Banned in the UK! How the Home Office "Protects the Public Good"

I have a deep, abiding, ethical concern with the suffering of animals.
In the late 1980s, when I was a committed human rights activist, the
animal rights struggle became my ultimate choice and existential
meaning. The more I learned about the enormity of animal suffering,
the more radical my positions became, shifting from animal welfare to
animal rights to animal liberation, and finally to total liberation
politics that articulates human, animal, and Earth liberation
struggles as an inseparable unity that must be conceived of and fought
for together.

In 1999, I decided to take a public and very controversial stand in
support of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). This group emerged in
England in 1976, and quickly spread throughout the world, such that it
is now active in over three dozen countries.[1] The ALF is the newest
anti-slavery and abolitionist struggle on the planet; ALF principles
are rooted in a rights framework that rejects any form of animal
exploitation as unjust and renounces all welfarist attempts to
regulate rather than to wreck institutions of oppression as
unacceptable and antithetical to liberationist goals.
...
Anyone who follows the animal liberation movement in England knows
that the direct action element has become increasingly powerful since
the 1970s. By abandoning often futile efforts to influence oppressors
through feeble protests and appeals to government, and by taking the
fight directly to the animal exploiters themselves, groups such as the
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), SPEAK (originally named Stop
Primate Experiments at Cambridge), and Save the Newchurch Guinea Pigs
(SNGP) have developed highly effective campaigns against all facets of
the vivisection industry, a primary target of attack.
...
The animal rights movement has rocked the core of the British
establishment and the Home Office has taken extraordinary measures
against it, but this righteous force cannot be stopped or defeated.
The menacing cops and laws of the UK dictatorship are not enough to
stop the children, youth, families, mothers, and grandmothers from
marching in the streets and knocking down walls to free animal
prisoners. England is a barometer of the kinds of political storms one
can expect in the US and elsewhere around the world as the struggle
over animal rights moves to entirely new levels.
...
Speciesism is arguably the first of any form of domination or
hierarchy and it has spread like a deadly virus throughout the entire
planet and all of human history. The problem is not limited to Western
culture or to the modern world, such that there is some significant
utopian past or radical alternative to recover. The problem is the
human species itself, which but for rare exceptions is violent,
destructive, and imperialistic. Universally, humans have vested
interests in exploiting animals and think they have a God-given right
to do so. To change these attitudes is to change the very nerve center
of human consciousness, and thereby to change the totality of society
itself. That is our task – no more and no less.
...
Dr. Steve Best is TPC’s associate editor. Associate professor of
philosophy at UTEP, award-winning writer, noted speaker, public
intellectual, and seasoned activist, Steven Best engages the issues of
the day such as animal rights, ecological crisis, biotechnology,
liberation politics, terrorism, mass media, globalization, and
capitalist domination. Best has published 10 books, over 100 articles
and reviews, spoken in over a dozen countries, interviewed with media
throughout the world, appeared in numerous documentaries, and was
voted by VegNews as one of the nations “25 Most Fascinating
Vegetarians.” He has come under fire for his uncompromising advocacy
of “total liberation” (humans, animals, and the earth) and has been
banned from the UK for the power of his thoughts. From the US to
Norway, from Sweden to France, from Germany to South Africa, Best
shows what philosophy means in a world in crisis.

--
full story:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Banned-in-the-UK-How-the-by-Steve-Best-090418-290.html