:

HB 2639:

Bill by Agriculture and Natural Resources
Allowing mountain lions and wolves to be hunted without a hunting license.
Effective date: Statute Bk.
02/03/2010 H Introduced -HJ 868
02/04/2010 H Referred to Agriculture and Natural Resources -HJ 873
02/05/2010 H Hearing: Mon., 2/8/2010, 3:30 PM, Rm 783 Docking

HB 2342:

By Committee on Appropriations

AN ACT concerning deer; relating to the taking thereof. Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Kansas:

Section 1. Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, the board of county commissioners of Johnson County shall provide for a season for archery for deer and is hereby directed to issue archery deer
permits for hunting deer within the boundaries of Shawnee Mission park in accordance with state statutes and rules and regulations of the secretary of wildlife and parks, adopted in accordance with K.S.A. 32-805, and amendments thereto, concerning archery deer hunting.

Presenting the Macabre Face of Murder….

Our purpose….

Journal Entry by Jason Miller

2/6/10

As we arrived in DeSoto for our demonstration against a local slaughterer and butcher, six Johnson County Sheriff’s cars descended upon us. Despite accosting us with such a large contingency (one officer for each of us), Sergeant Jeremy Campbell was quite respectful when he approached me to find out our intentions and to state theirs. They did not interfere with our protest, though three to four of them remained parked in the vicinity throughout our demo.

Today Bite Club of KC turned its attention to Steve’s Meat Market in DeSoto, KS for three reasons:

1. Steve’s ground the 313 innocent, defenseless, sentient deer slaughtered at Death Park (by JCPRD and Anthony DeNicola) into sausage, whilst pocketing $19,000.00 of our tax dollars….

2. We wanted to protest a “meat” processing facility to honor the memory of Jill Phipps, a UK animal rights activist whom the “meat” industry murdered on 2/1/95 when one of their trucks transporting veal calves to their execution ran over her as she protested factory farming. Phipps is a martyr and a hero of the animal rights movement.

‘HUNTING – THE “SPORT” OF COWARDS’

May I present Lori Anderson, the Lady of Honor of the first (of 50) Funeral Motorcade for the Animals in my 37- states- in-7-months Compassion for Animals Road Expedition (CARE-7). Lori is a well known and long time animal rights activist in the Vancouver area. This first motorcade will be on March 31 – my departure date on the CARE-7 tour. It will start in Downtown Vancouver at 11:30 a.m., and will send me off at the U.S./Canadian border by about 2:30 p.m., thus kick-starting the CARE-7 tour whose purpose is to forge and launch the Global Anti-Hunting Coalition (GAHC).

Maybe this will serve as the catalyst for change….

By Stacey Rakic

1/31/10

We recently learned of the tragic death of Mr. Daniel Shaull, who took his own life to demonstrate the stolen and killed ones of animals, and we all reacted in a similar manner: with shock, horror, sadness, and grief. It is difficult to contemplate one deliberately subjecting himself to such a cruel act, but we need to accept his behaviour and the subsequent message he delivered and continually share and expose the reason for it. It is with this thought that I read many critiques regarding Daniel’s actions and felt compelled to respond, for it is these selfish words that create a greater chasm and divert attention from the import of his sacrifice.

While many of us were trying to absorb and process Daniel’s actions absent any denunciation of him, they then rapidly came, criticizing him with self-righteous sermons distancing themselves from yet another tragic circumstance of animal exploitation. “He hurt the movement!”, and “it’s people like this who only hurt the movement!”, and “nobody takes us seriously when someone like this hurts the movement!”, screamed out from anonymous people publicly shaming Daniel. How incredibly egotistical and self-serving; when people have more inclination to cause disruption by censuring his acts rather than extending an empathetic gesture, their ONLY concern is revealed in their victimized assertions of self-preservation. Rather than accept him as a victim based on his own words, there are those whose primary response to this act is one of condemnation, in a self-serving manner to preclude being associated with a “crazy maniac” or being affiliated with a movement that lacks social and peer acceptance. Is this act of martyrdom too similar to terrorism, a kamikaze association bearing discomfort and fear? It is that discomfort and fear that is damaging the movement, and a subsequent servitude to the majority thought in acts of vindication by verbal detachment from Mr. Shaull’s actions. It is disgusting.

“Peace on earth” should be for all sentient wildlife – Support GAHC

Video and text below by Caroline Tia Terrel

1/31/10

How can there ever be “Peace On Earth” when humans continue to destroy innocent, sentient lives for sports, greed, profit, amusement or just because they “can?” Hunters leave millions of wildlife wounded and crippled to suffer and die every year. That is not “Peace On Earth!”

Join our fight to end the holocaust perpetrated against our wildlife !!

GAHC NEEDS YOUR HELP in any or all of the following:
1. Join the Global Anti-Hunting Coalition
2. Host local speaking events
3. Organize local Funeral Motorcade for the Deer
4. Donations to cover cost (Anthony Marr is not paid)
5. A place for AM to stay

WE MUST NOT LET THEM DIE IN VAIN!

By Anthony Marr

In 1600, after 8 years of repeated and hideous torture, “heretic” Giordano Bruno was burnt alive at the stake – for his belief and teaching that the Earth was not fixed at the center of the universe with everything revolving around it, including even the sun, but that it revolves around the sun, around which the other planets also revolve; and that the stars were not pin-holes in some sky-vault through which heavenly light shone, but are themselves distant suns around which other planets may revolve. He could have saved himself by recanting, but he steadfastly refused. He basically allowed himself to be burnt – for truth.

The Hidden Agenda Behind the Iowa A.L.F. Investigation

“His statement echoes J. Edgar Hoover’s infamous description of the FBI’s ideologically-driven Counterintelligence Program (“COINTELPRO”), designed in Hoover’s words to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” undesirable political targets.”

Simulposted with Voice of the Voiceless

1/31/10

In a press release dispatched yesterday, the Civil Liberties Defense Center fired back against the University of Iowa Animal
Liberation Front lab raid investigation.

While ostensibly an “ecoterrorism” investigation into the A.L.F. liberation of 401 animals from the University of Iowa’s animal research labs in 2004, in the below statement CLDC lawyers accuse the federal prosecutor of exacting a political agenda, and go on the offensive in the face of this specious prosecutorial assault.

In a future article, I will cover the reasons this A.L.F. investigation is farcical and fraudulent on its face.

–Peter Young

Civil Liberties Defense Center Press Release

Contacts:
Lauren Regan, Atty & Exec. Dir., CLDC
Ben Rosenfeld, Atty & Board Member, CLDC

For Immediate Release
January 29, 2010

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit Declines to Release 20 Year Old
Carrie Feldman, Jailed For More Than Two Months On Contempt of Grand Jury

Civil Liberties Monitors Charge That Federal Prosecutor Is On Personal Crusade
Against Anarchist Ideology; Courts Do Not Rein Him In

Searching for the Significance of a Life and a Death

Author: Cat

Forwarded to me by SYITS

1/31/10

Yesterday, a man set himself on fire outside Ungar Furs, and burned himself to death. We know his name now: According to the Alliance, it was Daniel Shaull. And we know that he did what he did appears to have been in solidarity with the animals who continue to die horrible deaths, day after day after day, to keep Nicholas Ungar in business. We know that, even as he was on fire and undoubtedly in terrible pain, he mustered great strength and tried to go inside the fur store to spread the flames to the coats and garments and blood-stained profits of the last fur store in Portland.

I would like to know more.

Indeed, it was strange to find out he was someone most of us did not know. Those of us who were not there yesterday, who scrambled to find out who it was, we each had a fear in the pit of the stomach, each of us sure we would know him, each of us having someone or other in mind that it might be. I know I did. When I finally heard his name, a small sense of relief washed over me, because it was a name I did not know. But someone knew him. And he deserves his story. If you knew Daniel Shaull, please post your stories of his life here.