• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

Anti-whalers get it *really* wrong

The group's aggressive brand of activism has landed it in trouble with courts.
The 9 th Circuit called Sea Shepherd an organization of pirates in a December 2011 ruling in favor of Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research, which had sued Sea Shepherd for violently attacking its ships.
On July 23 this year, a federal judge refused to dismiss a similar piracy action brought against the organization by Japanese whalers, who claimed that Watson and his crew "rammed its whaling ships, threw smoke bombs and flares and dragged ropes to disable the ships' propellers, among other things."
Click to expand...

Pirates? Eco-terrorists? Drag ropes to disable propeller...boy, ya learn something new every day.
 
Oh, I thought Whale Wars was about Greenpeace. It's about this Sea Shepherd guy?
 
credoconsolans said:
Oh, I thought Whale Wars was about Greenpeace. It's about this Sea Shepherd guy?
Click to expand...

For many years, Sea Shepherd has been like Greenpeace on steroids. I don't believe there is an overabundance of whales that need to be removed from the ocean. That being said, Sea Shepherd is a very physically aggressive organization and as such, you can expect physical tactics from them. At the same time, they have deflected charges of piracy many times. As for the intentional sinking of the ship, I have my doubts about that, though I cannot say for sure either way.

When you engage in physical confrontation at sea, things can happened that sink ships. The opponents of Sea Shepherd can lie. Organizations like Sea Shepherd are under constant attack and possibly infiltration and that seems more likely than Watson sinking the ship as a fund raising ploy. Everything I have seen of the good captain is that he is into action and not into crooked schemes. Maybe this issue will clarify itself, maybe not.
 
arkirk said:
credoconsolans said:
Oh, I thought Whale Wars was about Greenpeace. It's about this Sea Shepherd guy?
Click to expand...

For many years, Sea Shepherd has been like Greenpeace on steroids. I don't believe there is an overabundance of whales that need to be removed from the ocean. That being said, Sea Shepherd is a very physically aggressive organization and as such, you can expect physical tactics from them. At the same time, they have deflected charges of piracy many times. As for the intentional sinking of the ship, I have my doubts about that, though I cannot say for sure either way.

When you engage in physical confrontation at sea, things can happened that sink ships. The opponents of Sea Shepherd can lie. Organizations like Sea Shepherd are under constant attack and possibly infiltration and that seems more likely than Watson sinking the ship as a fund raising ploy. Everything I have seen of the good captain is that he is into action and not into crooked schemes. Maybe this issue will clarify itself, maybe not.
Click to expand...

You seem to have missed that this isn't his opponents saying it.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
arkirk said:
For many years, Sea Shepherd has been like Greenpeace on steroids. I don't believe there is an overabundance of whales that need to be removed from the ocean. That being said, Sea Shepherd is a very physically aggressive organization and as such, you can expect physical tactics from them. At the same time, they have deflected charges of piracy many times. As for the intentional sinking of the ship, I have my doubts about that, though I cannot say for sure either way.

When you engage in physical confrontation at sea, things can happened that sink ships. The opponents of Sea Shepherd can lie. Organizations like Sea Shepherd are under constant attack and possibly infiltration and that seems more likely than Watson sinking the ship as a fund raising ploy. Everything I have seen of the good captain is that he is into action and not into crooked schemes. Maybe this issue will clarify itself, maybe not.
Click to expand...

You seem to have missed that this isn't his opponents saying it.
Click to expand...

If they're saying it, then they're his opponents.
 
Arctish said:
Jolly_Penguin said:
So Sea Shepards are basically Eco-Terrorists?
Click to expand...

They're basically The Monkey Wrench Gang of the high seas.
Click to expand...

Sea Shepherds are a tough bunch of people and they take a more violent approach to things than Greenpeace. For a number of years in the California Deserts, I ran environmental political action committees opposing things like dumps and groundwater pollution and the like. There were always people who would come to our meetings monitoring us and even trying to sabotage us. We were completely non violent. It is only realistic to understand that a group that is not entirely non violent would likewise be sabotaged. I am not saying I know that to be a fact, but it is highly likely, considering the devious nature of most corporate interests whether they are American or Japanese or whatever.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
dismal said:
If they're saying it, then they're his opponents.
Click to expand...

It looks to me like it's some of the donors who were upset with being deceived.
Click to expand...
You are correct that it is the donors who are the claimants and they certainly should not be confused for "opponents" to the Sea Shepard mission. However, at this point, there is NO court decision as to whether Sea Shepard is guilty of deception. Meaning the claimants are only claiming their suspicion that the ship was sunk by Sea Shepard. That said in regard to " upset with being deceived". It is not a court established fact that they were "being deceived".
 
arkirk said:
When you engage in physical confrontation at sea, things can happened that sink ships.
Click to expand...

Or put another and more causally accurate way, when you initiate a physical confrontation and that causes things to happen that sink ships, then you caused the sinking of those ships and are morally and legally responsible just as if you had fired a cannon at them.

I don't doubt that whaling companies would infiltrate and sabotage eco-groups. Such corporations are essentially defined by the efforts to "conspire" to increase profits by nearly any means available. The more effective such conspiracies, the more the CEO gets paid. Thus, it is actually implausible to think that these companies are not conspiring to find ways to attack anyone who opposes their methods of making a profit.
However, if the Sea Sheppard is using physical confrontation, then it is violent assault and criminal. Whether they sunk it for publicity or not is actually irrelevant to its criminality.
 
It seems the skipper deliberately scuttled the vessel and he and the head of the organization are really just arguing about whether the head gave the order to scuttle the vessel:

In a public spat with the founder of conservation group, Sea Shepherd, Peter Bethune alleged its head Paul Watson ordered the scuttling of the trimaran Ady Gil even though it was salvageable.




However, Mr Watson denied the New Zealander's claim, saying the skipper had made the final decision. The exchange has exposed a bitter falling out between Mr Bethune, who gained fame because of the high-seas drama, and Mr Watson, the figurehead of Sea Shepherd's campaign against Japan's Antarctic whaling programme.

...

Now he claims the Ady Gil could have been repaired after the collision but that Mr Watson ordered its sinking. He said he and two other activists went aboard the Ady Gill and opened hatches to scuttle it.




He told New Zealand's National Radio he believed Mr Watson wanted the sinking to "garner sympathy with the public and to create better TV". "Paul Watson was my admiral. He gave me an order and I carried it out," he said. "I was ashamed of it at the time and I'm ashamed of it now."




"It was all done in secret. I was ordered not to tell any of the crew, not my family and especially not Ady Gil, the owner of the boat," he said, referring to the US businessman who funded the vessel.
Click to expand...

http://www.scotsman.com/news/boss-of-sea-shepherd-told-me-to-scuttle-clash-ship-1-823645
 
arkirk said:
credoconsolans said:
Oh, I thought Whale Wars was about Greenpeace. It's about this Sea Shepherd guy?
Click to expand...

For many years, Sea Shepherd has been like Greenpeace on steroids. I don't believe there is an overabundance of whales that need to be removed from the ocean. That being said, Sea Shepherd is a very physically aggressive organization and as such, you can expect physical tactics from them. At the same time, they have deflected charges of piracy many times. As for the intentional sinking of the ship, I have my doubts about that, though I cannot say for sure either way.

When you engage in physical confrontation at sea, things can happened that sink ships. The opponents of Sea Shepherd can lie. Organizations like Sea Shepherd are under constant attack and possibly infiltration and that seems more likely than Watson sinking the ship as a fund raising ploy. Everything I have seen of the good captain is that he is into action and not into crooked schemes. Maybe this issue will clarify itself, maybe not.
Click to expand...

This. Although IMHO I would add that Watson isn't nearly clever enough to actually attempt a stunt like that. Maybe due to the editing of Whale Wars or just my personal biases, but he doesn't seem like the most competent activist or the most competent sailor in the world. I mean it's been, what, seven years since the air cannon they built to launch their stinkbombs went kaput? That's not that hard of a thing to build, and given increasing Japanese countermeasures, it's also not the kind of thing they could afford to do without.

It actually seems more likely that the Ady Gil really WAS salvageable at the time it was damaged, but that Watson and his crew -- through a combination of incompetence and panic -- totally failed to control the flooding and the ship wound up sinking anyway. IOW, while I would be willing to believe that they ALLOWED the ship to sink, I don't think they INTENDED it to.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom