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.

  • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I gotta admit, I was blissfully unaware that this was a thing. I really did not expect to read a headline like that this morning.

    What in the fucking fuck is wrong with people? This motherfucker needs to spend the rest of his life behind bars. The biggest sign of a person becoming a serial killer is their treatment of animals. I mean, he’s already been to prison, so it’s not like he has any interest in being rehabilitated in prison.

    • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 months ago

      I agree with you but to be fair our prison system is terrible at rehabilitation. Sure it works sometimes but it’s not their main focus.

      Did you read about the prison that is denying everyone in person visits so they can charge money for phone calls and video calls? They’re getting a kick back from the companies whk run those systems. Fucking gross.

    • ccunning@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      The biggest sign of a person becoming a serial killer is their treatment of animals.

      I’m going to guess this is the second biggest sign with the first biggest sign being specifically their treatment of the animals most closely related to humans.

      Like torturing worms? Maybe 50% chance

      Torturing dogs has got to be a good 80%

      Torturing monkeys has got to be like a 99%+ chance of being a serial killer.

      Jesus Christ.

      • kase@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I kept reading “words” as “women”… felt real concerned for a minute there

        E: “worms.” I kept reading “worms” as “women.” It’s definitely time for bed now. ✌️

    • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      A woman who made crush videos involving kittens ended up being posted on 4chan. They did their thing. Last I heard she was never heard from again.

      4chan is a true agent of chaos but sometimes they focus their powers on the right people.

        • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I’ve tried it more than a few times over the years. 99% of the time it’s porn and racism. It’s a website that’s best viewed at a distance with people take screenshots of the shit that’s actually worth seeing.

          • steeznson@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Depends on the board to be honest. The papercraft and origami one is surprisingly wholesome.

            People assume all of it is like /pol/ since that is the most famous board with the highest traffic. It does leak into the other boards with the odd thread/post here and there but would say it’s not representative of the site.

      • catloaf@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        State-sponsored torture is still torture. And, in my opinion, worse.

      • Ultragigagigantic@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        This sounds cruel and unusual.

        Please do not forget that we are NOT him.

        Sometimes the hardest thing in life is to be a portrait of yourself, rather then a mirror reflecting the world around you.

        My paint is fading…

  • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    Well I am shocked that a person like this would be A Trump supporter and love the Confederacy. /s

    He should be up for now than 5 years. This is completely fucked.

      • AWistfulNihilist@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        LMAO, they’ll call him a legitimate businessman running a legitimate business, why is the government getting in the way of a stand-up American’s monkey-torture distribution network!

      • Zahille7@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        With motherfuckin Ice Cube on a T-shirt that’s hanging on the wall, too. Says “Boyz N Da Hood” and everything.

        What song of his do you think this POS likes?

    • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      That CAT shirt isn’t a good look either. That company is full of sadistic fuckers. They’ll probably promote him for this.

    • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      He didn’t do the actual stuff though, he got people in Indonesia to do it.

        • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Okay? People in the comments are talking as if he’s the one doing the torturing and killing.

          • hime0321@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            I think you are projecting. I don’t see that anywhere. Just people saying that the sentence should be longer. Which it should be. It should be considered as something like federal trafficking with a minimum of 5 years and up to 40 years. I bet they would have sentenced him with more than 5 years if it was CP he was trafficking.

            • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Why would you think that? I’m not interested if you think I’m discussing in bad faith.

              • hime0321@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                Yeah, I’m the one arguing in bad faith. This is exactly why I think you are projecting.

                • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  I didn’t say that. No interest whatsoever in your pisspoor understanding and attempt at using words you do not know how to use.

          • BreakDecks@lemmy.ml
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            8 months ago

            The comment you originally responded to didn’t say that he did the torturing himself, so your unsolicited response that “he didn’t do the actual stuff though” absolutely comes across as an attempt to minimize the things that he is accused of doing according to the article.

            That sounds like a defense to me. You think we should give him slack because of his distance to the violence he was orchestrating.

        • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          In that case he received the same sentence as Atkins, death, commuted to life. Good example, although he was more directly involved due to proximity.

      • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        Which adds a while other level of hypocrisy. Why can’t he have good ol’ Americans do the job? Are they not good enough for him?

        Also don’t care that he did not directly do it. He was facilitating it and it would not have happened on the same scale without his help. So in essence, he absolutely caused the torture of monkeys. Should someone who goes a hitman not be charged with anything? The hit man isn’t killing the victim without pay so obviously the person hiring one should be charged.

      • steeznson@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Wow! When you put it that way he’s basically a political prisoner. BRB going to set up a gofundme for this sweet misunderstood angel.

  • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Mr Macartney has cooperated with investigators from the Department of Homeland Security and agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges. He will formally make a plea later this month and is facing up to five years in prison.

    WHAT THE FUCK. 5 YEARS?!

    FOR SEXUALLY ABUSING, TORTURING, AND MUTILATING ANIMALS FOR PROFIT?!

    And of course hes a MAGAt. Fucking soulless, worthless cumstains on the fabric of society.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Distributing 500 grams of cocaine? 5 year prison sentence.

      Distributing 5 grams of cocaine cut with baking soda? 5 year prison sentence.

      Sexually abusing, mutilating, and slaughtering animals in the most sadistic methods imaginable? 5 year prison sentence.

      American criminal justice system is extremely normal.

  • venusaur@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Depending on the monkey or ape species I feel like this is on par with torturing human babies or young toddlers. They’re completely helpless and as intelligent and self-aware.

  • Ultragigagigantic@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I guess it doesn’t really matter how big of a shitter I am on my life, I’ll always be outshines by a professional piece of shit like this.

    It’s not gonna stop me from wanting to improve myself and helping those around me as best I can. Peace

  • Custoslibera@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Who are the individuals paying to commission this torture?

    Definitely needs to be some investigation into the ‘consumer’ here.

  • MilitantVegan@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    They’re only getting 5 years in prison. The article also says Macartney had been in prison previously. Since the US prison systems are designed for sadism and punishment, it probably did more to make the guy amenable to this kind of horror. It’s also known that slaughterhouses frequently get their workers from the prison system, so it’s very possible that this guy will simply have his unapproved abuses exchanged with ones that our society sanctions.

    When he comes out, his mind is most likely to be more disturbed than when he went in.

    • PrefersAwkward@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Not condoning prison vigilante/revenge behavior, but if this guy’s fellow inmates find out what he did, and that is very easy to do, he may be in for a horrible time in prison. Not sure if he will be put into a ‘special-cases’ prison for his own safety or whether he’ll just go straight to a general public prison.

      He has really bad paperwork and fellow prisoners always find out what your paperwork is as soon as you land in your new prison. Torture of animals is among the worst things one can do.

      Again, I’m not condoning any of this. It’s just the reality this guy faces in American prisons

        • MilitantVegan@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I have a Samsung device, so it’s likely from Vietnam. Other than that I, like most Linux users, live on a steady computer diet of used Thinkpads.

          Now that Fairphone is available in the US I will likely go for those in the future. Or maybe a Linux phone if one gets good enough. Is there evidence of unethical work practices in Samsung’s supply chain?

        • chetradley@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I’ve yet to see a proposal more convincing to me than just avoiding animal products altogether. Don’t get me wrong, I used to enjoy things like meat, dairy and eggs, but I realized the cost far outweighed my own pleasure.

          • rusticus@lemm.ee
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            8 months ago

            Dairy and eggs don’t kill animals in a cruel way. It’s animal exploitation yes but who amongst us aren’t exploited?

            • chetradley@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              I think we have fundamentally different outlooks on animal agriculture. It seems like your position may be based on the idea that animals used for milk and eggs are treated well, live long natural lives and are killed at the end of their lives when they would have died naturally.

              I wish this were the case.

              Animals used for milk and egg production live a small percentage of their potential lifespan. The effects on dairy cows of repeatedly being impregnated, giving birth, producing enormous quantities of milk, and going through the cycle again takes a harsh toll on their bodies. It’s normal for a dairy cow to only endure 4 or 5 cycles of this before they literally cannot physically continue, at which point they’re no longer profitable and are sold for slaughter. Similarly for egg-laying hens, the stress and mineral demand of ovulating multiple times a day means that they rarely live past two years. For the males of these breeds, it’s even worse. Male chickens of the egg-laying breeds are mostly useless to the industry, so they are killed immediately after hatching, usually by way of an industrial macerator or gas chamber. Male calves might live to 8 months to be slaughtered for veal, but if there’s no market for veal they are frequently killed immediately after birth.

              Modern egg laying chickens and dairy cows are man-made breeds far removed from their natural wild counterparts. Hens trace their lineage to red jungle fowls, who naturally will have a single clutch of roughly 12 eggs once a year. Selective breeding has increased this amount to once a day, sometimes even more. The extreme pressure on their reproductive system frequently causes health issues like egg yolk peritonitis, cloacal prolapse, and osteoporosis. Similarly with modern dairy cows, bovine mastitis, udder sores and infections are common due to our selective breeding to maximize milk yields. Even otherwise healthy animals face grueling lives because they’re part of a species that was selectively engineered for one purpose: profit.

              Modern animal agriculture is overwhelmingly inhumane, which is why livestock animals are almost always excluded from animal abuse legislation. Ignoring the above points about how they’ve been selectively bred and are worked to exhaustion, investigations into egg and dairy farms have found absolutely shocking treatment. If you have the stomach for it, they’re worth watching to understand the scope of animal abuse that is commonplace in our society.

            • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Dairy is produced by a cow being forcibly raped, kept pregnant, her milk stolen, and her babies torn away from her. It is cruel

        • MilitantVegan@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Currently billions of animals are raised in atrocious conditions and slaughtered against their will, for food, every year. This alone should be reason enough to want it to end, but the problems don’t end there. Most of the top causes of death in industrialized nations is the result of lifestyle diseases such heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancers. The main drivers of these diseases is overconsumption of animal products. In other words eating animals is the leading cause of death in humans.

          https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56984912-the-proof-is-in-the-plants

          To make it worse, food deserts in low income areas results in disproportionately higher incidences of these diseases and causes of death for black people, indigenous people, and all persons of color.

          https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w9ixJ3YcmZg&pp=ygUldGhleSdyZSB0cnlpbmcgdG8ga2lsbCB1cyBkb2N1bWVudGFyeQ%3D%3D

          even worse, animal agriculture is one of the worst sources of environmental destruction. It is one of the top causes of climate change, the single largest cause of deforestation, and causes rampant pollution.

          https://www.surgeactivism.org/aveganworld

          And again, it gets even worse. Not only is it strongly arguable that consumption of animals and their products is the cause of the covid pandemic; animal ag is also the leading cause of antibiotic resistant diseases, and if it’s allowed to continue it will only be a matter of when, not if, we end up with an H5N1 pandemic - a flu that has a 50-60% death rate. This should be reason enough for governments to outright declare animal agriculture a threat to national security, and pursue strong policies to transition away from animal consumption as rapidly as possible.

          https://www.surgeactivism.org/notifbutwhenbirdflu

          When something is this bad, aren’t modest proposals the last thing we need?

          • Mastengwe@lemm.ee
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            8 months ago

            How about you let people eat what they want to eat and you just worry about yourself.

            • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Their user name is MilitantVegan.

              Do you genuinely think they have ever, in their entire life, been capable of keeping their nose out of other peoples business?

              • Korne127@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                I’m not even vegan by myself, but saying other people’s business when it’s not about things people do for themselves without harming anyone but killing animals is… really weird.

                • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  Yeah, that bullshit “i’m not a vegan, I’m just gonna say vegan things” act wont pass here.

                  Also, I love how you are trying to claim something that a significant portion of all animal life on the planet does is “weird”.

                  Like, maybe thats a you problem, bro.

              • Mastengwe@lemm.ee
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                8 months ago

                Oh, absolutely not. I just wanted people to see how they will respond to a reasonable request.

            • MilitantVegan@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Animals are generally killed significantly younger than their natural lifespans. The short lives they live are entirely in conditions that are comparable to history’s worst concentration camps. You’re literally living on the rotten flesh of traumatized children.

              Have you ever stopped to wonder what they want?

                • MilitantVegan@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  Taste is subjective, and it changes in response to what you eat. The vast majority of people are used to what are called hyper-palatable foods - foods that are scientifically formulated to be addictive. Every food that is not hyper-palatable tastes flavorless by comparison.

                  If you get used to eating real food - that is, real plants in their whole, generally intact forms - then hyper-palatable foods end up tasting disgustingly salty.

                  Point is, plants taste perfectly fine.

              • steeznson@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                I disagree with you but that is an informative graph. I knew egg laying chickens were killed before they were a year old but 5 months is wild.

              • wakumul@lemm.ee
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                8 months ago

                that chart is all lies. none of those animals have a natural lifespan that long

              • wakumul@lemm.ee
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                8 months ago

                the vast majority of make dairy calves are brought to full weight before slaughter: 18-20 months

                • MilitantVegan@lemmy.world
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                  Everywhere I’ve looked says the same - cows can live 15-20 years and possibly even longer. That’s significantly more life than 18-20 months.

      • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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        Don’t you love how when it’s an animal they don’t eat they’re outraged, but animal agriculture is a-okay for no reason at all, and we’re just militant vegans? Lol. Carnists.

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    8 months ago

    Monkey torture enthusiasts? This isn’t about saving money on cosmetics testing or some shit, they literally just like torturing monkeys???

    Put them all in the Titan submersible and weld the doors shut before you send it down

    • Aqarius@lemmy.world
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      Oddly enough, I’m both not sure you could weld the doors shut, since the body was not metal, and also not sure you’d need to, since apparently the only latch was on the outside.