Tag Archives: Paul Watson

Behind the screen with Sea Shepherd

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Behind the screen with Sea Shepherd

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Captain Pete Bethune takes aim at Japanese whalersYou have to wonder where nonviolence would get activists on the high seas. Whales can be grateful the Sea Shepherd Society heros don’t opt to sacrifice the whales to save them. Captain Paul Watson is visiting Colorado College tomorrow to elaborate, but I have no illusion he’s at liberty to detail his provocative strategies. First off, he can’t spoil the upcoming TV season of Whale Wars and second, doesn’t playing for the media really turn on illusion?

Sea Shepherd’s fight to defend whales scored big when the cameramen began to film their adventures for the Animal Planet network. Even for veteran activists the reality TV format has necessitated they take some stage direction, and meant that the documentary lens presuming to take viewers behind the scenes, created a layer behind that one.

For example, look at the action shot at the top right, where a Sea Shepherd inflatable comes in close to harass a whaling ship. Everyone is helmeted and goggled, except leading man Pete Bethune aiming his stink bomb launcher as the camera focuses in. He doesn’t even have gloves or the bulkier dry-suit of his comrades. Are we to imagine protection from the Japanese water cannons is optional? Obviously adventuring with a script requires taking greater risks to get more drama in the shot. I’m contemplating now about the controversy surrounding the ramming of the Ady Gil. It was certainly dramatic.

When I went to check out one of two Whale Wars DVDs at my public library, I discovered a waiting list fourteen borrowers long. Certainly Sea Shepherd got its money worth from the sinking of the Ady Gil, whether by accident or not. After the collision the whale warriors demanded the Japanese whalers be charged with attempted murder. There could have been casualties, if anyone had been below deck. Skeptics suspect the Ady Gil’s helmsman sneaked his bow into harm’s way. How will we ever know?

By all appearances the Ady Gil was coasting slowly, all hands on deck, when the Japanese ship suddenly turned on her. Unseen might have been a quick lunge to intersect with the whaler’s bow. It’s hard to tell from the footage, taken from just the right angle by the Bob Barker coasting nearby. The Ady Gil was an innovative speed boat designed to pierce waves, not ride them, and could well disguise a last forward thrust.

I don’t think Paul Watson is about to fess up.

The third season of Whale Wars promises to reveal what happened behind the scenes, at Sea Shepherd, because they don’t have cameras following the Japanese fleet. And I think we’re going to see where reality television hits the wall. Whale Wars is not documentary filmmaking, it’s advocacy and drama. I love it, and I’d like to see more of it.

I’m not such a kill-joy to say that fashioning 43-minute long narratives prevents telling the truth. But I suspect filming the whaling renegades is something akin to televised poker, pretending to film behind the dark glasses. After seasons of strategies and bluffs, some inferred, some revealed, Watson and co now have to play close to the chest, and certainly must never been seen by their adversaries to have something up their sleeve.

I already lament the distance which official history keeps in relation to historical truth. What really happened, the story of mankind, is reserved for the student with no whale in the race.

Japan owes somebody A NEW BOAT!

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Japan owes somebody A NEW BOAT!

sea shepherd collision ram bow
The Japanese whaling fleet, whose inhumane hunts pretend to serve the Institute for Cetacean Research, have deliberately rammed the high-tech trimaran Ady Gil, formerly the Earthrace, operated by their arch nemesis the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Pseudo-science spokesman Glenn Innwood was quick to declare the footage showed otherwise, saying the accusation “is just not vindicated by the video.” Obviously the Japanese need a cover who speaks better English. It’s a Freudian slip to seek to be not vindicated.

Au contraire for Kiwi Innwood-sen, the videos from both ships show the Ady Gil floating idle to the Shonan Maru’s starboard side before the whaler turns straight for it. The whalers are perhaps counting on not enough people seeing the video. That might have worked before YouTube.

If the Japanese believe “The obstructionist activities of the Sea Shepherd threaten the lives and property of those involved in our research, are very dangerous and cannot be forgiven” then aiming to ram the smaller vessel must constitute attempted murder, however unpremeditated the crime of passion may be.

Whether or not the action is ruled a crime, it’s without any doubt a violation of maritime code. The Ady Gil had right of way both by its position, and by being stationary.

Here’s the collision from the perspective of the whaler Shonan Maru 2, a highly maneuverable harpoon chase ship, as broadcast on Al Jazeera:

And here is the footage released by Paul Watson’s Sea Shepherd Conservation Society:

UPDATE: I’d say this footage clinches it, from the Animal Planet Whale Wars cameraman aboard the Ady Gil. Read a detailed description from NZ.

Bullshit artists

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Penn, Teller, corporate AmericansOne of these likable dweebs may not be a complete asswipe.
 
But it isn’t Penn Asswipe Jillette.
 
I just caught an episode of BULLSHIT in which the dynamic duo was poking fun at the Endangered Species Act. The ESA is complete bullshit apparently because it doesn’t protect animals which may or may not be endangered, rather it protects land to which property rights advocates may feel they are entitled.

The Laurel to this Hardy is silent throughout, so it’s hard to accuse little Teller of the damnable untruths spewed by his well fed partner. This was an unforgivable attack on nature at risk. This was crapola from guys who have shown themselves on other subjects to know better.

Am I being too Politically Correct? Let me show you how PC works. Nothing’s inviolate, fine, but suffer the consequences for making light of defenseless animals in dire need. Nothing you can ever do will redeem you for minimizing the problems of your fellow beings who cannot speak for themselves.

You concluded your segment with Jerry Springer-like soft advice about animals facing extinction: “yes worry about them, but don’t pass laws, that doesn’t help anything.” Really you corporate prigs? You small minded, otherwise hip-sounding, gutless asswipe agents of corporate culture. Nothing you ever have to say will redeem the swill you have pitched here.

“Ninety nine percent of all creatures who’ve ever lived on earth are now extinct.” Really? Isn’t that kinda like saying one hundred percent of everyone who lived before us has died? Not a figure that tells us anything. How about saying, in the span of several billion years for which Earth has been in existance, twenty five percent of all extinctions ever have occured in just the last one hundred years? That might be more helpful, if hopefully also alarming. Yuk yuk.

And then to suggest at the very end of the show, not just that man might someday endanger himself and disappear, but that he might be replaced -ha ha- by one of the species currently endangered, is the height of cynicism. You goddamn twit. You know better, that’s what makes your message damnable. You call Paul Watson an asshole for ramming (illegal) fishing vessels, you accuse the Endangered Species Act proponents of using tear-jerk emotional manipulation, and yet the only example you give of the downside of the ESA is a crippled girl who has to shower outside at her friend’s house because she cannot build on the lot of land she has purchased because it is protected sanctuary for a protected bird.

You couldn’t have been more repulsive if this EPA segment had been satire. Instead you were part of the well-funded corporate lobby against nearly the only tool the environmental movement has ever had. And you portray California Representative Richard Pombo, the congressman with the worst environmental record ever, not to mention being an Abramoff and DeLay crooney, as some kind of folk hero.

It is true that the EPA is less about the species and more about land use control. Of course it is. The real story is why environmentalists cannot fight the corporate rapists on their own terms and have to couch their efforts in the language of saving the species.

By the way, is the Endangered Species Act by some coincidence facing an attack in congress right now? Yes.