Sea Shepherd Receives an additional €1 Million Euros from the Dutch National Postcode Lottery

Sea Shepherd Society ^ | February 19, 2010 | Paul Watson

[at bay]

Extra funds to support ongoing project to protect the Galapagos Marine Reserve

On February 4th, 2010, at the Goed Geld Gala in Utrecht, the Netherlands, the Dutch National Postcode Lottery not only donated the annual amount of half a million Euros, they also handed over an additional check worth €1 million to Geert Vons, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s General Director of the Netherlands and Alex Cornelissen, Director of Operations, Galapagos. The extra funds will support Sea Shepherd’s ongoing efforts to protect the Galapagos, a UN World Heritage Site.

Despite clear rules and legislation, commercial fisheries are still exploiting the legally protected Galapagos Marine Reserve. In particular, the illegal finning of sharks, the catching of tuna, marlin and other illegal poaching activities form a serious threat for the Galapagos Marine Reserve.

With this project funding, Sea Shepherd will both logistically and financially support the local authorities to protect this delicate and unique ecosystem. A primary goal of this project is to set up an “Automatic Identification System” for vessels. This will enable all the authorities and organizations involved to monitor illegally operating fishing vessels and to act instantly to enforce exiting regulations.

The Dutch National Postcode Lottery has made this concrete project to stop illegal poaching possible, thus enabling Sea Shepherd to better protect the Galapagos Marine Reserve. Sea Shepherd is extremely grateful for the support it has received.

Since 1989, the Dutch National Postcode Lottery has donated almost €3 billion to support good causes. This year, 75 social and environmental organizations will receive €513 million from the Dutch National Postcode Lottery.

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[MarMema]

Should we hunt bald eagles and blue heron?

[MarMema]

A United Nations committee says Japan has breached the human rights of two Greenpeace activists who exposed an illegal trade in whale meat. The UN Human Rights Committee's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention says Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, were jailed without charge, after being arrested in 2008. The pair known as the 'Tokyo Two' are due to stand trial next Monday for theft and trespass, after tracking and intercepting a parcel of whale meat from a mail depot in northern Japan, to prove the illegal sale.

"Well the circumstances around the arrests clearly point to politically motivated charges. The two activists as soon as they intercepted the whale meat and documented it they handed it over to the Tokyo prosecutors and staged a press conference. The Tokyo prosecution said it would have a look and start an investigation. Twenty three days later when the two were arrested and investigation into the whale meat embezzlement were dropped. So on the same day that the two activists were charged, investigations into whale meat embezzlement scandal which the activists spurred, were dropped. So it can hardly be seen as a coincidence."

So the more you look into this stuff, the less Paul Watson looks like a terrorist compared to Japan, you see. In fact The Australian government has thought very carefully about this issue and in the last week or so has come to the conclusion thay Australia will pursue before the International Whaling Commission a proposal which would see whaling in the Great Southern Oceans phased out over a reasonable period of time. And that is a position that we will put formally to the International Whaling Commission in the very near future. We would hope that we could get agreement to that position but as the Prime Minister and I have made clear in the past, if we can't get agreement to that position, then Australian would propose to seek to have that matter arbitated for internationally.

[MarMema]

There’s been a worldwide outcry over the apparent persecution of these two.

Japan consistently does not follow any laws in this regard but does whatever they want when it suits them. So my choice would be for Paul Watson as the lesser of the two in terms of evil.

[MarMema]

New Zealand will join in court action against whaling

FEB 23, 2010

"New Zealand has joined the protests against the annual whale hunt in Antarctica by telling Australia it wants to assist in international legal action against Japan.

Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Friday his government would take Japan to the international court if Tokyo did not agree to stop the hunt by November.

The Japanese whaling program allows for kills of hundreds of whales a year.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key said his country would first of all back a diplomatic resolution to Japan's whaling, and would only resort to court action if it fails." Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said Sunday that Tokyo will continue to defend its Antarctic waters hunt.

[MarMema]

Despite the fact that the two activists cooperated with authorities, notified prosecutors of their actions, and claim to have been acting in the public interest, the decision to bring charges doesn't bode well. Criminal trials in Japan almost invariably end in guilty verdicts, and there are judges who are infamous for never having found anyone innocent throughout their entire careers.

""If in any country, you have a 99 percent plus conviction rate, then you've got, not simply the best police force in the world, but a police force that's got a direct line to God, to be able to get it right all the time," said Naidoo.

[Kozak]

Should we hunt bald eagles and blue heron?

Are they endangered? Minke whales are not.

[Kozak]

The Australian government has thought very carefully about this issue and in the last week or so has come to the conclusion thay Australia will pursue before the International Whaling Commission a proposal which would see whaling in the Great Southern Oceans phased out over a reasonable period of time. And that is a position that we will put formally to the International Whaling Commission in the very near future. We would hope that we could get agreement to that position but as the Prime Minister and I have made clear in the past, if we can't get agreement to that position, then Australian would propose to seek to have that matter arbitated for internationally.

If what the Japanese are doing is LEGALLY banned, so be it. UNTIL THEN Capn' Paul and his Merry Band of Vegans are pirates ( self described by the way) and terrorists, and I wish naught but ill upon them.

[MarMema]

They don’t waste them, they study and eat them.

70 tons of whale meat was left unsold from a catch of 1,873 tons after the fleet returned to port in spring 2001

For some Japanese politicians, the appeal of the pro-whaling campaign is quite clear: Japan can let off steam in the foreign political arena.

As Sato Tetsu, professor of ecology and environmental sciences at Nagano University, says. "It is not really a problem of reviving the whaling industry now; it is a problem of national pride, or at least government and bureaucratic pride. They basically need a symbolic victory."

[Kozak]

70 tons of whale meat was left unsold from a catch of 1,873 tons after the fleet returned to port in spring 2001

Oh please, now you are just reaching. Big deal, they didn't manage to eat 100%. I bet if they could export it around the world it would get snapped up. After all the Norwegians Eskimos and Russians all whale or would if permitted. But greenie wienies have made whales a holy icon.

[Kozak]

Here's a few facts about your hero, Capn Paul..... Paul Franklin Watson, (born December 2, 1950) is a controversial and outspoken Canadian animal rights and environmental activist,[1] who founded and is president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a direct action group devoted to marine conservation.

The Toronto native joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing in 1969. He was an early and outspoken member of Greenpeace, crewed and skippered for it, and later was a board member. Watson argued for a strategy of "direct action" which conflicted with the Greenpeace interpretation of nonviolence, was ousted from the board in 1977, and subsequently left the organization. That same year, he formed Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The group is the subject of a reality show, Whale Wars, and pursues a direct action strategy that has led to controversy.

He also
promotes veganism, reducing the human population by voluntarily having fewer children, and rejecting an anthropocentric worldview for a biocentric worldview.[2

In October 1969, Watson joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing at Amchitka Island. The group which formed as a result of that protest was the Don't Make a Wave Committee, which evolved into the group known today as Greenpeace.[7] Watson sailed as a crewmember aboard the Greenpeace Too! ship in 1971[8] and skippered the Greenpeace boat Astral in 1972.[3] Paul Watson continued as a crew member, skipper, and officer aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s. According to Watson, in June 1975 during a Greenpeace campaign to confront Soviet whaling, an incident occurred which changed his life.[9]

Greenpeace states that while Watson "was an influential early member", he was not a founding member.[10] Paul Watson has characterized the Greenpeace position as "revisionism".[11]

The first Sea Shepherd vessel, the Sea Shepherd, was purchased in December 1978 with assistance from Fund for Animals.[8][12] Sea Shepherd soon established itself as one of the more controversial environmental groups, known for provocative direct action tactics. These tactics have included throwing objects onto the decks of whaling ships, the use of "prop foulers" in an attempt to sabotage the ships, boarding whaling vessels,[13] and the scuttling of two ships in an Icelandic harbor.[14]

During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! Watson has claimed to have invented the tactic of tree spiking.[15]

Although currently unaffiliated with it, Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s.[16] He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth.[17]

In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term.[18] In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest.[19]

Watson feels that "no human community should be larger than 20,000 people," human populations need to be reduced radically to "fewer than one billion," and only those who are "completely dedicated to the responsibility" of caring for the biosphere should have children, which is a "very small percentage of humans." He likens humankind to a virus, the biosphere needs to get cured from with a "radical and invasive approach," as from cancer.[20]

In January 2008 Paul Watson was named by the The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.[21]

Watson published Earthforce!, a guide to strategy for environmental activists in 1993.[22] In it, he specifically endorsed the tactics of "monkeywrenching" previously described by Dave Foreman[23] and Edward Abbey.[24] According to Foreman in Eco-Defense—The Field Guide to Monkey-Wrenching, these are tactics of sabotage, covert activity, and direct action.[25] Watson says he incorporated his own personal experience in writing the book.[26]

In Earthforce! An Earth Warrior’s Guide to Strategy, Watson also expresses disdain for truthfulness in the pursuit of environmental protection goals:

The nature of the mass media today is such that the truth is irrelevant. What is true and what is right to the general public is what is defined as true and right by the mass media. Ronald Reagan understood that the facts are not relevant. The media reported what he said as fact. Follow-up investigation was “old news.” A headline comment on Monday’s newspaper far outweighs the revelation of inaccuracy revealed in a small box inside the paper on Tuesday or Wednesday.[27]

Watson was explicit on this score: “If you do not know an answer, a fact, or a statistic, then simply follow the example of an American President and do as Ronald Reagan did—make it up on the spot and deliver the information confidently and without hesitation.”[28][29] In a subsequent book, Ocean Warrior, Watson reiterated this view, saying: “Survival in a media culture meant developing the skills to understand and manipulate media to achieve strategic objectives.”[30]

Watson was arrested in 1993 in Canada on charges stemming from actions against Cuban and Spanish fishing boats off the coast of Newfoundland.[40] In 1997, Watson and his then fiancée Lisa Distefano was convicted in absentia by a court in Lofoten, Norway on charges of attempting to sink the small scale Norwegian fishing and whaling vessel Nybrænna on 26 December 1992, and sentenced to serve 120 days in jail[41][42] but Dutch authorities refused to hand him over to Norwegian authorities although he did spend 80 days in detention in the Netherlands before being released.[41]

There have not been any successful attempts at prosecuting Watson for his activities with Sea Shepherd since the trial in Newfoundland. Watson himself defends his actions as falling within international law, in particular Sea Shepherd's right to enforce maritime regulations against illegal whalers and sealers.[43] Watson caught a Costa Rican fishing boat poaching in Guatemalan waters while he was on a journey to Costa Rica, having been invited by its president to help in the fight against shark poaching there. The authorities in Costa Rica later filed seven charges of attempted murder against Watson and a colleague, Rob Stewart, in what Watson and Stewart have described as an effort to cover up mafia-funded illegal shark finning operations.[44] They eventually fled to international waters to escape arrest by Costa Rican coast guards after they had filmed what they attest was mafia-funded shark-finning in private docks. These events are featured in Sharkwater,[45] a documentary about sharks and activism. Paul Watson leads protest against Makah whaling, Port Angeles, Washington, 1998.

Watson was also told to leave Iceland after having turned himself in to the Icelandic police after disabling two ships in harbor. Kristjan Loftsson of Iceland's largest whaling company told The New Yorker that Watson is persona non grata in that country.[1]

At an animal rights convention in 2002, Paul Watson was also quoted as saying, "There's nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write the history." [62]

Let me sum up. Radical evironmental far left terrorist, who advocates lying to further his goals, boasts of inventing tactics that have maimed and killed. Your hero is a classic leftist nutcase. I have nothing but contemp for him and his ragtag band of morons. Any so called conservative who supports him should have serious psychotherapy.

[MarMema]

They kill more than minke whales and they are bidding now to up their kill to include humpbacks.

[MarMema]

I never said he was my hero, I said he was the lesser of two evils. There’s a name for those kind of attacks but I don’t recall it offhand.
Try reading and responding to what I said.

[MarMema]

Looks more like they wasted about 1/4 of their catch that year and the news and web is filled with Japanese saying they don’t eat whale.

[MarMema]

Any so called conservative who supports him should have serious psychotherapy.

Well support Japan, then, Land of the Free.

[Kozak]

You stink at math. The numbers you stated show a spoilage rate of 3.7% pretty common.

[Kozak]

Well support Japan, then, Land of the Free.

I certainly will before I support Capn Paul's Socialist Ecotopia.

[Kozak]

No they don’t they only hunt Minke’s at this time. Not endangered.

[Kozak]

I never said he was my hero, I said he was the lesser of two evils.

Lesser of two evils? You really do need to think of shifting over to DU, if you think a violent ecoterrorist who brags about his lying and creative thuggery is the lesser of two evils.

[Kozak]

Try reading and responding to what I said.

I did. Dare you to respond to what I posted about that POS Watson.

[MarMema]

Not according to the IWC website itself.
Check it out.