A Stitch in Haste

As everyone prepares to blog about the Philippines' caving to terrorist threats, let's not forget a related form of terrorist capitulation, as the BBC reports:

Animal rights activists have been blamed for intimidating a building firm into pulling out of a new animal research centre contract in Oxford.

Executives at the Montpellier Group said the company's subsidiary, Walter Lilly and Co, would be withdrawing.  A police probe earlier this year found letters claiming to be from Montpellier bosses urging shareholders to sell or face action from activists.

"They are threatening, they are destroying, they are undermining the lives of people going about their business," [Home Secretary David Blunkett] said.
...
Consultant neurosurgeon at Oxford University Professor Tipu Aziz said: "Animal rights terrorism is the most immediate threat to the British population as I perceive it. ... "Until animal rights extremists are treated as terrorists they will hold hostage the future of British public health."

Perhaps the most amazing part of this story is that, according to Oxford University, "the centre would replace existing sites and would not mean an increase in animal tests." But perhaps the tests would have been more efficient in a modern facility (maybe even sparing a few specimens).  Or maybe the people using the facility would have been more comfortable and productive in their new surroundings.
 
Details, details...
 
Aziz' statement about the magnitude of the animal rights threat may be a bit exaggerated.  The philosophical underpinnings of animal rights terrorists, however, are just as toxic and decrepit as al Qaeda's.  Just as Islamic terrorists are motivated not by love of Islam, but rather by hatred of the West, animal rights terrorists are not motivated by love of animals, but rather by hatred of humans.
 
More on animal rights terrorism from NRO here.