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Barclays and AstraZeneca Protests in London

SHAC London | 17.08.2008 01:12 | SHAC | Animal Liberation | Health | London | World

Friday 15th August

A group of about 15 activists met at 11am to start the day of demonstrations against the allies of HLS. Barclays was first, second and third on the list.






First up was the Barclays at 128 Moorgate. This is an excellent location right on the crossroad, with the demonstration visible from several directions. Megaphones were used to convey exactly Barclays' involvement in animal torture in HLS, and to put pressure on with loud chanting of "blood on your hands" and "Barclays Bank, sell your shares!". We stayed at this location until 1 o'clock, before moving onto another branch.

Next was the Barclays Branch at 1-7 King Street. This is another good location for a demonstration. The Barclays branches seem to be situated in places that are easy for customers to find, but this often means that they're good places for demonstrations as well. This Barclays last week put up a notice in the window apologising to their customers about the "disruption", and they did the same here this time, again failing to mention why we were there: because they support the torture of sentient animals for profit! We also mention on Barclays demonstrations all the other murky investments they have, such as in the arms trade, and the fact that they make billions of pounds out of the wars in the Middle East. They have no ethical policy. They only policy they have is to make as much money as possible.

After about an hour, we moved onto Barclays at 81 Fleet Street. Another excellent location for a demo (nearly opposite regular target Goldman Sachs) where there are always many people walking passed. This, again, was a loud and forceful demonstration. This was the second demo in two days at this branch and a couple of the staff were visibly irritated by our repeated presence. We stayed here for about an hour, before paying a visit to our old friends, AstraZeneca.

We arrived at AstraZeneca at about quarter past 5 and stayed until after 6pm, to see the workers off home. We used megaphones and our voices to tell AZ exactly what we think of them, continuing to contract experiments in HLS, paying good money to see animals get tortured just so they can make money from their dodgy drugs. If it the pharmaceutical companies really wanted to help humans, they why do they not share data? The pharmaceutical industry is a complete fraud. Companies like AZ are not interested in saving any lives, they just want to make billions of dollars. That's why we see drugs constantly taken off the market, and recently very popular pharmaceutical anti-depressants have been proven to be no better than placebos. What does this tell you about the real motives of pharmaceutical companies?

Have you paid your $millions fine to the Alabama courts yet AZ, for over charging doctors for your drugs?

The fight continues.

SHAC London
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