The puppy killing scum at Novartis declared a war today. The gross abuse of power seen by the police, Novartis employees and private investigators will not be forgotten or forgiven. Those who support Novartis and Huntingdon Life Sciences would be wise to watch their backs, as both above and below ground activists know where they live and are disgusted and angered. Novartis, this is only going to get harder until you cut your ties with HLS.

Here is WSQT audio coverage of this same protest and this same outrageous police misconduct.

dc.indymedia.org/usermedia/audio/7/hls_demos_m21.mp3

This police behavior(making bad arrests based on LIES) is par for the course in neighborhoods of color, to serve developers. Now it appears that pharmaceutical corporation offices are getting a small sample of the same "service" from MPD that developers seeking to evict whole neighborhoods get.

This outrageous shit must NOT be tolerated anytime, anywhere-not at demos, and NOT in our neighborhoods!

Guess who Novartis acquired a few years ago according to the San Francsico Business times- CHIRON! This as you may recall is the bastards whose unsanitary laboratory conditions forced a massive flu shot recall a few years ago, leading to a nationwide shortage.

Chiron is also the same firm whose offices in California were bombed by the ALF years ago(before the acquisiton) by ALF after refusing to swear off contracts with HLS.

Here is a story about Novartis sending those Chiron execs packing after buying up their firm-one of the few good things Novartis's business bosses have done:

sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2006/05/01/story1.html

Good luck at yet another 'showcase' trial. The authorities have nothing to go on so they have to invent charges against SHAC members. At least it shows we are getting to them. For every person they arrest 3 more will join up to take their place.

There is homeless people; exploited immigrants all over the fucking place and this what you want us to care about? Do you know how classist and racist this shit looks like?

i s'pose it is asking a lot that you care about other life forms, right? after all, humans are sooooo much more important than all the other species we share this planet with, right?

Do you know how stupid your post looks...someone gets arrested on B.S. charges and you call it racist and classist, what about speciesism. Are we as human beings more important then animals is anyone more important than the next, we need to fight against all injustices and not attack our friends and comrades of all races sexes species what have you...we are all on this planet together and we need to start acting like it.

Equating racism and classism with "speciesism?" That's opportunistic "animal rights" bullshit, because there's one huge difference:

People of color and poor people are the people who created what you could call "anti-classism" and "anti-racism" - POC and poor people wanted to improve their lives, so they have and are taking action, and saying and doing things, and don't need any white liberals to speak for them or to help them.

We have no reason to believe that animals, on the other hand, are actually organizing for their rights or collective betterment, the concept of "animal rights" were created by people who are fairly comfortable and well off, and it's been used in all sorts of terrible ways that today's animal rights groups participate in and/or fail to denounce (PETA? Remember their equating of Black slaves to animals? I do, and they haven't asked for forgiveness, and I won't forgive that easily. Cap'n Paul Watson and his Sea Shepherd gang? Maka whale hunt. I can go on.) so yeah, there's plenty of reason to be hostile towards it.

I am actually of the opinion that humans are more important than animals, yes. You can call that what you will, but don't equate it with racism and sexism, because when things are racist or sexist then people of color or non-male/non-men folk can call it out... on this issue, you're speaking for the animals, based on what you think they want. Maybe a fun exercise in liberalism and thinking that the white man knows best for everything and everyone, but radicalism it is not.

An interesting read on the subject, but a bit dense: www.social-ecology.org/article.php

wow, you are NOT smart, are ya?

Does anyone have an UPDATE? Has the person arrested been released-or is he being held? Were charges dropped, or have future court dates been set?

This incident, as ugly as it was, would have been even worse had it been a kid in the neighborhood protesting at a condo project. The same made up bullshit where someone is struck and then charged with assault is a standard routine to hold people of color pending "trials" that usually turn into plea-bargain BS fests.

None the less, this marks a dangerous escalation in repressive tactics against activists (potentially ALL activists seen as effective), and must be answered forcefully and without mercy.

Maybe after a good ass-kicking downtown(in court or otherwise), the cops will be a little less inclined to pull this shit in the neighborhoods when people decide to fight back against gentrification, landlord terror, and the nightly drumbeat of police brutality.

He has been released and has a court date! More info to come!

You would feel right at home in Korea or Vietnam where they kill puppies and eat them. Go there and protest this needless killing of animals.

Been there, done that

Just when you thought you had seen every cult of every religion, here come the high preachers of veganism, without thinking much of the kind of place they are at! We have homelessness, evictions, police brutality, not to add that DC is still under a "plantation" status and these white-privileged children want us to forget about the issues that are destroying human lives and go and get arrested for the sake of animals instead! I don't have anything against mice and rabbits but, what the fuck is going on here?

However you feel on animal rights,there is a bigger story going on here. This is about corporate power that is used to running unchecked suddenly shuddering in fear of a movement using aggressive new tactics against just one of the vast many abuses the Big Pharmas are responsible for.

The Big Pharmas like Novartis are the same companies that price precription drugs out of most peoples reach. People die every day because of that shit-many of them right here in DC.

They are the same companies that file patent lawsuits against less wealthy nations that dare to produce drugs locally. That has cost thousands of lives to AIDS and millions to other diseases.

Novartis, like Monsanto, is in the GMO seed business, which among other things depends on suing small farmers for "patent violation" when pollen blowing in the wind contaminates their supposedly GMO-free crops. Their idea of a "Green Revolution" and global trade has so ruined small farmers as to cause a wave of farmer suicides in S Korea.

And oh yeah, some of these Big Pharmas also do business with HLS. Dumping HLS might get animal activsts off their backs, but those of us who are committed to social justice should see that as an opening for dealing with the REST of their abuses!

These corporate criminals all share the business ethics of Nestle,whose "free samples" of infant formula in Africa killed millions and of Coca-Cola, known to hire death squads to kill unionn activsts in Colombia.

Here in DC, if corporations think you are a threat, their police buddies come downn on you with everything they can get away with! It's not the death squads of Colombia, nor the three-months-on-high-bail that kids in the community get, but they hit you as hard as they think they cag get away with.

Animal rights protesters have discovered methods and tactics that strike fear into the hearts of Corporate Amerikkka, so the police treatment they get is far different that that received by a nonviolent sit-down against the war.

The REAL fear of the capitalists is this: That SHAC style tactics will spread to other issues! What's good for shutting down those who torture animals is also good for things like putting landlords who burn out tenants and convert to condos out of business for good.

What's good against the vivisectionist is good against the payday lending loan shark, the pro-police yuppie neighborhood council, companies like Deutche Bank that fund condo conversions, and the whole rest of that rotten stinking mess.

In the real work, those who support an enemy are treated as the enemy. For instance, the Tamil Tigers are known to execute farmers for selling rice to the Army they are fighting against.
By this same simple and direct logic, there's no reason why a bank that accepts deposits from a condo-building developer or an arsonist landlord cannot receive the same treatment the developer or landlord would get from the community.

To the FBI, the cops, and their masters, animal rights protesters at the gates of HLS customers are seen as a dangerous example. Their real fear is what happens when say, the entire congregation of an AME church starts invading branches of banks funding condo conversion. Internal law enforcmeent documents say they fear this sort of spread of SHAC style tactics. The vision of community activsts and neighborhood kids protesting outside stockbroker's house(over developer stocks) must be giving them nightmares. That kind of shit could throw a real monkeywrench into the Plan to "retake our cities" the upper class whites have had since school desegregation!

That, in turn, means the police and the FBI want to snuff out this sort of thing NOW while it's still confined to animal rights and not have developers face the same economic calamity that has befallen HLS. There is no way in Hell that Deutche Bank, Deauville Partners, Clark Construction, et all want to see their stock driven off the NYSE and sometimes trading as low as 8/1000 of a cent!

Even a limited spread of these tactics to other issues involving the Big Pharmas could cost them billions. It's one thing to have to dump HLS, quite another to have to give up pushing GMO's in Latin America and India or sacrifice every one of those drug patents. The day they have to sell their brand name drugs at a government-regulated price similar to that of generics is what they REALLY dread.