No one has said a word about it being irrelevant, and nobody is suggesting that the ship was not in violation of the law.
But this gang of hippies was not officially empowered by Australia or any other Government to enforce it's laws.
Australia has quite an effective and impressive Navy and armed forces which are delighted to deal with such matters, and that's whom the matter should have been left to, if the Australian Government had deemed it necessary.
This was nothing more than a reckless, juvenile vigilante action and these 'protesters' (terrorists, actually) are quite lucky to be alive.
They most certainly would not be if I had been Captain of that ship.
The USS Cole fades from the memory of some, but not for me.
“But this gang of hippies was not officially empowered by Australia or any other Government to enforce it’s laws.”
And you don’t enforce the laws with ropes and acid either.
Exactly. All the nutbars did was take attention off the issue at hand - illegal poaching - and put it on themselves, which will complicate matters for Australia.
Once there was notice the law had been passed, what was the purpose of attempting to sabotage a foreign vessel on high seas? Did they think they were going to save one more whale, or, more likely, was is a case of bravado, a terribly dangerous attempt at Shaudenfreude, that nearly got them or someone else killed.
IMO, if they had been sincere about their intentions, they would have backed off the minute the good news came, opened a few bottles of champagne, then calmly shadowed the Japanese Whaler whilst photo documenting any further violations. They then could have made themselves look like heroes by presenting this documentation to the Australians to use as evidence which would possibly lead to seizure and forfeiture of the ship, along with jail terms for the captain and crew, and bring beneficial attention to the raping of these resources.
Hopefully the boarders will spend the next 20 in a Japanese prison, subsiding on seafood parts that even the Japanese wouldn't eat...if there is such a thing (?)
An Australian government vessel is on the way to intervene. And the only source for the clain that the Greenpeacers planned to throw acid on the deck and entangle the ship’s propellers with ropes is the Japanese Whaling Commission. It may true, but with that as the only source, I wouldn’t assume so.