XPost: tor.general   
   From: sbm@accesswave.ca   
      
   Keep on ramming these bastards...   
      
      
   Activist still fights on high seas   
   Toronto-born anti-whaling captain says call me a pirate, not an   
   eco-terrorist   
   By ROD MCGUIRK The Associated Press   
      
      
   MELBOURNE, Australia — Toronto-born anti-whaling activist Paul Watson flies   
   the Jolly Roger from his ship and boasts of ramming more boats than any   
   living seafarer, part of an anti-whaling crusade that even Greenpeace calls   
   too radical.   
      
   Watson and his group came under withering criticism this season, summer in   
   the Antarctic, for tactics that some say put the lives of whales above the   
   lives of people.   
      
   A Japanese whaling ship caught fire after being chased and harassed by   
   Watson’s fleet, the ships and volunteers of the Sea Shepherd Conservation   
   Society, which not only rammed the whaling boats but fired smoke canisters   
   and ropes to entangle the propellers.   
      
   Japan announced that it was ending its whaling season early because of the   
   fire, which killed a crewman. Although the blaze came a day after Watson’s   
   group pulled back for lack of fuel, and there’s no alleged connection, Japan   
   calls Watson a terrorist.   
      
   But the 56-year-old activist, who founded the society 30 years ago,   
   dismisses the complaints.   
      
   "Call for a boycott of tuna fish these days and they call you a terrorist,"   
   he said.   
      
   Watson has spent his adult life as a conservationist, beginning with   
   Greenpeace, which itself has a strident reputation. The turn to radicalism   
   came, he says, when he made eye contact with a harpooned whale as it rose   
   above his dinghy before falling back into the sea.   
      
   "Paul recognized a flicker of understanding in the dying whale’s eye. He   
   felt that the whale knew what they were trying to do," the Sea Shepherd   
   website says.   
      
   The society bought a ship with donated money in 1979, allowing members to   
   disrupt seal hunting in eastern Canada. Later that year, the group rammed   
   its ship into a whaler in a Portuguese harbour, and the pattern was set. Sea   
   Shepherd claims responsibility for ramming six whaling ships and for playing   
   a part in 10 others going out of the whaling business.   
      
   Watson says his whatever-it-takes tactics threaten lives no more than   
   whaling itself. He points to the Japanese whaling factory ship Nisshin Maru,   
   which was crippled in February for 10 days in ice-strewn Antarctic waters   
   after the fatal fire.   
      
   "I think the Japanese are extremely reckless taking a floating factory down   
   to a pristine and fragile ecosystem with the potential of causing a major   
   oil and chemical spill and of course killing endangered species," Watson   
   said.   
      
   The Nisshin Maru and its five support ships were Sea Shepherd’s main targets   
   this whaling season.   
      
   Sea Shepherd’s attack ships, the Farley Mowat and the Robert Hunter, circled   
   the Japanese factory ship, dispensing Zodiac inflatables into the heavy seas   
   for the close-in attack.   
      
   Society volunteers used nail guns to fasten plates over the Nisshin Maru’s   
   drain outlets, which spill whale blood into the sea.   
      
   The attack ended when one of the Zodiacs cracked its hull in a collision   
   with the Japanese ship and the Zodiac’s two crew members, Australian Watson   
   Karl Neilsen and John Gravois of Los Angeles, became lost for more than   
   seven hours in heavy fog and falling snow.   
      
   Julie Farris, a 27-year-old American volunteer, said the hours of searching   
   were tense and scary after the Robert Hunter’s helicopter couldn’t take off   
   to search for the missing men because of the snow and fog.   
      
   Soon after the two men were found, the Robert Hunter discovered a Japanese   
   spotter ship among the sea ice and tried to snare its propeller before the   
   two ships collided. Other tactics include hurling smoke and stink bombs at   
   the whalers’ decks.   
      
   "These are not mere acts of sabotage, but literally an attack. We call these   
   an act of terrorism but I don’t think it is an exaggerated phrase," Hajime   
   Ishikawa, deputy director of the Japanese government-linked Institute of   
   Cetacean Research.   
      
   Sea Shepherd is at an extreme fringe of a movement that has broad popular   
   support. Most whaling opponents distance themselves from the group’s   
   tactics.   
      
   "We don’t think violence is the answer," Greenpeace spokesman Shane   
   Rattenbury said. "If you are conducting violent action, the discussion   
   becomes about the violence, not the issue."   
      
   New Zealand and Australia — leading anti-whaling countries — condemn Sea   
   Shepherd’s tactics as an unacceptable threat to human life.   
      
   The International Whaling Commission cancelled Sea Shepherd’s accreditation   
   as a non-government organization after it claimed responsibility for sinking   
   two Icelandic whaling boats in Reykjavik harbour and the wrecking of a   
   meat-processing factory in 1986.   
      
   Lou Sanson, chief executive Antarctica New Zealand, the government agency   
   responsible for that country’s operations on the frozen continent, said   
   tactics like those of Sea Shepherd increase the risk of damaging the fragile   
   Antarctic environment.   
      
   But Watson dismisses Greenpeace — an organization he helped found in 1971   
   before a falling out — and other mainstream conservation groups as "feel   
   good corporations." He insists the UN World Charter for Nature gives him   
   legal authority to save whales by sinking or disabling whaling vessels.   
      
   He has repeatedly been the target of legal action, but says he has never   
   been convicted of a felony. He was convicted in absentia by Norway and   
   sentenced to 120 days in prison on a charge related to the 1992 sinking of a   
   whaling ship. He spent 60 days in Dutch custody, but they refused to   
   extradite him to serve out his sentence.   
      
   The society has volunteers from 14 countries, who endure cramped, barely   
   sanitary conditions.   
      
   "I’ve probably rammed more boats than any person alive," said Watson, though   
   he says he hasn’t rammed a whaler since 1992. He said collisions he was   
   involved in this season and last were the whalers’ fault. The whalers say   
   otherwise.   
      
   "I’ve never seen a whale die since I started Sea Shepherd in 1977 and we’ve   
   never hurt anyone by effectively preventing this crime," Watson said.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)