Another sort of terrorist...

Dangerious, nonetheless...

Animal rights extremists gathered secretly in a Kent field yesterday to hear an American activist declare: "We will break the law and destroy property until we win."

Dr Steven Best, a philosophy professor and exponent of the Animal Liberation Front, told about 200 activists at the International Animal Rights Gathering 2005: "Now communism is dead, we are the new spectre in the world. We are named as the number one terrorist threat in the US and UK. Can you believe it?"

He added: "We are not terrorists, but we are a threat. We are a threat both economically and philosophically. Our power is not in the right to vote but the power to stop production. We will break the law and destroy property until we win."

He compared the animal rights struggle to the fight against slavery. "We are abolitionists. We don't want to reform them [vivisectionist companies], we want to wipe them off the face of the earth. We will fight, and die if necessary, to free the slaves."

Despite the Government's insistence that it is tightening measures to prevent foreign extremists who support criminal and violent acts from entering Britain, Dr Best is being allowed to give such speeches unchallenged.

Dr Best, who describes himself as a "sympathiser" of both the ALF and the Earth Liberation Front, both of which are listed as terrorist groups in the United States, believes that violence is morally right if the cause is "just".