United States | News & Politics

7214 readers

405 users here now

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

103

The FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Program Has a New Target: Animal Rights Activists (theintercept.com)

submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

10 comments fedilink hide all child comments

On a chilly, early morning in January 2019, a group of animal rights activists descended upon a poultry farm in central Texas. Donning plastic gloves, medical masks, hazmat suits, and T-shirts emblazoned with “Meat the Victims,” they slipped through the unlocked door of a massive, windowless barn.

Inside, they found 27,000 chicks densely packed across the floor, like “just a sea of yellow,” recalled Sarah Weldon, one of the activists. “There were a lot of chicks that were already deceased, in various stages of decomposition,” she said. “Some were so deformed you couldn’t even tell they used to be baby chicks, just fluffs of feathers.”

Activists with Meat the Victims, a decentralized, global movement to abolish animal exploitation, later uploaded gruesome photos of injured and dead chicks to social media platforms. This is how, Weldon suspects, the police identified her and issued a warrant for her arrest, along with 14 other activists. She was charged with criminal trespassing, a Class B misdemeanor, and quickly turned herself into jail.

The FBI has been collaborating with the meat industry to gather information on animal rights activism, including Meat the Victims, under its directive to counter weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, according to agency records recently obtained by the nonprofit Animal Partisan through Freedom of Information Act litigation. The records also show that the bureau has explored charging activists who break into factory farms under federal criminal statutes that carry a possible sentence of up to life in prison — including for the “attempted use” of WMD — while urging meat producers to report encounters with activists to its WMD program.

all 11 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

yeonmi-park

In the slave empire, trying to show people the way the nuggets are made the way Upton Sinclair would gets you tried under the same statutes that they justified torturing "terrorists" under

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (2 children)

The FBI has been collaborating [...] to gather information on animal rights activism [...] under its directive to counter weapons of mass destruction

[...] charging activists who break into factory farms under federal criminal statutes that carry a possible sentence of up to life in prison - including for the "attempted use" of WMD

Can someone explain to me, in simple terms, how animal rights activism is connected to weapons of mass destruction?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

They probably argue that rescuing or even interacting with sick animals can spread disease and is therefore bioterrorism. If you stretch the definition enough almost anything can count.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 weeks ago

So then... these factory farms are the ones creating the "weapons of mass destruction," and the activists are the ones trying to stop them...?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 weeks ago

They start with their goal and walk it backwards. Their goal is to use the most extreme measures at their disposal to stop activists from interfering with capitalists’ profits. Their most powerful tools are the expanded police state powers created for the post-9/11 War on Terror. Therefore these activists are terrorists and whatever they do is a terrorist attack.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 4 weeks ago

Actual terrorism in the US: almost entirely from Christian white nationalists.

FBI: better infiltrate more leftist groups!

[+] [email protected] 14 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago

“This kind of escalation in charging or threats of charges is textbook escalation by government actors against successful efforts by social movements that they disagree with or find subversive,” said Justin Marceau, a law professor who runs a legal clinic for animal activists at the University of Denver. “The very framing of civil disobedience against factory farms as terrorism is a form of government repression.”

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago

Terrorism is whatever vaguely liberatory activity the Atlantic Consensus doesn't like.

Environmentalists have been categorized as terrorists for destroying private property. The ANC was classified as terrorists for fighting back against apartheid.

This particular tendency in labelling goes back to the 60s in labeling Palestinian liberation groups terrorists. The Zionists forcing people from their homes at gunpoint and threatening worse if they resist? Never labeled terrorists. The people who did organize and resist? Called terrorists.

The common theme is not even a selective application of the term ("our freedom fighters, their terrorists"), it is just organizing concretely for liberation that runs counter to Western interests.

Samidoun was just labelled a terrorist org. Samidoun organizes many of the pro-Palestine marches and protests you've seen and/or participated in over the last year. During the same period the US supplied Zionists with tens of billions in weapons and cash so that they could bomb refugee camps, schools, and hospitals.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

i hope not deliberately.

No one familiar the history of the FBI would give it the benefit of the doubt. The FBI is just cops at the federal level. Their core function is to protect the means of production for the capitalist class, same as in town.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 weeks ago

Yeah, the FBI only exists to protect the wealthy corporate interests and maintain the status quo. Occasionally catching serial killers or corrupt politicians is just window dressing for the taxpayers. Even corrupt politicians are only a target when they piss off the powers that be.