October 27, 2005
Wall Street Cowing to Animal Extremists
By Debra
Saunders
"All Americans took pride when the New York Stock Exchange
reopened for business only four business days after the 9-11 terrorist
attacks," Mark Bibi, a lawyer for Life Sciences Research, which
tests drugs and chemical on animals, testified before the Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee on Wednesday.
The committee
was investigating the New York Stock Exchange's decision to pull
a planned listing of Life Sciences on Sept. 7, after animal-rights
extremists vandalized a members' yacht club. So Bibi opined, "A
handful of animal extremists had succeeded where Osama bin Laden
had failed." The company was de-listed in 2000 because of
damage due to "economic terrorism," according to the
Financial Times.
Bibi and
other execs were breakfasting at the NYSE on the morning of Sept.
7, preparing to celebrate the listing on the exchange, when NYSE
officials abruptly announced they were postponing the listing.
At the time,
NYSE President Catherine Kinney wouldn't say why. A lawyer she
sent Wednesday to testify before the committee also refused to
say why. He said the exchange is still considering a Life Sciences
listing.
FBI Deputy
Assistant Director John E. Lewis testified that, shortly after
Carr Securities began marketing the Life Sciences stock, activists
vandalized the yacht club to which Carr biggies reportedly belonged.
Carr cut all ties with Life Sciences.
Later, the
NYSE, once defiant in the face of terrorism, caved.
Animal-rights
fanatics have figured out that you beat medical research that
uses animals not by going after the researchers, but by going
after those who do business with the researchers. They cow Wall
Street not by flying in to buildings, but by trashing members'
clubs.
Bibi knows
what it is like to be a target.
Anonymous
thugs vandalized his house, smashed his car's windshield and made
nasty phone calls to his home in the middle of the night.
Skip Boruchin,
the only trader who refused to be scared out of business with
Life Sciences Research, testified about the relentless intimidation
he and his family endured. Activists painted his yard red with
slogans like, "Skip is a murderer." Online, they called
him a "child pornographer."
One website
instructed people to send sex toys to his 90-something mother
at an assisted-living home. Another website listed the names,
phone numbers and Social Security numbers of 19 neighbors, and
threatened to publicize information about their credit cards and
medical history.
Violence?
Well, there were the two bombs set at Chiron's Emeryville, Calif.,
offices in 2003. Agents believe the second bomb was timed to go
off as first-responders arrived. The FBI also believes the violence
is escalating.
Jerry Vlasak,
a Southern California physician who is spokesman for the North
American Animal Liberation Press Office, also testified Wednesday.
Vlasak dismissed the intimidation of Boruchin and others as "getting
a little spray paint on the wall."
Committee
Chair James Inhofe, R-Okla., questioned Vlasak about a statement
Vlasak had made defending the assassination of medical researchers.
Once again, Vlasak justified violence.
For "people
who are hurting animals and who will not stop when told to stop,"
he answered, one option would be murder, a "morally justifiable
solution."
If anti-abortion
fanatics were behind this vandalism, the Life Sciences saga --
not to mention Vlasak's support for murdering medical researchers
-- would be the stuff of countless editorials. But because the
fanatics say they stand for beagles -- not Bibles -- the cognoscenti
barely take notice. They're too busy complaining about how GOP
limits to federal funding might crimp research to notice that
some zealots advocate killing medical researchers.
If animal-rights
nuts can get away with this brand of personal intimidation, extremists
of all ideologies will take note. What began in the rat-hugging
left will grow on the extreme right and the extreme left.
Bibi sees
his company's plight as a "test case for a whole new brand
of activism through personal intimidation." And it's winning:
Life Sciences Research still remains off the New York Stock Exchange.
Terrorism works.
Vlasak testified,
"The animal-rights movement has been notoriously nonviolent
up to this point." It sounds as if the days of the friendly
spray-painting, bomb-setting, child-porn-accusing and club-vandalizing
rat-hugger may be over. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
Copyright
2005 Creators Syndicate
