Animal rights thugs again

A full-page ad in yesterday's New York Times slammed the New York Stock Exchange for caving to pressure from animal rights activists and blocking the listing of a controversial pharmaceutical research company.

But exactly who came up with the big bucks for the ad - which shows a man in a black ski mask below type proclaiming, "I Control Wall Street" - is a mystery. A Web site link, NYSEHostage.com calls animal rights activists "terrorists." The campaign looks like a show of support for Life Sciences Research, the New Jersey company whose stock was yanked by the Big Board on Sept. 7 only minutes before it was to be listed, amid pressure from an animal rights group.

Speculation is swirling that animal activists placed the ad themselves to draw attention to their cause. Richard Michaelson, Life Sciences' finance chief, shares that theory, noting the ad came during "World Week for Animals in Laboratories," which is spurring protests around the globe. "The first we learned of the ad was when we opened the newspaper," he told The Post. "Animal rights activists are the only ones I can fathom that might be behind this."

The group claiming it placed the ad, NYSE Hostage, purports to be "a project of individuals and businesses who were disturbed" by the NYSE's decision to abandon Life Sciences. Calls seeking comment weren't returned.

Life Sciences has been hounded by animal activists for years. Stop Huntingdon Animial Cruelty, or SHAC, which formed to target the company's U.K. division Huntingdon Life Sciences, has been particularly fierce. In March, six of the campaign's U.S.-based leaders were convicted on federal terrorism charges for using the group's Web site to incite threats and vandalism against people linked to Life Sciences.

The NYSE is believed to have bowed to intimidation tactics. NYSE spokesman Christiaan Brakman declined to comment. Life Sciences' stock has been a dog since SHAC foiled its NYSE listing. It has been forced to list on the pink sheets, where it trades at about a penny. A Life Sciences' lawyer recently sent a draft complaint to the NYSE seeking damages for breach of agreements. Michaelson said the company hopes to settle the matter out of court.

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Background:

During a September 29, 2005 National Public Radio broadcast, Columbia Business School finance professor Charles Jones called the New York Stock Exchange's last-minute reversal "unprecedented." He also predicted that once the exchange took its first step down the road of terror-appeasement, "it's going to be very hard to decide where to stop on that path."

"The stakes in the war against Life Sciences," adds bio-ethicist Wesley Smith in The Weekly Standard, "are greater than the survival of one company . Today, it is medical testing. Tomorrow it could be the fast food industry, zoos, the salmon fleet. The list is potentially endless. So is the list of potential imitators. Why wouldn't antiwar radicals, having noted SHAC's success, apply tertiary targeting against businesses that contract with the Defense Department?"

Smith and Jones are right. Of the companies that make up the Fortune 50 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, more than one-third are the subjects of organized anti-business activist campaigns. There's no threat like a bottom-line threat, and now activists need only look to the NYSE for a taste of their future leverage.

Worse yet, eight of these elite corporations are themselves targets of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), the same group that has already forced the NYSE to cancel one listing. SHAC's overall list of targets (all customers and suppliers of Life Sciences Research International) is over 100 companies long. And dozens of them are publicly traded corporations.

Anti-business activism is alive, well, and as radical as ever. Animal "rights" violence and eco-terrorism are just two of the movement's many bitter flavors.

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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)

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