I don't approve of the ALF's violence (that's the Animal Liberation Front, not the TV alien puppet that ate cats, though I really don't approve of that either), but there is a classic theme to some more recent activities that the FBI is investigating:
...personal credit cards were stolen from a family car and used by ALF to buy $20,000 in traveler's checks that were sent to a number of charities.
Felonies are bad, but playing modern-day robin hood rocks. The ALF stole the credit cards from an executive of Forest Laboratories, Inc., an obvious villain with animal testing ties. Alf said the activism was intended to force Forest to sever ties with Huntingdon Life Sciences, a company PETA successfully nailed on 23 counts of violating the Animal Welfare Act through an undercover action. I prefer PETA's tact of working inside and outside the system - teaching the government how to do its job and/or doing it for them gives the animal rights movement more legitimacy than this "terrorism" stuff, even if it takes longer, but this petty felony is poetic beauty.
Excerpt from a Long Island Business News article via Animal Defense League of Long Island:
A separate undercover operation by the activist group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) of Huntingdon's New Jersey facility prompted the U.S. Department of Agriculture to charge it with 23 counts of violating the Animal Welfare Act. In April 1998, the USDA and Huntingdon agreed to a consent decision in which Huntingdon neither admitted nor denied the charges but agreed to a $50,000 civil penalty. Stepanian acknowledged that the activists' strategy is to defeat Huntingdon by stripping it of its potential contracts and clients. "That's where Forest comes into play," he said, adding that activists suspect Forest of using Huntingdon to test its best-selling anti-depressants, Lexapro and Celexa. That strategy in the past has prompted companies including Merrill Lynch, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland to sever ties with Huntingdon, based in Cambridgeshire, U.K. In 2002, Huntingdon moved its stock listing to the United States through a takeover by Life Sciences Research, an animal-testing laboratory based in East Millstone, N.J. Despite the reorganization, the company still is widely called Huntingdon.
More info on the topic at Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
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