{"id":577,"date":"2012-03-07T17:13:27","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T01:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/?p=577"},"modified":"2012-07-04T17:14:24","modified_gmt":"2012-07-05T01:14:24","slug":"animal-rights-extremist-camille-marino-calls-for-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/2012\/03\/07\/animal-rights-extremist-camille-marino-calls-for-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Animal Rights Extremist Camille Marino Calls for Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By Leah Nelson
\nSouthern Poverty Law Center
\nSpring Issue, 2012<\/p>\n

In the wee hours of March 7, 2009, David Jentsch was startled out of his sleep by the sound of an explosion. The UCLA professor ran outside to find his car engulfed in flames. The fire quickly spread to a nearby tree before firefighters were able to douse it.<\/p>\n

The next day, self-described members of the \u201cAnimal Liberation Brigade\u201d claimed responsibility for the firebombing. They also warned ominously: \u201cwe will come for you when you least expect it and do a lot more damanage [sic] than to your property.\u201d The message was posted on the website of the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which publishes communiqu\u00e9s from underground animal rights activists.<\/p>\n

Soon afterward, Jentsch, a professor of psychology and psychiatry whose research involves rodents and non-human primates, began receiving menacing E-mails and packages containing razors.<\/p>\n

“If I have my way, you’ll be praying to us for mercy.” So says Camille Marino, a Florida woman who adds that those who use animals in their research should have their blood spilled. Marino specifically targeted UCLA professor David Jentsch, who obtained a restraining order against her after she told him her group wanted to throw him “a very very hot housewarming” party.
\nThen he discovered something else that alarmed him: Shortly after the firebombing, an obscure Florida-based group called Negotiation is Over (NIO) had identified him as a high-priority enemy on its website. It had posted his picture and contact information, and urged the animal liberation community to terrorize him.Who would do such a thing?<\/p>\n

That person would be Camille Marino, 47, who lives in Wildwood, Fla., and who formerly worked in the investment banking business. In recent years, she has devoted herself full-time to the animal rights movement. NIO is her brainchild, and she doesn’t care if someone gets hurt.<\/p>\n

Like many animal rights activists, Marino opposes the consumption of meat, eggs and dairy, and the use of leather, fur and wool. The bulk of her wrath, however, is reserved for \u201cvivisectionists,\u201d the scientists who use live animals for research purposes.<\/p>\n

Using language and tactics consciously borrowed from violent anti-abortion extremists, Marino sends threatening E-mails, publicizes the personal information of her targets, and encourages NIO sympathizers to destroy their lives by whatever means they deem appropriate, whether lawful or not.<\/p>\n

No one is off limits. The group has verbally attacked students \u2014 among them an undergraduate researcher at Florida Atlantic University whose work involved fruit flies. And it has gone after professors who don’t work directly with animals but use open source data collected by others who have.<\/p>\n

Marino and her group have caught the attention of the FBI, which in a recent biosecurity briefing to agents identified NIO’s campaign against student researchers as a \u201cnew trend in domestic threats.\u201d<\/p>\n

NIO’s crusade represents a sharp escalation of movement tactics that emerged a little more than a decade ago, when activists began to target individuals rather than institutions and labs. So far, no murders have been attributed to the movement. But scientists are clearly worried.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe [Marino] has taken this to a level that very few others have,\u201d Jentsch said. \u201cShe’s really become sort of the nationally visible representative of \u2018just pummel people, take them on personally, put all the cards on the table and do everything possible to crush them.’ That part is distinctive about her; it’s almost an art form.\u201d<\/p>\n

A \u2018Chalk Outline’<\/p>\n

About a year after she started harassing Jentsch, Marino posted an image of a chalk outline with the words \u201cAnimal Abuser Was Here\u201d and announced that her group was ramping up its war against researchers. Mentioning Jentsch by name, she wrote, \u201cThe image on this page is not a cute logo. It is my personal belief that if you are a sadistic animal torturer, that is all you deserve \u2014 a chalk outline.\u201d<\/p>\n

As if the message weren’t explicit enough, she reinforced it: \u201cIf you spill blood, your blood should be spilled as well. [W]e’re no longer playing games. We will print your information. And we’ll be at your homes. We’ll be at your work. We’ll be at your country clubs and golf courses. We’ll see you at your manicurist and we’ll be kneeling next to you when you take that next holy communion wafer on Sunday. If I have my way, you’ll be praying to us for mercy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jentsch did not ignore the warning. He moved and changed his phone number. It didn’t do much good. An NIO sympathizer soon found him, and his new address appeared on the website, along with a photo of his gate and instructions on hacking into a home security system. In July 2010, Marino sent him a mocking E-mail: \u201cEveryone at NIO is most anxious to throw you a housewarming \u2026 a very very hot housewarming. haha. Just joking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frightened by what he saw as a threat of arson, Jentsch obtained a permanent restraining order against Marino. Though he is still listed among NIO’s \u201cMost Wanted,\u201d the group has turned the bulk of its attention to new prey \u2014 especially students, whom Marino sees as highly vulnerable to the type of pressure her followers are willing to exert. NIO has even offered \u201cEa$y Money\u201d to undergraduates willing to provide information about peers involved in animal research.<\/p>\n

\u201cAspiring scientists envision curing cancer at the Mayo Clinic,\u201d Marino wrote in March 2011. \u201cWe need to impart a new vision: car bombs, 24\/7 security cameras, embarrassing home demonstrations, threats, injuries, and fear. And, of course, these students need to realize that any personal risk they are willing to assume will also be visited upon their parents, children, and nearest & dearest loved ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imprisoned arsonist Walter Bond says the world would be improved by the murder of “Animal researchers, slaughterhouse workers and even non-Vegans”. He is the “director of Militant Direct Action” of Camille Marino’s group.
\nNIO does far more than simply identify targets. Its website is essentially a one-stop shop for aspiring terrorists, with links to hacker sites, information on picking locks and making flash bombs, and the Animal Liberation Front’s (ALF) primer on arson and related tactics. Particularly disturbing is its \u201cStrategies and Tactics\u201d page, which offers information about other organizations whose \u201ccreative and aggressive\u201d techniques are intended to \u201cinspire\u201d NIO activists. One featured group is \u201cIndividualities Tending Towards Savagery\u201d (ITTS), a Mexico-based entity that explicitly models its tactics on those of the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, the former Berkeley professor who sent parcel bombs that killed three professors and wounded 23 others during a two-decade campaign against technological advancement.ITTS has already claimed responsibility for wounding researchers and support staff on three continents and says it will continue \u201cwithout compassion and without mercy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ditto for Marino. She openly acknowledges that she considers violence an acceptable tactic. \u201cThere is a war being waged against animals and any act committed in the name of love and compassion against those who are waging the war I do not consider an act of terrorism,\u201d she told the Intelligence Report. \u201cI’ve never done anything violent and I don’t intend to. But if some unknown person took that step, I would support and applaud it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, she already has. Marino lavishes attention on Walter Bond, a self-identified ALF \u201coperative\u201d who is currently serving an 87-month prison sentence for arsons in Colorado and Utah. Describing him NIO’s \u201cdirector of Militant Direct Action,\u201d Marino has made her website a conduit through which Bond can spread his ideology.<\/p>\n

\u201cI regret that I did not take more drastic action when I had the chance,\u201d he wrote on the NIO website last December. \u201cMy arsons were good but I could have made a stronger and more permanent statement with my actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

A month later, Bond wrote: \u201cLet’s be honest, the world would simply be a better place for Animals if people like Animal researchers, slaughterhouse workers and even non-Vegans were disposed of. It’s kind of difficult to harm an Animal if you’re dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Extensional’ self defense<\/p>\n

However much she lionizes him, Walter Bond is not Marino’s chief ideological idol. That honor belongs to Steven Best, a philosophy professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who last year was barred from entering the U.K., where he had been invited to speak at an animal rights rally.<\/p>\n

Best declined repeated interview requests from the Report, saying via E-mail that a productive conversation would not be possible unless the Southern Poverty Law Center (the Report’s publisher) gets its \u201cmoral bearings straight\u201d and takes on the \u201cacademic-industrial complex\u201d as \u201cthe true forces of hate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Best’s views, though, are easily found in his essays, blog posts and YouTube videos.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet every motherfucker who shoots animals be shot; Let every motherfucker who poisons animals be injected with a barrel of battery acid; Let every motherfucking vivisector be vivisected and thrown away like the shit they are,\u201d he wrote in 2011. \u201cMay this upside down world be set right \u2026 and the human voice never again be heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Best has never faced criminal sanctions for acting on his beliefs, but he has flirted with what activists call \u201cdirect action.\u201d In April 2010, he posted on NIO a video of himself attempting to confront a man rumored to trap and poison cats that wandered into his yard. The man wasn’t home, but his wife and small daughter were. \u201cIf I hear he’s hurting cats, I’m going to be all over his office,\u201d Best told them. \u201cYou tell him I’ll have a thousand people all over this place. You tell him Steve Best dropped by. You remember that name.\u201d<\/p>\n

Best posted the man’s phone numbers and addresses, along with pictures of his wife and children, beneath the video. In an update the next day, he thanked \u201call who called and expressed concern\u201d for letting the alleged cat-poisoner know \u201che is being watched.\u201d<\/p>\n

Best is much admired within the radical fringe of the animal liberation movement. As co-founder of the North American Animal Liberation Press Office (with which Marino is also involved), he’s helped enable \u201cunderground\u201d activists \u2014 like the Animal Liberation Brigade member who firebombed Jentsch’s car \u2014 to anonymously claim credit for terrorist acts.<\/p>\n

His biggest contribution to the movement is ideological. Under his notion of \u201cextensional self-defense,\u201d humans are morally justified to act as \u201cproxy agents\u201d for animals and use violence against their \u201coppressors.\u201d This doctrine is virtually identical to that embraced by anti-abortion extremists, who call the murder of abortion practitioners \u201cdefensive action\u201d and celebrate those who do it.<\/p>\n

Marino \u2014 who told the Report that she considers herself pro-choice \u2014 is well aware of this parallel. She routinely refers to Jentsch as \u201cDavid \u2018Tiller’ Jentsch,\u201d a reference to George Tiller, the Wichita, Kan., abortion provider who was shot dead at his church by activist Scott Roeder in 2009. In March 2011, Marino posted on NIO a news story about a push in some states to broaden the definition of \u201cjustifiable homicide\u201d to include murder committed in defense of an unborn child. \u201cAnimal liberationists are encouraged to pay close attention to the anti-abortionists’ tactics and strategies,\u201d she wrote. \u201cThe logical extension of their efforts is to expand the definition further to include murder committed in defense of an imprisoned and tortured nonhuman animal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recently, Marino’s rhetoric has become even more extreme, leaving no doubt that she endorses murder. \u201cIf abusers are dead, they cease being abusers,\u201d she wrote on her Facebook page in January. \u201cI fully support justifiable homicide in the war for animal liberation.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Schism Within the Movement<\/p>\n

Violence is by no means universally accepted within the radical animal rights community. Indeed, Best and Marino spend nearly as much energy jousting with their opponents within the movement as they do lambasting researchers and others who occupy the so-called \u201cacademic-industrial complex.\u201d<\/p>\n

A favorite target is Gary Francione, a Rutgers University law professor who is famous in some circles for proposing that there is no morally justifiable use of animals by humans but who also categorically opposes violence as a means of stopping it.<\/p>\n

Steven Best, a Texas professor who suggests that hunters and others be killed was senior editor of Marino’s website until last year.
\nBest accuses Francione and his followers (whom he has nicknamed \u201cFranciombes\u201d) of being \u201cMcCarthyists\u201d whose pacifism undermines the mission of serious activists like himself. \u201cFrancione is a cancer to be CUT OUT of this movement ENTIRELY, no compromise, no negotiation, no kumbaya, dead and gone,\u201d he wrote in one of his many diatribes. Recently, Best added \u2014 and a short time later removed \u2014 to his website a page titled \u201cStockholm Syndrome Watch,\u201d with the intent of \u201cexposing traitorous individuals and organizations who identify and collaborate with exploiters and cops over the exploited and militants in the animal advocacy movement.\u201dBest’s collaboration with NIO came under scrutiny of late.<\/p>\n

In late October, Marino announced that she was having financial difficulty and began collecting donations through a PayPal link on her site. After an online publication called Death & Taxes reported that the PayPal account belonged to Best, she removed the link and posted a lengthy and unconvincing essay attempting to distance her organization from the professor, though her reason for doing so was unclear.<\/p>\n

Although Best was \u201conce\u201d a senior editor (he left in 2011 and continued posting on the site frequently after that) and did indeed help \u201ckeep the website afloat\u201d for a time, Marino insists he has no direct role with the group. \u201cDr. Best and I are friends,\u201d she wrote. \u201cIt is appalling that his profession and livelihood are being assailed because of our personal association.\u201d Though the PayPal button was removed almost immediately after the Death & Taxes article appeared, she wrote, the two events were entirely unrelated. (As of press time, Marino had not re-established a means of raising money online; instead, she asks supporters to send donations by regular mail.)<\/p>\n

Marino owes more than $6,000 in legal fees she was ordered to pay as the result of a legal bout with Donal O’Leary, a cardiovascular researcher at Detroit’s Wayne State University who obtained a protective order after she targeted him in October. Having violated a judge’s order that she remove all references to O’Leary from her site and refrain from discussing him on social media, she faces arrest and possible jail time if she ever sets foot in Michigan.<\/p>\n

But Marino is chugging along faster than ever, posting pictures, naming names and declaring war against so-called animal oppressors. Recently, she bragged about NIO’s victory in a freedom of information lawsuit against the University of Florida, which in early January was ordered to turn over certain information about its animal research labs.<\/p>\n

Certain information, but not all. Citing \u201csubstantial concern for the personal safety of individuals,\u201d the judge permitted the school some discretion in redacting information it feared could expose faculty, staff and students to harassment. In the meantime, campus police \u2014 in consultation with local authorities as well as their counterparts at Wayne State and UCLA, where Jentsch works \u2014 are developing strategies to keep current and future targets safe.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s kind of disheartening, because you do have to wait for something to happen,\u201d Linda Stump, the University of Florida’s chief of police, told the Report. Working within the limits of laws that allow Marino tremendous leeway to post her messages of hate, she said, the department is doing its best \u201cto get out in front of this\u201d before anyone gets hurt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Leah Nelson Southern Poverty Law Center Spring Issue, 2012 In the wee hours of March 7, 2009, David Jentsch was startled out of his sleep by the sound of an explosion. The UCLA professor ran outside to find his car engulfed in flames. The fire quickly spread to a nearby tree before firefighters were … <\/p>\n

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