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Post #1
For those of you who don't know the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is an environmental activist group dedicated to the protection of sea life. They're most famous for their multiple campaigns against Japanese semi-legal whaling operations, and the television show about said campaigns. They're known to use active, radical and semi-illegal tactics in their anti-whaling operations including throwing butyric acid grenades on to whalers' decks, water cannons, poisoning the corpses of harpooned whales, ramming, and even placing limpet mines onto whaling vessels. Plenty of people praise them for their activist measures, and plenty of people call them "eco-terrorists" and pirates. Simple enough what do you think? Are they in the right or the wrong? Should either or both sides be arrested? And who was responsible for sinking the Ady Gil?
I personally think that in this case two wrongs make a right, when someone commits a crime and gets away with it people need to take the law into their own hands. I also consider the Shonan Maru's captain at fault for the sinking of the Ady Gil as the Sea Shepherd boat was idling when it was rammed.
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Although their activism is understandable, the execution of their campaigns I would consider to be terrorism. With the latest incident, they pretty much held the crew of the whaling boat captive by boarding the boat, "surrendering", and then demanding to be taken to Australian shores. How is that not terrorism? They should be charged as terrorists. They may think what they are doing was right, but guess what? The plotters of 9/11 thought they were right too, and the men who hijacked the planes held many passengers captive against their will. The two situations are comparable, just different circumstances. Oh and not to mention that the whaling is in fact legal.
However, Japanese whaling should be put under investigation by an international commitee, as it is obvious that the whaling isn't done just for scientific purposes. At the moment though, what they are doing is legal but it really shouldn't be when considering most of the meat goes straight to the markets anyways. The Sea Sheppards shouldn't be taking the matter into their own hands, this should be left to diplomacy and international law to deal with, not terrorism.
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Well the main argument in their defense is that no official organization is working to prevent the illegal whaling operations they fight. While it may be terrorism I think it's justified considering the circumstances and the good they do.
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Terrorism is never justified. Do you think 9/11 can be justified in any way?
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I dont see too mutch of a problem with it, considering how corrupt the japs are making the IWC -
paying off small, financially fucked over countries to vote for them so they can keep whaling for "scientific" purposes.
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Terrible comparison, The Shepherds don't kill anyone and the U.S. hadn't committed any crimes to justify those actions.
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Well, Australia did sue them in the International Court of Justice, but burocracy being what it is, their court date is as of now set fir 2014.
Holy crap its 4am. I can contribute heavily tomorrow.
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I interviewed Paul Watson a while ago, turns out he was kicked out of Greenpeace for being too radical. He also said his passion for wildlife conservation started when he sabotaged a bunch of beaver traps in Canada. Regardless, I wouldn't call what he is doing terrorism per se, it isn't using terror as a tactic, it's more of a "blockade", like a protest.
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As you've said yourself, considering the circumstances you reckon the Shepherds are justified, but considering the circumstances you could still possibly compare the two incidents as at the base they are both acts of terror where a plane/boat had been hijacked/boarded with the aggressing parties having the common goal of causing panic on the homefront of the terrorised party. The Shepherds want to send a message to the Japanese to stop whaling and are using terror tactics to do so, Al Qaeda wanted to send a message to the United States to stop intervening in Middle Eastern affairs, and used terror tactics to do so.
Also Japan didn't commit any crimes to justify the actions of the Shepherds (don't forget, that they are legally allowed to hunt whales), so what is your point?
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Except Sea Shepard aren't trying to cause terror, they're trying to block the whaler ships from reaching their targets.
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The means are somewhat similar but not the ends. The Shepherds have boarded vessels for three reasons that I'm aware of: to track them, two sue the captain, and to plant explosives. The last of which they've never harmed anyone with. Whereas Al Qeada hijacked three airplanes and crashed them into various sites of importance in America killing almost 3000 people and injuring twice that.
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That's not at all what they're doing. They're trying to "sink the whalers economically and politically" by making it physically impossible to catch whales by blocking the slip way. It's working so far as the only profit they've made in years was 30 million(USD) taken out of the Tsunami relief fund to increase security. Last year the whalers cited Sea Shepherd as the reason they left early. Sea Shepherd is not against Japan, or the Japanese people, and have never tried to harm a human being whaler or not. In fact, they offered to call of the attacks and help the Whalers find a man that went over board but the whalers refused saying they don't accept help from Terrorists and the man was never found.
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-snip-
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-snip, wrong thread-
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Implying anyone here puts a whale over a person, seriously do some people actually just fabricate bullshit claims from thin air?
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Except they don't actually kill anyone.
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Wrong thread. Was replying to Lachzor in the other Sea Shepard thread.
I'll expand on it. With Sea Shepards rampant ramming and their buddy groups boarding, someone is going to get hurt, and not 'oh god i've been shot by nothing' hurt.
Edited:
you don't need to kill anyone to put human life over that of a whale.
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Tell that to the whalers when they cut the bow of the Ady Gil.
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Just noticed that part. No, they're not. They're allowed to "research" whales. They examine stomach contents and stuff like that as a smokescreen but most of their whaling activities are illegal.
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Okay then what is your point? People put "human lives" below almost anything conceivable, the big one being money. To put it more accurately, the Sea Shepherds are putting animal life over other humans' economic interests.
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Whaling is illegal under the IWC. The Scientific Whaling thing is there so you can do lethal research if and only if there are no nonlethal methods to get the same research.
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It's as much terrorism as a DoS is. They're preventing a job from being done, not killing innocents or threatening people in a sense to inspire fear. They're making life a nuisance and working to make the job unprofitable so that the Whalers quit and head home.
If legislation won't get it done, let them do the job. They haven't done anything too radical at this point, and their cause is just. If that should change at any point, then my standing will accordingly.
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I wouldn't even call them terrorists. I'd call them protesters or even guerillas because 'terrorism' is one of the vaguest words in the english language. If you just look at the introduction to this wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism
you will see that "terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition" and is "politically and emotionally charged".
Also, terrorism generally requires combatants and non-combatants and I would call both Greenpeace and the whalers non-combatants.
What the Sea-Shepherd does is active and in some cases aggressive protest and is completely different from events such as 9/11. Calling them terrorists is like calling every violent protest a terrorist action. And lets be honest, the words terrorist and terrorism can only be traced back about 300 years were used very sparsely up until Bush started using it (however vaguely) for political propaganda against extremist organisations.
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They do a lot more than just whale stuff too, you know. Like work with Police to protect the Galapagos National Reserve. They even have a K9 unit to sniff out contraband leaving the islands.
Edited:
One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter.
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"Limpet Mines"
Actually, that was the French, blowing up an anti-nuclear/anti-whaling vessel.
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Exactly
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1. Stink bombs, that's just generally annoying and fairly unsanitary
2.Dangerous as it could push someone overboard and kill them
3.Wasteful and the stupidest thing they could do, in fact it wastes the already dead whale, really just a plain stupid move.
4.Dangerous to both ships and could cause many lost lives
5.Again, dangerous and could cause many lost lives
It's terrorism and they should be tried as pirates.
The whaling may be bad, but them putting many lives in danger and wasting already dead whales is just plain worse, no argument needed.
Edited:
How? They engage in various combat actions, ramming another ship, placing mines on it, yeah, those can't at all cause damage nor are they potentially life threatening huh?
Not to mention using high pressure water cannons, capable of easily pushing people off the deck of a ship into the water, no that couldn't be dangerous huh?
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The Nisshan Maru has 4 water cannons on the aft, and two on each side, plus one on each harpoon ship and two on the security ship. The Sea Shepherds only have one. One season a Cameraman got his eye almost taken out by the water cannons from the Japanese.
The Shonan maru deliberately cut the bow off the Ady Gil, then aimed directly at the people hanging onto the back of the broken ship with their high powered water cannon. Going by what you say, the Shonan crew should be tried for attempted murder. The Sea Shepherds have never attempted to harm a human being.
Then there's the spear they threw at them.
Edited:
The french killed two Greenpeace members doing that, too.
Though Sea Shepherd said they used homemade mines to sink the Sierra which was an illegal whaling ship. They were never arrested for it because the owners never came to court (because they themselves were breaking the law). They also did the same with their own ship the Sea Shepherd, and Isba I and Isba II.
"Arrest me or shut up"Wikipedia posted:
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1. That's the point, prevents work from going on, the same type of weapon has also been used by anti-abortion activists
2 as OvB said all of the whaling ships are armed with several water cannons, whereas the Steve Irwin only has one, also the whalers are aiming them at small inflatable boats and helicopters which is extremely dangerous, also the whaling ships are very large and the Nissan has nets around the deck so the odds of someone being pushed off are very low
3 The point is that they whale is already dead but they can stop the poachers from turning a profit, if the meat is toxic then they can't sell it, but it's still perfectly good for scientific research, this technically isn't doing anything wrong wince that's all the "Institute for Cetacean Research" is supposed to want the whales for
4 Again whalers have engaged in the same tactics, and have yielded more results than the Shepherds, sinking the Ady Gil and causing a hull breach in I believe it was the Bob Barker
5 Yes I'm well aware of that, but so far it hasn't
I'm not going to go into whether or not it's terrorism but I will again point out that because the Japs are required by law to say they're only hunting whales for research purposes, the Shepherds are not "wasting" the dead bodies, the poison only renders them inedible, still perfectly good for study though.
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Whales are delicious, that's all I have to say.
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They're either terrorists or pirates. Seems to flip depending on the day of the week or something. Either way, they should be strung up on charges, protecting the whales is no excuse to terrorize fishermen, 'specially when there's government agents paid to do exactly that.
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Yes they're classified as terrorist because they're politically motivated however their goals are not evil. They're simply doing what no one else will do they're preserving ocean's wildlife due to over fishing/hunting. These corporations know what they're doing is illegal but use loop-holes and abuse the system for profit. It isn't like the sea sheppard's accomplishments benefit one group of people. WE all need the ocean and the wildlife that live in it.
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@OBV and such, I never denied that the whalers shouldn't be tried for crimes as well, they both should.
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So blowing up someone's ship isn't an act of terror? Regardless of the fact that nobody was injured, you're still sinking a vessel that is not your own and out of intention. It is still an act of terror. Although the Japanese are not morally or environmentally correct for hunting the whales, they are legally allowed to do so, and we live in a world of legality. I fail to see the Sea Shepherds' work as justified, nor should it be tolerated legally. Their work results in vandalism, destruction of property, and it holds these whalers back from producing revenue. It's how the world works though, I'm sorry.
Edited:
You don't have to be "evil" to be a terrorist, a terrorist is someone who uses terror and fear to sway the actions of others. Blowing up a whaler ship is no different than walking into an abortion clinic and blowing it up because you don't like what the building is used for. Whaling is legal in Japan as abortion is legal here. It's heavily disputed and often frowned upon, but I can guarantee you if you blew up an abortion clinic in America you'd be taken to court and arrested. Legality reigns over morality.
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The whalers use water cannon too so that's a moot point.
The stink bombs as you say are just to cause irritation.
Sea Shepard don't use limpet mines, I'm pretty sure that was an offshoot of Sea Shepard a decade or two ago and they immediatly distanced themselves from the group.
The Whalers actually fucking demolished one of the sea shepard ships, and smashed another which ripped through the hull.
You really should research your stuff before you try a debate man.
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Well actually Paul Watson did claim responsibility for sinking the Sierra, Isba I and Isba II with limpet mines (well technically he claimed responsibility for the first one and said the other two were done by the same people), but that was over 20 years ago and there was a pretty long list of inhumane things those particular whalers were doing (also nobody was injured in any of the blasts).
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That doesn't, at all, justify anything they do. You don't answer cruelty with blowing shit up.
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Damn right. If you want to stop illegal whaling, use the lawful judiciary path and present solid evidence against it.
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due to the incredibly positive results in their fight against whaling, compared to greenpeace and other passive organizations, I really don't have anything against the Sea Sheppards at all
