Saving The Whales
A fantastically fun article was to be found in The Guardian today, and I really would suggest that you give it a read.
A few years ago the environment was unquestionably the issue which I considered of most importance and although a lot of the prickly radical sharp edges have sense been blunted it is still something that concerns me. Furthermore as an admirer {if not advocate} of Anarchy the notion of various ships abducting, boarding, ramming and delaying each other in a fashion only restrained and guided by ethics and profit seems fascinating. There is obviously no form of law enforcement present here and thus personality, talent and the bottom line reign.
If Watson wants to ram the Japanese vessels with his own he can get away with it, if the whalers want to hold boarders prisoner then they seem able to. Apparently Australia are sending out a ship to pick up the pair of campaigners held captive, which rather ruins my fantasies of the commercial vessel being stormed and sunk by vengeful eco-nuts, but this remains a fascinating conflict in a gorgeous back-drop.
The philosophy of the whalers is something which either seems to be a form of brutal, relentless egoism {if you reckon that they are lying, which does seem likely} or else a harsh humanist view of science. Perhaps they are divided between the two. More clearly separated, however, are its opponents, which the article does a fine job of illustrating the dichotomy between. It seems to run deeper still than these surface issues, however, being more than a mere matter of tactics and attitudes: Greenpeace seem to be operate from a rather less extreme view that animal life should be cherished and protected while Watson works from the principle that they are of equal value and that murdering a whale is as dire a deed as killing another human being.
Once this perspective is accepted a good deal is possible: the Japanese are homicidal sociopaths who are attempting murder while the role of the Shepherds is to act as vigilante and hero to save these beautiful beings from becoming victims. By comparison to mass murder a few tossed jars of acid or excrement seem negligible sins.
Ultimately I hope that one group or the other, or a combined effort, will prevent the whaling continuing and the entire affair will be enthralling to follow. But a misanthrope is a misanthrope and I must say that the diverse neo-hippie pacifists are a far less cool but far more ethically impressive model.
