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.

  • rottingleaf
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    2 months ago

    There’s a difference between killing and torturing.

    • Sconrad122@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      You can absolutely make that distinction, but speaking as another meat eater, it’s not really a given that factory farming is more like one than the other

      • rottingleaf
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        2 months ago

        Yes, but you can expect that what these people do is closer to torture, and what factories do is further from it, because for them graphic torture is the main criterion, and for factory farming profit from selling meat is the main criterion.

      • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        That’s on the factory farms (and the non existing government regulations) though.

    • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Animals used for meat are tortured. They call the rack they tie the cows to for mating to keep them pregnant and producing milk the rape rack.

          • Dasus@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I think getting killed for food is torture.

            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.

            • 🦄🦄🦄@feddit.de
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              2 months ago

              Postulating that members of a species should be shot because they otherwise destroy the environment is thin fucking ice as a human lol

                  • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                    2 months ago

                    “I’m wrong but I can’t accept it so here I’ll jump to ridiculous whataboutism that will hopefully make us ignore the fact that I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about”

                    “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.

                • rottingleaf
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                  2 months ago

                  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.

                  • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                    2 months ago

                    “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?

                    1. 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

                    2. 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?

            • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              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.

              • gimpchrist @lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                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.

                • Sizzler@slrpnk.net
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                  2 months ago

                  The gigantic difference is you are aware you are hurting animals and could be a better person.

                  • gimpchrist @lemmy.world
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                    2 months ago

                    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.

              • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                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.