Sticks and Stones: A Journal of Radical Santa Cruz #1 out now

In this Journal you mention
"August 3
Two UCSC animal torturers are targeted with firebombs: a car belonging to one of the vivisectors,
parked at a home on campus, is destroyed and the home of another vivisector was partly burned."

The man who's car was attacked on campus did NO vivisection, he worked on yeast!!! Are you really that stupid?

And was it really justified to set a house on fire, where 2 completely INNOCENT children were asleep?

It is very sad to hear that the firebombings are once again being discussed in this way. I am a neighbor of one of the victims. Before dawn that day, I was awoken by what I thought was gunfire and screaming. It was, in fact, the tires of the burning car exploding, and my neighbor screaming to his child (who had also woken up to see the commotion) to stay away from the flames. A burning car next to a series of attached wood-shingle houses with multiple children sleeping inside can not be celebrated. I was afraid and disgusted. I try very hard to teach my students about critical thinking, so that they do not confuse this sort of behavior with productive protest.

I hope that the radicals, the anarchists, and other readers have the courage to challenge some actions as unjustifiable, that they can see through rhetoric to find the most basic violations of ethics and community. I do not forget what happened that morning, and I will actively speak up whenever someone publishes an account which celebrates, justifies, denies, or glorifies this event.

thanks for the comments.

actually i think it is clear that unlike the mainstream media and most people, s & s has NOT discussed the firebombing in terms of having an editorial stance about it, it was simply mentioned that it happened. i think such a discussion would be interesting but it has yet to happen in our pages.

and my feelings? i feel like the captives being tortured to death in labs are innocent, and have families, too. i wish people would stop and think about that for a minute. and i think there are serious questions about the research that is being done and why. it does seem that the people who carried out these acts are not interested in trying to acquire sympathy from the general public of santa cruz, (or if they do they went about it wrong) but to concretely impact the lives of those who are carrying out torture, in the name of science, for the benefit of the uc and pharmaceutical corporations.

if they can get away with doing it to non humans, what are they going to do with us? the idea that humans are fundamentaly different or better than other creatures is one of the foundational ideas of our culture, and one of the most destructive. the treatment of human and nonhuman animals in such a society is still linked a lot more than people tend to think.

check this out: http://insurgentdesire.org.uk/beast.htm

The man who's car was firebombed was NOT a vivisector, nor was his wife.
Perhaps you aren't discussing this from an editorial stance, but you are spreading MISINFORMATION.
Regardless or (morally) right or wrong, the information printed was clearly wrong.
A completely innocent victim here- he researches YEAST!

could you cite a reference of some sort?

this sentinel article says that both feldheim and the other researcher, whose name i cant seem to find anywhere online, both conduct animal "research". http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_10101525?IADID

of course, its not like the sentinel isnt a pretty great source of misinformation itself. but its hard for me to see why people who would go to such legal risk of carrying out such a drastic action wouldnt have researched their target pretty thoroughly. and if you want to say that the people who did it are just "crazy terrorists" then i think you are name calling to override discussing some very important questions about the lines drawn by this society between homo sapiens and other species.

as for whether or not this makes him a "vivisector", it seems like we are arguing about definitions - an argument which probably cannot be resolved since uc is not at all transparent about its use of animals in "research". personally i dont think there is any "humane" way to experiment on a living being. the power dynamic there is unacceptable.

---- "but its hard for me to see why people who would go to such legal risk of carrying out such a drastic action wouldnt have researched their target pretty thoroughly."------

i totally agree with this statement, but it does seem like in this action things weren't very well researched. the info on those fliers about animal research that were found at coffee shops had incorrect infothe researchers targeted do not work on animals. this is unfortunate because if extreme campaigns or going to be done, they should be well researched.

of course, the uc makes info on any kind of research almost impossible to come by. and now the california state legislature has made it illegal to even discuss what kinds of things animal researchers are doing in assembly bill #2296. (see http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:DNLjD8UhM20J:http://www.stopaeta.org/ab2296.pdf+california+Assembly+Bill+2296&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us

that being said, no one has ever taken credit or even been accused of participating in setting those fires. in fact, the people who were being "investigated" about it were not arrested for that. so let's stop making assumptions. whatever happened to that BS amerikkkan ideal of innocent til proven guilty?

those incidents seemed like just what the state needed to pass the above bill -- before that it had been languishing in the state senate and it wasn't going anywhere. but give people something to fear and they will gladly hand you their rights to free speech.

actually the idea of free speech rights within a democratic dialogue enchants us less than the potential for autonomous individuals to express the rage and disgust they feel in the face of modern society's horrors, whether it is the torture of other-than-humans, the slaughtering of the poor by police, the march of gentrification and surveillance in santa cruz, even the horror of boredom...and this is why we published the very brief mention of the summer arsons against animal research in santa cruz.

its true we didnt do too much fact checking, especially considering its just a zine, it seemed a safe assumption that other people had done so already and thats why certain versions of stories were being circulated. at the same time ive heard outraged - and presumably frightened - uc faculty and other bourgeoisie spouting some extremely distorted and absurd gossip on the subject, which i havent heard of verified anywhere (and there are plenty of these type of comments to be found online). but who knows, as ive said above we're relying on the sentinel for the pertinent information in this case. where are you basing your statement about the flyers being innacurate? i have seen that the police said that and the newspaper reported it but we all know cops are full of lies and everyone wants us to be scared shitless of "crazy terrorists", and material resistance can never be valid.

now, is that the way whoever-it-was didnt like the act being discussed?

"we're relying on the sentinel for the pertinent information in this case."

"where are you basing your statement about the flyers being innacurate? i have seen that "the police said that and the newspaper reported it but we all know cops are full of lies and everyone wants us to be scared shitless of "crazy terrorists"

Um, contradict yourself much, there S&S? So which is it? Is the Sentinel reporting "pertinent information in this case," or are they spreading "Lies" to make us "scared shitless of crazy terrorists?"

"this sentinel article says that both feldheim and the other researcher, whose name i cant seem to find anywhere online, both conduct animal "research"."

"Pradip K. Mascharak, a 25-year UCSC researcher, said the crudely made flyers discovered Wednesday at a downtown coffee shop are misleading. As a chemist, he said he can't use animals in his research, which most recently has included creating a nitric oxide compound to treat skin cancer."

"He suspects activists may have mistaken a recent online report saying the chemical compound he works with could be tested on animals in the future - a project other scientists would have to undertake, he said."

thats almost a good point, but actually all you get is that is mis-wrote the first time, and beyond that you are sort of putting words in my mouth. first: we are not just relying on the sentinel for information out of the blue, in fact the sentinel seems to have affirmed what whoever set fire to the car presumably intended to indicate by the act (although of course we still know nothing for sure).

secondly, when did i ever say the media printed nothing BUT lies? obviously they need a combination of fact and fiction to keep things sounding remotely plausible. if you really cared about this question perhaps you could do your own research or take the sentinel to task instead.

or of course, simple lies fed to a docile public by the tribune of the local bourgeouisie (of which uc is a major element), the fucking sentinel.

see greenisthenewred.blogspot.com for more analysis of this case...