Trevor Holmes, not guilty

I'm personally delighted that these extremists have been sent to prison. There is no excuse for their behaviour and justice has finally been done.

What about justice for the millions of animals tortured to death every year? What about justice for the millions of people that suffer and die after being prescribed animal tested drugs? The pharmaceutical industry is making billions but where`s the `cures` that they constantly promise?

WAKE UP!!!!!

Healthy people don`t require medicine, therefore the drug industry have no interest in finding `cures`. If everyone was `cured`, the big pharmaceuticals would go bust! Animals provide the easiest way for these scumbags to get their products onto the market.

Peaceful campaigners from SHAC are merely trying to end this charade. It doesn`t matter how many they lock up - there`ll always be others to take their place. The SHAC campaign is going strong.  http://www.shac.net

If people have been found guilty of blackmail for running a campaign against vivisection oh dear "shac hater" who could be next? Maybe those campaigning against global warming (stop flying on short trips or we will invade the runway). Indeed in recent years pro hunt activists threatened to poison the water supply so should we look forward to seeing the leading lights of the Coutryside Alliance locked up for up to 14 years? Anyone who cares about the right to protest should be furious and prepared to fight against police and government corruption. None of us will stop campaigning against the atrocities carried out by HLS and other such organisations.
By the way it is amazing how the media works, I keep hearing about how the defendants have been doing naughty things (bombs and stuff) for 6 years funny that how at least one of them is physically incapable and some of them were at school and not even activists 6 years ago! For goodness sake read behind the propaganda spewed out by the state.

In regard to the right-to-protest comment above - giving a example of lobal warming protestors invading a runway.....

There needs to be a line between opinion and absolute fact. For instance, plenty of people disagree with the theory that man-made greenhouse gases causes climate change. So this doesn't mean such protestors are correct in the eyes of many.

Animal testing is purely an opinion based on moral stances. I'm against it personally, but I'm also against sacrificial animal slaughterings that are done for religious reasons because they are even more unnecessary.

Are you suggesting that the right to protest should only apply to those with factual evidence on side? Surely even if someone wants to protest peacefully that martian space goblins are running Barclays it is the RIGHT to protest not the reason to protest! Aside from global warming there are many other problems with aviation etc for example acid rain, the imact on local populations, noise pollution ad infinitum. Global warming is (regretably) only the most urgent problem, even if it were not thousands of environmental problems from littering to the massacre of countless entire species vy for our attention. The dilemma with global warming is if we do as we ought it may not happen laying charges of hysteria at the feet of the "killjoys", if we all carry on as we are of course the "killjoys" will be right albeit very dead along with the entire human race. I really do not think that world leaders would bother unless the science was very compelling (it's taken long enough to persuade them!)

The Shac style techniques of mobs turning up at people's houses and cars being set on fire is coming to a close and I think for the better. The label 'animal rights activist' brings to the publc mind a violent extremist thanks to Shac. What has really changed from what they've done? Are less animals dying in labs? It's time for a new positive direction. Thie law needs to be changed.

To call Shac a peaceful campaign is a joke. Their success was based on intimidation. Yes, no one was killed but a lot of people were terrorised. Yes, many were animal abusers but it was not a peaceful campaign.

The people in the SHAC trial are heroes for standing up for abused animals against the pharmaceutical industry.

David: I don't understand what point you are making. Everything is "an opinion". Being for or against attacking animal abusers and their collaborators is just an "opinion".

And I think you will find the so-called SHAC tactics of home demos and arson attacks (though actually nothing to do with the SHAC people on trial, otherwise they would have been charged for it) are actually on the increase all round the world. This is an international movement and things are really kicking off in many places.

The UK has a well-funded and well-connected behind-the-scenes campaign by pharmaceutical multinationals to try to crack down on the campaign against HLS, but it is still going strong:  http://www.shac.net/ . Tactics will adapt - there is no use battering against a brick wall, but you can guarantee activists will be always thinking one step ahead.

The sort of people who work at HLS torturing animals or managing the process are absolute scum. How anyone can stoop so low as to defend them, I don't know.

SHAC organise letter writing campaigns, email action alerts, leafleting sessions, campaign stalls and demonstrations with megaphones? If thats violent then the thought of anti-capitalism must be genocidal!

Get your facts straight ...

* Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) : Operate a legal campaign with legal demonstrations against HLS and its associates; this is just another crackdown.

* The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) : Take illegal direct action against HLS and its associates; rescuing animals, sabotaging property and burning cars.

* The Animal Rights Militia (ARM) : Use non-violent and violent methods of armed struggle against HLS and its associates; sending razor blades, bombs and death threats.

SHAC are not the violent group, the ARM are.
SHAC are not the illegal group, the ALF & ARM are.
SHAC are not the ones the police state 'should' be after ...

Would you expect anything less from fascists in power?

PS
Claiming animal rights is too extreme is the equivalent insult to non-human animals as convincing human animals that civil/human rights are 'too extreme'. Rights are not extreme!

"Surely even if someone wants to protest peacefully that martian space goblins are running Barclays it is the RIGHT to protest not the reason to protest!"

yeah, but let's not get someone's RIGHT TO DO SOMETHING confused with WHAT IS RIGHT. just because someone exercises their right to protest, doesn't mean i think they *should* be doing that - yet for some reason in "activist" circles there seems to be the belief that ANY direct action is good. BOLLOCKS! since "direct action" basically means using force to stop something you disagree with, it ultimately comes down to physical power / strongest side wins. therefore it really pisses me off when some "activists" define their "movement" as the "direct action movement". DA is a method! right wing scum might use it! Pro-hunters might use it! doesn't make them right! but according to the Direct Action Ideology, it does...

but my point was not whether a protest is something I agree with or not but whether or not it is right that people should be permitted to protest. I am staunchly anti vivisection but I know that if I lobby to stop pro-test (the flash in a pan pro vivisection group) holding a demonstration that I undermine my own right to protest and miss the spectacle of Oxford University students breaching a section 14 and being chased by police! Pro-test do not like people like me but they had the good grace to squirm uncomfortably when asked by journalists about injunctions and draconian new laws.

What really annoys me is when our opposition argue that vivisection is not worth protesting about, that is not the question. First of all vivisection tortures and kills animals, secondly big pharma use animal tests to put unsafe products on the market and rip off the NHS, thirdly vivisection is used to rubber stamp pesticides and GMOs which are then forced upon all of us, finally vivisection has an impact on every single person and surely we should have the right to question its validity as it is done in our name and paid by our taxes. The question is in this instance should those who are openly involved in a campaign against a big evil company be legally responsible for the actions of everyone who does something against that company although they have no control over such actions? Should those prominent in a campaign spend 14 years in prison for the actions of "persons unknown"?