Are you looking for some holiday cards? Look no further! Thanks to some amazing artists, Unoffensive Animal has a small little set for you to send your best wishes to prisoners around the world!
Thanks to Illustre Feccia, Kate Powell and ZeroFourSixEight you can pop a card over to your family, friends or a few comrades in prison whilst representing animal liberation and direct action.
The pack contains six cards, A6, and they come with envelopes. They have been printed on recycled paper and for every pack we sell we will be sending six cards to prisoners ourselves.
As always, all profit goes to prisoner support and the maintenance of Unoffensive.
Please bare in mind that there is a postal strike (which we fully support), so some parcels might be slightly delayed. We will do our very best to send stuff as it is ordered, but bare with us if your cards don’t arrive immediately!
The fight against HS2 has seen many activists working very hard to stop a high speed train construction that has destroyed and will continue to destroy miles of nature, murdering thousands of animals and decimating the very little habitat that they have in the UK.
Jellytot is a HS2 campaigner that was sentenced to 268 days in prison for breaching a HS2 injunction . He is in HMP Dovegate until 3rd Feb 2023 and is welcoming messages (via an email managed by some friends) and donations to his support campaign.
His first letter after going in was full of jokes and positivity. Send him a letter (via the email below) and let him know you’re looking forward to his release!
Email him at [email protected]. Donate: https://tinyurl.com/Hs2prisoner
Lately we have seen a few folks sending DMs asking how to submit content, or sending us links to reports they’ve seen online. Regardless of it being an anonymous submission or a link to a news site, the only way to send reports to UA is over email. This is to protect the anonymity of activists as well as to ensure we actually see it. We do not check the multiple social media’s private messages often, but we will always maintain our emails regardless of how busy we are!
To submit a report, our email is unoffensivereports(aattt)protonmail.com
We have made it easier to submit reports anonymously by creating a form within our website where people can write the content and click send. That email then is encrypted before being sent to our address. Depending on the sensitivity of it and your level of security, you should consider accessing the contact form using TOR instead of your normal browser to ensure you are taking extra steps to remain anonymous.
We are aware that some TOR users might experience trouble with CAPTCHA and we are actively learning about Cloudflare’s new captcha alternative, which should work better with Onion Routed browsers. We will implement that feature soon.
To send media, you can upload it (once again using TOR) to any cloud service (like ufile.io) and then simply paste the link alongside the written report. We would advice to remove the metadata of videos and photos using any of the many tools available online.
Tell us what happened, tell us when and tell us where, but do not tell us who you are and do not give information about your comrades. We do not edit reports, whatever is sent will be copy and pasted as it was sent.
We hope this helps explaining how to send Hit Reports! The image used comes from Wildfire Magazine volume 3, where you can read an article about what to write on a report a lot more in depth!
Hey folks! It’s been a little while since we have reached out directly. The main reason is that we spent a couple of months working with our friends at Underground Badger Syndicate opposing the cruel badger cull in the UK, so we attempted to keep UA running as much as we could but we certainly had a lot less time for the project.
The badger cull, as every year, was one gruesome yet empowering campaign. On one hand, seeing tens of thousands of badgers being mutilated is a horrible experience. Whole clans destroyed, wiped clean to support the farming industry in the country. On the other hand, it is always empowering to see a direct action campaign that manages to bring so many different people from many different walks of life to do one thing and one thing only, sabotage the murder. After many shooters spooked away and many cages smashed, the main badger cull ends for the year, whilst supplementary zones will keep the killing for a little longer.
Now that we have a little more time to dedicate to the project, we would like to reach out to you. Over the years we’ve served as a platform for anonymous reporting, but also as an educational resource, be it on history, or security, or technology, as well as as a news platform for the broader revolutionary struggle. We have operated for over six years now and many different contributors have come and gone. We are at a crossroads now, where we would like to produce more media but we do not have enough time to do so with the current team, so we are looking at broadening up and calling for folks who would like to be active participants in the creation of media for Unoffensive Animal.
The project has always had folks working on it on a volunteer basis and none of us gets paid. UA is, and always will be, a mutual aid project. We are looking for people who would be interested in writing an article twice a month, or maybe even once a week! This could be on history of the movement, or maybe updating the readers about prisoner’s news, it could be on security advice and even on technology and security, but we are not limited to those ideas, if you believe you have a cool idea and know you can commit to it on a semi regular basis, please reach out! This project belongs to all of us, you included, and UA becomes what we all make it! if you think you can help, you can reach out to us directly over the email form on the contact us tab on our website. We do not need (nor want!) to know your details, or your past, or what you’ve been involved in.
Reach out and help us make UA a better platform for all!
Worth mentioning that our Patreon has been on a very steady decline over the past two years. If you can afford it, why not join and support the project for a few coins a month?
If you do not want to subscribe for a monthly donation, we also accept monero and bitcoin donations as well as PayPal. You can find all the addresses on our Support Us page:
Several members from De Zwarte Tulp opened the cages of the Aviary in Het Plantsoen in Leiden on the night of 7 to 8 November, as we had promised after our previous campaign.
For our reasoning, we refer you to our previous statement on our website. In this text we state that the freedom of the birds is priority number one and the confinement of the birds is morally unjustified. We would also like to emphasize that 0 birds were found dead as a result of our previous action.
We suspect this is the reason the municipality reacted differently this time. They can no longer claim that the escaped birds died. Instead, we are noticing conflicting reports from the municipality and outlets like Sleutelstad and Leidsch Dagblad.
The municipality claims that a cat was found in the aviary, this can be seen in photos. However, they also claim that thIs cat ate some of the birds, a claim which Unity then uncritically regurgitated and turned into their headline. This while Het Leidsch Dagblad previously said that the cat had timidly hidden itself away in a corner. On Tuesday, Sleutelstad even went so far as to suggest that we left this cat here, now they tell the same story as the municipality.
We want to make it clear that we did not leave this cat in the cage. We are against putting animals in cages, this includes cats. In addition, no evidence has been provided for the claim that the cat had eaten some of the birds. If this is actually true, we’d like to see some proof.
We are saddened to see that the municipality is not taking our concerns seriously and is making unsubstantiated claims again. This distracts from the point of our action: birds shouldn’t be forced into cages. Instead, they want to portray us as untrustworthy criminals who are inherently wrong. If the birds weren’t trapped, we wouldn’t have had to free them.
This is why we would like to ask people to not just believe everything the authorities and the media say without substantial proof to back it up. Please think critically.
Speaking of critical thinking, we find it peculiar that nowhere in the responses, both from the media and comments there, we’ve seen an answer to the question we raised. Is this because people would rather be caged from the moment they’re born, living the rest of their lives in the equivalent of a tiny student room instead of the vast outside world? We highly doubt it.
Therefore we’d like to ask again: wouldn’t you rather be free too?
We would like to ask the municipality to discuss our concerns. We have read the documents from the city council and we find it unacceptable and borderline undemocratic how the council has dealt with the Partij voor de Dieren. Take their concerns seriously as well.
In any case, it’s clear that the municipality is showing some hostility towards us.
With militant regards, Team “Free as a bird”
DUTCH:
Een aantal leden van De Zwarte Tulp hebben in de nacht van 7 op 8 november de kooien van de Volière in Het Plantsoen in Leiden geopend, zoals wij hadden beloofd na onze vorige actie. Voor onze beweegredenen verwijzen we jullie naar ons vorig statement op onze website. Hierin stellen wij dat de vrijheid van de vogels prioriteit nummer 1 is en het opsluiten van de vogels moreel verwerpelijk is. Wij willen ook graag benadrukken dat er 0 vogels dood zijn aangetroffen als gevolg van onze vorige actie.
Wij hebben het vermoeden dat er hierdoor dit keer een andere reactie vanuit de gemeente is gekomen. De gemeente kan nu niet meer claimen dat er ontsnapte vogels gestorven zijn. In plaats daarvan valt ons nu tegenstrijdige berichtgeving vanuit de gemeente, Sleutelstad en het Leidsch Dagblad op.
De gemeente claimt dat er een kat is aangetroffen in de volière, dit is te zien op foto’s. Echter zeggen zij vervolgens ook dat deze kat vogels heeft opgegeten, een claim die Unity zonder kritiek heeft overgenomen en zelfs als kop van hun artikel gebruikt. Dit terwijl volgens het Leidsch Dagblad de kat zich schuw in een hoekje had verstopt. Sleutelstad wekte dinsdag nog de suggestie dat wij die kat daar zouden hebben achtergelaten. Inmiddels vertelt Sleutelstad echter hetzelfde verhaal als de gemeente.
Wij willen duidelijk maken dat wij deze kat niet in de kooi hebben achtergelaten. Wij zijn tegen het plaatsen van dieren in kooien, dit geldt ook voor katten. Daarnaast is voor de claim dat de kat vogels heeft opgegeten ook geen bewijs geleverd. Als deze kat daadwerkelijk vogels heeft opgegeten, dan willen wij dat graag zien voordat wij dat geloven.
Wij vinden het jammer dat de autoriteiten onze zorgen niet serieus nemen en opnieuw ongefundeerde claims maken. Dit leidt af van het punt van onze actie: vogels zouden niet gedwongen in een kooi opgesloten moeten zitten. In plaats daarvan willen ze door middel van ongegronde claims ons wegzetten als zijnde niet te vertrouwen criminelen die het per definitie aan het verkeerde eind hebben. Maar, als de vogels niet opgesloten zouden zitten, zouden wij ze ook niet hoeven te bevrijden.
Daarom willen wij mensen vragen om niet zomaar alles wat de autoriteiten en de media zeggen te geloven als daarvoor geen bewijs voor wordt geleverd en kritisch na te denken.
Over kritisch nadenken gesproken, we vinden het opvallend dat nergens in de reacties, zowel van de media en comments daar, een antwoord wordt gegeven op de vraag die we gesteld hebben. Is dit omdat men werkelijk liever in een kooi geboren wordt, om hun hele leven door te brengen in de grootte van een kleine studentenkamer in plaats van de wijde wereld daarbuiten? Wij betwijfelen dit ten zeerste. Vandaar dat we opnieuw willen vragen: Jij zou toch ook liever vrij zijn?
Aan de gemeente willen wij vragen om onze zorgen te bespreken. Wij hebben de stukken van de gemeenteraad gelezen en wij vinden het onacceptabel en ronduit ondemocratisch hoe het college met de Partij voor de Dieren is omgegaan. Neem ook hun zorgen serieus.
Het is in ieder geval duidelijk dat de gemeente zich vijandig naar ons opstelt.
Eric was sentenced to ten years behind bars after accepting a non-cooperating plea agreement to one count of “using explosive materials to commit arson”. Since the moment Eric was locked up, the system has been continuously torturing him, exposing him to nazis after feeding them information that he is an antifascist, beating him up behind out of camera view doors and even shackling him to a bed, naked and in solitary. He had to battle a new charge whilst in prison, accused of attacking a guard when he had been the one attacked by the corrections officer, who had taken him to a broom closed and beat him up. He was found NOT GUILTY of that charge, but because the Bureau Of Prisons has many different ways to keep punishing innocent people, he was transported to a supermax facility.
This means that Eric is now completely isolated, 24/7, if you don’t count the disgraceful treatment by the screws, although that changes very little compared to his previous locations, where he was locked up in SHU and also not allowed to interact. There are positives to his new location. Eric reports that he has not had any smack talk from screws yet, and he has a TV. He does mention TV being a double edge sword and a tool by BOP to shackle people to a screen. He also has more access to commissary now, and he is allowed to wear sweatpants and shoes.
With commissary being less controlled now, he should be able to access more stamps and respond to more letters. Write to him so that the BOP’s tactic of isolation to force his mental health to break does not have an effect. He likes talking about football (specially Manchester United!), he likes folk music, he loves hearing about animals punking humans, the misfortunes of officers/nazis and even Taylor Swift. Just drop him a letter, pain a smile on his face and remind him that the end of his sentence is nearing.
Eric King 27090045 USP FLORENCE ADMAX PO BOX 8500 FLORENCE, CO 81226 USA
Solidarity is our biggest weapon! Send solidarity to Eric today!
A few years ago, Underground Badger Syndicate was born as an anti-hunting direct action splinter from Unoffensive Animal. By now, the group is a fully fledged independent team of very committed activists that look for traps wherever they are and destroy the tools that murder wildlife.
We spent some time with them during the last badger cull and it was amazing to see the strategy and work of folks who might not see each other in months but still knows how to work together and be very disruptive to the hunters. We would love to share with you one of our favourite pieces of media they published during the last season; the release of a badger from a trap in the middle of the night. We will paste the words that accompanied that video, but before we do we would really like to ask folks to donate to them if you are able to; they are a non-affiliated direct action group which means no bigger charities or organisations are funding them, and they are constantly in need of support.
“WELL, I HOPE THAT SOMEWHERE SOMEONE BREAKS FREE TONIGHT.
You just went for a stroll. Down the path, into the fields, snuffling around and looking for food. You know what you’re looking for. For a week, you’ve been snacking on peanuts every single day. You walk straight to them, feeling the luckiest animal on earth. Except for this time; your luck has run out.
The cold, deafening sound of the cage shutting behind you startles you. You turn around leaving your peanuts behind, but you are trapped. Locked in a metal box and without escape, you still fight.
It is desperate and frantic, yet hopeless. You scratch against the mud and your nails mark the ground, but they don’t manage to break the soil below you. You don’t care that your knees are bloodied, you want to break free. When that does not work, you try headbutting the walls. A streak of warm blood falls into your eyes from your forehead. There is no escape.
You just wanted to roam free, but the human had decided otherwise. You’re a pest, a problem, an inconvenience. You deserve death. So with nothing else to do but wait, you stare away into the night awaiting your fate. A gunshot awaits you a few hours away from now.
Today is your lucky day though, and so it is ours for having met such an incredibly resilient fighter. You didn’t need a saviour, but you certainly needed solidarity. So we extend solidarity to you and you keep fighting from today onwards.
Stay away from peanuts little one, and run free forever.
“On the 7th November, after having heard of the arrest of four comrades accused of a slaughterhosue arson in Chile, we decided to take action in solidarity. We had been keeping an eye on a Northamptonshire sheep farmer that is known to neglect animals even more than the standard.
We paid a visit to one of his fields and discovered what nightmares are made of. From about sixty young lambs, we could count at least twelve bodies laying dead in the mud. Many others too weak to run, or completely stuck in brambles or barbed wire.
We took eight lambs with us, as many as we could fit, and drove them to safety. During the drive, more and more gruesome discoveries were found. Their excrements were full of worms, their spine could be felt all the way around and two of them were covered in flystrike. We hope all the lambs make a speedy recovery now that they have people around who care about their wellbeing and freedom.
This farmer deserves a lot more than just a liberation, and we can promise this is just the begining. He will pay for the enormous suffering that he inflicts on every single animal under his care.
To our imprisoned comrades in Chile, solidarity, love and rage.
You can imprison activists, but you can never jail the ALF.”
Smash Speciesism is a civil disobedience and direct action group in the UK. Earlier in the year we published about their NOT GUILTY verdict in their case for the Forge Farm Meats slaughterhouse blockade, which stopped the murder for almost the whole day and -as an unexpected win – took the climbing police resources away from evicting protestors who were blockading an arms factory known to sell weapons used to murder Palestinians. During their court case, the judge accepted that the blockade was justified due to the abuse and malpractice by Forge Farm Meats.
During the T&S Campaign, Smash Speciesism blockaded Phil Kerry’s quarry, raising alarm bells about the fact that major trades providers were making dealings with an animal abuser. That action would be the last nail in the coffin after a well thought out campaign by Shut Down T&S and Phil Kerry would announce his imminent retirement from rabbit fur farming. The two activists that blockaded the quarry would have their charges dropped as the cops had once again acted illegally and CPS was unable to build a case.
The group doesn’t shy away from even more disruptive actions. Last year they disrupted the Royal Vet vivisection awards, where alarms attached to helium balloons were set off, people booed and shouted at the speakers and ultimately someone would set off the fire alarm off, forcing the whole university compound to evacuate and the awards event to be cancelled. No activist was arrested as a result of that action.
They also organised another slaughterhouse blockade in 2020 at the gates of Tulip LTD in Manchester. Multiple lock ons and D-locks were deployed and no pigs were killed for the whole day. Last week, a judge acquitted all activists, effectively giving Smash Speciesism yet another win against the speciesist machine.
Whatever is next for Smash Speciesism, we would like to congratulate the activists and celebrate their wins once again. Disruptive, well thought out actions will topple the machine, and they have proven that multiple times.
In the past week, the US has woken up to three mink farm raids by the Animal Liberation Front. First in Ohio, where 1000 mink were released into the wild. Michigan was the next target, where 800 mink were reed from cages. Yesterday, at a different farm in Ohio, 40,000 mink found freedom thanks to the ALF, who have yet to claim the action.
Every time that a liberation of this manner is reported, there are many critical voices within the movement that insist in the ecological impact of such actions, or that believe that the animals are far too domesticated to make it in the wild.
We would love to analyse those claims, as well as talk about the thought process behind this type of action, as they are some of the most impactful liberations in the recent years.
Mink liberations (like game bird liberations, or even deer parks) have one very powerful characteristic. Whilst they behave like any other animal liberation action -freeing animals from their place of abuse – they are understood easier as a sabotage action. Unlike other kinds of liberations where the domesticated animals will need care for the rest of their lives, wild animal releases do not require the transport of animals to a secure location, or the rehoming of each individual, or the ongoing treatment and medical care for the rest of their lives. The people involved in wild animal releases do not have to travel out of the raid location with a van full of animals (and the immediate and forensic risk that that entails). Instead, the animals are released into the wild, where they are fully able to meet all their needs and express all their wants. That is a very powerful and much less burdensome action.
We are not talking here about the release of domesticated individuals into the wild. For example, the release of rabbits from a meat farm will without a doubt ensure their death after a few days or weeks, whilst the raid of a rabbit game farm could see thousands of wild rabbits make it into the wild to live for generations to come. In the case of mink, for the most part, fur farms breed American Mink. They are not genetically (or behaviourally) different to their already free comrades. The release of American mink in the North American continent will not force those animals into any more difficulties than any other part of the wild faces with the uber-development of the human species trampling on all sorts of almost disappearing habitats.
There is always an argument about the ecological impact of releasing any kind of animal into the wild, specially on big numbers. The introduction of thousands of individuals does indeed cause an ecological imbalance. But we shouldn’t blame the liberators for that imbalance. The imbalance has been manufactured by greed and capitalism destroying habitat around the world, and by fur farmers that have decided to breed thousands of animals and confine them into a tiny farm. In fact, there has been multiple instances where the farmers themselves have decided to release mink into the wild when the cost of feeding and murdering them was higher than the profits of selling their pelts. Self liberated mink are a common occurrence in mink farms, and arguably if a mink liberation is so impactful that the farm shuts down for good, the ecological impact will be greatly reduced in comparison to decades of that same mink farm working ‘business as usual, releasing mink when they feel like it, with escapees running out of the farm constantly and producing a huge amount of animal waste that leaks into the ecosystem.
There is no action without consequence, and we hope that every single fur farm shuts down, be it because you make them shut down, or because the raids in other farms scare the owners into the realisation that mink (and fox, and chinchilla, and rabbit!) farming is a thing of the past, reserved to history books under the “human horrors and cruelty” chapter.
For more information on mink farm locations (in the USA) and on how people in the past have raided mink farms worldwide, visit https://finalnail.wordpress.com/
UNTIL WE WIN.
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