I think the video is kind self explanatory. The police was so pissed, you could have fried an egg on their foreheads . But what the video doesnt tell is the story of how they came onboard the warrior afterwards to arrest the ship. The captain, Daniel, decided not to let them onboard unless they dumped the M16 carbine they were bringing aboard, carelessly pointed at crewmembers (also they were quite smelly).
They climbed on board and for a while, It was quite serious, and then the guy holding the automatic gun , dropped it on the floor.( i mean how many guys do you know who come holding a M16 , and then drop it? it was hilarious.)
The other highlights of the day was the dolphins , they came to visit the ship (as usual, rescuing our arses from the more serious aspects of the universe, namely the ships impending arrest). It was really funny to see the cops suddenly jump up and run towards the railing ( I personally dont think they had seen any dolphins before)
Captain Daniel was of course uber cool in his dealing with the cops. He hit them with a mallet of polite conversation and it was clearly stronger than their guns.
epilogue ( of secret documents)
A french insider memo from 1985: You cant sink a rainbow!
An Israeli insider memo from 2008: apparently you cant arrest the darn thing either!!
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
an action in israel , free paranoia for everyone
9th September 2008:
Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior launches a Peaceful and Non violent action aginst authorities in Israel. They are amongst the many ( and the fact that they are many doesn’t condone that’s they are stupid ) countries , who think that burning coal is perfectly all right. That climate change is problem for others to deal with. And that human babies are flown into our world by stork airlines.
We of course try to tell them otherwise. So we paint a coal carrying ship in Ashkelon , Israel with the words “QUIT COAL , SAVE CLIMATE" . We hope that if we keep our font size really big, somebody might actually understand what we are saying. Of course , the police tend to prove us wrong most of the time. But still we keep on trying.
So we do a classic greenpeace Non violent direct action , and the authorities do not like it. They arrest all the protesters and then board the ship with guns . We welcome them with fresh coffee. But they decide to arrest the ship , or at least they try to. After some discussion they decide that the ship is too big to be handcuffed ;) ( don’t they know you cant stop a rainbow ) so they go for the captain instead . Captain Daniel is very cool and gives them a polite conversation instead. Finally after hours , they decide that they just want coffee and biscuits and not the captain. :)
Its amazing what powers lie hidden in the cuisine. We get our activists and our boats back. They get hugs and kisses. We promise not to trouble them anymore. Everyone is happy( except for the coal ship and they better not be too happy, we ‘ll be back for them later )
Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior launches a Peaceful and Non violent action aginst authorities in Israel. They are amongst the many ( and the fact that they are many doesn’t condone that’s they are stupid ) countries , who think that burning coal is perfectly all right. That climate change is problem for others to deal with. And that human babies are flown into our world by stork airlines.
We of course try to tell them otherwise. So we paint a coal carrying ship in Ashkelon , Israel with the words “QUIT COAL , SAVE CLIMATE" . We hope that if we keep our font size really big, somebody might actually understand what we are saying. Of course , the police tend to prove us wrong most of the time. But still we keep on trying.
So we do a classic greenpeace Non violent direct action , and the authorities do not like it. They arrest all the protesters and then board the ship with guns . We welcome them with fresh coffee. But they decide to arrest the ship , or at least they try to. After some discussion they decide that the ship is too big to be handcuffed ;) ( don’t they know you cant stop a rainbow ) so they go for the captain instead . Captain Daniel is very cool and gives them a polite conversation instead. Finally after hours , they decide that they just want coffee and biscuits and not the captain. :)
Its amazing what powers lie hidden in the cuisine. We get our activists and our boats back. They get hugs and kisses. We promise not to trouble them anymore. Everyone is happy( except for the coal ship and they better not be too happy, we ‘ll be back for them later )
terrorism and climate change
Israel:
When you think about Israel, you get some strange pictures in your head. Usually for a mildly well informed Indian, you think of a Jewish nation in the Middle East, constantly under attack by terrorists. In fact most of us might even sympathize with Israel, it seems they are pretty high on the Al Quaida hit-list, just like we are.
But if the WHO , along with scientists from along the world are to be believed . It seems that climate change is a bigger threat to human life than terrorism.( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3381425.stm for all you skeptic boys and girls) For most of us, who have lived with trains and buses being bombed are probably the only ones who can imagine the reality of those words.
Believe me, I would love to give the climate skeptics a chance, and say that climate change is just a myth , a joke, a cosmic parody . Sometimes I really wish it was.
A small pop quiz :
1. When you plant a bomb in a public place and you kill 20 people. They call you a terrorist. Its completely unforgivable , You get the life sentence.
2. What do you call yourself when you are doing something that will leave a 80 million people in your own country homeless? This is not the first time we have dealt with numbers that size . Remember the partition of India and Pakistan? Remember the horror stories you grandparents told you? Remember the wars that followed and the bitterness that exists 50 years later between our two nations? .... Remember?
Now multiply that number by 10 times. And imagine….
What name will you give to the people responsible for it?
I take out my dictionary and skim through it, but somehow none of the words . terrorist or mass murderer or genocidal maniac does the trick ( genocidal maniac comes close, but even Adolf Hitler was only responsible for about 5 million deaths, and that’s still too low a score )
I leave you to it….
When you think about Israel, you get some strange pictures in your head. Usually for a mildly well informed Indian, you think of a Jewish nation in the Middle East, constantly under attack by terrorists. In fact most of us might even sympathize with Israel, it seems they are pretty high on the Al Quaida hit-list, just like we are.
But if the WHO , along with scientists from along the world are to be believed . It seems that climate change is a bigger threat to human life than terrorism.( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3381425.stm for all you skeptic boys and girls) For most of us, who have lived with trains and buses being bombed are probably the only ones who can imagine the reality of those words.
Believe me, I would love to give the climate skeptics a chance, and say that climate change is just a myth , a joke, a cosmic parody . Sometimes I really wish it was.
A small pop quiz :
1. When you plant a bomb in a public place and you kill 20 people. They call you a terrorist. Its completely unforgivable , You get the life sentence.
2. What do you call yourself when you are doing something that will leave a 80 million people in your own country homeless? This is not the first time we have dealt with numbers that size . Remember the partition of India and Pakistan? Remember the horror stories you grandparents told you? Remember the wars that followed and the bitterness that exists 50 years later between our two nations? .... Remember?
Now multiply that number by 10 times. And imagine….
What name will you give to the people responsible for it?
I take out my dictionary and skim through it, but somehow none of the words . terrorist or mass murderer or genocidal maniac does the trick ( genocidal maniac comes close, but even Adolf Hitler was only responsible for about 5 million deaths, and that’s still too low a score )
I leave you to it….
Friday, September 12, 2008
the how and the why of being a green activist
I have been working with Greenpeace for the past 4 years, since I was 17 years old. And like everyone who joins Greenpeace with a passion for Environmental activism, I have been in awe of the Rainbow Warrior (RW for the ones well versed in Greenpeace lingo). The ship that sank and came back, the biggest blot in the French conscience since Waterloo , the ship that pretty much change the entire course of Environmental activism around the world. And believe me none of this is an understatement.
So finally I found myself on the RW 2 months ago, trying to stop what is probably the biggest threat to human life. No, its not cholesterol related. It doesn’t even have any connections with Nuclear weapons. Its our friendly neighborhood climate change. It might sound impossible to a lot of us sitting in air-conditioned rooms on comfortable seats, but if scientists across the world are to be believed (and not the soon-to-be-extinct Bush administration) it seems climate change is the single biggest threat to our culture, our way of life and even to our very existence. In other words . Its true, and its happening to you, you just don’t know it yet.
3 thousand years of human civilization, everything from languages to music to digital watches (the non waterproof kind of course) is at threat. And who is the biggest criminal ? well its that harmless piece of black coal that we have been mining and burning for the past 100 years. Quite an irony , 100 years of dumb humans is all it takes to wipe out 3000 years of smart ones. But at least we are not going down without a fight, large corporations and some countries think that making a quick buck is better than saving the planet from environmental destruction, and they seem almost amazed when someone tells them any different. That’s where we come in, the ship, the activists and the truth. We stopped them at map da phut , Thailand. We stopped them at Ashkelon , Israel. And we will try and stop them from burning a single piece of coal if we can. We have been beaten, bombed , shot at, kicked in strange places, thrown vegetables at .And its not stopped us before , do you think we let it stop us now. I don’t think so.
Captain Mike Fincken used to say these words ,’ for the past 37 years Greenpeace has fought at the front line of environmental activism, but all that has only been a dress rehearsal for the fight that lies ahead. Climate Change is the biggest threat to human life and coal is the biggest criminal. ,”
So finally I found myself on the RW 2 months ago, trying to stop what is probably the biggest threat to human life. No, its not cholesterol related. It doesn’t even have any connections with Nuclear weapons. Its our friendly neighborhood climate change. It might sound impossible to a lot of us sitting in air-conditioned rooms on comfortable seats, but if scientists across the world are to be believed (and not the soon-to-be-extinct Bush administration) it seems climate change is the single biggest threat to our culture, our way of life and even to our very existence. In other words . Its true, and its happening to you, you just don’t know it yet.
3 thousand years of human civilization, everything from languages to music to digital watches (the non waterproof kind of course) is at threat. And who is the biggest criminal ? well its that harmless piece of black coal that we have been mining and burning for the past 100 years. Quite an irony , 100 years of dumb humans is all it takes to wipe out 3000 years of smart ones. But at least we are not going down without a fight, large corporations and some countries think that making a quick buck is better than saving the planet from environmental destruction, and they seem almost amazed when someone tells them any different. That’s where we come in, the ship, the activists and the truth. We stopped them at map da phut , Thailand. We stopped them at Ashkelon , Israel. And we will try and stop them from burning a single piece of coal if we can. We have been beaten, bombed , shot at, kicked in strange places, thrown vegetables at .And its not stopped us before , do you think we let it stop us now. I don’t think so.
Captain Mike Fincken used to say these words ,’ for the past 37 years Greenpeace has fought at the front line of environmental activism, but all that has only been a dress rehearsal for the fight that lies ahead. Climate Change is the biggest threat to human life and coal is the biggest criminal. ,”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)