Throwback Thursday, Ep 01 // SHAC USA's "Strike Back"
Find Your Target & Drive Them Nuts
Author: Jake Conroy
Date: Dec 10, 2020
Source: The Cranky Vegan. <www.youtube.com/watch?v=zisaCHgSf28>
For the first episode, I'm taking a look at Strike Back, SHAC USA's promotional recruitment video that still get's people excited for action when they hear Darude's "Sandstorm". We are looking at office demos, home demos, direct action, animal liberations and Bob Barker weighing in on the ALF.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zisaCHgSf28
Author: SHAC-USA
Date: November 2003
Source: Earth First! Journal, vol. 24, no. 1 (edited by Rod, Samantha, Sprig, Tinder, and Turtle). Republished by the Environment & Society Portal. <www.environmentandsociety.org>
While a large mass movement is nice (and needed), an “army of one” can and will get the job done. Activists taking action on their own can be powerful. When an activist can’t join a demonstration, set up an outreach table or create a group, they are not out of options. Those of us who can’t or don’t want to be part of a big movement may instead take a 007 approach to activism by using COINTELPRO-type tactics to crack our enemy’s resolve.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to distract, disrupt and destroy the ease with which those who abuse animals and decimate the environment operate. By means of stealth and cunning, you must first acquaint yourself with your enemy and then seek to undermine their every effort. Armed with all of today’s urban spy techniques, you shall act as both sleuth and provocateur.
This is no assignment for the weak of heart. Great peril exists at every turn. But remember, even greater peril exists for the victims who are depending on the success of your operation. This article will not self-destruct in five seconds... but any evidence attaching you to any of the following tactics should.
Use a company’s website and any promotional materials you can find to locate who sits on the board of directors, as well as who holds the managerial positions. Also, try annual reports and old press archives about the target company (at your local library or online). Trace who is quoted and what their position is. Nine times out of 10, you will track down your target.
Start in the simplest places. Look in the phone book, search for the name on Google oruse411.com.Many targets are business people and don’t expect protest pressure. They see no reason to keep their home listings private.
For those tough-to-find corporate bastards, use the infosearch databases at your nearest university library. Most college libraries (and definitely law and business libraries) give free access to the search engine “Lexus-Nexus.” This is your one-stop shop for all public records—from news stories to legal documents and business filings. By searching for the company or the target’s name, chances are high that you will not only find the current address but also previous addresses.
Besides the chain of command, you are going to want to know the target’s work hours, projects, events, facilities and any gossip about them. Two clever approaches are:
The pretext phone call. Head to a payphone and call your target, pretending to be various characters. If you are put through to a secretary, you can pretend to be a delivery person with an important document needing immediate attention. Invaluable slip-ups happen and may result in you getting the time your target goes home, which golf club they attend or even their personal cell phone number. Even better information can be forthcoming if you actually get your target on the line. Try this with various departments. On one occasion, an activist was actually able to find out when a shipment of laboratory animals was being delivered!
Sport your most generic business outfit and simply do the “walk-through.” In big companies, not everyone knows everyone else. Last year, a Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) activist drove her car past security and into Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS). An employee of the lab held the door open for her as they went in, and she had a good long walk around before barricading herself inside an office!
Neighbors are easily duped and will tell you what you’re not supposed to know. When the target is not home, swing by the neighbor’s house and pretend to be interested in the vintage green jaguar parked in your target’s driveway. Call the neighbors pretending to be a relative planning a surprise party and that you need to know when your target will be home. Or even call acting like a journalist doing a story on animal rights or environmental activists targeting the folks next door: Can they offer any comment on their neighbors?
One of the most exciting ways to get to know your animal-abusing or Earth-destroying target is to follow them. Which video store and library do they use? Do they belong to a golf or yacht club? Following can be tricky, and you must have a reliable source of transportation. Most corporate scumbags don’t take the train or bus.
With your newly acquired information, it is time to let your imagination run wild.
Visit www.nachomail.com. This website allows you to send emails from your target’s email address to anyone you’d like, such as their friends and colleagues. Think the morning meeting should be canceled? Go ahead and do it. Maybe it’s time to fess up to your spouse about having an affair.
Letting rude and inappropriate comments slip to a customer can be so easy when on email—especially theirs. Recently, all the high school classmates of a HLS executive received an email from their old chum, asking if any of them would act as a character witness for him in his upcoming murder trial!
If you can’t attend a home demo, don’t sweat it. You can still make an impact on your target’s credit ratings. In many magazines, there are forms allowing you to start receiving subscriptions and products with a bill sent later. Once the unwanted deliveries start pouring in, if your target doesn’t take the time to send each parcel back with a canceled order statement, their credit takes a nose dive. HLS employees have received everything from Playboy to Precious Moments figurines. This got so bad for HLS in England that the company had to hire someone to sort through and send back all of the deliveries.
Swing by your target’s home and wait around to take photos of him or her. The paparazzi do it all of the time for movie stars, s ) why don’t we do it for all of the celebrities of animal ano Earth abuse? Maybe catch a glimpse of them in their swimsuit, screaming at their bratty kids or stealing the neighbor’s newspaper.
“Warning: A known Earth destroyer/animal abuser lives at...” Putting up posters in your target’s community is a good way of drawing attention to the vile and secret world of corporate exploitation. This can also cause a great deal of embarrassment to the individual. The locals are entitled to know about someone who commits unthinkable acts of barbarism on animals or the Earth.
www.SHAMEONYOUl.com. If you are more computer inclined, why not build a special website for the ecoterrorist or vivisectionist you are after? Expose their dirty laundry, their funny photos, their home address and phone number. Include graphic pictures of the animals they experiment on or the forests they have clearcut, as well as links to other websites that attack the merit of those operations. These people deserve as much privacy and dignity as they give to their animal victims.
These are just a few of the ways to get to know your enemy and get under their skin. There are plenty of other ideas. The point is that you don’t have to belong to your local animal rights group or Earth First! chapter to have a voice for the Earth or its animal inhabitants. Pranks, practical jokes and an unnerving amount of personal information on your subject can be just as powerful as a national demonstration.
Using great determination, SHAC-USA is committed to shutting down HLS and driving another nail in the coffin of the vivisection industry. For more information, contact SHAC-USA, POB 22398, Philadelphia, PA 19110; (888) 354–2435; shacusa@envirolink.org www.shacamerica.net.
Date: November 2003
Source: Earth First! Journal, vol. 24, no. 1 (edited by Rod, Samantha, Sprig, Tinder, and Turtle). Republished by the Environment & Society Portal. <www.environmentandsociety.org>
"Who are the Revolutionary Cells? It is an anti-GMO activist destroying a crop. It is a Basque youth driving a car packed with explosives destined for a Spanish politician. It is a queer bashing back, a rape victim putting a bullet in the rapist, a Corsican nationalist planting a bomb at a French bank. It is an animal liberationist shooting a vivisector dead on his doorstep. In short, it is the spirit of resistance realized. It is moving from politics to praxis.”
—Revolutionary Cells communique,
September 30
A new group of animal liberationists has claimed responsibility for two blasts at the Chiron Corporation’s world headquarters in Emeryville, California, on August 28. Chiron, the nation’s third largest biotechnology firm, has come under attack because of its affiliation with Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS). In 1997, an undercover investigation exposed Chiron as a customer of HLS, where it sponsored primate experimentation involving gross animal abuse.
The two pipe bombs left at Chiron’s headquarters detonated an hour apart from each other and caused no injuries, breaking only a few windows and damaging two doors.
The Revolutionary Cells-Animal Liberation Brigade claimed responsibility for the action stating, “If you choose to continue your relations with HLS, you will no longer be subject only to the actions of the above-ground animal rights movement, you will face us.”
Chiron officials responded to the action by arguing that only mice and rats are experimented on at the Emeryville location.
In an official statement, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) responded to the blasts: “SHAC-USA does not support terrorism — neither ideologically nor materially. It is precisely for this reason that we lend our vocal support to acts of property destruction — compassionate acts aimed at combating the daily terrorism committed by HLS without causing harm to any life.”
SHAC has repeatedly requested that Chiron attend meetings with scientists who have reviewed HLS’s research, ex-employees of HLS who can testify to broken procedural protocol and Animal Welfare Act violations. Chiron has ignored all requests.
On September 25, the Revolutionary Cells struck again, detonating a 10-pound bomb outside the Pleasanton, California, offices of Shaklee, shattering windows and tearing stucco from the building. Shaklee is a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Yamanouchi Holdings Group, another business associate of HLS.
While not mentioned in their guidelines, the Animal Liberation Front has yet to use explosives, which are considered to be less predictable and more likely to cause injury. A SHAC activist commented, “We don’t support violence against people. I think that if anything, the people who are abusing animals should be concerned.”
In a communique, the Revolutionary Cells explained, “We have given all of the collaborators a chance to withdraw from their relations with HLS. We will be nonviolent when people are nonviolent to the animal nations. Now you all will have to reap what you have sown.”
On October 8, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided the Schellville, California, home of 25-year-old Daniel Andreas San Diego who has been charged with planting all three of the Revolutionary Cells pipebombs. San Diego, who faces 10 years in prison for each bomb if convicted, is considered a fugitive. The FBI claims to have physical evidence connecting San Diego to the bombings, but that information has been sealed by a federal judge.
Police say they stopped San Diego in Pleasanton an hour before the Shaklee blast on September 26. San Diego is the only suspect in the bombings, but animal rights activists in the San Francisco area report increased surveillance and harassment from the FBI. The FBI has warned activists of the penalties for harboring a fugitive. Activists say San Diego is being unfairly targeted, citing an August FBI all-points bulletin that named three people as bombing suspects, which the FBI now admits was incorrect.
For more information on Chiron, visit www.shacamerica.net/cc.htm.