The Toronto Star’s Thomas Walkom recently wrote a rather dull story about Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty activities in the United States. Walkom, however, is clueless about the topic and makes two ridiculous errors in fact that are likely to be repeated by others.
First, he completely misunderstands Huntingdon Life Science’s maneuvers to incorporate in the United States rather than the United Kingdom. According to Walkom,
In the United Kingdom, the animal rights campaign against Huntingdon was so successful that the company faltered financially. Its saviour arrived in the form of a U.S. firm called Life Sciences Research Inc. that took over Huntingdon more than two years ago.
What an idiot. Life Sciences Research was created by the principals at HLS solely for the purpose of transferring the company’s incorporation to the United States. All the move to LSR did was shuffle the stock from one legal entity to another. Did Walkom do any research for his article?
Apparently note, as he also offers up this bizarre — and completely false — take on the Patriot Act,
In the U.S., authorities have used provisions of the so-called Patriot Act, enacted after Sept 11 2001, to target animal rights organizations. In particular, the act allows grand juries . . . to share information with one another. At last count, there were an unprecedented grand jury investigations across the U.S. looking into animal rights organizations as well as four aimed directly at SHAC.
Again, this is simply an idiotic misreading of the Patriot Act. Federal prosecutors have always had the ability to take evidence from one grand jury and share it with another grand jury. Federal rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules Of Criminal Procedure allowed the following exemption of grand jury secrecy long before the Patriot Act was passed,
(C) An attorney for the government may disclose any grand-jury matter to another federal grand jury.
What the Patriot Act’s provisions on grand juries did was make it easier for prosecutors to share evidence from grand juries with domestic intelligence and law enforcement officials. Before 9/11, federal prosecutors essentially needed a judge’s approval in most cases to share grand jury evidence with domestic intelligence/law enforcement agencies. The Patriot Act provides a broad range of exemptions to this where federal prosecutors are simply required to disclose to a judge that he or she has shared such information.
There’s nothing so far in any of the investigations of animal rights activists that required the use of provisions of the Patriot Act.
Source:
America’s home-grown dissidents. Thomas Walkom, Toronto Star, May 25, 2004.