Yesterday, an employee of a McDonald’s in Chico, California found two firebombs lodged against the restaurant’s back door when he arrived for work at 5:30 am. Thankfully, the bombs did not detonate.
In addition to the incendiary devices, the perpetrators scrawled the slogans “Meat is Murder,” “Species Equality,” and “Animal Liberation Front” (ALF) in red spray paint on the building’s exterior.
The ALF criminals responsible for this act of terrorism have reportedly left at least two notes explaining their actions — one taped to a public telephone, and the other in the mail slot of a local “alternative” weekly newspaper. The second note reportedly claims that McDonald’s was targeted “because of their [sic] prevalent connection to the farming industry… McDonald’s is the world’s largest user of beef.”
News reports from the Chico Enterprise Record describe the bombs as “two one-gallon plastic milk containers filled with a flammable liquid.” The Paradise Post adds that the incendiary devices were stuffed with “floating sponges” and quotes an FBI spokesman, relieved that the devices “were not ultimately ignited” — suggesting that they included a means of ignition.
This recipe almost exactly mirrors the one described by convicted Animal Liberation Front arsonist (and recipient of over $70,000 from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) Rodney Coronado, who shared his preferred method of bomb-building with a lecture hall full of American University students in January.
The Chico firebombs could also be fairly interpreted as an activist’s attempt to bring the vision of PETA campaign director Bruce Friedrich to fruition. Friedrich told the Animal Rights 2001 convention that “it would be great if all of the fast-food outlets, slaughterhouses, these laboratories, and the banks that fund them exploded tomorrow… Hallelujah to the people who are willing to do it” [click here to listen to Bruce].
