Hypocrisy of Human Perceptions. By Captain Paul Watson. (Great Read)

[Guest guest]

Dealing with the Hypocrisy of Human Perceptions

Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

 

2/10/07

 

 

It is a bizarre world we live in where people are sympathetic to killers and

condemn those trying to save lives.

 

 

It is a world where governments and corporations can commit atrocious acts of

ruthless violence yet both condemn as violent any non-violent opposition to

their activities.

Sea Shepherd’s opposition to illegal Japanese whaling is described as an

attack. Words like “violent,” “militant,” eco-terrorist,” are flung about

loosely and with little thought.

Sea Shepherd crew did not attack innocent people on the high seas. We

intercepted an illegal whaling opposition that is in the process of violently

and cruelly slaughtering protected, endangered whales.

 

 

Sea Shepherd activists did not shoot at these killers or even attempt to sink

them. We used methods to physically obstruct them that are designed to not

injure any of our opposition.

 

 

The Japanese whalers have a highly paid public relations firm working to spin

their illegal activities in the best possible light.

 

 

Yesterday they accused Sea Shepherd activists of injuring two Japanese

whalers. The claim, coming ten hours after the events is bogus. Even the video

shot onboard and released by the Japanese clearly shows that the containers

struck not a single person.

If Sea Shepherd activists had pelted them with marshmallows they would still

be claiming injuries.

 

 

No matter what a conservationist does, the media sympathy is placed on the

opposition. The people plundering the planet are usually portrayed as just

trying to earn a living. Of course bank robbers and cocaine smugglers could make

the same argument.

The media finds it difficult to understand that these Japanese whalers are

criminals involved in a criminal operation. The violence down in these waters

each and every day is being caused by harpoons and electric lances and hundreds

of whales are dying in horrific agony as their convulsing dying bodies pump hot

blood into the frozen seas.

This is the violence that is being ignored and trivialized.

 

 

Unfortunately the pain and death inflicted upon these gentle, intelligent,

and socially complex sentient creatures is something few humans have empathy

for.

The media tends to have more sympathy for those who kill and plunder than

those who strive to protect life for reasons of compassion and ecological

concern.

The sympathy and the concern are one-sided. Anytime a whaler, a logger or a

polluter is inconvenienced they scream terrorism yet when violence is inflicted

upon a defender of animals or the environment it is reported as natural.

 

 

In November 2003, Sea Shepherd activist Allison Lance Watson freed 15

dolphins from nets in Taiji, Japan that were about to be speared to death. The

Japanese fishermen ran over her with a boat and one fisherman attempted to

strangle her with a rope and pushed her head beneath the water to drown her.

This was all captured on videotape.

The next day the Japanese reported that Allison was an eco-terrorist who had

“violently” cut the nets to free the dolphins.

 

 

This was reported without anyone questioning exactly how someone “violently”

cuts a rope.

Once when the Sea Shepherd blocked a sealing ship from approaching a group of

defenseless baby seals where sealers were about to club the pups to death, a

reporter interviewed a Newfoundland politician who protested that Sea Shepherd

was “violently” obstructing the sealing vessel. When asked what he thought

should be done about it, the politician said, ‘they should be shot.”

 

 

After Magdalen Island sealers beat me viciously in 1995, Canadian Minister of

Fisheries Brian Tobin responded by saying, “I can understand the anger of the

fishermen that would motivate them to defend their industry with violence.”

 

 

Governments to invade territory, to defend oil wells or to defend property,

always justify violence. Violence is never tolerated to defend the environment

or other species.

Thus we have the environmental movement without a single case of an activist

ever killing anyone and we have environmentalists being described as violent.

Yet when environmentalists are beaten and killed, the actions are justified,

ignored or covered up.

So now we have the New Zealand government accusing Sea Shepherd of

“violently” defending the whales yet this is the same nation that refused to

take action against the French government for murdering a crewmember onboard the

Rainbow Warrior.

The fact is that the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has never caused a

single injury to any person in our entire thirty-year history. Yet the very

people who are terrorizing the environment call us eco-terrorists.

 

 

What is an eco-terrorist really? It is an act that terrorizes other species

and threatens the ecological systems of the planet.

In this sense it is the Japanese whalers that are the eco-terrorists.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society would not even be down here if not for

the refusal of nations to uphold international conservation law.

 

 

Why does Australia and New Zealand search for, arrest and seize Uruguayan

toothfish poachers but they ignore the Japanese whalers? Both are committing

crimes in waters controlled by these two nations with one notable difference.

Australia and New Zealand have companies that profit from toothfish

exploitation. They don’t whale and the Japanese whalers are not an economic

concern.

 

 

Perceptions of violence in our culture is simply a matter of public relations

spin. Something is violent if the media can be bought or manipulated to spin it

as violent. Likewise non-violence can be spun to appear violent. Whoever has the

best public relations firm wins.

 

Captain Paul Watsons website is www.seashepherd.org

 

 

 

 

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[Guest guest]

I'm sorry to say that this seems to be all too true.

 

Deborah

 

 

Perceptions of violence in our culture is simply a matter of public relations

spin. Something is violent if the media can be bought or manipulated to spin it

as violent. Likewise non-violence can be spun to appear violent. Whoever has the

best public relations firm wins.

 

Captain Paul Watsons website is www.seashepherd.org

.