Thrashing the Monkey for Profit

So, people are still being charged in connection with the global monkey torture network uncovered by an extensive BBC investigation.  Terrible though cruelty to animals undoubtedly is, I can't help but feel somewhat underwhelmed that the best the BBC could uncover was a monkey torture network.  I mean, after watching countless exploitation movies and video nasties, I was expecting a global human torture network, run by international sadists, operating on the dark web to have been uncovered.  It's not just movies which have advanced this narrative - the tabloids frequently go through phases when the usual flying saucers, yeti sightings and ghost stories aren't bringing in the readers, of trying to convince their readers of the existence of 'snuff films' and online live murder channels.  While I don't doubt that there have been real-life 'snuff films' in which unwilling participants really are killed, I'd guess that they are pretty rare and confined to a very specialised underground market - let's face it, getting caught in possession of such a thing is going to land you in serious trouble with the authorities: you'd certainly be implicated in the on screen murder.  So, in addition to having a very limited market in the first place - there really aren't that many people who want to see such a thing - even many of those interested would be unlikely to want to take the risks associated with physically being in possession of such an artifact.  Interestingly, while most people would (understandably) have no stomach for watching real violence, torture and murder being practiced against human beings, many have no problem with seeing it being done in fictional form in so called video nasties, precisely because it isn't real and more often than not, it is obviously not real (something the moral campaigners never seem to grasp).

Getting back to the global monkey torture network, I suppose that torturing monkeys is the closest you can get to torturing an actual human being.  To be accurate, of course, these were baby monkeys being tortured for pleasure, which is disturbing on several levels.  Most obviously, it implies that for those involved, theses baby primates were proxies for human children in their fantasies.  It also tells us that the people doing the torturing aren't even capable of taking on adult monkeys - some of which, after all, are pretty small.  Clearly, they wouldn't risk trying to torture gorillas - the tables could too easily be turned and you really would have a global human torture network, but run by gorillas.  Actually, I suspect that the fact that the actual torturing part of the operation is outsourced to Indonesia might be why they stick to smaller primates - importing gorillas might have seemed a bit suspect.  Frankly, I firmly blame the CIA and MI6 for this outsourcing of torture - it's something they both 'pioneered' with respect to terror suspects. It's an absolute disgrace - they're putting home grown sadistic bastards out of business, for God's sake.  Another thing that struck me about this global monkey torture network are the absolutely pitiful sums of money the participants pay for the 'privilege' of seeing monkeys tortured - so far the sums paid by individuals that I've seen mentioned haven't even reached twenty pounds.  Not just sadists, but cheap bastards, too.  The ones so far convicted are also a pretty pathetic bunch of social misfits, a long way from the evil sadistic masterminds the media would have us believe are lurking in every shadow.  I think I'll stick to the video nasties - despite what the moral campaigners would have you believe, nobody ever got hurt for real in them.