Watch the full documentary below. NOTE: If the video is blocked in
your country then use google to find a way to bypass the block.
Film Review by Captain Paul Watson
Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
I finally got a chance to view the documentary Battleship
Antarctica and it was indeed an educational experience.
This is a documentary about the Greenpeace voyage to the
Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in 2006 and 2007. I highly recommend it.
The documentary answered a question that has been nagging me
for years. Why does Greenpeace refuse to work in cooperation with Sea Shepherd?
The answer was delivered quite plainly in this film. Quite
simply they hate us and they expressed that hatred in no uncertain terms
underscored with some very colourful expletives.
This documentary exposed many of the contradictions that
have disillusioned so many with Greenpeace.
From a cook bragging about the 700 kilos of meat in the
freezer of the Greenpeace ship Esperanza to the Captain confessing his
irresponsible fathering of three children scattered he knows not where, to
their refusal to accept the coordinates of the Japanese fleet from Sea Shepherd
because, well, because Sea Shepherd gave it to them.
The documentary plays like a soap opera with a crew who seem
more involved in a voyage of self realization and an adventure cruise than in
the actual mission to defend and protect whales.
Throughout the documentary, Sea Shepherd appears as the
force of confrontation with the Japanese whalers and the object of contempt by
the Greenpeace crew. Sea Shepherd remains mysterious and portrayed as both
effective and the real opposition to Japanese whaling as the Greenpeace crew
deliberately refuse to cooperate with Sea Shepherd's request to work together
to oppose whaling.
Whereas Greenpeace fruitlessly searches for the fleet
despite the fact that Sea Shepherd has provided them with the coordinates, the
Sea Shepherd crew are depicted as being everywhere the Japanese are - harassing
them, chasing them and shutting down their whaling operations.
In one segment of the documentary Sara Holden, the Greenpeace
media director contemptuously informs the film maker that she is in charge and
in control although she worries about the way the film will be edited and as it
turns out - with justification.
This film does not portray Greenpeace in a very good light although
it does portray Greenpeace in a very accurate light.
Greenpeacers in the film seem to be obsessed with this old
Quaker tradition of "bearing witness."
In fact it was amusing for me to listen to Karli Thomas say
how Greenpeace had has this philosophy of bearing witness since 1971 (Before
she was born) and how this philosophy of non-violence was the foundation of the
values that Greenpeace stands for and that is the reason they cannot cooperate
with Sea Shepherd.
I was there at the founding of Greenpeace as a co-founder
and I participated in every single Greenpeace campaign from 1971 until 1977 and
not once during that time did I ever hear of this thing called "bearing
witness."
It is a revisionist philosophy of course and one that smacks
of cowardice more than righteousness. Bearing witness to violence does not stop
violence, it merely transforms an activist into an inactive spectator of
brutality.
I cannot imagine walking down a street and seeing a woman
being raped without intervening. I cannot imagine watching a child being
molested without interfering. I cannot see myself bearing witness to a kitten
or a puppy being kicked and stomped on the sidewalk without doing something to
stop the violence and I cannot imagine taking pictures of dying whales and
watching as the harpoons plunge into the backside of whales leaving them
rolling in their own blood on the surface and doing --- nothing, except bearing
witness.
What kind of new agey, sewagy, perverse logic is that?
Spending millions of dollars to voyage to the Southern
Oceans to watch whales die is not progressive, positive or admirable in any way
that I can fathom.
What I saw in that documentary was a boatload of
hypocritical cowards sporting a holier than thou attitude that they, and they
alone are the saviours of the whales and the planet.
A boatload of cussing, smoking, meat eating, whining
irresponsible men and women who have found a comfortable niche to occupy and
unlike Sea Shepherd volunteers, these people get paid to be ocean posers,
making whale snuff flicks and pretending to save whales when in actual fact
they only "bear witness" to the death of whales.
Since the day I left Greenpeace in June 1977, I have not
seen a whale die. When Sea Shepherd arrives, the killing of whales stops, and
even more noteworthy is the fact that in our entire history we have never
injured a single person. That in my book is the definition of non-violent
intervention - the saving of lives without causing harm.
By contrast Greenpeace perpetuates violence by allowing the
deaths of the whales. With Sea Shepherd - no one (whales included) dies and no
one is hurt!
In the documentary, Greenpeace seems more concerned with the
accident on the Nisshin Maru and the death of a whaler than they do for the
deaths of thousands of whales. They actually shed tears for a whaler they do
not know and did not see die yet not a tear is shed for the whales they
witnessed dying.
I think the message of the documentary was summed up near
the end when Emily Hunter, the daughter of Greenpeace founder Robert Hunter
radioed the Esperanza from the bridge of the Sea Shepherd ship Robert Hunter to
say how ashamed she was of the Greenpeacers on the ship and informed them that
they were simply a sham.
They did not answer - after all, there was not much they
could say.
All they could do was bear witness to her words.
Watch the documentary in full below
Also, watch END:VID: RESIT OR DIE, which also talks about Greenpeace.
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