If the group you protested with were engaged in terrorist actions then you are. You want to go join a BUAV rally thats fine. And I wouldn't dream of calling you anti science. Nor would I accuse you of being anti science for protesting at a Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth rally. SHAC/ALF are a terror group. Attending a SHAC rally, giving money to SHAC, etc. is funding terrorism.
Protecting the identity of a member of SHAC is supporting terrorism.
Seeing as SHAC is a lawful public group, whose members are well-known to the authorities, I doubt it somehow.
The ALF and the ELF share many members and are populated by people who engage at attacks on scientists. If you support the ELF or ALF you are anti science. I'm not equating attending a Greenpeace or BUAV protest with being a member of the ALF.
Now you are descending into self-parody.
Thanks for doing my job for me by making yourself look like a raving lunatic.
I live in the UK. I've had problems with "animal rights protesters" in the UK, and in fact I've got a pretty severe knee injury which I've had for about 15 years, thanks to "animal rights protesters" stringing steel wire across a bridlepath used by a pony-trekking centre. Presumably the "animal rights" people weren't too concerned about causing enough injury to a horse that it had to be put down - a broken foreleg really *isn't* survivable for an animal that weighs nearly half a ton and has most of its weight over the front.
I thought I'd heard all the ludicrous stories about animal rights bogeymen, but this takes the biscuit.
You really think animal rights activists would string up a wire where it would injure a horse?
Even if you think they would want to injure some lard-arsed tourist weighing down some poor unfortunate pony, which I doubt, that is just such nonsense I'm lost for words.
Do people genuinely believe these stories? Have they no critical faculties left?
It sounds to me more like someone with a personal grudge against the pony trekking centre.
Read up on animal rights in the UK. Trust me these people are terrorists.
They are the first terrorists I've heard of that have never killed a single person.
How much terror do animal abusers inflict on animals every day?
Their actions include but are not limited to [...] murder.
Would you care to tell me who has been murdered for the cause of animal rights? No, you can't, because no-one ever has, unlike the several animal rights activists who have been killed by animal abusers.
It's worth noting that these cowards - I won't dilute the meaning of the word "terrorist" by using it here - will only attack relatively defenceless people and their workplaces, from a distance.
Which is more cowardly - to stand idle while animals are being abused, or to risk your liberty trying to stop that abuse?
Animal abusers really are the lowest of the low. How anyone can inflict suffering on an animal I'll never understand. Abusing animals is true cowardice.
If they really wanted to protest against the meat industry, they'd attack farms and farmers. They don't do this, because we all have shotguns, lime and heavy earthmoving machinery.
I've news for you - the meat industry and farms have been attacked on a regular basis for many decades. Take a look at this direct action site for some recent examples.
"You updated a website protesting animal cruelty vs drug companies. Now we're gonna smack you with a conspiracy charge for 4.5 years in prison."
Try, "you were basically CIO of a terrorist organisation."
Er, no, SHAC are a perfectly lawful organisation, which are still happily functioning, as you can see from their website.
If they were "terrorists", they would have been shut down.
SHAC/ALF are not a group protesting animal cruelty. They are a bunch of anti science luddites hell bent on hurting scientists and engineers.
Nonsense on stilts. The whole point of SHAC is to stop the terrorizing of animals by Huntingdon Life Sciences who, for example, force feed weedkiller to beagles.
SHAC, and myself, are neither luddites nor anti-science. I am fully supportive of the scientific method. I just don't think it is right to inflict pain on sentient beings in the process.
Belief in animal rights and belief in science are totally orthogonal issues.
I'm at a loss why you would think SHAC or the ALF want to hurt engineers, unless they are building some kind of device for torturing animals?
The UK government has acted against SHAC in the way that governments are good at: the people who committed the harassment will be in jail for some time.
Actually, that's not quite true.
The people who committed harassment were never found or charged, and there was no evidence that those imprisoned knew who they were.
The SHAC activists who were imprisoned were the ones running the lawful campaign, and they were convicted of "conspiracy to blackmail" precisely because they hadn't actually broken any real laws.
It was a clearly politically motivated attempt to silence an effective campaign - although the SHAC campaign is still going strong, I might add.
The toughs now in jail were not even bright enough to harass employees of the company doing the animal testing.
To start with, the people in jail weren't harassing anyone. They were running a legal campaign and were charged with a political offence - "conspiracy to blackmail" - precisely because they were not guilty of any genuine illegal acts.
This case was "guilt by association", which people should see as a worrying development, whatever your views on animal rights.
Secondly, employees of Huntingdon Life Sciences certainly did get harassed, by persons unknown.
They were not even bright enough to harass employees of companies doing business with them.
Companies that did business with Huntingdon Life Sciences certainly did get illegally harassed.
They would find names of big conglomerates doing business (in ways that often were extremely derivative, like messaging companies), choose a company from the group (that had nothing to do with animal testing) and then start harassing lets say the janitor.
As I recall, it was either customers of HLS - primarily chemical and pharmaceutical companies that contracted HLS to feed their wares to animals, or suppliers of HLS - companies who provided them with essential services for their business - who were targeted.
The SHAC campaign just carried out peaceful demonstrations at offices and encouraged people to write to the companies.
The people who were harassed - and again, not by the people who have been imprisoned - were generally directors and other high-up decision makers in the company.
The author has obviously totally missed the point that primarily the activism isn't targetted at 'corporations' but at individuals who happen to work at them.
Corporations are explicitly set up as faceless fronts for people to hide behind while they do their dirty work. Why shouldn't the people behind them who are doing nasty things like abusing animals be exposed?
What if animal rights activists set up a corporation behind which they did illegal things? Should the police just target the corporation and leave the people behind it alone?
The purpose of their activities is significant. They're publishing these addresses for purposes of harassment. I've read these animal activist web sites. They disingenuously claim they're posting addresses so you can peacefully protest to these people, and don't endorse illegal activities (wink wink). Then after a firebombing, they post anonymized messages from the people who did it justifying their actions.
I believe this is factually incorrect. Can you point me to a website that posts addresses of people to write to, and also posts messages from people who have attacked people at the same addresses? I don't think you can, because none of these websites do such a thing.
How the hell did this piece of establishment diatribe get modded +5 informative?
ALF - AnimalLiberationFront - a umbrella name for an unconnected group of compassionate people prepared to break the law and risk their liberty to defend animals from abuse. They have a strict policy of non-violence to any animals, including humans.
SHAC - Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty - a lawful group that campaigns against hideous abuse of animals at Huntingdon Life Sciences, who have been exposed numerous time for punching beagles, force-feeding them weedkiller, and torturing monkeys.
SPEAK - A group campaigning against a new animal torture facility in the heart of Oxford, UK.
PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - a large mainstream animal rights group, that nevertheless recognises that some people will break the law to help animals in suffering.
BUAV - British Union of Anti-Vivisectionists - a formerly radical but now wishy washy group whose main activities are lobbying politicians, who get much larger bribes from drug companies anyway.
We completely agree on what is best for the animal rights movement however. The violence, intimidation and extremism has to stop if any progress is going to be made.
I totally agree with you there.
The violent abuse of animals in laboratories, the intimidation of animals in circuses and zoos, and extreme torture and killing of animals on farms has to stop if humanity is going to become truly progressive.
When it comes to anti science terrorism I'm prepared to give the police the benefit of the doubt until I hear evidence otherwise.
What's with all this "anti-science" nonsense?
Where does it say to be pro-science you need to believe in the torture of animals?
I'm a pro-science as anyone, and I think anyone who denies the blatantly obvious fact that animals are sentient beings that feel pain is clearly putting their own prejudices and bigotry before scientific reality.
I haven't read such a nonsensical and plain untrue post for a long while.
SHAC, PETA, and SPEAK are all basically different wings of the ALF.
SHAC, PETA and SPEAK are all perfectly legal groups; if they weren't, they would have been shut down.
The SHAC people were convicted of "conspiracy to blackmail" not for anything they did, but purely for the illegal actions of others, who were unknown to them.
It was a purely political show trial to imprison the legal side of the campaign because it was getting too successful, and because they didn;t know who was breaking the law.
None of these groups are 'pro animal rights' and are all just anti science.
In further news, black is white and white is black? Of course they are all pro animal rights, that's the whole reason for the campaigns. Do you really believe what you say, or are you just a self-parody?
And they are certainly pro-science. I am a firm believer in the scientific method, I just don't think it's right to torture and kill sentient creatures in the process.
That's just like saying if you disapprove of scientists experimenting on humans without their consent, you must be anti-science. Totally ludicrous logic.
The current mass-scale industrialised abuse of animals that goes on in our society in factory farms and laboratories is the real Dark Age from which animal liberationists are trying to pull us.
Privacy and presumption of innocence are just a couple of the things that must be sacrificed for the job. They are public servants, and we need to remind them of that.
I disagree. A judge is not a political figure, his sole purpose is to objectively "weigh" the facts presented in a case in order to determine its truth value. His personal convictions don't add into it, and he did not attain the position by public means: his office is completely separated from his private life.
Hahahahahahaha! Thanks for that comedy, I haven't had a laugh like that for a while.
Oh, wait... you're serious?
Judges are all part of the establishment, they all went to the same posh schools and dinner clubs as the politicians and captains of industry.
The SHAC website has not been taken down by the UK police.
That would be because SHAC is a perfectly legal group that campaigns against disgusting animal abuse at Huntingdon Life Sciences.
An Indymedia mirror has, probably because the police wanted to check for themselves the claim that Indymedia does not keep logs, rather than trust the site's operators, who are likely sympathetic to SHAC and might be inclined to help cover up the source of the criminal harassment that the police are investigating.
The offending post was the private address of a judge. There was no incitement to harass, although it is against Indymedia policy to show personal details, so it was removed.
SHAC *is* an innocent "international campaign group".
The authorities were aware the campaign was very successful, and were also aware that there was a lot of illegal action being taken by unknown people in support of the group's aims.
Because they couldn't catch the lawbreakers, they decided to imprison the people running the lawful group on politically-motivated "conspiracy to blackmail" charges.
There was no accusation that the people in the SHAC campaign were responsible for any specific illegal acts.
SHAC is by no means a terrorist group. If they were, how come they are still functioning openly? - you can see many recent actions at http://shac.net/
They are a perfectly lawful group that got too successful in challenging the abuses of the pharmaceutical industry and were locked up on a spurious "conspiracy to blackmail" charge.
Don't you think there is a reason that they were never arrested, accused or charged with specific illegal acts?
It's because those acts were carried out by unknown people unconnected to them other than by a common goal. This was pure guilt by tenuous association.
Please do try to bear in mind that the SHAC "activists" are violent criminals, who have launched physical attacks on people involved in animal testing.
With a rather loose definition of "involved".
With a rather loose definition of "violent criminals" and "physical attacks".
Do you believe everything you read in the mainstream media? The SHAC activists jailed were neither accused nor convicted of any specific illegal acts, let alone violence or physical attacks.
This is because they were never involved with anything like this. If you read the news carefully, you will see how clever they are never to say directly that the SHAC prisoners did it, but the way it is written is ambiguous enough to make the gullible and the casual reader jump to that conclusion.
The SHAC activists were convicted of conspiracy to blackmail purely because they ran a successful legal campaign where other people, unknown to them or the courts, committed illegal actions.
Whether you believe animal testing is right or wrong, that is not the way to go about protesting it.
It's also not credible for them to claim that terrorism was their only possible method of protesting. With the people recently jailed having put plenty of deliberate effort into terror.
And what "terror" is that then? Answer: none at all, for the reasons outlined above. Do people always fall for the clumsy propaganda spoonfed to them by the media?
The real "terror" is that inflicted on monkeys, beagles, cats and other animals by Huntingdon Life Sciences to perform pointless CYA tests for products such has weedkiller and household cleaners, as well as largely useless drugs.
Animal rights protesters attack factory farming regularly. A few minutes of googling would confirm this. "Pest" controllers have been targeted in the past too.
It's not about equating two lives, it's about giving each life equal consideration.
To any animal, human or non-human, their life is the only one they have and they will fight for it.
Animals clearly are capable of suffering. Is it right that we make them undergo things like the barbaric tortures and brutal killings in factory farms just so we can enjoy the taste of their flesh?
I don't think so, and I think anyone who feels the need to flippantly disagree should think deeply about why that is.
Point of information: the original post wasn't a death threat. It gave the private address of a judge and asked people not to mention the fact that his son had been killed in an car accident last year.
Tasteless? Maybe.
Illegal? I don't think so.
Against Indymedia's policy on not showing personal information? Certainly, which is why Indymedia censored the post fairly soon after it was posted.
You are blindly falling for the line taken in much of the uncritical media that the people imprisoned were responsible for illegal acts.
They weren't, and a close examination of the news reports shows very clever use of words to insinuate those convicted were responsible for the harassment.
Why were they convicted of conspiracy to blackmail and not harassment or threats? Simple, because they didn't do that, nor were they accused of doing that.
This case was political, to punish the people running a purely lawful campaign for the actions of unknown others who did break the law in furtherance of the objectives of the campaign.
Regardless of what you think about the moral rights of wrongs of the campaign, that has to be a worrying development.
And as for animal liberationists not targeting factory farming, a few minutes googling will show you that the meat industry gets quite extensively attacked by animal rights activists.
Firstly, the original post wasn't a death threat, it just gave an address of the judge.
Secondly, the SHAC prisoners aren't violent criminals. They were never accused of committing or being involved with any specific illegal acts against people or companies.
They were found guilty of a politically-motivated charge of conspiracy to blackmail, just for running a perfectly legal campaign where other unknown people broke the law.
The mainstream news reports do an excellent job of misrepresenting the facts, but if you read them with a critical eye, you can see that nowhere do they actually say those convicted were involved in illegal actions.
That is because they weren't - they were convicted purely on the basis of guilt by association with unknown others who DID commit illegal acts, quite independently.
This case will have far-reaching ramifications, because it basically says that legal campaigns are somehow responsible for what other people might do on behalf of the campaign's objectives.
Don't believe the biased reports you see in the mainstream media. If you read between the lines, you can see a glimmer of the truth: The SHAC members convicted were never accused nor found guilty of any illegal actions against people or companies.
They were convicted of conspiracy to blackmail just because other unknown people broke the law in support of their campaign.
This is pure guilt by association.
Irrespective of what you think of the rights and wrongs of vivisection, it is a chilling verdict that will have damaging effects in other areas.
Slashdot Mirror
If the group you protested with were engaged in terrorist actions then you are. You want to go join a BUAV rally thats fine. And I wouldn't dream of calling you anti science. Nor would I accuse you of being anti science for protesting at a Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth rally. SHAC/ALF are a terror group. Attending a SHAC rally, giving money to SHAC, etc. is funding terrorism.
Protecting the identity of a member of SHAC is supporting terrorism.
Seeing as SHAC is a lawful public group, whose members are well-known to the authorities, I doubt it somehow.
The ALF and the ELF share many members and are populated by people who engage at attacks on scientists. If you support the ELF or ALF you are anti science. I'm not equating attending a Greenpeace or BUAV protest with being a member of the ALF.
Now you are descending into self-parody.
Thanks for doing my job for me by making yourself look like a raving lunatic.
I live in the UK. I've had problems with "animal rights protesters" in the UK, and in fact I've got a pretty severe knee injury which I've had for about 15 years, thanks to "animal rights protesters" stringing steel wire across a bridlepath used by a pony-trekking centre. Presumably the "animal rights" people weren't too concerned about causing enough injury to a horse that it had to be put down - a broken foreleg really *isn't* survivable for an animal that weighs nearly half a ton and has most of its weight over the front.
I thought I'd heard all the ludicrous stories about animal rights bogeymen, but this takes the biscuit.
You really think animal rights activists would string up a wire where it would injure a horse?
Even if you think they would want to injure some lard-arsed tourist weighing down some poor unfortunate pony, which I doubt, that is just such nonsense I'm lost for words.
Do people genuinely believe these stories? Have they no critical faculties left?
It sounds to me more like someone with a personal grudge against the pony trekking centre.
Read up on animal rights in the UK. Trust me these people are terrorists.
They are the first terrorists I've heard of that have never killed a single person.
How much terror do animal abusers inflict on animals every day?
Their actions include but are not limited to [...] murder.
Would you care to tell me who has been murdered for the cause of animal rights? No, you can't, because no-one ever has, unlike the several animal rights activists who have been killed by animal abusers.
It's worth noting that these cowards - I won't dilute the meaning of the word "terrorist" by using it here - will only attack relatively defenceless people and their workplaces, from a distance.
Which is more cowardly - to stand idle while animals are being abused, or to risk your liberty trying to stop that abuse?
Animal abusers really are the lowest of the low. How anyone can inflict suffering on an animal I'll never understand. Abusing animals is true cowardice.
If they really wanted to protest against the meat industry, they'd attack farms and farmers. They don't do this, because we all have shotguns, lime and heavy earthmoving machinery.
I've news for you - the meat industry and farms have been attacked on a regular basis for many decades. Take a look at this direct action site for some recent examples.
"You updated a website protesting animal cruelty vs drug companies. Now we're gonna smack you with a conspiracy charge for 4.5 years in prison."
Try, "you were basically CIO of a terrorist organisation."
Er, no, SHAC are a perfectly lawful organisation, which are still happily functioning, as you can see from their website.
If they were "terrorists", they would have been shut down.
SHAC/ALF are not a group protesting animal cruelty. They are a bunch of anti science luddites hell bent on hurting scientists and engineers.
Nonsense on stilts. The whole point of SHAC is to stop the terrorizing of animals by Huntingdon Life Sciences who, for example, force feed weedkiller to beagles.
SHAC, and myself, are neither luddites nor anti-science. I am fully supportive of the scientific method. I just don't think it is right to inflict pain on sentient beings in the process.
Belief in animal rights and belief in science are totally orthogonal issues.
I'm at a loss why you would think SHAC or the ALF want to hurt engineers, unless they are building some kind of device for torturing animals?
The UK government has acted against SHAC in the way that governments are good at: the people who committed the harassment will be in jail for some time.
Actually, that's not quite true.
The people who committed harassment were never found or charged, and there was no evidence that those imprisoned knew who they were.
The SHAC activists who were imprisoned were the ones running the lawful campaign, and they were convicted of "conspiracy to blackmail" precisely because they hadn't actually broken any real laws.
It was a clearly politically motivated attempt to silence an effective campaign - although the SHAC campaign is still going strong, I might add.
The toughs now in jail were not even bright enough to harass employees of the company doing the animal testing.
To start with, the people in jail weren't harassing anyone. They were running a legal campaign and were charged with a political offence - "conspiracy to blackmail" - precisely because they were not guilty of any genuine illegal acts.
This case was "guilt by association", which people should see as a worrying development, whatever your views on animal rights.
Secondly, employees of Huntingdon Life Sciences certainly did get harassed, by persons unknown.
They were not even bright enough to harass employees of companies doing business with them.
Companies that did business with Huntingdon Life Sciences certainly did get illegally harassed.
They would find names of big conglomerates doing business (in ways that often were extremely derivative, like messaging companies), choose a company from the group (that had nothing to do with animal testing) and then start harassing lets say the janitor.
As I recall, it was either customers of HLS - primarily chemical and pharmaceutical companies that contracted HLS to feed their wares to animals, or suppliers of HLS - companies who provided them with essential services for their business - who were targeted.
The SHAC campaign just carried out peaceful demonstrations at offices and encouraged people to write to the companies.
The people who were harassed - and again, not by the people who have been imprisoned - were generally directors and other high-up decision makers in the company.
The author has obviously totally missed the point that primarily the activism isn't targetted at 'corporations' but at individuals who happen to work at them.
Corporations are explicitly set up as faceless fronts for people to hide behind while they do their dirty work. Why shouldn't the people behind them who are doing nasty things like abusing animals be exposed?
What if animal rights activists set up a corporation behind which they did illegal things? Should the police just target the corporation and leave the people behind it alone?
The purpose of their activities is significant. They're publishing these addresses for purposes of harassment. I've read these animal activist web sites. They disingenuously claim they're posting addresses so you can peacefully protest to these people, and don't endorse illegal activities (wink wink). Then after a firebombing, they post anonymized messages from the people who did it justifying their actions.
I believe this is factually incorrect. Can you point me to a website that posts addresses of people to write to, and also posts messages from people who have attacked people at the same addresses? I don't think you can, because none of these websites do such a thing.
How the hell did this piece of establishment diatribe get modded +5 informative?
ALF - Animal Liberation Front - a umbrella name for an unconnected group of compassionate people prepared to break the law and risk their liberty to defend animals from abuse. They have a strict policy of non-violence to any animals, including humans.
SHAC - Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty - a lawful group that campaigns against hideous abuse of animals at Huntingdon Life Sciences, who have been exposed numerous time for punching beagles, force-feeding them weedkiller, and torturing monkeys.
SPEAK - A group campaigning against a new animal torture facility in the heart of Oxford, UK.
PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - a large mainstream animal rights group, that nevertheless recognises that some people will break the law to help animals in suffering.
BUAV - British Union of Anti-Vivisectionists - a formerly radical but now wishy washy group whose main activities are lobbying politicians, who get much larger bribes from drug companies anyway.
We completely agree on what is best for the animal rights movement however. The violence, intimidation and extremism has to stop if any progress is going to be made.
I totally agree with you there.
The violent abuse of animals in laboratories, the intimidation of animals in circuses and zoos, and extreme torture and killing of animals on farms has to stop if humanity is going to become truly progressive.
When it comes to anti science terrorism I'm prepared to give the police the benefit of the doubt until I hear evidence otherwise.
What's with all this "anti-science" nonsense?
Where does it say to be pro-science you need to believe in the torture of animals?
I'm a pro-science as anyone, and I think anyone who denies the blatantly obvious fact that animals are sentient beings that feel pain is clearly putting their own prejudices and bigotry before scientific reality.
I haven't read such a nonsensical and plain untrue post for a long while.
SHAC, PETA, and SPEAK are all basically different wings of the ALF.
SHAC, PETA and SPEAK are all perfectly legal groups; if they weren't, they would have been shut down.
The SHAC people were convicted of "conspiracy to blackmail" not for anything they did, but purely for the illegal actions of others, who were unknown to them.
It was a purely political show trial to imprison the legal side of the campaign because it was getting too successful, and because they didn;t know who was breaking the law.
None of these groups are 'pro animal rights' and are all just anti science.
In further news, black is white and white is black? Of course they are all pro animal rights, that's the whole reason for the campaigns. Do you really believe what you say, or are you just a self-parody?
And they are certainly pro-science. I am a firm believer in the scientific method, I just don't think it's right to torture and kill sentient creatures in the process.
That's just like saying if you disapprove of scientists experimenting on humans without their consent, you must be anti-science. Totally ludicrous logic.
The current mass-scale industrialised abuse of animals that goes on in our society in factory farms and laboratories is the real Dark Age from which animal liberationists are trying to pull us.
Privacy and presumption of innocence are just a couple of the things that must be sacrificed for the job. They are public servants, and we need to remind them of that.
I disagree. A judge is not a political figure, his sole purpose is to objectively "weigh" the facts presented in a case in order to determine its truth value. His personal convictions don't add into it, and he did not attain the position by public means: his office is completely separated from his private life.
Hahahahahahaha! Thanks for that comedy, I haven't had a laugh like that for a while.
Oh, wait... you're serious?
Judges are all part of the establishment, they all went to the same posh schools and dinner clubs as the politicians and captains of industry.
The SHAC website has not been taken down by the UK police.
That would be because SHAC is a perfectly legal group that campaigns against disgusting animal abuse at Huntingdon Life Sciences.
An Indymedia mirror has, probably because the police wanted to check for themselves the claim that Indymedia does not keep logs, rather than trust the site's operators, who are likely sympathetic to SHAC and might be inclined to help cover up the source of the criminal harassment that the police are investigating.
The offending post was the private address of a judge. There was no incitement to harass, although it is against Indymedia policy to show personal details, so it was removed.
SHAC *is* an innocent "international campaign group".
The authorities were aware the campaign was very successful, and were also aware that there was a lot of illegal action being taken by unknown people in support of the group's aims.
Because they couldn't catch the lawbreakers, they decided to imprison the people running the lawful group on politically-motivated "conspiracy to blackmail" charges.
There was no accusation that the people in the SHAC campaign were responsible for any specific illegal acts.
SHAC is by no means a terrorist group. If they were, how come they are still functioning openly? - you can see many recent actions at http://shac.net/
They are a perfectly lawful group that got too successful in challenging the abuses of the pharmaceutical industry and were locked up on a spurious "conspiracy to blackmail" charge.
Don't you think there is a reason that they were never arrested, accused or charged with specific illegal acts?
It's because those acts were carried out by unknown people unconnected to them other than by a common goal. This was pure guilt by tenuous association.
Please do try to bear in mind that the SHAC "activists" are violent criminals, who have launched physical attacks on people involved in animal testing.
With a rather loose definition of "involved".
With a rather loose definition of "violent criminals" and "physical attacks".
Do you believe everything you read in the mainstream media? The SHAC activists jailed were neither accused nor convicted of any specific illegal acts, let alone violence or physical attacks.
This is because they were never involved with anything like this. If you read the news carefully, you will see how clever they are never to say directly that the SHAC prisoners did it, but the way it is written is ambiguous enough to make the gullible and the casual reader jump to that conclusion.
The SHAC activists were convicted of conspiracy to blackmail purely because they ran a successful legal campaign where other people, unknown to them or the courts, committed illegal actions.
Whether you believe animal testing is right or wrong, that is not the way to go about protesting it.
It's also not credible for them to claim that terrorism was their only possible method of protesting. With the people recently jailed having put plenty of deliberate effort into terror.
And what "terror" is that then? Answer: none at all, for the reasons outlined above. Do people always fall for the clumsy propaganda spoonfed to them by the media?
The real "terror" is that inflicted on monkeys, beagles, cats and other animals by Huntingdon Life Sciences to perform pointless CYA tests for products such has weedkiller and household cleaners, as well as largely useless drugs.
Are you begin sarcastic?
Animal rights protesters attack factory farming regularly. A few minutes of googling would confirm this. "Pest" controllers have been targeted in the past too.
It's not about equating two lives, it's about giving each life equal consideration.
To any animal, human or non-human, their life is the only one they have and they will fight for it.
Animals clearly are capable of suffering. Is it right that we make them undergo things like the barbaric tortures and brutal killings in factory farms just so we can enjoy the taste of their flesh?
I don't think so, and I think anyone who feels the need to flippantly disagree should think deeply about why that is.
Point of information: the original post in question wasn't a death threat; it just listed the private address of a judge.
Point of information: the original post wasn't a death threat. It gave the private address of a judge and asked people not to mention the fact that his son had been killed in an car accident last year.
Tasteless? Maybe.
Illegal? I don't think so.
Against Indymedia's policy on not showing personal information? Certainly, which is why Indymedia censored the post fairly soon after it was posted.
You are blindly falling for the line taken in much of the uncritical media that the people imprisoned were responsible for illegal acts.
They weren't, and a close examination of the news reports shows very clever use of words to insinuate those convicted were responsible for the harassment.
Why were they convicted of conspiracy to blackmail and not harassment or threats? Simple, because they didn't do that, nor were they accused of doing that.
This case was political, to punish the people running a purely lawful campaign for the actions of unknown others who did break the law in furtherance of the objectives of the campaign.
Regardless of what you think about the moral rights of wrongs of the campaign, that has to be a worrying development.
And as for animal liberationists not targeting factory farming, a few minutes googling will show you that the meat industry gets quite extensively attacked by animal rights activists.
Correcting some points of misinformation:
Firstly, the original post wasn't a death threat, it just gave an address of the judge.
Secondly, the SHAC prisoners aren't violent criminals. They were never accused of committing or being involved with any specific illegal acts against people or companies.
They were found guilty of a politically-motivated charge of conspiracy to blackmail, just for running a perfectly legal campaign where other unknown people broke the law.
The mainstream news reports do an excellent job of misrepresenting the facts, but if you read them with a critical eye, you can see that nowhere do they actually say those convicted were involved in illegal actions.
That is because they weren't - they were convicted purely on the basis of guilt by association with unknown others who DID commit illegal acts, quite independently.
This case will have far-reaching ramifications, because it basically says that legal campaigns are somehow responsible for what other people might do on behalf of the campaign's objectives.
Don't believe the biased reports you see in the mainstream media. If you read between the lines, you can see a glimmer of the truth: The SHAC members convicted were never accused nor found guilty of any illegal actions against people or companies.
They were convicted of conspiracy to blackmail just because other unknown people broke the law in support of their campaign.
This is pure guilt by association.
Irrespective of what you think of the rights and wrongs of vivisection, it is a chilling verdict that will have damaging effects in other areas.