Category: Animal Rights/Liberation

Sea Shepherd to Deploy Drones to Stop Massive Whale Slaughter

(Photo: Andrija Ilic/Reuters) 13th June In recent years, the annu­al dol­phin hunts in Tai­ji, Japan, have gar­nered head­lines world­wide and sparked out­rage among activists, sci­en­tists, celebri­ties,

(Photo: Andrija Ilic/Reuters) 13th June In recent years, the annu­al dol­phin hunts in Tai­ji, Japan, have gar­nered head­lines world­wide and sparked out­rage among activists, sci­en­tists, celebri­ties, and diplo­mats. But half a world away, in the North Atlantic nation of the Faeroe Islands, a sim­i­lar slaugh­ter has received far less scruti­ny.

That’s about to change. On Fri­day, Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety USA will unveil details of a new hi-tech ini­tia­tive aimed at dis­rupt­ing and halt­ing the whale hunts, which begin this month and con­tin­ue through Sep­tem­ber.

The annu­al hunts are known as “grinds.” As part of “Oper­a­tion Grind­Stop 2014,” a land-based cam­paign, Sea Shep­herd USA will deploy drones and livestream video to hin­der the slaugh­ter. Oth­er Sea Shep­herd orga­ni­za­tions will launch simul­ta­ne­ous water-based cam­paigns.

Why the drones? They are “pri­mar­i­ly for sur­veil­lance and doc­u­men­ta­tion,” Sea Shep­herd founder Paul Wat­son said in an email. “They are inex­pen­sive and easy to oper­ate, and they can get us into places we could not oth­er­wise get to.”

Com­bined with livestream­ing video, drone tech­nol­o­gy  “will allow us to cov­er the more than two dozen beach­es in the Faeroes where whales may be killed,” Wat­son added. “The Faeroes present some logis­ti­cal chal­lenges, and we need to be able to deploy in such a way that all pos­si­ble kill sites are mon­i­tored at all times.”

Drones might also detect approach­ing whales, he said, which would “allow us to take our boats to deflect the pods away from the islands.” (The Faeroe Islands cam­paign is fund­ed in part by the Skoll Foun­da­tion, part of the Jeff Skoll Group, which includes Par­tic­i­pant Media, TakePart’s par­ent com­pa­ny.)

Sea Shep­herd USA will place four teams of at least 15 activists each on the ground.
Res­i­dents of the windswept Faeroes, a self-gov­ern­ing arch­i­pel­ago of Den­mark between Nor­way and Ice­land, have been killing fin whales, pilot whales, Atlantic white-sided dol­phins, and oth­er small marine mam­mals for cen­turies. Though the slaugh­ter has received a smat­ter­ing of atten­tion in the glob­al media, the Faeroes hunt has been large­ly over­shad­owed by the dol­phin dri­ves in Tai­ji, which were chron­i­cled in the Oscar-win­ning doc­u­men­tary The Cove.

As many as 1,000 endan­gered long-finned pilot whales, along with mem­bers of oth­er species, are killed each year in the Faeroes dur­ing the “tra­di­tion­al” hunt, called grindadráp (“grind”) by islanders.

The hunt is even pro­mot­ed as a tourist attrac­tion. Accord­ing to the Vis­it Faroe Islands web­site, one of the country’s main attrac­tions is whal­ing.

“The pilot whale hunt in the Faroes is, by its very nature, a dra­mat­ic sight,” it states. “Entire schools of whales are killed on the shore and in the shal­lows of bays with knives which are used to sev­er the major blood sup­ply to the brain.”

The method is “the most effi­cient and humane” means of killing “under the cir­cum­stances,” the web­site reas­sures poten­tial­ly queasy tourists, “but it nat­u­ral­ly results in a lot of blood in the water.”

This is not the first time that Sea Shep­herd, which has been fight­ing against the Faeroes slaugh­ter for more than 30 years, has used drones in a cam­paign, accord­ing to Jake Weber, Sea Shep­herd drone spe­cial­ist. But it is the first drone deploy­ment in the Faeroes, he said in an email. “A great advan­tage they will pro­vide is the abil­i­ty to get [high-def­i­n­i­tion] footage and still pho­tos very close to the grind with­out endan­ger­ing our vol­un­teers or their equip­ment.”

4 Arsons against Bristol’s cellular transmission infrastructure over 24 Hours

Around Bris­tol between June 9th-10th, we left 7 mobile phone anten­nae in flames. Dai­ly con­tin­u­a­tion of cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety is depen­dent on unin­ter­rupt­ed flows (of goods, peo­ple, data, and ener­gy) and the com­mu­ni­ca­tions grid is no excep­tion.

Around Bris­tol between June 9th-10th, we left 7 mobile phone anten­nae in flames. Dai­ly con­tin­u­a­tion of cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety is depen­dent on unin­ter­rupt­ed flows (of goods, peo­ple, data, and ener­gy) and the com­mu­ni­ca­tions grid is no excep­tion. The lim­it­ed uses most of us can make from these flows only mask the way they are main­ly used to over­see and impose the dom­i­nant order, and increase its’ reach and con­trol. You need only look to how the val­ues of con­nec­tiv­i­ty, speed, and mobil­i­ty that are embod­ied in a mobile phone (for exam­ple) facil­i­tate a relent­less con­sumer cul­ture and the require­ment to be avail­able and flex­i­ble at all times: as much for the ben­e­fit of the boss and the adver­tis­er as for your fam­i­ly or friends. This is ful­ly con­sis­tent with the mod­ern restruc­tur­ing and decen­tral­i­sa­tion of the gigan­tic pro­duc­tive sys­tem which this soci­ety sub­jects us to. Hin­der­ing all this was our objec­tive.

2 anten­nae went up simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, in Ham­brook and out­side Ram Hill busi­ness park in Coal­pit Heath, both owned by O2. This is also not the first time O2 have been sin­gled out for dam­age acts because of the con­tracts they hold in the migrant deten­tion indus­try, with cops, and tag­ging for the pro­ba­tion ser­vice. Some hours lat­er a 3rd O2 anten­na went up in Coombe Din­gle, at the same time as a 4th fire was lit after gain­ing access to trans­mis­sion units con­nect­ed to the huge BT telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion tow­er in Lock­leaze. Sig­nals that will have been affect­ed are those of O2, T‑Mobile, Orange and Voda­phone. These cor­po­ra­tions var­i­ous­ly are con­nect­ed to the field of mil­i­tary equip­ment and arma­ment, use prison labour, and are famous for read­i­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing with elec­tron­ic polic­ing by the secret ser­vices (now that wide­spread data-sur­veil­lance is well known) while not even stop­ping at financ­ing Oxford uni­ver­si­ty with its’ exten­sive ani­mal exper­i­men­ta­tion labs. This has already led to their inter­ests being attacked in Berlin (T‑Mobile’s par­ent com­pa­ny*), Paris (Orange*), and Ban­bury (Voda­phone*).

For all above rea­sons it is always good to harm these cor­po­ra­tions, struc­tural­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly, and then there is the issue of the anten­nae them­selves radi­at­ing who knows how much harm­ful­ness to near­by species. There were the pub­li­cised cas­es in Bris­tol even some years ago of a woman in Shire­hamp­ton who com­plained of the affects of an anten­na put up on her high rise flat­block and lat­er died from a brain tumor, while an anten­na nick­named The Tow­er of Doom was with­drawn from Sta­ple Hill after can­cer rates soared. Evi­dence has mount­ed up that pro­longed use of mobile phones dam­ages the immune sys­tem, decreas­es fer­til­i­ty, and caus­es brain tumors and can­cers: espe­cial­ly in the young. We should men­tion that the anten­na we burned in Coombe Din­gle is one of three on the grounds of a uni­ver­si­ty sports pitch also mar­ket­ed for schools, as are many oth­ers. Addi­tion­al­ly, twist­ed lab tech­ni­cians claim to have deduced from exper­i­men­ta­tion on oth­er mam­mals (built on tor­ture like so much sci­en­tif­ic research) that expo­sure while still in the womb “sig­nif­i­cant­ly dam­ages brain func­tion, struc­ture and behav­iour and sug­gest­ed that these expo­sures could con­tribute to chil­dren’s behav­iour­al dis­or­ders”.

These prod­ucts were and still are pushed on us as harm­less, although near­ly every study that claims this was fund­ed by the indus­try itself, when we had no idea of the long term affects, sim­i­lar­ly to the mar­ket­ing of asbestos or smok­ing before they began to show their dead­ly toll (to use only 2 bet­ter known exam­ples among thou­sands). These days even researchers at Bris­tol uni­ver­si­ty con­cede the dan­gers of cel­lu­lar use. What a surprise.…the per­ma­nent­ly wired envi­ron­ment turns out to be tox­ic, while com­pa­nies make a killing in prof­its and the gov­ern­ment receives bil­lions in tax­es and licens­ing. For most peo­ple pro­longed con­tact with mobile phones or wire­less net­works in gen­er­al seems unavoid­able, for work or to avoid social mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion, in the street, on pub­lic trans­port, or at home: we are soak­ing in one more accu­mu­la­tive bar­rage in a poi­so­nous, anti-human and anti-life civil­i­sa­tion that grows by the day.

A recur­ring fea­ture of the estrange­ment that tech­nolo­gies such as mobile phones actu­al­ly cul­ti­vate between indi­vid­u­als, is how many addict­ed to their con­stant use now pre­fer to text mes­sage or to “tweet” to avoid the prospect of real life con­tact, and how many only feel safe com­mu­ni­cat­ing from behind a device. It is now com­plete­ly stan­dard for peo­ple to spend the major­i­ty of their wak­ing hours inter­fac­ing with one screen or anoth­er. Up and com­ing inven­tions such as Google Glass attempt to make this enclo­sure near total (although also depen­dent in part on unin­ter­rupt­ed trans­mis­sion infra­struc­ture). As a soci­ety that lives through high­ly com­plex tech­nolo­gies, we no longer ful­ly inhab­it our bod­ies and envi­ron­ment but instead some part of the tech­no-hive: and it is no longer only nerds and the young who prac­ti­cal­ly call this vir­tu­al real­i­ty their home. As the sphere dom­i­nat­ed by infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy expands, what is con­sid­ered social­ly of impor­tance in our actu­al lives shrinks to what can be con­veyed and received by the device, and so nar­row­ing human emo­tion and expe­ri­ence. Or think about the obses­sive urge to treat mod­ern life as some­thing less to be lived than to be doc­u­ment­ed in each detail for pas­sive con­sump­tion on the “social” net­works, as anoth­er exam­ple of coloni­sa­tion by cap­i­tal­ism and its’ tech­nol­o­gy.

Plan­ning and car­ry­ing out your exis­tence dig­i­tal­ly also allows the pos­si­bil­i­ties of unprece­dent­ed sur­veil­lance, and it hin­ders active rebel­lion or even ques­tion­ing of the dom­i­nant order by flag­ging up “abnor­mal­i­ties” in what you often vol­un­tar­i­ly share with your friends or “Friends.” At the same time, con­cert­ed exploita­tion of the base pop­u­la­tions around the world and eco­log­i­cal pil­lage to the point of col­lapse con­tin­ues to fat­ten the same rich par­a­sites’ pock­ets, and tech­no­log­i­cal immer­sion helps peo­ple nei­ther relate nor care. On the con­trary mil­lions now hunger for their part in the way of life that is killing every­thing.

With an anar­chist per­spec­tive in search of free and ful­fill­ing exis­tence, we fight to do away with all tech­nolo­gies born from the tox­i­fi­ca­tion and slav­ery of mines, fac­to­ries, and indus­tri­al infra­struc­tures, and for our dai­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion to be as unmedi­at­ed as pos­si­ble. Tak­ing down these few nodes was not enough for us, it is not a case of sim­ply aban­don­ing the uses of a par­tic­u­lar device alone, but it is eras­ing the whole social sys­tem which first trapped us in its’ “neces­si­ty” which is the chal­lenge. We found anten­nae an easy way to start: it is sim­ply a mat­ter of burn­ing tires between the exposed cables and away you go. In North Lanark­shire, Scot­tish vil­lagers even felled one. By reflect­ing on rad­i­cal and anti-indus­tri­al his­to­ry in Britain (such as the Swing and Lud­dite insur­rec­tions), as well as con­tem­po­rary anar­chist guer­ril­la prax­is, we can see the advan­tage of low-tech, cheap, and eas­i­ly repro­ducible tac­tics to wreck machin­ery that enclos­es and impov­er­ish­es us, on an even more inti­mate lev­el present­ly than ever before. These ubiq­ui­tous (and high­ly expen­sive) struc­tures are spread around every town or city and fur­ther indus­tri­al­is­ing the coun­try­side, where they are some­times paint­ed green in the attempt to cam­ou­flage them: and dis­gust­ing­ly even have bird and bat nest­ing box­es mount­ed on some. Their guardians can­not always be watch­ing them all so it is up to our inge­nu­ity to remain a step ahead and stretch their forces thin. This and every net­work has its’ weak points, in these cracks in the archi­tec­ture of con­trol that afford us lever­age: a destruc­tive capac­i­ty we are appro­pri­at­ing. As the promis­es of hyper-tech­ni­fied mod­ern cul­ture con­tin­ue to show their shal­low­ness, rebels will car­ry on act­ing against the nox­ious instal­la­tions and the way of life they feed.

“.…Resis­tance against the Tech­no­log­i­cal-Indus­tri­al Machine lives only through the path of lib­er­a­tion from every pow­er and order, runs towards an event hori­zon where noth­ing has been writ­ten yet.” ‑let­ter from Gian­lu­ca Iaco­v­ac­ci, from C.R. San Michele prison

Our attack is not sep­a­rate from over­all anar­chist sub­ver­sion by all means, which nat­u­ral­ly includes sol­i­dar­i­ty with our pris­on­ers in ene­my hands. A wild greet­ing from Bris­tol to Adri­ano Antonac­ci, no less than to his friend and com­rade Gian­lu­ca (FAI/IRF Sub­ver­sive Anti-Civil­i­sa­tion indi­vid­u­al­i­ty) whose brave lone acts in Rome he is also accused of. Hel­lo to the new anar­chist and anti-colo­nial groups in Hong Kong and Aus­tralia, and sol­i­dar­i­ty to the Paris ten accused of sab­o­tag­ing prison prof­i­teers.

Our attack came at a time when the net­works are already set to be over­loaded by the World Cup hys­te­ria, to show our com­plic­i­ty with the insur­gent fight­ers in Brazil as they answer mas­sive dis­pos­ses­sion and mil­i­tarised slum clear­ances for the opu­lence of the games with street bat­tles and arson. Because it should be remem­bered that the enthralling spec­ta­cle, that is staged to make the rich yet more mon­ey and to dis­tract us from our dai­ly humil­i­a­tions, is based on the State and Cap­i­tal’s vio­lence against resisters, the indige­nous, and the poor­est in Brazil­ian soci­ety.

Let’s not for­get Marie Mason and Eric McDavid: both are still behind bars after State repres­sion and entrap­ment which fol­lowed an ear­ly string of Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front strikes in the USA. Years lat­er the earth lib­er­a­tion strug­gle is not defeat­ed either in spir­it or in prac­tice. The fight goes on with fur farms raid­ed and emp­tied across North Amer­i­ca, and our incen­di­ary-mind­ed sis­ters or broth­ers prowl­ing the besieged Turk­ish forests, the streets of the Cos­ta Rican metrop­o­lis, or the tech­no-indus­tri­al devel­op­ments in Switzer­land (on the last note: a quick reminder that the con­tin­u­ing legal threats against the released anar­chists Sil­via, Costas and Bil­ly, and also the lat­est vin­dic­tive treat­ment of Mar­co Camenisch around his prison trans­fer, have not gone unno­ticed by the inter­na­tion­al fire-starters).

Down with the soci­ety based on dom­i­nat­ing earth and all its’ crea­tures. Live Wires, FAI/ELF
(14th con­tri­bu­tion to the inter­na­tion­al Phoenix Project, one more part of a war that will nev­er be con­tained by a legal code)

* http://en.contrainfo.espiv.net/2013/01/08/berlin-incendiary-attack-on-deutsche-telekom-vehicle-in-friedrichshain/
* http://nantes.indymedia.org/articles/28902
* http://www.directaction.info/news_mar12b_06.htm

Tourist Chains Himself to Icelandic Whaling Ship

anti_whaling_activist_hvalur8_026th June Update:

anti_whaling_activist_hvalur8_026th June Update: After 15 Hours Activist Ends Lock­down Due to Threats

A 32-year-old unnamed activist from Berlin from the orga­ni­za­tion Hard to Port chained him­self to the mast of Ice­landic whal­ing ship Hval­ur 8 this morn­ing and has declared that he will remain there for at least 48 hours in protest of whal­ing.

“Work­ers seem irri­tat­ed. Col­lec­tive brain­storm­ing how to deal with me up here. First whale watch­ing tourists stop by to take pic­tures and show sup­port,” the activist post­ed on Face­book this morn­ing.

Hard to Port released a state­ment to the media, explain­ing their inten­tion to: “…raise aware­ness among poten­tial tourists of Ice­land world­wide of the cru­el and uneth­i­cal prac­tice [of whal­ing].”

Hval­ur 8 is docked at the ship­yard in Reyk­javík in prepa­ra­tion for the upcom­ing whal­ing sea­son, which begins this month. The quo­ta for fin whales is 154 ani­mals and their hunt­ing will result in sig­nif­i­cant work on sea and land, Morgun­blaðið reports.

Former ELF Member Pleads Guilty to Arsons; Snitches on Friends for Reduced Sentence

liammulholland3 Tomor­row, May 5, 2014, Liam Mul­hol­land will be sen­tenced for his involve­ment in a 2003 ELF arson.

liammulholland3 Tomor­row, May 5, 2014, Liam Mul­hol­land will be sen­tenced for his involve­ment in a 2003 ELF arson.

Mul­hol­land plead­ed guilty to set­ting fire to a house at Mys­tic For­est hous­ing devel­op­ment in Ann Arbor, Michi­gan, on March 21, 2003. Spray paint­ed on the garage of a neigh­bor­ing house were the words “ELF – No Sprawl.”

In Michi­gan, the manda­to­ry min­i­mum for this kind of prop­er­ty destruc­tion is five years in prison. How­ev­er, the gov­ern­ment has request­ed a reduced sen­tence because of Mulholland’s “coop­er­a­tion” with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.

From his plea agree­ment and the Government’s Sen­tenc­ing Mem­o­ran­dum, it seems Mul­hol­land hand­ed the feds a lot of infor­ma­tion. He claimed involve­ment in sev­er­al more ELF and ALF actions, includ­ing arsons that destroyed two homes at anoth­er hous­ing devel­op­ment in Michi­gan in June of 2003; using incen­di­ary devices to destroy chick­en deliv­ery trucks in Bloom­ing­ton, Indi­ana in May of 2002; an arson at a hous­ing devel­op­ment in Bloom­ing­ton, Indi­ana in June of 2002; and a failed attempt to set fire to a pump­ing sta­tion in Stan­wood, Michi­gan, in Sep­tem­ber of 2003.

Mul­hol­land also pro­vid­ed feds with the names of the oth­er activists with whom he car­ried out these actions—as well as where and how they trav­eled, where and when they planned and dis­cussed their actions, what they pur­chased for the actions, how they dis­posed of the pur­chased items, and how they car­ried out each action.

The gov­ern­ment is request­ing a sen­tence of 18 months for Mulholland—a reduc­tion of 42 months from the state’s manda­to­ry minimum—because his coop­er­a­tion will aid the gov­ern­ment in crack­ing down on the oth­er ELF and ALF sus­pects: “The gov­ern­ment has deter­mined that the defendant’s coop­er­a­tion to date amounts to sub­stan­tial assis­tance in the inves­ti­ga­tion or pros­e­cu­tion of oth­ers.”

Photo captured from Local 4 Defenders.

Pho­to cap­tured from Local 4 Defend­ers.

The agree­ment also asserts that, because of his coop­er­a­tion, all his charges relat­ed to the oth­er admit­ted ELF and ALF arsons will be dis­missed.

And it seems that Mul­hol­land isn’t the only one snitch­ing. The Sen­tenc­ing Mem­o­ran­dum states that, though Mul­hol­land often assert­ed that he was sim­ply “along for the ride” dur­ing these actions, the feds have received con­tra­dic­to­ry infor­ma­tion: “Accord­ing to wit­ness­es, it was the defen­dant who had the exper­tise to con­struct incen­di­ary devices and did so for both the arson of the deliv­ery trucks at Sim’s Poul­try, as well as the attempt­ed arson of the Ice Moun­tain pump­ing sta­tion.”

Stay tuned for more infor­ma­tion after tomorrow’s sen­tenc­ing hear­ing. If any­one has pic­tures of Liam Mul­hol­land, or more infor­ma­tion, please send them to col­lec­tive [at] earth­firstjour­nal [dot] org, so that the word can be spread, and activists and activist groups can be on guard for the pres­ence of this snitch.

For more infor­ma­tion on snitch­es and infor­mants, be sure to check out our online Infor­mant Track­er.

Rab­bit is an edi­tor for the Earth First! Jour­nal and Newswire. He can be reached at rab­bit [at] earth­firstjour­nal [dot] org. If you appre­ci­at­ed read­ing this arti­cle, or want to sup­port the infor­mant track­ing and pris­on­er sup­port ser­vices, please con­sid­er sub­scrib­ing or donat­ing today.

Support the SOCPA 7

22nd April Over recent years there have been many attempts to stop UK activists protest­ing against Europe’s largest ani­mal test­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry; Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. Activists have been arrest­ed, raid­ed, impris­oned and banned from tak­ing part in the cam­paign.

22nd April Over recent years there have been many attempts to stop UK activists protest­ing against Europe’s largest ani­mal test­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry; Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. Activists have been arrest­ed, raid­ed, impris­oned and banned from tak­ing part in the cam­paign. Despite these attempts, SHAC (Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty) has been a ground­break­ing cam­paign which has suc­ceed­ed in almost bank­rupt­ing the mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tion. Hun­dreds of com­pa­nies have refused to deal with HLS after learn­ing about the hor­rors hap­pen­ing to ani­mals inside the tor­ture lab – includ­ing some of the world’s largest busi­ness and finan­cial insti­tu­tions.

There is an ongo­ing bat­tle tak­ing place in the UK, with SHAC try­ing to shut down HLS and vest­ed busi­ness and state inter­ests try­ing to shut down SHAC. The des­per­a­tion on the part of the state has lead to the intro­duc­tion of new laws crim­i­nal­is­ing legit­i­mate protest and the harass­ment and tar­get­ing of peace­ful and law­ful cam­paign­ers.

On 18th May 2012, three peo­ple were arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with a protest at a new­ly exposed sup­pli­er of Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. A fourth per­son was also arrest­ed a few weeks lat­er. The four were accused of SOCPA 145 (inter­fer­ing with a con­trac­tu­al rela­tion­ship so as to harm an ani­mal research organ­i­sa­tion) and SOCPA 146 (intim­i­da­tion of per­sons con­nect­ed with an ani­mal research organ­i­sa­tion). They were bailed with strict con­di­tions, such as ban­ning them from cam­paign­ing against HLS and order­ing them to live and sleep only at des­ig­nat­ed address­es.

SOCPA 145 and 146 were intro­duced in 2005 to class even minor pub­lic order offences against vivi­sec­tion as seri­ous crimes and to enable high­er sen­tenc­ing of anti-vivi­sec­tion pro­test­ers. An activist found guilty of a civ­il wrong whilst protest­ing against vivi­sec­tion now faces up to 5 years impris­on­ment, where­as some­one com­mit­ting the same act in con­nec­tion with anoth­er issue (anti-fas­cism, envi­ron­men­tal­ism etc) could expect to receive a small fine.

The four were rebailed numer­ous times over the next 8 months, although it is extreme­ly bad prac­tice (and fair­ly unusu­al) for the police to keep sus­pects on bail for such a pro­longed peri­od with­out reach­ing a deci­sion. The delay behind this became appar­ent on Thurs­day 17th Jan­u­ary 2013, when the four sus­pects and anoth­er two peo­ple, were raid­ed and arrest­ed – this time for “con­spir­a­cy” to com­mit SOCPA 145 and 146. This offence was alleged­ly in rela­tion to SHAC and took place between Octo­ber 2011 – June 2012, cov­er­ing 25 inci­dents, includ­ing the protest the four sus­pects were already on bail for (which has now been dropped as an indi­vid­ual charge). All six were ques­tioned and even­tu­al­ly bailed to return to the police sta­tion in April, again with strict con­di­tions and this time banned from com­mu­ni­cat­ing with each oth­er.

A sev­enth per­son was arrest­ed in this case short­ly after­wards and bailed along with the oth­ers.

Dur­ing the raids, the policed forced entry to a num­ber of prop­er­ties, includ­ing those of the sus­pects’ part­ners and mis­tak­en­ly, their neigh­bours. Many items were seized, includ­ing elec­tron­ics and per­son­al items uncon­nect­ed to the case and belong­ing to both the defen­dants and oth­er peo­ple liv­ing in the prop­er­ties.

The most wor­ry­ing aspect of this case is the lack of evi­dence of crim­i­nal activ­i­ty against the defen­dants as indi­vid­u­als. As with pre­vi­ous cas­es, “con­spir­a­cy” is being used to group peo­ple togeth­er, with­out the need for evi­dence against them indi­vid­u­al­ly. Dur­ing the police inter­views they men­tioned a num­ber of protests against com­pa­nies deal­ing with HLS (some of which the defen­dants were accused of attend­ing), as well as direct action (although there is no sug­ges­tion or evi­dence that the defen­dants had any knowl­edge or involve­ment in this). Beneath the legal ter­mi­nol­o­gy, the only thing they’re accused of doing them­selves, is tak­ing part in protests.

This case is one of the most recent exam­ples of the lengths the UK author­i­ties are going to in their attempt to stop peo­ple cam­paign­ing against vivi­sec­tion and espe­cial­ly HLS. When peo­ple are no longer able to attend a law­ful protest with­out being accused of tak­ing part in a crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy, it is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to speak out.

 

In an atmos­phere of increas­ing repres­sion against activists and the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of effec­tive cam­paigns, it is impor­tant that we show our sol­i­dar­i­ty for those involved and form a strong net­work to sup­port the UK ani­mal rights move­ment.

http://www.stopukrepression.org/

Hunt Saboteurs and Sea Shepherd force Gardenstown seal cull to be abandoned

April 22 2014 A major wild salmon pro­duc­er has said it is giv­ing up the culling of seals after protests at a har­bour in the north east of Scot­land.

The Mon­trose-based Scot­tish Wild Salmon Com­pa­ny claimed it had been con­front­ed by activists at Gar­den­stown har­bour.

April 22 2014 A major wild salmon pro­duc­er has said it is giv­ing up the culling of seals after protests at a har­bour in the north east of Scot­land.

The Mon­trose-based Scot­tish Wild Salmon Com­pa­ny claimed it had been con­front­ed by activists at Gar­den­stown har­bour.

The com­pa­ny said it was remov­ing firearms from its oper­a­tions, mean­ing only acoustic devices would be used to dri­ve seals away from nets.

The protest group, Sea Shep­herd, expressed “delight” at the news.

Police Scot­land said it was mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

Violent Seal Killers Threaten Sea Shepherd UK Crew

SS April 21 2014 As pre­dict­ed by Sea Shep­herd on Good Fri­day, the killing team of the Scot­tish Wild Salmon Com­pa­ny esca­lat­ed ten­sions in the Scot­tish seal killing grounds with an unprece­dent­ed attack on a mem­ber of Sea Shep­herd U

SS April 21 2014 As pre­dict­ed by Sea Shep­herd on Good Fri­day, the killing team of the Scot­tish Wild Salmon Com­pa­ny esca­lat­ed ten­sions in the Scot­tish seal killing grounds with an unprece­dent­ed attack on a mem­ber of Sea Shep­herd UK’s cam­paign crew.

As res­i­dents of Gar­den­stown were prepar­ing for break­fast on East­er Mon­day, Sea Shep­herd crewmem­bers were already being threat­ened with vio­lence by the Scot­tish Wild Salmon Company’s seal killers.

In a dra­mat­ic 8 a.m. con­fronta­tion which took place away from the Har­bour in the town’s New Ground, three employ­ees of the Scot­tish Wild Salmon Com­pa­ny, one car­ry­ing a rifle, cor­nered just one of our crewmem­bers, leav­ing him fear­ful of extreme vio­lence.

 

The crewmem­ber had the pres­ence of mind to keep his cam­era run­ning through­out, and the sit­u­a­tion was saved when oth­er mem­bers of the Sea Shep­herd cam­paign crew arrived with their own cam­eras. Real­iz­ing that any fur­ther ille­gal acts on their part were being record­ed, the thugs backed away and returned to their com­mand base.

Sea Shep­herd UK has now report­ed the sit­u­a­tion and shown video footage to Police Scot­land. Sea Shep­herd UK is con­fi­dent that charges can now be brought against the ring­leader of the Scot­tish Wild Salmon Company’s out-of-con­trol thugs.

Giv­en the esca­lat­ing sit­u­a­tion, Sea Shep­herd UK has now asked the Hunt Sabo­teurs Asso­ci­a­tion to reac­ti­vate their under­cov­er teams as well as intro­duce new covert oper­a­tives to the area. Oth­er Sea Shep­herd vol­un­teers and spe­cial­ist inter­ven­tion teams are also now head­ing to Banff­shire in order to defend Scot­tish seals from these vio­lent peo­ple.

The Scot­tish gov­ern­ment issues com­pa­nies such as the Scot­tish Wild Salmon Com­pa­ny with licens­es to shoot seals, which they claim threat­en fish stocks. How­ev­er the leg­is­la­tion requires that seals may only ever be shot as a last resort after all oth­er meth­ods of con­trol have been applied. The actions of these com­pa­nies them­selves are draw­ing seals to the salmon. Seals in this area do not nor­mal­ly eat salmon, but when salmon net­ting com­pa­nies trap wild fish in large num­bers, it is only nat­ur­al that the cap­tured fish attract seals.  As we’ve seen with the sea lions on the Colum­bia Riv­er on the Oregon/Washington bor­der here in the U.S., these ani­mals are being tar­get­ed for the sim­ple “crime” of eat­ing fish.

The non-lethal solu­tion is to deploy Acoustic Deter­rent Devices (ADDs), which the Scot­tish Wild Salmon Com­pa­ny does have avail­able to them.  Unfor­tu­nate­ly, lethal bul­lets are cheap­er than the non-lethal alter­na­tive, and so, with­out effec­tive polic­ing by Marine Scot­land (the agency respon­si­ble for the seal killing licens­es), it is left to Sea Shep­herd to once again uphold nation­al and inter­na­tion­al laws which gov­ern­ments nei­ther can’t nor won’t enforce.

 

Japan’s Northwest Pacific Whale Killing Program Could Start Later This Month

Photo by Erwin Vermeulen April 18 2014 On March 31st, a rul­ing by the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) served a dev­as­tat­ing blow to Japan’s whal­ing indus­try.

Photo by Erwin Vermeulen April 18 2014 On March 31st, a rul­ing by the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) served a dev­as­tat­ing blow to Japan’s whal­ing indus­try. The court’s land­mark rul­ing stat­ed that the Japan whale Research Pro­gram in the Antarc­tic (JARPA II) was not con­duct­ed for the pur­pos­es of sci­en­tif­ic research. It ordered that Japan revoke the sci­en­tif­ic per­mits giv­en under JARPA II and refrain from grant­i­ng any fur­ther per­mits under that pro­gram.

In a bla­tant show of defi­ance of this rul­ing, Japan’s Insti­tute of Cetacean Research (ICR) last week filed court briefs stat­ing that they intend to return to slaugh­ter whales in the South­ern Ocean for the 2015–2016 sea­son with a new­ly designed “research” pro­gram and will seek a per­ma­nent injunc­tion against Sea Shep­herd.

Anoth­er exam­ple of Japan’s com­plete dis­re­gard for the wish­es of the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty could soon unfold as the Japan whale Research Pro­gram in the North­west Pacif­ic (JARPN II) is sched­uled to start this month. Accord­ing to a Japan Times arti­cle of April 17: “The Japan­ese whal­ing fleet’s depar­ture for the Pacif­ic North­west has been delayed to April 26 instead of Tues­day 22nd” because of dis­agree­ments between the For­eign Min­istry and the Fish­eries Agency after the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice last month ordered Japan to halt its annu­al “research” hunts in the Antarc­tic Ocean after rul­ing they are not sci­en­tif­ic in nature. The For­eign Min­istry is con­cerned that if Japan whales in the North­west Pacif­ic imme­di­ate­ly after the ICJ rul­ing, anti-whal­ing coun­tries may sue to halt hunts there as well. The Fish­eries Agency insists that whal­ing in the North­west Pacif­ic should con­tin­ue, but at a reduced tar­get catch of 60 whales. The delay “might be a side effect of U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s planned three-day vis­it to Japan start­ing Wednes­day.”

 

Although the ICJ rul­ing does not include JARPN II, as Aus­tralia and New Zealand’s case cen­tered on “their” whales in their “back­yard”, even the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment real­izes, accord­ing to a NHK World arti­cle of April 10, that “the court’s rul­ing could be applied to those waters depend­ing on meth­ods used, includ­ing the num­ber caught.”

The arti­cle con­tin­ues: “The con­cern is prompt­ing the gov­ern­ment to assess its research pro­ce­dures. It plans to decide as ear­ly as next week whether to go ahead with research whal­ing in the North­west­ern Pacif­ic. Some in the gov­ern­ment claim that it should con­duct the Pacif­ic research whal­ing as planned. But oth­ers argue that Japan could be sued again if it con­tin­ues the pro­gram with­out due con­sid­er­a­tion to the court’s rul­ing.”

Imme­di­ate­ly after the ICJ rul­ing, the spokesman for the Japan­ese del­e­ga­tion to the court, Nori Shika­ta said: “Our pro­gram in the North­ern Pacif­ic is out­side the scope of the pro­ceed­ings before the court, and so they are two sep­a­rate pro­grams and this rul­ing is about the pro­gram in the Antarc­tic,”

On April 15th, before a meet­ing with the pres­i­dent of the ICR, Japan’s Agri­cul­ture, Forestry and Fish­eries Min­is­ter, Yoshi­masa Hayashi expressed will­ing­ness to con­tin­ue whal­ing in the Pacif­ic despite the ICJ rul­ing. He said he is deter­mined to “main­tain the sol­id pol­i­cy of pre­serv­ing whale-eat­ing cul­ture and secur­ing sup­ply of whale meat.”

On that same date, Kyo­do Sen­paku, which owns Japan’s whal­ing fleet, said it had urged Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Yoshi­masa Hayashi to allow the North­ern Pacif­ic whal­ing to take place as usu­al. “The min­is­ter gave us strong encour­age­ment by say­ing that he would firm­ly con­sid­er it, giv­en that the research itself was not gain­said.”

Aside from the geo­graph­ic region and the whales tar­get­ed, the JARPN and JARPA pro­grams are iden­ti­cal twins when you look at their goal, con­struc­tion and his­to­ry. Thus a large part of the ICJ’s moti­va­tion for the rul­ing on Antarc­tic whal­ing can be direct­ly applied to the North­west Pacif­ic slaugh­ter:

  • A court would find no evi­dence of any stud­ies of the fea­si­bil­i­ty or prac­ti­ca­bil­i­ty of non-lethal meth­ods, nor find evi­dence that Japan exam­ined whether it would be fea­si­ble to com­bine a small­er lethal take and an increase in non-lethal sam­pling to achieve its research objec­tives.
  • As with the eval­u­a­tion of JARPA (1988–2005) and JARPA II (2005–2014) by the ICJ, a court inves­ti­ga­tion of JARPN (1994–1999) and JARPN II (2000-present) will reveal a con­sid­er­able over­lap between the two pro­grams’ sub­jects, their objec­tives, and their meth­ods.
  • Both state iden­ti­cal goals such as improv­ing knowl­edge on stock identity/structure and feed­ing ecol­o­gy.
  • As with JARPA II, which called for a sig­nif­i­cant increase in the minke whale “sam­ple” size and the lethal “sam­pling” of addi­tion­al species (hump­back and fin whales) com­pared to JARPA, the North­west Pacif­ic kill quo­ta esca­lat­ed from the killing of 100 com­mon minke whales annu­al­ly under JARPN to 100 com­mon minke whales, 50 bryde’s whales, and 10 sperm whales under JARPN II. In 2002 they increased the minke whale quo­ta to 150 and added 50 sei whales. The next year, the minke quo­ta became 160 and the sei whale quo­ta was dou­bled to 100. In 2008 the pro­gram pro­pos­al was an annu­al take of 340 minke whales, 50 bryde’s whales, 100 sei whales and 10 sperm whales.
  • The ICJ deter­mined that weak­ness­es in Japan’s expla­na­tion for the deci­sion to pro­ceed with the JARPA II sam­ple sizes pri­or to the final review of JARPA lend sup­port to the view that those sam­ple sizes and the launch date for JARPA II were not dri­ven by strict­ly sci­en­tif­ic con­sid­er­a­tions. The same applies to the tran­si­tion from JARPN to JARPN II.
  • The ICJ not­ed that there were three addi­tion­al aspects of JARPA II which cast fur­ther doubt on its char­ac­ter­i­za­tion as a pro­gram for pur­pos­es of sci­en­tif­ic research: the open-end­ed time frame of the pro­gram, its lim­it­ed sci­en­tif­ic out­put to date, and the lack of coop­er­a­tion between JARPA II and oth­er domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al research pro­grams. All of these aspects apply to JARPN II.

 

Giv­en these exam­ples, it becomes clear that if JARPN II were under the scruti­ny of the ICJ or any oth­er court out­side of a whal­ing nation, the con­clu­sion of that court would sound much the same as in the case of JARPA II: “The Court con­cludes that the spe­cial per­mits grant­ed by Japan for the killing, tak­ing and treat­ing of whales in con­nec­tion with JARPA/N II are not ‘for pur­pos­es of sci­en­tif­ic research’ pur­suant to Arti­cle VIII, para­graph 1, of the Con­ven­tion.”

As a result, Japan would have vio­lat­ed the mora­to­ri­um not only in the Antarc­tic, but also in the North­west Pacif­ic.

Beyond all the legal talk, it is of course clear to every ratio­nal per­son that just as Japan’s Antarc­tic whale pro­gram is a dis­guise for com­mer­cial whal­ing, the same goes for the pro­gram in the North Pacif­ic.

Still in the court’s rul­ing there is this sen­tence: “The Court finds that JARPA II can broad­ly be char­ac­ter­ized as ‘sci­en­tif­ic research’.” How “broad­ly” exact­ly do you want to go?

Sci­ence thrives on our thirst for knowl­edge. All valu­able research starts with a ques­tion. With that ques­tion as a foun­da­tion, sci­en­tists build a research pro­gram that might pro­vide them with answers.

Japan has no ques­tions; they had to dis­guise their con­tin­u­a­tion of com­mer­cial whal­ing as sci­ence. Decid­ing on an out­come was easy: the resump­tion of com­mer­cial whal­ing. Then they defined the desired con­clu­sions: “there are plen­ty of whales” and “these whales eat our fish.” As whales in Antarc­ti­ca migrate South to feast on krill and not fish, they had to come up with some­thing else there: “minke whales have become too abun­dant and threat­en the recov­ery of the blue whale and there­fore have to be culled.”

Call­ing this sci­ence, even broad­ly, is an obscen­i­ty.

An impor­tant point that some might for­get in this day and age, where for many sci­ence has replaced the gods of old, is that just because some­thing is called sci­ence, be it as a guise, tru­ly so or just broad­ly, that in itself jus­ti­fies absolute­ly noth­ing! We only have to look at what is done to ani­mals in lab­o­ra­to­ries all around the world to real­ize that sci­ence often lacks ethics and morals. In the def­i­n­i­tion of the ICJ, prob­a­bly even the exper­i­ments of Nazi doc­tors in WW II con­cen­tra­tion camps could “broad­ly be char­ac­ter­ized as ‘sci­en­tif­ic research’.” That doesn’t make it all right…

Regard­ing JARPN II there is anoth­er dis­guise with­in the dis­guise of com­mer­cial whal­ing as sci­ence. When Japan in 1988, under US pres­sure, lift­ed its objec­tion to the mora­to­ri­um on com­mer­cial whal­ing, this also end­ed Japan­ese Small-Type Coastal Whal­ing (JSTCW) for minke whales, as minkes are one of the 13 species of larg­er whales that fall under the juris­dic­tion of the Inter­na­tion­al Whal­ing Com­mis­sion (IWC). In response to the mora­to­ri­um, four of the last nine JSTCW ves­sels from Abashiri (Hokkai­do Pre­fec­ture), Ayukawa (Miya­gi Pre­fec­ture), Wada (Chi­ba Pre­fec­ture) and Tai­ji (Wakaya­ma Pre­fec­ture) stopped oper­at­ing. The remain­ing ships con­tin­ued killing short-finned pilot whales, Risso’s dol­phins and Baird’s beaked whales in Japan’s coastal waters, as these “small cetaceans” are not cov­ered by the IWC’s reg­u­la­tions.

Since 1987, Japan has tried to get a quo­ta from the IWC to resume the killing of minke whales under a sort of abo­rig­i­nal sub­sis­tence whal­ing scheme as exists for Alaskan Inu­its, North­east Siber­ian Chukchi, Green­lan­ders and for the natives of Bequia. The IWC has for all these years refused to grant a minke whale quo­ta for JSTCW because they judge it to be a com­mer­cial pro­pos­al.

To get around this, the ICR added a coastal com­po­nent to JARPN II in 2002. The ICR con­tracts Japan’s Small Type Whal­ing Asso­ci­a­tion to pro­vide ves­sels and crew to par­tic­i­pate in whal­ing oper­a­tions off Ayukawa, now part of Ishi­no­ma­ki, (Miya­gi pre­fec­ture) from April through May and off Kushi­ro (Hokkai­do) in Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber to shoot 60 minke whales in each area. The ICR buys the whales from the whal­ing com­pa­nies at a set price and then sells part of the meat at a sub­si­dized price back to the JSTCW towns.

In this light, the ICR’s activ­i­ties in the North­west Pacif­ic are an even big­ger scam than those in Antarc­ti­ca.

This is the hunt that is about to start on April 22nd, fol­lowed a month lat­er by the off­shore com­po­nent that includes the last-of-its-kind float­ing abat­toir, the Nis­shin Maru and the famil­iar Yushins.

All this could just be under­way before the annu­al meet­ing of the IWC sci­en­tif­ic com­mit­tee start­ing May 12 in Slove­nia. The com­mit­tee mem­bers are almost cer­tain to ques­tion the legal­i­ty of JARPN II in light of the ICJ rul­ing on JARPA II.

The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty can­not stand by and allow Japan to make a mock­ery out of its agree­ments and insti­tu­tions. It’s time for the world’s lead­ers to pick up the phone and explain to Tokyo in no uncer­tain terms why they should keep their whal­ing ships in port

HSA fights Scottish Seal Cull in joint operation with Sea Shepherd

news-140417-1-2-Sea-Shepherd-UK-Taking-Action-to-Defend-Scottish-Seals-270w 18th April Mem­bers of the HSA have just returned from Scot­land where they have been involved in

news-140417-1-2-Sea-Shepherd-UK-Taking-Action-to-Defend-Scottish-Seals-270w 18th April Mem­bers of the HSA have just returned from Scot­land where they have been involved in stop­ping the shoot­ing of seals by fish­ing com­pa­nies.  They have been busy map­ping the loca­tion of Salmon nets used by the Scot­tish Wild Salmon Com­pa­ny in, and around, Gam­rie Bay, Aberdeen­shire.  Since arriv­ing in the area hunt sabo­teurs have ranged across the ter­ri­to­ry on foot locat­ing seal kill zones from beach­es, hill­sides and treach­er­ous cliff-top loca­tions often in extreme weath­er con­di­tions.  This vital infor­ma­tion will enable Sea Shep­herd to inter­vene between marks­men and the seals.

The Nets

Each year fish­ing com­pa­nies in Scot­land shoot up to 4000 seals under license from Nat­ur­al Scot­land to pro­tect the wild salmon which they lat­er kill for human con­sump­tion.
 
Lee Moon, Spokesper­son for the HSA, stat­ed:  “We are pleased to be work­ing with Sea Shep­herd and hap­py to utilise the skills we’ve aquired dur­ing the bad­ger culls to car­ry out this invalu­able work.  The mass mur­der of Scot­tish seals has been going on unin­ter­rupt­ed for far too long and we hope this will be the first of many such inter­ven­tions by hunt sabo­teurs.”
 
The Nets

‘If you don’t fight, you’ve already lost’: Animal rights activist facing six years in jail remains defiant

20140417_092540 April 17, 2014 from cor­po­rate watch Today Deb­bie Vin­cent, an ani­mal

20140417_092540 April 17, 2014 from cor­po­rate watch Today Deb­bie Vin­cent, an ani­mal rights activist from the Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty (SHAC) cam­paign was sen­tenced to six years in prison for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail after a five week long tri­al at Win­ches­ter Crown Court. She was also giv­en an Anti Social Behav­iour Order which means she can be arrest­ed if she protests against or con­tacts Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences (HLS) or its busi­ness part­ners for a fur­ther five years after her release from prison. The sen­tence should serve as a wake up call to anti-cap­i­tal­ists of the need to offer sol­i­dar­i­ty to those who have been sin­gled out for repres­sion because of their involve­ment in effec­tive resis­tance to cor­po­rate pow­er. A press release from the Black­mail 3 sup­port cam­paign quotes Deb­bie: “I have been made an exam­ple of because I put myself up as a pub­lic face of Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty and for believ­ing that such places as Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences should be resigned to the his­to­ry books.” “In some ways I’m real­ly not sur­prised I was found guilty, as I don’t believe any­one can get jus­tice when faced with a polit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy charge and the huge resources of the state and multi­na­tion­als against me. I will always have hope and will always con­tin­ue to try my best to make the inhab­i­tants of this plan­et more com­pas­sion­ate to all and try to make the world a bet­ter place for all.” What we are see­ing is a coor­di­nat­ed cam­paign against ani­mal rights activists in an effort to silence dis­sent,” said Adri­an Shaw of the Black­mail 3 Sup­port Cam­paign. “This is the third con­spir­a­cy to black­mail tri­al in the UK involv­ing peo­ple accused of cam­paign­ing against Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences.” Cor­po­rate Watch spoke to Deb­bie pri­or to the sen­tenc­ing. She said: “What is scary in this world is oppres­sion and injus­tice, when peo­ple hurt peo­ple, ani­mals and nature. What is beau­ti­ful in this world is resis­tance, when peo­ple say ‘enough is enough’ and act. Oppres­sion and injus­tice are every­where, but so is resis­tance. Because some peo­ple know that if you fight you might lose, but if you don’t fight, you’ve already lost.” The cam­paign SHAC was set up in 1999 with the aim of clos­ing down Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences (HLS). HLS is one of the largest con­tract test­ing com­pa­nies in the world. They keep about 70,000 ani­mals on site at their lab in Hunt­ing­don. Accord­ing to SHAC, “HLS will test any­thing for any­body. They car­ry out exper­i­ments which involve poi­son­ing ani­mals with house­hold prod­ucts, pes­ti­cides, drugs, her­bi­cides, food colour­ings and addi­tives, sweet­en­ers and genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­isms. Every three min­utes an ani­mal dies inside Hunt­ing­don totalling 500 inno­cent lives every sin­gle day.” SHAC’s tac­tics have been ground­break­ing for direct action cam­paigns in their tar­get­ing of the net­work of com­pa­nies with busi­ness rela­tion­ships with HLS: from its cus­tomers to its ser­vice providers and from its sup­pli­ers to its investors. To read an analy­sis of the SHAC mod­el of cam­paignin­ing click here. Over the years SHAC has pub­lished details of the com­pa­nies doing busi­ness with HLS on its web­site and has encour­aged peo­ple to per­suade these com­pa­nies to cease their busi­ness with HLS. The SHAC web­site is clear that it is not encour­ag­ing peo­ple to break the law. SHAC con­tacts the com­pa­nies and tells them that they will remain list­ed on its web­site until they cease doing busi­ness with HLS. Hun­dreds of com­pa­nies have ceased trad­ing with HLS. View a list here. HLS have been infil­trat­ed and their prac­tices exposed sev­er­al times. To read under­cov­er expos­es of ani­mal abuse at HLS click here. The arrests of the ‘Black­mail 3’ In June 2012 Euro­pean arrest war­rants were issued in the UK for two activists in Hol­land, who will be referred to as SH and NS in this arti­cle. On 6th July 2012 Deb­bie Vin­cent, who had been tar­get­ed by the police for many years for her involve­ment in the SHAC cam­paign, was arrest­ed and detained on sus­pi­cion of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail. Her home address was searched. On the same day SH and NS were arrest­ed and premis­es in Ams­ter­dam were searched. Deb­bie was charged in July 2012 with con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, an offence under the 1977 Crim­i­nal Law Act. The British police have sought the extra­di­tion of the Dutch activists and the Dutch courts grant­ed it. How­ev­er, until now there is an ongo­ing dis­pute over the extra­di­tion as the lawyers for one of the Dutch defen­dants have demand­ed an under­tak­ing from the British Sec­re­tary of State that he would serve his sen­tence in Hol­land if he was con­vict­ed. The charge placed by the Crown Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice (CPS) against Deb­bie was con­spir­ing with 16 named peo­ple, includ­ing the two Dutch activists, and unnamed oth­ers “to black­mail rep­re­sen­ta­tives of com­pa­nies and busi­ness­es and oth­er per­sons” “by mak­ing unwar­rant­ed demands, name­ly to cease law­ful trad­ing with HLS, with men­aces and with intent to cause loss to anoth­er.” The 13 oth­er ‘co-con­spir­a­tors’ have already been jailed for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, at tri­als in 2009 and 2010 for a total of almost 70 years between them. For many of them the only evi­dence pre­sent­ed was involve­ment in law­ful cam­paign­ing against the com­pa­ny and asso­ci­a­tion with those involved in direct action. The use of the charge of black­mail against Deb­bie is anoth­er exam­ple of the twist­ing of the law to repress grass­roots dis­sent against pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions. Black­mail? The events relied on in Deb­bie’s case were that in 2008 and 2009 actions were car­ried out in France, Bel­gium, Ger­many and Switzer­land against Novar­tis, EuroNext, Scher­ing Plough, BDO, AstraZeneca, Fortress and Nomu­ra, all com­pa­nies with busi­ness rela­tion­ships with HLS. The actions includ­ed set­ting fire to direc­tors’ cars, com­pa­ny build­ings and, in one case, the hol­i­day hunt­ing lodge of Daniel Vasel­la, Direc­tor of Novar­tis. Graf­fi­ti was daubed on direc­tors’ homes overnight and the ash­es of Vasel­la’s moth­er were stolen from the fam­i­ly tomb. How­ev­er, in the words of Michael Bowes QC, the pros­e­cu­tor in the case: “There is no evi­dence that Ms Vin­cent was present at the scene of any of the attacks, or inci­dents in Europe. There is no evi­dence that she was out­side of the Unit­ed King­dom at the time of any of these attacks”. Instead the Crown Pros­e­cu­tion ‘Ser­vice’ (CPS) claimed that Deb­bie was guilty of involve­ment in a ‘con­spir­a­cy to black­mail’ involv­ing those actions. The CPS claimed that there was evi­dence link­ing SH and NS to some of these actions. How­ev­er they were not the ones in the dock. The pros­e­cu­tion argued that Deb­bie had been in phone con­tact with SH and NS and had attend­ed the 2009 Ani­mal Rights gath­er­ing in Oslo that they also attend­ed. But the case went much fur­ther than that. The CPS argued that the SHAC cam­paign itself, in pub­lish­ing details of com­pa­nies on their web­site and encour­ag­ing peo­ple to protest against them, was guilty of black­mail. The effects of this legal ‘log­ic’ have broad impli­ca­tions for anti-cor­po­rate activists. For exam­ple, dur­ing the move­ment against apartheid in South Africa activists pub­lished details of com­pa­nies like Bar­clays Bank and encour­aged peo­ple to protest against them until they pulled out of South Africa. Was this an act of black­mail? Do cam­paign groups who pub­lish the names and address­es of com­pa­nies involved in frack­ing and encour­age peo­ple to protest against them run the risk of con­vic­tions for black­mail? Is activist secu­ri­ty a crime? The CPS’s case sum­ma­ry says that “Deb­bie Vin­cent has tak­en steps to con­ceal her crim­i­nal­i­ty by the use of encrypt­ed com­put­ers (she has failed to pro­vide the encryp­tion codes despite being known to have been using a total­ly encrypt­ed com­put­er short­ly before it was seized). Encrypt­ed stor­age media was found hid­den behind the kick­board of kitchen units at her address”. In high­light­ing this, the pros­e­cu­tors were imply­ing to the jury that Deb­bie had some­thing to hide. The impli­ca­tion that the tak­ing of law­ful steps to pro­tect pri­va­cy in the con­text of a con­cert­ed police cam­paign to mon­i­tor, crim­i­nalise, arrest and imprison activists seems laugh­able. How­ev­er, it is a well rehearsed argu­ment in ani­mal rights cas­es. The set-up The pros­e­cu­tion had evi­dence that Deb­bie had con­tact­ed the direc­tors of Novar­tis after the direct action against the com­pa­ny had tak­en place. How­ev­er, they had no evi­dence link­ing Deb­bie to the direct action itself apart from the cir­cum­stan­tial links to NS and SH. In order to try and strength­en their case, the police worked with Novar­tis to try to entrap Deb­bie and anoth­er SHAC activist (who was also arrest­ed but had his charges dropped, he will be referred to in this arti­cle as ‘X’) into admit­ting links to the rob­bing of the Vasel­la grave. SHAC had emailed Novar­tis, request­ing that they cease deal­ing with HLS. Andrew Jack­son, Glob­al Head of Cor­po­rate Secu­ri­ty at Novar­tis, replied and request­ed a meet­ing with the cam­paign. Jack­son said that this meet­ing would be to dis­cuss the issues raised in the email from the cam­paign. Deb­bie and the oth­er activist arranged to meet rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Novar­tis at the Le Meri­di­en Hotel in Pic­cadil­ly on 10th March 2010. Unknown to them, the com­pa­ny had arranged with the police to bug the meet­ing, and one of the peo­ple they were due to meet was an under­cov­er offi­cer, using the alias ‘James Adams’, who was mas­querad­ing as a Spe­cial Con­tracts Man­ag­er for Novar­tis. The activists were swept for bugs at the begin­ning of the meet­ing and each time they went to the toi­let. They were told that the meet­ings were strict­ly con­fi­den­tial. After the meet­ing Adams got in touch with SHAC again and said that “cer­tain things are out­side the para­me­ters of the dia­logue” and asked Deb­bie and ‘X’ to set up anoth­er meet­ing, encour­ag­ing them to com­mu­ni­cate with him via PGP email encryp­tion. ‘Adams’ was eager to com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly with Deb­bie and ‘X’ rather than through the cam­paign. The clear inten­tion was to coax the activists into offer­ing to secure the return of the Vasel­la remains. Through­out the dis­cus­sions in the meet­ings with Novar­tis, Deb­bie was clear that SHAC had no idea who took the remains and had no con­trol over them. ‘Adams’, the under­cov­er offi­cer, took the lead dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tions with Deb­bie. Accord­ing to Deb­bie, he asked “lead­ing ques­tions about whether we were the right peo­ple” to talk to. Deb­bie’s notes of the con­ver­sa­tion record her as say­ing: “We’re tak­ing a risk the way the legal sys­tem is in this coun­try to meet with you… [X] and I are painful­ly aware that going to these meet­ing with Novar­tis puts us in the spot­light, puts us at risk…” A rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Novar­tis then says: “This is a con­fi­den­tial process…” In a lat­er email to the com­pa­ny, Deb­bie said that she had spo­ken to some of the activists con­duct­ing demon­stra­tions against Novar­tis and con­firmed that they had agreed to stop protest­ing should Novar­tis end its con­tract with HLS. Soon after the sec­ond meet­ing with Novar­tis Deb­bie met ‘James Adams’ on the under­ground, as if by chance. In fact he had fol­lowed her onto the train. He tried to broach the issue of the Vasel­la remains again but Deb­bie refused to dis­cuss the issue. Tar­get­ing of activists by polit­i­cal police units The arrest and pros­e­cu­tion of Deb­bie, and cas­es against ani­mal rights activists more gen­er­al­ly, are over­seen by spe­cialised polit­i­cal police units designed to pro­tect cor­po­ra­tions from pub­lic anger. In 1999 the Nation­al Pub­lic Order Intel­li­gence Unit (NPOIU) was set up fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of a Her Majesty’s Inspec­torate of Con­stab­u­lar­ies report, which claimed that some protest groups “have adopt­ed a strate­gic, long-term approach to their protests, employ­ing new and inno­v­a­tive tac­tics to frus­trate author­i­ties and achieve their objec­tives”. The NPOIU has been respon­si­ble for plant­i­ng under­cov­er offi­cers in protest move­ments. Deb­bie regards the use of under­cov­er offi­cers against her as a “sting oper­a­tion”. She said she believed that Adams was “clear­ly part of Nation­al Domes­tic Extrem­ism and Dis­or­der Intel­li­gence Unit”, for­mer­ly the Nation­al Domes­tic Extrem­ism Unit, “who are just a re-brand­ing of the Spe­cial Demon­stra­tion Squad and Nation­al Pub­lic Order Intel­li­gence Unit” and that “there is now a 25 year his­to­ry of unac­count­able prac­tice by a secre­tive and unac­count­able police unit”. Spe­cialised polit­i­cal police units aim to crim­i­nalise and imprison activists and neu­tralise polit­i­cal move­ments that pose a chal­lenge to cor­po­rate pow­er or oth­er aspects of the cur­rent sys­tem. ‘Decap­i­tat­ing’ the ‘lead­ers’ The strat­e­gy of the police units involved in over­see­ing Deb­bie’s case is explored in the Jan­u­ary 2013 edi­tion of the Euro­pean Jour­nal of Crim­i­nol­o­gy. It includes an arti­cle by John Dono­van and Richard Tim­o­thy Coupe. Dono­van is employed by the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police ‘Ser­vice’. The arti­cle encap­su­lates the police and CPS’s approach to the SHAC cam­paign as one of “lead­er­ship decap­i­ta­tion”: “Police agen­cies com­bat­ing ter­ror­ist or organ­ised crime groups prin­ci­pal­ly employ intel­li­gence-led activ­i­ties (Innes et al., 2005) and covert inves­tiga­tive tech­niques for iden­ti­fy­ing group par­tic­i­pants and link­ing them to crim­i­nal activ­i­ties. These involve human sur­veil­lance, infor­mants and under-cov­er offi­cers, as well as covert, elec­tron­ic tech­niques, includ­ing wire-tap­ping, to mon­i­tor incrim­i­nat­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and under­stand mem­ber roles and ties in crim­i­nal net­works, such as the Neapoli­tan Camor­ra (Cam­pana, 2011; Cam­pana and Varese, 2012). As well as the arrest of mem­bers of ter­ror­ist groups who com­mit or plan crimes, lead­ers and upper ech­e­lons have been specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed in order to ‘decap­i­tate’ and weak­en or ter­mi­nate groups (Cronin, 2009; David, 2002; Jor­dan, 2009; Price, 2012), an approach still empha­sised in counter-insur­gency doc­trine (Hauen­stein, 2011). This was the approach adopt­ed by UK police in seek­ing to dis­rupt and ter­mi­nate SHAC’s cam­paign of intim­i­da­tion.” The CPS’s case sum­ma­ry claimed that Deb­bie was the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of SHAC in the UK. Alis­tair Nis­bet, the Senior Crown Pros­e­cu­tor in the case, said: “Fol­low­ing the con­vic­tion of SHAC’s main lead­ers in 2008, Deb­bie Vincent’s role with­in the organ­i­sa­tion grew. She became the pub­lic face of SHAC”. Of course, the police’s notions of lead­ers with­in the SHAC cam­paign betray a fun­da­men­tal lack of under­stand­ing of hor­i­zon­tal organ­is­ing by protest move­ments. Nev­er­the­less, this tac­tic of paint­ing indi­vid­u­als as lead­ers and tar­get­ing them is the strat­e­gy behind the police efforts to rail­road Deb­bie and oth­er activists to prison; an organ­ised attempt by the police to neu­tralise a polit­i­cal protest move­ment through the twist­ing of the law to imprison those who the author­i­ties label as ‘lead­ers’. Media green­scare So why aren’t more peo­ple ral­ly­ing to sup­port Deb­bie and oth­er SHAC cam­paign­ers? One rea­son is the police’s attempts to dis­cred­it the move­ment in the media and thus to lim­it pub­lic sol­i­dar­i­ty for those under their cosh. In the past, main­stream media scare-sto­ries about ani­mal rights and envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers have been found to have been fab­ri­cat­ed by polit­i­cal police units — see here. Dur­ing Deb­bie’s case the media cov­er­age was deeply offen­sive, defam­a­to­ry and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, focus­ing on the fact that Deb­bie had under­gone gen­der reas­sign­ment. The Mir­ror’s head­line was “The boy who grew up to become a woman of ter­ror” while the Dai­ly Mail ran with “Sex-change sol­dier who became an ani­mal rights ter­ror com­man­der” and made the unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claim that Deb­bie had “been attack­ing ani­mal test­ing labs for over ten years”. Deb­bie has already made a suc­cess­ful claim to the Press Com­plaints Com­mis­sion and forced the Mail to amend an arti­cle which erro­neous­ly linked her to the Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front and linked SHAC to a pre­vi­ous black­mail case against the Save the New­church Guinea Pigs cam­paign. This defama­tion in the press is undoubt­ed­ly stirred up by police press releas­es, aimed at gen­er­at­ing a neg­a­tive image of ani­mal rights cam­paign­ers in the media in order to lim­it pub­lic sup­port for the move­ment. It is of utmost impor­tance that anti-cor­po­rate cam­paign­ers are not tak­en in by this spin, which is designed to pro­tect cor­po­rate prof­its, and to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those expe­ri­enc­ing repres­sion. Pro­tect­ing cor­po­ra­tions from dis­sent Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies that are fac­ing pub­lic anger over their activ­i­ties have seized on Deb­bie’s con­vic­tion to fur­ther restrict protest out­side their premis­es. After the ver­dict in the tri­al, Novar­tis applied for a strength­ened injunc­tion under the Pro­tec­tion from Harass­ment Act (PHA) of 1997 against ani­mal rights pro­test­ers. It was grant­ed on 14 April 2014. The harsh terms of the injunc­tion were request­ed, by noto­ri­ous cor­po­rate lawyer Tim­o­thy Law­son Crut­ten­den, on the grounds that there could be a “back­lash that occurs after the sen­tence”. The PHA Act was draft­ed and made its way through par­lia­ment as a pro­vi­sion designed to pro­tect vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple from harass­ment. Before the law was passed, the media had been evok­ing emo­tion­al accounts of the effect of stalk­ing and the need to pro­tect vul­ner­a­ble indi­vid­u­als. The Act was nev­er por­trayed as a law designed to pro­tect cor­po­ra­tions and restrict protest. Yet, that’s exact­ly what its being used for. The new con­di­tions put in place by Novar­tis are an inter­im mea­sure and will be exam­ined at anoth­er court hear­ing. The inter­im injunc­tion has been made against ‘per­sons unknown’ but poten­tial­ly affects any­one demon­strat­ing against Novar­tis. It restricts demon­stra­tions to six peo­ple or few­er, in des­ig­nat­ed protest zones, with no ampli­fied sounds, and for­bids face-cov­er­ings or blood-splat­tered cos­tumes. Any­one deemed to have breached the con­di­tions can be arrest­ed and may face up to five years in prison. How­ev­er, last year a test case at the Old Bai­ley of two SHAC activists put into ques­tion the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of pros­e­cut­ing activists arrest­ed under PHA injunc­tions. See this Cor­po­rate Watch arti­cle for details of the case. Sol­i­dar­i­ty need­ed Deb­bie’s con­vic­tion is part of an ongo­ing cam­paign of repres­sion against the UK ani­mal rights move­ment. A fur­ther sev­en SHAC activists have been charged with ‘con­spir­a­cy to inter­fere with the con­trac­tu­al rela­tions so as to harm an ani­mal research organ­i­sa­tion’ under Sec­tion 145 of the Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police Act (2005). The charges relate to demon­stra­tions against com­pa­nies with busi­ness rela­tion­ships with HLS. They are due to appear in court lat­er this year. For more infor­ma­tion on the ongo­ing repres­sion of UK ani­mal rights activists see the web­site: www.stopukrepression.org When we asked Deb­bie if she would need any par­tic­u­lar sup­port from peo­ple if she got a cus­to­di­al sen­tence, she replied: “Prac­ti­cal­ly, I’m not sure what my needs will be in prison, it will depend to a degree to where I go. I’m pret­ty sure I’ll be able to cope, but being iso­lat­ed from nature and friends will be the worst part. I will try to make the best of the bad sit­u­a­tion, it’s all a bit daunt­ing and new. The whole charge and court case are still amaz­ing­ly sur­re­al.” “Keep on cam­paign­ing against all oppres­sion and cap­i­tal­ist dom­i­na­tion. Don’t be afraid to speak out and nev­er apol­o­gise for try­ing to make a dif­fer­ence and car­ing.” To see a list of impris­oned ani­mal rights activists world­wide click here. Update: We have just heard that Deb­bie has been tak­en to Bronze­field Prison. Her pris­on­er num­ber should be avail­able soon.