Animal rights advocacy taken to a murderous extreme:
(CNN) — A self-proclaimed animal rights activist in Ohio has been charged with soliciting a hit man to kill a random person wearing fur, either by shooting the individual or slitting his or her throat.
Meredith Lowell, 27, of Cleveland Heights, is accused of creating a phony Facebook profile with the intention of contacting a would-be killer, according to the affidavit filed in an Ohio district court.
Lowell allegedly posted on the social media website the following request: “I would like to create an online community on facebook which would allow me to find someone who is willing to kill someone who is wearing fur toward the end of October 2011 or early November 2011 or possibly in January 2012 or February 2012 at the latest.”
An undercover FBI agent posing as a hitman reached out to the woman and built a case around the ensuing contact. The particulars are grisly. Ms. Lowell wanted the kill to take place at a local library so she could hand out literature on animal cruelty after the fact. She allegedly requested that the hitman bring a knife “at least four inches long” and “sharp enough to stab someone with and/or to slit their throat to kill them.” But she is not without . . . scruples? Lowell insisted the victim be at least twelve years old and “preferably 14 years or older”. And she emphasized that the victim should be dead “in less than two minutes.”
Disturbing stuff.
The Daily News has more about Lowell’s apparent beliefs about animal liberation:
Reprinted emails also say Lowell wrote that she sees nothing wrong with “liberating” animals from fur factory farms and laboratories since “soldiers liberated people from Nazi camps in World War 2.”
She also criticized a new aquarium in Cleveland – saying “it is wrong for animals to be taken against their will and put into their (equivalent) of a bathtub” – and research by the Cleveland Clinic, where she said animals should be “liberated and put somewhere where they are not tortured.”
Is this not also Terrorism?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI blame the violent rhetoric of the Tea Party.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThey exchanged God's truth for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am continuously amazed at the number of "meet eaters" who continue to labor under the mistaken notion that PETA and these activists are some sort of cute but harmless group. These people are perhaps the worst of the radical leftists, because they have *literally* debased human life to the equivalent of a common sewer rat. PETA has a well documented history of affiliation of violent groups who engage in arson and sabotage without regard to the potential danger to human life. PETA is effectively a front for a web of terrorist organizations in the same way that Senn Fein was a front for the IRA.
Next time you see that nice, quiet pretty lady from PETA politely asking you not to eat meet, before you laugh, remember that she is nothing less than Gerry Adams.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI also remember certain members of PETA that claimed they were "rescuing" animals were really killing them because they didn't believe that animals should be pets and therefore they were better off dead.
I guess it doesn't take long to go from that to "kill a human being wearing fur".
And it's the Right that is supposed to violent.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI believe PETA euthanizes more pets each year than any other operation. They are totally and completely committed to a radical anti-human cause and have a history of acting on their beliefs. Yet so many continue to think of them as some group of affable misguided innocents infatuated with eating veggies.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou are absolutely, unequivocally right.
There is a fundamental difference between Animal Welfare and Animal Rights, and most people don't know it.
AR ideology holds that "the capacity to suffer" is the moral standard upon which rights are apportioned.
Since humans and animals both have the capacity to suffer, animals and humans are equal in a moral sense and therefore should be accorded equal rights. What this means is that if it is immoral or unethical to do something to a human, it is equally so to do it to an animal. So — since it is immoral to hunt humans, keep them in cages, eat them, confine them in zoos or as pets, it is likewise immoral to do those things to animals.
The AR person believes that to discriminate on the basis of species differences ("speciesism") is as immoral as it is to discriminate on the basis of racial, sexual or age differences.
This "do not discriminate" tenet is the "prohibitive" side of their moral equation, the "thou shalt not" side.
If an animal and a human are of equal moral value, then morality itself becomes a matter of simple math, and an AR person can argue that if, by killing one human s/he has saved 2 non-human animals (by intimidating a third party) into changing his behavior, then that one human killing was a moral act.
And that is the prescriptive side of their moral equation, the "thou shalt" side.
Of course, AR people are also strong advocates of sterilizing animals. And this is where things unravel for them and their ideology becomes incoherent, or worse.
How could AR people possibly advocate forcing an animal which is morally equivalent to a human to undergo the surgical mutilation of her reproductive organs without it being grossly immoral . . . unless they would advocate exactly the same draconian procedures for humans, for exactly the same reasons.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow much you wanna bet Lowell is against the death penalty?
Any takers?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMadisonian, your are almost certainly correct. But here's a sure thing: had she made contact with a real hitman, he would have been against the death penalty. Strangely, there are just so few professional killers in favor of it...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is just bizarre. She didn't even have a particular victim in mind. I'm going to chalk this one up to mental illness, and not her animal rights beliefs.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI've seen no mention of her being mentally ill. Her worldview has been so altered by propaganda that she has rationalized human life to be only worth anything in death, and only if that death was to raise awareness of the plight of our animal brothers. Twisted yes, mentally ill? Could you say that about most cold-blooded killers?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI agree with Keith. Her statement that the victim must be at least 12 years old, but preferably at least 14, clinch it for me.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm with you. She is undoubtedly mentally ill...not that I sympathize with the extremists she finds herself in deluded company with...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNo, it is not bizarre. This is what these people are - this is what their beliefs logically lead to. The only difference between her and Ingrid Newkirk is that Newkirk realizes that the public at large is not *YET* ready to treat the killing of animals as a capital crime deserving of capital punishment. Newkirk has admitted on camera that they are trying - over time - to make such beliefs acceptable to the main stream. Open your eyes and ears.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf believing it's wrong to wear fur "logically leads to" killing those who do so, wouldn't believing it's wrong to, say, abort fetuses logically lead to murdering those who do so?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseby your logic, I can show that Clinton's beliefs encourage the rape of women, and that Obama's logically lead to genocide. Or maybe you can just stop demonstrating your pure ignorance of basic logic.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEr, it's your logic. I don't think pro-lifers are bound to murder abortion doctors any more than I think animal rights activists are on a logical path to murder.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseyeah, just what I thought - you don't get it. If abortion doctors were in the business of slaughtering men, women and children indiscriminately, then skinning their victims to sew them into coats which they proudly wore around town, and then YOU accepted the characterization of people who opposed to this practice as "pro-life activists" opposed to "abortion" then you might have a point. But like all liberals, you never do because you have no idea what you're talking about.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI can't make any sense out of this reply, except that it fails to explain why you think strong moral outrage will "logically" lead to an animal activist to murder, but not an anti-abortion activist or, presumably, anyone other kind of activist with whom you happen to agree politically.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUgh, fixed a bunch of typos from my first attempt:
I can't make any sense out of this reply, except that it fails to explain why you think strong moral outrage will "logically" lead an animal-rights activist to murder, but not an anti-abortion activist or, presumably, any other kind of activist with whom you happen to agree politically.
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