A ringleader in a global monkey torture network exposed by the BBC has been charged by US federal prosecutors.
Michael Macartney, 50, who went by the alias “Torture King”, was charged in Virginia with conspiracy to create and distribute animal-crushing videos.
Mr Macartney was one of three key distributors identified by the BBC Eye team during a year-long investigation into sadistic monkey torture groups.
Two women have also been charged in the UK following the investigation.
Warning: This article contains disturbing content
Mr Macartney, a former motorcycle gang member who previously spent time in prison, ran several chat groups for monkey torture enthusiasts from around the world on the encrypted messaging app Telegram.
I can’t agree. I think getting killed for food is torture. The deer wants to live.
But you thinking red is blue won’t make it so.
Torture has an actual definition.
It isn’t killed for food. These animals have to be killed to protect the environment. Humans have replaced apex species, and if we don’t keep up population control, the deer overpopulate and destroy the whole ecology.
Why should you waste the meat?
And the way they’re shot, they will literally be dead before they can even hear the bang of the weapon (bullets travel faster than sound.)
So where exactly is the “torture” in that, and can you not see that taking such an absolute position is absolutely indirectly devaluing the actual animal cruelty going on in industrial farms.
Postulating that members of a species should be shot because they otherwise destroy the environment is thin fucking ice as a human lol
I don’t think you understand the meaning of that word.
Ecological Impacts of High Deer Densities
And in a simpler form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_management
Whats the ecological impact of high human density?
Less than low density
“Postulate”: suggest or assume the existence, fact, or truth of (something) as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or belief.
I do not postulate that overpopulation of deer will destroy entire environments. It’s a cold hard fact which you wish to ignore.
Its not whataboutism. If you want to apply “killing is good against individuals of a species responsible for environmental destruction” then you should apply it to the biggest offender. Or be a hypocrite I guess. Your choice.
There’s nothing hypocritical about it.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, didn’t your mommy ever teach you that?
That is literally whataboutism.
Deer population has to be managed, or entire environments will die. You won’t get out of that being a fact by going “well but what about corporate pollution?!1?”
If you were accused of murder and asked to provide an alibi, you wouldn’t get off by saying “well what about Jeffrey Dahmer?”
You seem to purposefully miss the point. Have fun with that I guess 🤷
You missed the joke they were making. It’s not questioning if deer have an ecological impact, it’s about what to do with species that have a negative ecological impact. The thin ice being that if we apply that logic to deer then what if it’s applied to us.
I did not miss it.
I explicitly addressed it, and trying to get out of having said something moronic by “b-b-but humans have negative effects so deer overpopulation isn’t actually a real thing” isn’t a joke, it’s a bad attempt at evading the topic.
That part makes it sound like you missed it because they were not questioning if deer have an ecological impact.
Well, reintroducing predators would be a good way too. Most of Europe has no wild wolves.
BTW, I really like those movies about Chernobyl area, where they show how it has turned into one big natural reserve. Plenty of animals, plenty of plants. I know it was a catastrophe, but I really like wolves. Especially wild wolves living in such heaven that they don’t fear the cameraman and behave like very smart and independent dogs.
“Reintroducing predators” I always find this equally ridiculous. Like first off. Why? In your weird value world, why does it matter if a hunter or a wolf kills the animal? Who does it make it better for? Certainly not the deer or the deer population, because wolves are notoriously bad at doing statistical analysis that the felling amounts are based on. Even if the wolves had their own researchers, they probably wouldn’t understand “felling quotas”, would they?
Okay, humour me: if you were sentenced to death, which of the following would you choose?
Being shot at some random time you won’t even be aware about (in this hypothetical you agree to the execution and then get mindwiped so you won’t know it’s coming), with a single bullet that kills you instantly
A pack of wolves runs after you and tears you to shreds and eats you while you’re alive.
Personally, I’m pretty sure that option number 2 is closer to torture than option number one.
"Most of Europe has no wild wolves. Do you think those areas don’t have deer browsing them? Because they do, and those populations have to be controlled, and have been, by people, for centuries.
“They don’t fear the cameraman and behave like very smart and inpendendent dogs”
No, they don’t. They do not do that. Sigh. This is frustratingly naive of you. Betrays a deep lack of understanding of the difference between wolves and dogs, and even if they behaved like “smart and independent dogs”, you’d actually allow them in population centres in Europe, and all because you feel like it’s immoral that the deer are being shot instead of violently mauled to death?
Wolves eat too many deers, become hungry and die, then there are more deers, wolves have more food, there are more wolves.
I’m talking about human effect on nature, you’re talking about cruelty.
Cmon, so serious. I just like wolves.
Anyway, a wolf usually won’t attack humans. If it’s hungry and irritated - yeah.
I don’t think it’s immoral, I just think it’s ideologically dirtier for humans to perform the function of wolves.
Why did you skip the part where I ask how and who is it better for if there are wolves instead of hunters?
What sort of mental knot have you tied yourself into? Do you not have empathy? We’re talking about the experience of dying. Which is more cruel to inflict on ANY creature; being shot dead with a single shot without you even realising it, or being torn to bits by wolves?
You have no idea how wolves behave, which is evident from your ridiculously naive take: >Wolves eat too many deers, become hungry and die, then there are more deers, wolves have more food, there are more wolves.
That’s just, incredibly ignorant. The science of populations studies in animals is incredibly complex, and the wolves won’t care about the ecology of the area where they’re hunting. They could hunt a deer population out and then move to another area. These are known as wolf packs and there’s a reason humans have historically avoided living in an area with a large, HUNGRY pack of wolves. Can you guess what it is?
Or do you think that when the deer of a certain area are finished, the wolves will just stay there and starve to death instead of eating other things?
Again, you don’t understand how wolves behave. They don’t behave like they do in your animu-shows or documents from tame wolves. If you saw a pack of wolves while standing on a field, and they saw you and happened to be somewhat close, and you started running, there’s a pretty good propability they’d start chasing you down and tearing you to pieces. If you just stand your ground though, not a high chance. Reading this, you’ll disagree, even though you have no basis to, and then you’ll wonder why I even wrote that, and then you’ll open this and learn about what coursing predators are.
They aren’t aggressive to people, but to say that “a wolf won’t usually attack humans” is clearly indicative you don’t think they’re dangerous. So you would literally unleash packs of coursing predators to central European areas, and think it would somehow be morally and otherwise better than hunting. And you can’t even say why it’s better to be torn to bits by canine teeth than it is to be shot, but you are saying it is better.
Same as with dogs.
Should have left me a choice, LOL.
Animals are not food, they have a right to live like anyone else. Hunting is cruel and factory farming is cruel, and all the nonsense of pasture raised animal agriculture is also cruel, and all the carnists mental gymnastics about how one is ok and the other is not is absurd. There’s no good reason we should murder animals.
Everything on this planet is food … including us. Every single thing on this planet eventually is food for something else. It’s not cruelty, it’s not evil, it’s not barbarism, it’s not wrong, it is life on planet Earth. Eating food does not have to come with torture. There is a gigantic difference and it is important to make that distinction, otherwise we will rip ourselves and this planet to pieces.
The gigantic difference is you are aware you are hurting animals and could be a better person.
I’m not hurting anything. And I won’t be hurting myself by not eating food if it comes down to it. I am part of the Earth and I will participate while I’m here.
Keep lying to yourself or go watch the conditions animals are killed in, your choice.
Animals literally are food.
All animals are. And we too, are animals.
For what, that’s a different question. Literally every living thing gets consumed by other living things as a part of nature. Well, putting aside “artificial” things like being blasted to dust in a furnace, and even then, you can be used to fertilise plants, meaning another living thing is consuming you.
Just how naive do you have to be to think that nothing should ever die, or if it does, that it should never be consumed by another living thing? That’s illogical and crazy.
So… you would rather destroy whole environments, entire species, than accept that hunting is necessary? Because it is. It’s necessary for the environment and it saves lives (because overpopulated deer cause more accidents because of constant migration and just the sheer amount of them.)
You don’t understand what the word “murder” means.
This sort of absolutism is exactly why veganism has such a poor rep.
It’s clearly a personal thing for you. This is part of your identity, but not something you’ve actually researched or thought about. It shows from the way you use expressions like “carnist mental gymnastics” while not being able to accept literally unchangeable facts of nature and crying that a deer who lived in the wild was equally tortured as a livestock animal who may have lived their entire lives without being able to even turn around in their cage.
You’re about as good for animals and equally ironic as PETA.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a stupider bunch of nonsense in my life. Animals are not food.
What do sharks eat?
Other animals, but they don’t call what they eat “food”. Do you understand or do I need to use pictures to explain to you?
Actually if you think you are making a valid coherent point please go into further detail. As I see it what they call or don’t call what they eat doesn’t change what it fundamentally is. Shark food is animals. Translate that into shark if you like but the meaning doesn’t change.
Sharks don’t have the same self-reflective mechanism we do, I mean they recognise we aren’t very good food but other than that they don’t think “should I eat this?”.
Simply put we do have the capacity for that and should maybe act on it.
I don’t even believe you read it, tbh.
Please name a foodstuff that wasn’t originally from a living organism. I’ll wait.