Category: Unoffensive Reports

So it’s been six years. Six years of travelling and covering news on the frontlines of eco struggle and animal rights. Six years of workshops, security culture and technology guides, history of the animal liberation movement and six years serving as a platform for anonymous reporting.

We have seen friends being sent down and come out of jail. We’ve written a lot of letters to prisoners, gotten excited about the work that many of you are doing to further the revolution, learnt new ways to organise and caused a whole lot of trouble.

Unoffensive Animal was born out of the need to bridge the social media activist scene with the direct action scene. As an anarchist collective, we wanted to teach that another world is possible, we wanted to reach out to other action groups and we wanted to educate the public about what a few, anonymous and dedicated folks, are willing to do in the path to liberation.

This year has been exciting to see. The kick off of Free the MBR Beagles, the resurgence of CAFT USA and the Shut Down T&S campaign are inspiring and give us hope for the future. The fierce eco resistance of the Atlanta Forest protectors has been inspiring. So many fantastic campaigns to support! We are sure that many other campaigns under the radar are also working heaps towards a better world and we cannot wait to hear about them too!

As always, we would like to remind you all that UA is a collaborative project, we are open to submissions, we are always happy to receive an email about something new and we love that folks who follow the collective reach out to help and become part of the collective itself!

We would also like to remind you that, although we do not make any profit, pay ourselves any wages and do not do the work for the money, as UA still exists within a capitalist society we are dependent on your donations to keep afloat. We never really get enough to save for better days, so if you can, please consider doing a little donation as an anniversary gift, or joining as a patreon if you can afford a monthly donation! We accept Monero donations too if you prefer to be completely anonymous. You can find our crypto addresses on the website, and out patreon and PayPal below.

Paypal (unoffensive_animal)(att)tutanota(dottttt)com
Patreon: patreon.com/animalliberation

SEE YOU IN THE NEXT RIOT!

PS: We are taking some holidays. Sneaky way to announce at the very bottom of the write up, but we are gonna take a few days off. We will be back at the end of the month!

Last month we reached out to all of you to ask for support as we couldn’t afford to pay for all the infrastructure that keeps our website and internet presence afloat. Thankfully many of you donated, and especially thanks to a single, very generous donation, we have managed to cover the costs of servers, domains and other infrastructure for the next year. We are truly grateful for that support.

Unoffensive Animal has been going for a good handful of years and we believe the project is useful for the broader movement. For as long as the movement finds the project useful too, we will keep going and adding to the fight towards animal liberation.

If you appreciate our platform, or if you think that our work is needed in this fight against the system, do reach out and collaborate. Supporting isn’t just about sending funds (although we are incredibly short for funds all the time), but also about sending ideas, submitting write-ups and helping with whatever you think UA could publish about.

Our emails are open and you can find how to safely reach out to us on our “Contact Us” tab on our website.

Solidarity with all fighting for a fairer world.

UA.

PS: drop us some coins if you can afford it, be it through a Patreon subscription, by sending some Bitcoin or Monero (wallet addresses on our website), or by PayPal! We would truly appreciate the support as we’ve not been able to distribute funds to prisoners for a couple of months now.

patreon.com/animalliberation
paypal: unoffensive_animal(at)tutanota.com

After the Animal Rights Militia sent a communique threatening those involved in the badger cull in Ireland, some people had questions. Many of those questions require a lot of nuances to be answered, but a reader decided to send over a little overview of who the Animal Rights Militia is, which you can read in full (albeit slightly modified) below:

“So, you support the ALF. Great! But what about the ARM (Animal Right Militia)? Do you know who they are? Just as a reminder, the ALF consists of small leaderless autonomous groups of people committed to doing all that it takes to end animal abuse. There are no membership cards: anyone can be an ALF activist. You can see it as a banner under which activists claim responsibility for illegal actions as long as they follow the ALF guidelines. One of these guidelines is to take all necessary precautions against harming any animal, human or non-human.

However, not all activists agree on the moral hierarchy of actions that comes with this ethical stance. Some groups choose to employ a variety of tactics, including the use of violence against animal abusers. They then go one step beyond the ALF stance of non-violence. In doing so, they have historically generated a lot of controversy within the movement.

This is the case of the ARM, whose first mission was the sending of parcel bombs to Margaret Thatcher’s residence. In 1982, the British government attempts to block a common Market ban on imports of seal products. Letters were sent to Thatcher, the three major opposition party leaders and a government official. The one addressed to the MP flared up in the face of a security officer who was slightly burned.

While advocating the use of violence when necessary, it should be noted that no deaths have been attributed to the ARM to date. Actions range from firebombing to product contamination to death threats to those making profits from animal exploitation. They are often just hoaxes that cause economic damage and fear among the abusers. Some other examples include the poisoning of Mars candy bars in 1984 which forced the company to withdraw “suspicious” batches of products leading to a loss of £3 million or planting firebombs at a McDonald’s restaurant in Gothenburg in 2011.

All that said, one must distinguish between refusing to perceive a moral distinction between non-human and human animals and seeing the human as the predator to be slaughtered. The latter has a toe in eco-fascism. Let’s not hide our eyes, some groups with methods similar to ARM have had extreme right-wing people in their midst. The argument against violence is notably widespread in the eco and animal liberation movement and it would be beneficial for those learning about the movement to study other concepts, for example reading ‘The Failure of non-violence’. That said, one must remain aware of the historical implications that some groups have had in connection to fascism so that whatever path one decides to take, it is not tarnished by the methodology of the far right.”

Over the 5 years we’ve been working we have brought you much news about the animal liberation movement, we’ve organised workshops and even gatherings. We’ve served as a platform for anonymous reporting and supported multiple prisoners. This is all done off the backs of volunteers who do not make any money and just do it to further the movement.

Sadly over time we have been recieveing less and less donations and sometimes we haven’t been able to do all the projects we’d like to.

This month we are at a crossroads with a huge bill to pay, to cover servers, domains and other tech related stuff. If we don’t manage to pay it a big part of our platform will be gone. We have some regular donations coming in from our patreon supporters, which we are incredibly grateful for. But that will not be enough to cover all our costs and it will mean that arrest and prisoner support is halted for the month.

So if you can afford it and you aren’t gonna put yourself out of pocket then please drop us some coins. We have patreon/PayPal/bitcoin linked below.

If you can’t afford it, maybe send this to your rich uncle or share it with all of your mates, or mention UA to whatever animal rights funding groups you can think of!

Support your radical animal lib media, this project is yours as much as it is ours.

PayPal: Unoffensive_animal(at)tutanota(dot)com
Patreon: www.patreon.com/animalliberation
Bitcoin wallet: bc1q5aujd8ekny4yt5tchht0gdf83g5y32cspzelyc

SEE YOU IN THE NEXT RIOT!

(photo: North East Surrey College of Technology (NESCOT) on April 19th 1986. 11 hamsters, 40 gerbils, 70 rats, and 400 mice.)

El Estor is a nickel mine in Guatemala owned by Solway, a Swiss mining company that is willing to go to any lengths to keep making profits.



The nickel resources around the mine happen to be just below the surface of land indigenous folk live on, and for many years there has been a serious fight to not only stop the company from digging up their home but also to stop the company’s continuous pollution that is affecting everybody’s health, murdering uncountable endangered species and destroying the land around it.



In 2009, Adolfo Ich Chaman, leader of the indigenous community, was brutally murdered by mine security. In 2016, due to the precarious conditions within the mine, an explosion injured over twenty workers and killed at least six. In 2017, during the fishermen’s protests demanding a stop to the polluting of the lake, Carlos Maas was shot dead by riot police. The two journalists that covered his murder were the only people charged with anything after his death.

A hacking group called Guacamaya decided to fight back and released 4.2 TB of internal documents showing the lengths that Solway is prepared to go to displace the indigenous community. From bribes to judges, police and government officials to creating economic dependency within the community, Solway was willing to pay their way to bulldoze the land murdering animals, plants and trees. If the indigenous community wasn’t willing to move, then they had even more sinister plans, like setting fire to key parts of the forest to destroy their livelihood or spread false rumours about the community leaders having HIV “due to their promiscuity”. To Solway, the health of the earth, the life of animals and the worth of the indigenous community were lesser than their hunger for money. The mining company has carried out many of these plans, burning irreplaceable chunks of the forest and terrorising both individuals and the whole community.



Forbidden stories broke the news at the beginning of March, releasing the work that over 65 journalists from across the globe had done analysing the data dump that Guacamaya had handed them over. 



At the same time, Guacamaya released their statement, which can be read in Spanish and is linked at the bottom of this article. Guacamaya did not stop there tho. They want you to know that everybody can do this job and they put a video together of how they hacked this multinational company, using open-source software. We have linked that video below too. 

Check the resources linked below to learn more about the hack, the indigenous peoples’ struggle against Solway and the tools and methods that Guacamaya used to hack them.



From UA, we want to echo the words of Guacamaya. “Infiltrate and sabotage with rebellious joy!”; but we also want you to think. A big part of our readers is part of the West. Have you ever stopped to think how deeply our consumption affects the earth? And if you have, have you put faces to the people that we are hurting with our insatiable thirst for progress? Watch the videos published by Forbidden Stories to meet the people affected by Solway. Solway is a Swiss-based company. They live in Europe and they profit from the destruction of the indigenous communities of Guatemala whilst comfortably sitting on their sofa at home. They are giving orders to pollute rivers, burn forests down and murder the people on the ground who resist. While this mine is far away for many of you, the people who run and profit from it are closer than you think. Are you part of the resistance?

RESOURCE LINKS:
Forbidden Stories, all articles: https://forbiddenstories.org/case/mining-secrets/
Downloadable Mining Secrets 4.2TB Datadump: https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/Mining_Secrets
Guacamaya’s communique after the hacking was published: https://enlacehacktivista.org/comunicado_guacamaya.txt
Guacamaya’s ‘how to’ video of the action: https://enlacehacktivista.org/hackback.webm

By now, you have learned quite a bit about us. We’ve explained our political background, what we do and don’t do and how people send anonymous reports. If you like the work we do there are many ways you can support Unoffensive and help us.

The first one is fairly self-evident. We created a platform so news could be spread over social media, so following, sharing and inviting others to check the content is a huge bit of help. We have had a very tumultuous relationship with the main social media channels and are permanently shadowbanned, so all interaction is positive and very much appreciated.

Secondly, as we have mentioned in previous articles, we work with submissions. People are not only welcome but also encouraged to submit both ideas and fully written articles to be published on our platforms. As long as they are not encouraging illegal activities or promoting any form of bigotry, we are always happy to publish them! We are also happy for folks to approach us with concepts for series or other forms of regular content that they would like to help with.



Lastly, supporting Unoffensive with donations is vital for us to keep going. Not only does it help us with prisoner support, arrest support and campaign support, but also it helps us upkeep website, server and domain costs. We would like to reach a point where we can support more journalistic work through Unoffensive, but unfortunately, donations to the collective have steadily declined in the past two years, and we now barely manage to do half of the money work we once did. We do not take donations for personal money, wages or anything of the like, as we all are volunteers (and more often than not end up putting money in ourselves!)



So if you think we do a good job and want to support our work, please consider donating. You have many different options, from Monero and bitcoin if you want to use cryptocurrencies to PayPal and Patreon. 



Paypal: unoffensive_animal(at)tutanota.com
Patreon: www.patreon.com/animalliberation
Bitcoin and Monero wallets can be found on our website.

UNTIL WE WIN!

UA.

By now you have learnt about what our platform does as well as what we do not do and what political background we have, and it is time to learn how people send direct action reports anonymously.

As mentioned before, we do not take part in actions, we simply serve as a platform for people to report their activities furthering the struggle. But for people to remain anonymous whilst sending reports, they need to follow a few steps so they can send information safely.

To start with, it is important that everybody understands that sending reports or submissions over Instagram, Facebook and Twitter is not safe. Those companies are data hoarding machines and even if your social media is “anonymous” you will be leaving a trace of who you are.

For that reason, we only accept reports over email.

You should always use Tor Browser to send reports. You can download it for free and use it as much as you want. If you don’t know what Tor does, please read up about it!

Once you’re connected through Tor, you have two options. You can either use our contact form on our website (which encrypts the communication on our end) or use a self-destructing email.

Examples of self-destructing emails would be https://tempr.email/ or https://anonymousemail.me/. Send your text and media to unoffensivereports(at)protonmail.com

If not, you can simply use our contact form and click send. Our contact form can be found on our website:

www.unoffensiveanimal.is/contact-us

Sending media (video or photo) is a very important part of any report. To do that safely please remove metadata. www.exifcleaner.com is a good tool you can download and use to get rid of all the pesky metadata you do not want to send. Once you have cleaned your media, you can upload it to the cloud using www.ufile.io and paste the downloading link alongside your report before sending it.

Do not send us personal details and do not expect us to answer back. We don’t want to know who you are.

Now you can report your actions if you need to, and report them safely.

UNTIL WE WIN!

UA.

There are folks in the frontlines that for one reason or another are widely known and mentioned often. Other people chip away at the enormous rock that is oppression throughout their whole life without asking for credit and without wanting notoriety. Sometimes those people fall through the cracks and only those who knew them personally remember them once they are gone.

Fernán was one of those people. Fernando Sanchez Grassa. An animal liberationist involved with the Spanish ALF (FLA), an anti-fascist, a fighter against Daesh who joined the YPG in Kurdistan and an incredible human being who is remembered by his friends with the love and rage reserved for those who truly meant something to your life.

Fernán died climbing a mountain in the Himalayas on the 4th of November 2019. A year later, an unnamed group liberated a dog tethered to a dairy farm and called him Fer.

When talking to people who knew him, they only have words of adulation. “He was incredibly sweet, a revolutionary to the core”. “He was in the riots in Italy, 2001, when Carlo Giuliani died. There are pictures of him at a mink raid, placing incendiaries at a fur farm and even some photos during a partridge farm liberation”.

And indeed, Fernán was photographed many times during FLA (ALF) raids. In 2003, after having visited a mink farm in Lubia, Spain, and having found that all the animals had already been killed, they planed and took action by setting the farm on fire. That arson would be the only recorded fur farm arson in the country of Spain. They would later dedicate the action to not only Barry Horne, but also the Palestinian people.

He was photographed cutting the fence of a game farm breeding partridges for hunters to shoot, and on a different occasion, at a mink farm raid where over 1000 mink were released before the farmer interrupted the raid.

There is no doubt that Fernán fought against oppression at a completely different level that many of us would only dream of. And after having learnt about him, we felt you too should know his name. He never took action to gain fame, but his memory should be powerful enough to still inflict blows in the oppression machine that devours the earth.

He was also a published author and we would like to end this with a quote from one of his books that perfectly explains what his life and history should do to all of us:

“We hope this article is nothing but a germ that replicates and creates more memories and love. We now pass you this weapon; take it”.

So we’ve talked about our background and our intentions and we have mentioned what Unoffensive does. If you haven’t read those two posts, head to Part 1 and Part 2 of the series. Today, we will try and clarify what we do not do.

Unoffensive is a media platform receiving anonymous reports. We cannot put you in touch with the ALF because we do not know who sends those reports. In fact, when people send incomplete reports we are unable to respond to them to clarify details or ask for photos. We do not have contact with the Animal Liberation Front.

In the same way, we do not take part in illegal actions. There is no point in contacting us to “join during an action” because we are a media hub, not a direct action group. We also do not fund illegal actions. We will discuss more how we deal with money in future instalments, but folks need to understand that donating to Unoffensive is not a way of sending money to people taking actions of liberation or sabotage.

Lastly, people must know that we do not share “sign the petition” links. For the most part, they are a way of collecting huge networks of email addresses willingly given by like-minded individuals, so it is a very easy way of creating lists of people that might take dissenting actions. On a more practical level, we would not be able to share every single petition we get sent, so we decided that we do not share any of them. There is a similar action about sanctuary fundraisers. We do not share sanctuary fundraisers but not because we do not think folks should support sanctuaries, but because sanctuaries do not need the heat that we could add to the equation. People should support animal sanctuaries without a doubt, but of the three fundraisers we have shared in the past, two of the sanctuaries were raided a week later. It is not worth the hassle because it is obvious that authorities do not understand we do not have links with illegal actions, so they blame anyone else by proxy.

So to sum it up, no, we cannot put you in touch with the ALF. No, we do not know who did x, y or z action. No, we cannot send animals to your home if “homes are needed”. We cannot fund illegal actions and we do not take part in illegal actions either.

In the next post, we will talk about how people send reports anonymously.

For now, if anyone wants to support Unoffensive, you can do so by donating on www.patreon.com/animalliberation.

until then

SEE YOU IN THE NEXT RIOT!

So now you know our political background and intentions (if you don’t check out Part 1!), and it is time to talk about what we do.

Unoffensive serves as a platform for a multitude of things, and one of them is reporting on animal liberation direct action from around the world. We receive anonymous reports submitted via secure means and publish them on the platform, allowing those taking action to explain what, how and why they took action whilst remaining anonymous. This means that individuals and groups can remain safer whilst having the opportunity to reach out to wider audiences and express themselves however they want.

We also try to help as a prisoner support hub. This translates in a few different ways. We collect (and try to keep up to date) addresses for those locked up in prison, so people can write letters. We give updates about their current situation, and we try and send money for their commissary or legal fees as much as we are able to.

But prisoner support isn’t just about prisoners! We also try to publicise court cases and sentencing of activists that have not ended up in prison, as well as help fundraising or sending money for their legal fees. This helps create a culture of solidarity, but also it is useful as a “sentencing comparison” so folks understand previous sentencing attached to actions and are able to weigh up the risk-reward factor.

Lastly, we try to also be an education hub. Be it by talking about history, or about anarchist concepts, or even about security and technology, if folks that follow us learn something new that will further expand their knowledge and help them keep fighting, that is our biggest and most important objective.

Now that you know what we do and who we are you should be able to paint an image of what Unoffensive is. In a future post, we will cover what we do not do.

Until then;

SEE YOU IN THE NEXT RIOT!