I can’t believe this is real. Is this real? It is, apparently, real. Did I mention I can’t believe it?

The famously political Earth Crisis — whose causes of choice include animal rights — have a new album called Salvation of Innocents coming out in March, and this is apparently considered bad, bad news for mink farmers.

According to Animal Liberation Front-line, there’s a mink farmer advocacy group called Fur Commission USA that routinely releases “internal fur industry ‘security alerts’” that “are sent to fur farmers via email and fax every time there is a ‘security’ related issue affecting US fur farms.” Obviously, these documents are not intended for public consumption, but Animal Liberation Front-line has gotten their hands on thirty of these bulletins from the past however many years, and they are now posting them for all the world to see.

What does this have to do with Earth Crisis, you ask? Well, a FCUSA security alert from 2009 included this tidbit:

“Earth Crisis has released its To The Death album.”

That’s right: the mere release of a new Earth Crisis album was considered a viable-enough threat to be included in a security alert for fur farmers. A fur alert that also included warnings of a convicted destroyer of fur farms who was spotted “doing surveillance and filming farms” (presumably to plan his next attack) and reports that “suspicious people have approached [fur] farmers seeking work.” So not to undermine art’s power to raise awareness or anything, but this would be a little like the government including Rage Against the Machine on a list of possible terrorist organizations. (Actually, that doesn’t seem so far-fetched… but STILL.) Forget your feelings about the cause for a moment — Earth Crisis had these folks so freaked out that they were bunched in with people who have (at least in the eyes of the law as it stands) committed actual crimes.

I mean… overreact much, dudes?

You can read the entire leaked security alert, as well as other such alerts, here.

[via Earth Crisis’ Twitter]