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Joining the eco-terrorist dots together: Barbarash at the gate


by Judi McLeod
August 12, 2002

The Animal Liberation Front, (ALF) which goes to great lengths to protect the anonymity of its members, may have contracted a fatal Achilles’ heel in the acquisition of Canadian David Barbarash.

And it’s all a matter of joining the dots.

Current spokesperson for ALF’s press office, Barbarash was busted last month by the RCMP, who removed all computers, computer equipment, videos, paper files, photos, books and personal effects from his Courtenay, B.C. home/ALF office. RCMP officers were acting under the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act in support of a US government investigation into ALF activities that took place in the state of Maine sometime in 1999.

Barbarash has been an indefatigable spokesperson for the North American Animal Liberation Front since he took the role of press officer in the summer of 1999. Things being hot for groups like ALF since September 11, Barbarash has consistently maintained that he has no knowledge of participants involved in ALF activities, but only receives anonymous communications, which he only relays to interested media and supporters.
According to the Independent Media Centre, "all members of the ALF remain anonymous so as to continue their work without interference from law enforcement."

Parroted by ALF activists in brochures and in media interviews: " ALF is non-violent and has never killed any person or animal in the course of its actions."

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, ALF and ELF (Earth Liberation

Front) were responsible for the vast majority of domestic terrorist acts committed in the United States in the 1990s. Citing the $43-million in property damage for which they claimed responsibility, former FBI Director Louis Freeh last year told Congress that the threat is "a matter of grave national concern".

Since 2000, there has been a marked escalation in the violence and the FBI has warned that all institutions involved in animal research–and anyone associated with them–are potential targets.

When the civilized world was reeling in shock on Sept. 11, 2001, ALF was taking credit for torching a McDonalds in Tucson, Arizona, causing an estimated $500,000 in damages. A week and a half later with a nation in mourning, vandals spraypainted swastikas, profanity and the initials ELF at the Ronald McDonald House in the same city. Ronald McDonald house, of course, is where parents stay while their critically ill children are being treated in hospitals.

"This act is meant to serve as a warning to corporations world wide. You will never be safe from the people you oppress," said a sign left on the building.

Throughout America, underground cells of eco-terrorists have been waging a campaign of tree-spiking, industrial sabotage, arson and bombing.

In the most notorious of their actions, in Vail, Colorado, in 1998, ELF burned down part of a ski resort, causing $12-million in property damage. The attack was mounted, the group said, on behalf of the wildlife whose habitat was being "trespassed" upon.

To protest the existence of Huntington Life Sciences, a British animal-research lab, animal liberation activists blew up several cars belonging to the firm’s employees, and severely beat the company’s managing director with baseball bats.

Yet, astonishing little has been done to stop the Eco-terrorists. Some have been caught and even brought before grand juries, but few have been punished. Last February, the House Resources Committee Subcommittee held a hearing on Eco-terrorism, but nothing came of it: the main witness, an ELF spokesman, refused to answer most of the questions. Meanwhile, the attacks, both large and small, continue at an average pace of one every four days.

Both ELF and ALF activists have boasted that they have small cells operating independently of each other. They often stymie law enforcement agencies conducting investigations by insisting that they do not even know who their other members are.

Activists have the benefits of being able to operate with stealth under the cover of anonymity. As bold as they are determined, they not only scale walls, they, in the case of Vale, scale mountains.

In times of trouble, they can count, emotionally and financially on the resources of other radical groups within the environmental movement.
The activists will continue to outwit authorities as long as no one is joining the dots together.

Authorities should be tracking members of animal rights activists and their running dogs in the environmental movement.

Take the tracking of David Barbarash, for example.

We know from his own words that he claimed responsibility--under ALF–for the June 25, 1999 firebombing of a truck at Worldwide Primates in Florida. On August 11, he announced that ALF had torched the United Feed mill in Wisconsin. On Oct. 3, he announced that ALF was to blame for three attacks on Maine hunting clubs.

But in order to track him, you have to dig much further into Barbarash’s past.

Barbarash and Kenneth Quayle were arrested together in alleged possession of bomb-making materials on Jan. 19, 1988 in Toronto. Barbarash was suspected of participating in vandalism against the University of Toronto school of dentistry almost a year earlier, but was convicted only of painting animal rights slogans on the walls of a fried chicken store.

In June 1992, Barbarash and Darren Todd Thurston were jointly accused of taking 29 cats from a University of Edmonton laboratory. Thurston was in 1993 convicted of that action and of torching three trucks at an Edmonton fish processing plant in 1991. Wily Barbarash fled to the U.S., where he was apprehended and deported in May of1994.

When Barbarash was originally arrested in 1988 for allegedly being in possession of bomb-making materials, he was a contract researcher with the Toronto Humane Society.

And that’s where all the dots start coming together.

A lady by the name of Holly Penfound, later fired by the Society for radical activity, was then a THS employee.

Penfound later formed a business union with animal rights activist Rob Laidlaw in Zoocheck, a non-profit organization whose members travelled across Canada and the United States shutting down roadside menageries and petting zoos.

In latter-day history, Laidlaw, as project manager for the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), is back in business investigating zoos with State of the Ark: Investigating Ontario’s Zoos, a project commissioned by WSPA.

After being fired by the THS, Penfound spearheaded the drive to ban circuses in North American cities, as the executive assistant of left-wing Toronto city Councillor Peter Tabuns.

Defeated in Toronto politics, Tabuns went on to become CEO of Greenpeace Canada. Penfound is now Greenpeace Canada’s Genetic Food co-ordinator.

No, there is no connection between ALF, ELF and their confreres at Greenpeace.

If you think that there is, you are a fascist right-winger, leaning heavily on conspiracy theories.

Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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