by DGR News Service | Oct 23, 2021 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Direct Action, Human Supremacy, Obstruction & Occupation, The Problem: Civilization
Author Paul Watson has no problem with critics calling him and his marine-life-defending colleagues pirates—it’s far better than helplessly standing by and doing nothing in the face of the violence against animals they have witnessed.
This excerpt is from Death of a Whale, by Captain Paul Watson (GroundSwell Books, 2021). This web adaptation was produced by GroundSwell Books in partnership with Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
By Paul Watson
In 1975, Robert Hunter and I were the first people to physically block a harpooner’s line of fire when we intercepted a Soviet whaling fleet and placed our bodies between the killers and eight fleeing, frightened sperm whales. We were in a small inflatable boat, speeding before the plunging steel prow of a Russian kill boat. As the whales fled for their lives before us, we could smell the fear in their misty exhalations. We thought we could make a difference with our Gandhi-inspired seagoing stand. Surely these men behind the harpoons would not risk killing a human being to satisfy their lust for whale oil and meat. We were wrong.
The whalers demonstrated their contempt for our nonviolent protests by firing an explosive harpoon over our heads. The harpoon line slashed into the water and we narrowly escaped death. One of the whales was not so lucky. With a dull thud followed by a muffled explosion, the entrails of a female whale were torn and ripped apart by hot steel shrapnel.
The large bull sperm whale in the midst of the pod abruptly rose and dove. Experts had told us that a bull whale in this situation would attack us. We were a smaller target than the whaling ship. Anxiously, we held our breath in anticipation of sixty tons of irate muscle and blood torpedoing from the depths below our frail craft.
The ocean erupted behind us. We turned toward the Soviet ship to see a living juggernaut hurl itself at the Russian bow. The harpooner was ready. He pulled the trigger and sent a second explosive missile into the massive head of the whale. A pitiful scream rang in my ears, a fountain of blood geysered into the air, and the deep blue of the ocean was rapidly befouled with dark red blood. The whale thrashed and convulsed violently.
Mortally wounded and crazed with pain, the whale rolled, and one great eye made contact with mine. The whale dove, and a trail of bloody bubbles moved laboriously toward us. Slowly, very slowly, a gargantuan head emerged from the water, and the whale rose at an angle over and above our tiny craft. Blood and brine cascaded from the gaping head wound and fell upon us in torrents.
We were helpless. We knew that we would be crushed within seconds as the whale fell upon us. There was little time for fear, only awe. We could not move.
The whale did not fall upon us. He wavered and towered motionless above us. I looked up past the daggered six-inch teeth and into the eye the size of my fist, an eye that reflected back intelligence and spoke wordlessly of compassion and communicated to me the understanding that this was a being that could discriminate and understood what we had tried to do. The mammoth body slowly slid back into the sea.
The massive head of this majestic sperm whale slowly fell back into the sea. He rolled and the water parted, revealing a solitary eye. The gaze of the whale seized control of my soul, and I saw my own image reflected back at me. I was overcome with pity, not for the whale but for ourselves. Waves of shame crashed down upon me and I wept. Overwhelmed with horror at this revelation of the cruel blasphemy of my species, I realized then and there that my allegiance lay with this dying child of the sea and his kind. On that day, I left the comfortable realm of human self-importance to forever embrace the soulful satisfaction of lifelong service to the citizens of the sea.
The gentle giant died with my face seared upon his retina. I will never forget that. It is a memory that haunts and torments me and leaves me with only one course to chart toward redemption for the collective sins of humanity. It is both my burden and my joy to pledge my allegiance to the most intelligent and profoundly sensitive species of beings to have ever inhabited the Earth––the great whales.
Reykjavik, Iceland, November 1986
Despite the criticisms, the name-calling, and the controversy that have arisen from our work since 1975, one indisputable fact emerged from a raid made by my crew (which included Rod Coronado of the U.S. and David Howitt of the UK) on two whaling ships in Reykjavik in 1986 in order to enforce an international moratorium on commercial whaling that had been established that year: it was successful.
The two whaling ships were razed, although their electronics and mechanical systems had been totally destroyed. Insurance did not cover the losses because the owners had stated that terrorists sank the ships, and apparently they were not insured for terrorism.
Most importantly, from that day of November 8, 1986, to sixteen years later in the year 2002, the Icelanders did not take another whale. What talk, compromise, negotiations, meetings, letters, petitions, and protests had not accomplished, we achieved with a little monkey-wrenching activity in the wee hours of the morning.
Were we terrorists? No, not even criminals, for we were never charged with a crime, even though we made ourselves available for prosecution. We had simply done our duty, and we put an end to an unlawful activity.
The only repercussion was that Iceland moved before the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1987 that the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society be banned from holding observer status at the meetings of the IWC. After this passed, Iceland resigned from the IWC, leaving us with the distinction of being the only organization to enjoy the status of banishment from the IWC.
How ironic, I thought, to be the only organization banned from the IWC because we were the only organization to have ever enforced an IWC ruling.
It was not much of a punishment. I had never enjoyed listening to the delegates of the member nations barter whales like they were bushels of wheat or pork bellies. I also never had much use for the posturing of the nongovernmental organizations pretending that they were actually making a difference by attending this annual circus. All that we were interested in were the rulings of the IWC, and we fully intended to continue to enforce those rulings.
I have been asked many times why we consider the IWC rulings important. Why not just oppose all whaling everywhere? The answer is that we do oppose all whaling by everyone, everywhere. However, we only actively attack whaling operations that are in violation of international conservation law. The reason for this is simple: We do not presume to be the judges and jury. We simply execute the rulings of the IWC or the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) or any rulings from international conservation authorities, and we do so in accordance with the definition of intervention as defined by the 1982 United Nations World Charter for Nature, Part III (Implementation), Principle 21, Section (e): “States and, to the extent they are able, other public authorities, international organizations, individuals, groups and corporations shall… Safeguard and conserve nature in areas beyond national jurisdiction.”
As a seaman, I have a great and abiding respect for the traditions of the law of the sea. To attack without a vested authority would be piracy. Thus, the difference between a privateer like Sir Francis Drake and a pirate like Blackbeard was that the former was in possession of a letter of marque from a sovereign authority and the latter practiced the same trade solely upon his own authority.
I have never considered it my place to judge the illegal activities of others. However, I feel that when there are laws and international treaties that it is the responsibility of individuals and nongovernmental organizations to strive toward the implementation of these rulings, especially in light of the fact that there is no international body empowered to police these international laws. Nation-states intervene when it is advantageous for them to do so, but little enforcement is carried out in the interests of the common good of all citizens of the planet.
It is worth noting that it was not the British or Spanish navies that brought the piracy of the Caribbean under control in the 17th century. There were too many conflicts of interest, too much corruption, and too little motivation for any real action to have been taken. The bureaucracies in the British admiralty and the Spanish court did nothing because the very nature of a bureaucracy is the maintenance of the status quo. The achievement of first shutting down piracy on the Spanish Main is attributed to one man––a pirate himself.
Henry Morgan did what two nations chose not to do: he drove the pirates to ground and ended their reign of terror. As a result, the “pirate” was made governor of Jamaica, although history would show that the man was far more effective as a pirate than as a politician. In fact, he was more of a pirate as a politician than he was as an actual pirate.
When Andrew Jackson failed to get the support of the merchants of New Orleans to back his attack on the British, it was a pirate who came to his service in the personage of Jean Lafitte. When the United States successfully endeavored to cast off the yoke of British rule, it was a pirate who achieved the most dramatic and successful naval victory at sea. That person was captain John Paul Jones. Consequently, it is a pirate who was the founder of what is today the world’s most powerful navy.
Today, with the pirates of corrupt industry aided by corrupt politicians plundering our oceans for the last of the fish, killing the last of the whales, and polluting the waters, we find that there is very little real resistance to their activities upon the high seas. Once again it is time for some good pirates to rise up in opposition to the bad pirates, and I believe that the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is just such an organization of good pirates.
When our critics call us pirates, I have no problem with that. In fact, we have taken their criticisms and in an aikido-like manner; we have incorporated their accusations into our image. Our ships are sometimes painted a monochromatic black. We have designed our own version of the pretty red [a flag which, when translated to French, becomes “joli rouge” and is rumored to have inspired the “jolly roger” phrase applied to pirate flags], and our black-and-white flag flies from our mast during campaigns. We even carry cannons, with the difference being that our guns fire cream pies and not red-hot balls.
As good pirates, we have evolved to suit the time and culture in which we live, and this being a media-defined culture, our primary weapons are the camera, the video, and the internet. Like modern-day Robin Hoods, we take from the greedy and give back to the sea. We don’t profit materially, but we profit tremendously both spiritually and psychologically.
Author Bio:
Captain Paul Watson is a Canadian-American marine conservation activist who founded the direct action group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 1977 and was more recently featured in Animal Planet’s popular television series “Whale Wars” and the documentary about his life, “Watson.” Sea Shepherd’s mission is to protect all ocean-dwelling marine life. Watson has authored or co-authored more than a dozen books, including Death of a Whale (2021), Urgent! (2021), Orcapedia (2020), Dealing with Climate Change and Stress (2020), The Haunted Mariner (2019), and Captain Paul Watson: Interview with a Pirate (2013).
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Sep 1, 2016 | Lobbying
Featured image: Leaders from Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw First Nation recently boarded a BC fish farm to serve an eviction notice. Photo by Alexandra Morton.
By Andrew Nikiforuk / The Tyee
The Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw, whose traditional lands includes much of the Broughton Archipelago, have boarded two Japanese-owned fish farms and delivered eviction orders to remove their operations from unceded territories over the last six days.
On Aug. 15, three Dzawada’enuxw traditional leaders served an eviction notice to a Cermaq/Mitsubishi salmon farm on the Burdwood Islands, and on Aug. 18 boats from the communities of Gwayasdums (Gilford Island), U’kwa’nalis (Kingcome Inlet) and Alert Bay arrived at the Sir Edmund Bay fish farms run by Cermaq/Mitsubishi to conduct a cleansing ceremony.
Melissa Willie, an elected councillor for the nation, said about 40 people participated in the cleansing ceremony and that more demonstrations are planned later this week.
Willie said a cleansing ceremony was necessary because fish farms have been clouded by a lot of “negativity” and environmental impacts, and her people wanted to do something positive.
“We will do a cleansing of our waters once we get these fish farms out,” Willie told The Tyee.
The Martin Sheen, a research vessel loaned by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to biologist and anti-fish farm activist Alexandra Morton, witnessed and filmed the delivery of the eviction notice as well as the cleansing ceremony.
Morton, a long-term foe of the controversial industry, is on a two-month mission to investigate the state of corporate fish farms, do research on virus prevalence, and provide a platform for First Nations.
Some nations support fish farms on their territory, while others such as Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw have been fighting them and their impacts on wild fish for 30 years.
The eviction notice follows a number of developments, including the federal government’s decision to extend fish farm licences from one to six years despite recent evidence found by federal scientists of a “potential” heart disease in farmed Atlantic salmon samples collected from one B.C. fish farm.
Members of the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw were also shocked earlier this month when Melissa Willie visited a Cermaq farm and opened the lid of a blue-coloured tote containing dead fish netted from the facility.
Both Willie and Morton identified what they said looked like several wild salmon and other native fish (possibly herring and eulachon) in the pile. Fish farms do not have a licence to feed or harvest wild fish.
But in an Aug. 18 press release, Cermaq denied the dead fish were wild and said they were young farmed salmon.
“The small salmon carcasses found in the mort totes are Atlantic salmon grown from our own broodstock, not Pacific wild salmon as alleged. In fact, the tote in question was at our broodstock site, where we grow salmon that are several years apart in age. The age difference results in both small and large fish that, if they die, go into the same tote,” explained their press release.
Willie disagreed with Cermaq’s view of things.
“Wherever you have fish farms, there will be wild fish entering those pens. It is common sense. We all know that the herring stay by some of the farms and feed there.”
In the same press release, Cermaq accused the Sea Shepherd Society of trespassing on private property, making unsubstantiated claims, and having “taken samples of dead fish without permission and without following any proper scientific procedures.”
In contrast, Willie said her people would like to thank Sea Shepherd for joining them in their fight.
Notice gives three months to pack up
The eviction notice gives the corporate farms three months to pack up their operations.
It also demands that no more farmed fish be transferred into the First Nation’s traditional territory and that the nation be allowed to take fish samples from the farms anytime it wants to determine what types of disease or parasites might be present.
“The people who are benefiting from these farms are benefiting over the suffering of our people,” said Dzawada’enuxw hereditary leader Farron Soukochoff in a press release.
The Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw First Nations have opposed corporate salmon farming on the grounds that open-net feedlots invite diseases and waste that have had a deleterious impact on wild fish, including herring and five varieties of Pacific salmon.
“We, the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw view the destruction of wild fish by the fish farming industry as part of the long history of genocide forced on our people by the governments of Canada,” reads an Aug. 18 press release. “Salmon are essential to our well-being and the well-being of our world.”
According to a recent report, the number of young wild salmon leaving Dzawada’enuxw territory in the spring of 2015 could have been reduced by nine to 39 per cent due to sea lice from salmon farms.
Along with the eviction notice, the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw have set up a website called “cleansing our waters.”
Approximately one-third of the corporate feedlots growing Atlantic salmon along B.C.’s coast are located on Dzawada’enuxw territory.
A 2008 scientific study found that wild salmon populations declined wherever corporations have set up industrial fish farms in the ocean including Norway, Scotland, Ireland and Canada.
“We have heard the words of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, that honouring the rights of First Nations are a ‘sacred obligation’ to the Liberal Government of Canada,” said Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw hereditary leader and chief councillor Willie Moon at a cleansing ceremony at the Sir Edmund salmon farm at the entrance to Kingcome Inlet.
“Our people have spoken: we want salmon farms out of our territory.”
In a prepared statement, Jeremy Dunn, executive director of the BC Salmon Farmers Association, said that the industry has 20 agreements with First Nations that cover “78 per cent of the annual harvest of farmed salmon.”
“Our members are always open to meeting and discussing issues with First Nations and would like to develop agreements in areas where they do not exist today,” added the statement.
Dunn told The Tyee that many First Nations have tried to evict corporate farms in the past but later signed financial agreements with the industry.
by DGR Colorado Plateau | Jun 22, 2015 | Building Alternatives, Gender, Strategy & Analysis
In 1993 Michael Carter was arrested and indicted for underground environmental activism. Since then he’s worked aboveground, fighting timber sales and oil and gas leasing, protecting endangered species, and more. Today, he’s a member of Deep Green Resistance Colorado Plateau, and author of the memoir Kingfishers’ Song: Memories Against Civilization.
Time is Short spoke with him about his actions, underground resistance, and the prospects and problems facing the environmental movement. The first part of this interview is available here, and the second part here.
Time is Short: You mentioned some problems of radical groups—lack of respect for women and lack of a strategy. Could you expand on that?
Michael Carter: Sure. To begin with, I think both of those issues arise from a lifetime of privilege in the dominant culture. Men in particular seem prone to nihilism; I certainly was. Since we were taught—however unwittingly—that men are entitled to more of everything than women, our tendency is to bring this to all our endeavors.
I will give some credit to the movie “Night Moves” for illustrating that. The men cajole the woman into taking outlandish risks and they get off on the destruction, and that’s all they really do. When an innocent bystander is killed by their action, the woman has an emotional breakdown. She’s angry with the men because they told her no one would get hurt, and she breaches security by talking to other people about it. Their cell unravels and they don’t even explore their next options together. Instead of providing or even offering support, one of the men stalks and ultimately kills the woman to protect himself from getting caught, then vanishes back into mainstream consumer culture. So he’s not only a murderer but ultimately a cowardly hypocrite, as well.
Honestly, it appears to be more of an anti-underground propaganda piece than anything. Or maybe it’s just a vapid film, but it does have one somewhat valid point—that we white Americans, particularly men, are an overprivileged self-centered lot who won’t hesitate to hurt anyone who threatens us.
Artwork by Stephanie McMillan
That’s a fictional example, but any female activist can tell you the same thing. And of course misogyny isn’t limited to underground or militant groups; I saw all sorts of male self-indulgence and superiority in aboveground circles, moderate and radical both. It took hindsight for me to recognize it, even in myself. That’s a central problem of radical environmentalism, one reason why it’s been so ineffective. Why should any woman invest her time and energy in an immature movement that holds her in such low regard? I’ve heard this complaint about Occupy groups, anarchists, aboveground direct action groups, you name it.
Groups can overcome that by putting women in positions of leadership and creating secure, uncompromised spaces for them to do their work. I like to reflect on the multi-cultural resistance to the Burmese military dictatorship, which is also a good example of a combined above- and underground effort, of militant and non-violent tactics. The indigenous people of Burma traditionally held women in positions of respect within their cultures, so they had an advantage in building that into their resistance movements, but there’s no reason we couldn’t imitate that anywhere. Moreover, if there are going to be sustainable and just cultures in the future, women are going to be playing critical roles in forming and running them, so men should be doing everything possible to advocate for their absolute human rights.
As for strategy, it’s a waste of risk-taking for someone to cut down billboards or burn the paint off bulldozers. It’s important not to equate willingness with strategy, or radicalism and militancy with intelligence. For example, I just noticed an oil exploration subcontractor has opened an office in my town. Bad news, right? I had a fleeting wish to smash their windows, maybe burn the place down. That’ll teach ‘em, they’ll take us seriously then. But it wouldn’t do anything, only net the company an insurance settlement they’d rebuild with and reinforce the image of militant activists as mindless, dangerous thugs.
If I were underground, I’d at least take the time to choose a much more costly and hard-to-replace target. I’d do everything I could to coordinate an attack that would make it harder for the company to recover and continue doing business. And I’d only do these things after I had a better understanding of the industry and its overall effects, and a wider-focused examination of how that industry falls into the mechanism of civilization itself.
By widening the scope further, you see that ending oil and gas development might better be approached from an aboveground stance—by community rights initiatives, for example, that have outlawed fracking from New York to Texas to California. That seems to stand a much better chance of being effective, and can be part of a still wider strategy to end fossil fuel extraction altogether, which would also require militant tactics. You have to make room for everything, any tactic that has a chance of working, and begin your evaluation there.
To use the Oak Flat copper mine example, now the mine is that much closer to happening, and the people working against it have to reappraise what they have available. That particular issue involves indigenous sacred sites, so how might that be respectfully addressed, and employed in fighting the mine aboveground? Might there be enough people to stop it with civil disobedience? Is there any legal recourse? If there isn’t, how might an underground cell appraise it? Are there any transportation bottlenecks to target, any uniquely expensive equipment? How does timing fit in? How about market conditions—hit them when copper prices are down, maybe? Target the parent company or its other subsidiaries? What are the company’s financial resources?
An underground needs a strategy for long-term success and a decision-making mechanism that evaluates other actions. Then they can make more tightly focused decisions about tactics, abilities, resources, timing, and coordinated effort. The French Resistance to the Nazis couldn’t invade Berlin, but they sure could dynamite train tracks. You wouldn’t want to sabotage the first bulldozer you came across in the woods; you’d want to know who it belonged to, if it mattered, and that you weren’t going to get caught. Maybe it belongs to a habitat restoration group, who can say? It doesn’t do any good to put a small logging contractor out of business, and it doesn’t hurt a big corporation to destroy machinery that is inexpensive, so those questions need to be answered beforehand. I think successful underground strikes must be mostly about planning; they should never, never be about impulse.
TS: There are a lot of folks out there who support the use of underground action and sabotage in defense of Earth, but for any number of reasons—family commitments, physical limitations, and so on—can’t undertake that kind of action themselves. What do you think they can do to support those willing and able to engage in militant action?
MC: Aboveground people need to advocate underground action, so those who are able to be underground have some sort of political platform. Not to promote the IRA or its tactics (like bombing nightclubs), but its political wing of Sinn Fein is a good example. I’ve heard a lot of objections to the idea of advocating but not participating in underground actions, that there’s some kind of “do as I say, not as I do” hypocrisy in it, but that reflects a misunderstanding of resistance movements, or the requirements of militancy in general. Any on-the-ground combatant needs backup; it’s just the way it is. And remember that being aboveground doesn’t guarantee you any safety. In fact, if the movement becomes effective, it’s the aboveground people most vulnerable to harm, because they’re going to be well known. In that sense, it’s safer to be underground. Think of the all the outspoken people branded as intellectuals and rounded up by the Nazis.
The next most important support is financial and material, so they can have some security if they’re arrested. When environmentalists were fighting logging in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island in the 1990s, Paul Watson (of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society) offered to pay the legal defense of anyone caught tree spiking. Legal defense funds and on-call pro-bono lawyers come immediately to mind, but I’m sure that could be expanded upon. Knowing that someone is going to help if something horrible happens, combatants can take more initiative, can be more able to engineer effective actions.
We hope there won’t be any prisoners, but if there are, they must be supported too. They can’t just be forgotten after a month. As I mentioned before, even getting letters in jail is a huge morale booster. If prisoners have families, it’s going to make a big difference for them to know that their loved ones aren’t alone and that they will have some sort of aboveground material support. This is part of what we mean when we talk about a culture of resistance.
TS: You’ve participated in a wide range of actions, spanning the spectrum from traditional legal appeals to sabotage. With this unique perspective, what do you see as being the most promising strategy for the environmental movement?
MC: We need more of everything, more of whatever we can assemble. There’s no denying that a lot of perfectly legal mainstream tactics can work well. We can’t litigate our way to sustainability any more than we can sabotage our way to sustainability; but for the people who are able to sue the enemy, that’s what they should be doing. Those who don’t have access to the courts (which is most everyone) need to find other roles. An effective movement will be a well-organized movement, willing to confront power, knowing that everything is at stake.
Decisive Ecological Warfare is the only global strategy that I know of. It lays out clear goals and ways of arranging above- and underground groups based on historical examples of effective movements. If would-be activists are feeling unsure, this might be a way for them to get started, but I’m sure other plans can emerge with time and experience. DEW is just a starting point.
Remember the hardest times are in the beginning, when you’re making inevitable mistakes and going through abrupt learning curves. When I first joined Deep Green Resistance, I was very uneasy about it because I still felt burned out from the ‘90s struggles. What I’ve discovered is that real strength and endurance is founded in humility and respect. I’ve learned a lot from others in the group, some of whom are half my age and younger, and that’s a humbling experience. I never really understood what a struggle it is for women, either, in radical movements or the culture at large; my time in DGR has brought that into focus.
Look at the trans controversy; here are males asking to subordinate women’s experiences and safe spaces so they can feel comfortable. It’s hard for civilized men to imagine relationships that aren’t based on the dominant-submissive model of civilization, and I think that’s what the issue is really about—not phobia, not exclusionary politics, but rather role-playing that’s all about identity. Male strength traditionally comes from arrogance and false pride, which naturally leads to insecurity, fear, and a need to constantly assert an upper hand, a need to be right. A much more secure stance is to recognize the power of the earth, and allow ourselves to serve that power, not to pretend to understand or control it.
TS: We agree that time is not on our side. What do you think is on our side?
MC: Three things: first, the planet wants to live. It wants biological diversity, abundance, and above all topsoil, and that’s what will provide any basis for life in the future. I think humans want to live, too; and more than just live, but be satisfied in living well. Civilization offers only a sorry substitute for living well to only a small minority.
The second is that activists now have a distinct advantage in that it’s easier to get information anonymously. The more that can be safely done with computers, including attacking computer systems, the better—but even if it’s just finding out whose machinery is where, how industrial systems are built and laid out, that’s much easier to come by. On the other hand the enemy has a similar advantage in surveillance and investigation, so security is more crucial than ever.
The third is that the easily accessible resources that empires need to function are all but gone. There will never be another age of cheap oil, iron ore mountains, abundant forest, and continents of topsoil. Once the infrastructure of civilized humanity collapses or is intentionally broken, it can’t really be rebuilt. Then humans will need to learn how to live in much smaller-scale cultures based on what the land can support and how justly they treat one another. That will be no utopia, of course, but it’s still humanity’s best option. The fight we’re now engaged in is over what living material will be available for those new, localized cultures—and more importantly, the larger nonhuman biological communities—to sustain themselves. What polar bears, salmon, and migratory birds need, we will also need. Our futures are forever linked.
Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a bulletin dedicated to promoting and normalizing underground resistance, as well as dissecting and studying its forms and implementation, including essays and articles about underground resistance, surveys of current and historical resistance movements, militant theory and praxis, strategic analysis, and more. We welcome you to contact us with comments, questions, or other ideas at undergroundpromotion@deepgreenresistance.org
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 30, 2013 | Obstruction & Occupation
By Agence France-Presse
Anti-whaling activist group Sea Shepherd said Wednesday it had intercepted the Japanese fleet in its annual Southern Ocean hunt “before a single harpoon has been fired”.
Sea Shepherd claims to have saved the lives of 4,000 whales over the past eight whaling seasons with ever-greater campaigns of harassment against the Japanese harpoon fleet.
The militant environmentalist group said the Brigitte Bardot, a former ocean racer, had intercepted the harpoon ship Yushin Maru No. 3 in the Southern Ocean at a relatively northern latitude.
“Given that the large concentrations of whales are found further south, closer to the Antarctic continent where there are high concentrations of krill, this would indicate that they have not yet begun whaling,” said Brigitte Bardot captain Jean Yves Terlain.
Former Australian politician Bob Brown, who assumed leadership of the anti-whaling campaign from fugitive Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson due to legal issues earlier this month, said it was welcome news.
“It is likely that we have intercepted these whale poachers before a single harpoon has been fired,” said Brown.
Watson is wanted by Interpol after skipping bail last July in Germany, where he was arrested on Costa Rican charges relating to a high-seas confrontation over shark finning in 2002.
He is on board Sea Shepherd’s main ship, Steve Irwin, but has stepped down as skipper and has vowed to abide by a US court ruling in December banning the group from physically confronting any vessel in the Japanese fleet.
Read more from The Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/29/anti-whaling-group-intercepts-japanese-fleet/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 5, 2012 | Property & Material Destruction, Strategy & Analysis
It is important to note that this analysis and perspective is not meant to be authoritative on, nor instructive towards the objectives, organization and operation of Agenda 21; those are always their own to determine, as they see fit. This is definitively an outsider’s perspective, gleaned from publicly available information, and is undoubtedly lacking insight in various ways. Apologies for such inadequacies.
*DGR SUPPORTS THE EFFORTS OF AGENDA 21 AND ALL MILITANT DIRECT DISMANTLING OF INDUSTRIAL INFRASTRUCTURE*
It doesn’t take much to sink a ship.
The physics of buoyancy are somewhat precarious; thousands of pounds of iron & steel, carefully shaped to stay balanced and afloat. The smallest rupture in the hull can drag all the sophisticated design and calculations to cold and watery depths. In some instances, one may not even need to create a rupture, so much as expand existing weak-points—like the salt water intake valve—to submerge a vessel.
That simple technique has become the calling card for a mysterious organization in Norway, which has been targeting the country’s whaling fleet since 1996. They’re called Agenda 21, the name being a reference to the 1992 UN Conference on the Environment in Rio de Janeiro, which proposed an international “sustainable development” program under the name Agenda 21. To date, they’ve claimed responsibility for the sinking of 6 commercial whaling ships.
The style has been more or less identical in each of the attacks: the group scouts a ship, boards at night, and opens the salt water intake valve in the engine room. They’ve been more successful in some instances than in others; in a 2010 attack, a ship alarm alerted the captain the ship was flooding, and the sabotage was discovered before the vessel had fully sunk. Nonetheless, they’ve been engaged in a campaign of underground direct action for close to two decades, and have maintained effective security; to the police who have investigated the actions, Agenda 21 is as mysterious today as it was when it emerged in 1996.
The story of Agenda 21 goes back to before the genesis of the group itself, to 1986, when the International Whaling Commission set a moratorium on commercial whaling around the world. Norway objected to the ban, and international politics being the absurdity that they are, suddenly the rule didn’t apply to the Scandinavian country. Paul Watson, of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, then threatened to sink any Norwegian vessel that violated the moratorium. The Sea Shepherds made good on their promise too: in 1992, they sank the whaler Nybraena, and two years later in 1994, they sank the Senet.
Agenda 21 (A21) is said to have taken over the effort in 1996, when they sank the Elin-Toril; it is unclear whether this was a coordinated take-over of the campaign by local Sea Shepherd supporters, or figurative language, but Watson and the Sea Shepherds say they don’t know anyone involved in A21.
The next attack came two years later, in 1998. The whaling ship Morild was scuttled, and A21 claimed responsibility, and was credited with the action.
There weren’t any subsequent attacks for a number of years, until August of 2007, when the group sunk the Willassen Senior in Svolvaer, causing more than £2,000,000 in damage, bankrupting the whaler.
Less than two years later, Agenda 21 struck again. In an effort to pre-empt the whalers, the group sunk the Skarbakk, a commercial whaling vessel docked in Henningsvaer in late April, shortly before the whaling season began in 2009. This action saw a marked increase in media coverage, especially foreign media, with reports, articles, and the group’s communique being published on alternative websites in the U.K. and the U.S. The Sea Shepherds also issued a press release praising the action and Agenda 21; Paul Watson compared the individuals involved to those who resisted Nazi occupation of Norway 60 years prior, and added, “The Agenda 21 team did an excellent job: no injuries, no evidence, no mistakes, and no more whaling. These are results that we can appreciate and admire.”
In A21’s own words, “We came to Henningsvaer. We saw the Skarbakk. We sank the bastard.”
The 2009 sinking of the Skarbakk began a string of more frequent attacks. Only a year after the action in Henningsvaer, A21 struck again; “Norway announced an increased quota of minke whales so we decided to increase our quota of sunken whalers.”
The target was the Sofie, docked in Svolvaer (only a “stone’s throw” from where the Willassen Senior had been when it fell prey to A21 in 2007). On the evening of April 2nd, members of Agenda 21 snuck on board the vessel, and (according to the communique issued afterwards) “[e]ntry was made through the wheelhouse. The engine room was accessed by removing the locked door from its frame using axe and crowbar. Two sea valves were opened fully submerging the engine and electrical systems.”
Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, an alarm alerted the ship’s owner who was asleep in his nearby home, and the fire department arrived before the vessel was entirely submerged. However, both the engine room and electrical equipment were put securely to rest under several feet of water. Apparently undeterred, the owner vowed to repair the damage and be hunting whales in less than a month, but whether or not he succeeded in his sadistic intentions is unconfirmed.
The repeated actions have certainly hurt the industry, and after the Sofie attack, the head of one whaling organization complained to the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, “It is outrageous that this can be done year after year without anyone being caught!”
There was a final attack, in October of 2011. The whaling boat Onsoyvaeringen was found on the morning of October 6th, with its bow in the air. The night before, Agenda 21 boarded the ship and opened repurposed one of the valves to let water into the ship, rather than keeping it out. In the communique issued after the action by A21, Onsoyvaeringen was said to have been the last whaling ship in Oslofjord. The statement also indicated the continued resolve of A21 to bring a permanent end to whaling in Norway by any means necessary and to continued escalation, reiterating that any vessels planning on whaling would be targets and that as Norway increases the Minke whale quota, A21 will step up its attacks.
Agenda 21 remains at large, as it has been for 16 years. It is difficult to talk about their organization and function, because they’ve done such an impeccable job of keeping any knowledge of themselves—other than their name and their actions—secret. However, there are still lessons to be learned and new insights to be gleaned in regards to strategic underground action.
To operate successfully for so long demonstrate an undeniable conviction as an organization, but also a careful patience, a keenness that ensures action is effective rather than simply self-actualizing and serves as a counterweight to the (often) blind urgency that strong conviction can fuel.
However, others have questioned whether Agenda 21 has been effective in the fight to end commercial whaling, or whether the organization has been just another group using glorified tactics but making little material difference. Critics point to reports that the numbers of whales killed in the summer season haven’t declined, or that there is a surplus of whaling ships and simply too few processing centers for the meat.
These are important considerations, and critical reflection on ourselves and the effectiveness of our particular strategies is absolutely vital if our movements are to be successful. This is true whether our goal is to end whaling in a particular region, restore grasslands, destroy institutional racism, or dismantle civilization.
A simple breakdown of Agenda 21’s strategy (as I interpret it based on their actions and their public statements) is that at the core, they are fighting a battle of attrition (this seems to be the unconsciously preferred strategy of most activists—liberals and radicals alike—and is a separate discussion in itself), in which they hope to wear down the ability of their enemy (the Norwegian commercial whaling fleet) to operate. In order to be successful in a war of attrition, one must damage and deplete the enemy’s resources quicker than the enemy can replace them. Eventually, this drawdown reaches a critical point, and the enemy loses the ability to function as a force. This leaves us with two important factors to consider: first, how A21 draws down the resources of the commercial fleet, and secondly, the speed with which the fleet is able to replace those resources.
Obviously, A21’s preferred tactic is sinking commercial whaling vessels. The technique which they use to do this is simple, and seems relatively simple and to cost them little (in terms of time, technical knowledge, money, etc.). However, there are some additional, smaller ways in which the sinking of these ships may sap the resources and capacity of the whaling fleet: the attacks have seriously raised insurance premiums for whaling boats, and may discourage investors from fronting the capital for new whaling ships. They’re both smaller, and perhaps less directly measurable effects, but they’re impacts A21 has mentioned explicitly in their communiques.
As for the fleet itself, the most important fact to note is that the entire Norwegian fleet consists of less than two dozen ships: in 2012, only 18 ships participated in the whale hunt, one less than last year. This small fleet-size makes the loss of a ship a significant blow for the industry, much more serious and detrimental than a smashed window or graffiti on a storefront would be, and creates a (rare) situation that lends itself to a strategy of attrition.
It’s not necessarily possible to draw a clear line on whether Agenda 21 is definitively effective or not. Given that the number of whales hunted hasn’t significantly declined or changed, it would be hard to say A21 is close to bringing commercial whaling in Norway to a close. But at the same time, we cannot deny that there are 7 fewer vessels hunting for whales each summer due to A21. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that the A21 strategy has very real potential, and for Agenda 21 to ultimately be successful in winning their war of attrition against the whaling industry will require that they escalate the frequency of their actions to impose a fatal (for the industry) drawdown. If the reports of bottlenecks at the over-stressed processing facilities are true, they would represent another vulnerable node. If anything were to happen to those processing facilities resulting in their being temporarily or permanently shut down, the difficulties facing the industry wound undoubtedly be compounded, and the system as a whole would be further disrupted.
In any case, the story of Agenda 21 is a hopeful and promising one. And like all stories of resistance, it’s one that needs to be told. History is full of stories of people, even if only a few of them, organizing to find collective strength and shatter systems of abusive and destructive power that only months before seemed invincible. Those stories are taking place right now, around the world. We need to listen to them, learn from them, find our connection and meaning in them, and share them. We need to tell these stories of resistance, because resistance is a story; whether of mysterious folks scuttling ships on a spring evening so Minke whales can swim free, or Indian women training each other in self-defense and dealing retribution to abusers and batterers, or indigenous and Chicano neighborhoods marching on and scattering a Columbus Day march, or masked groups torching transmission substations to blackout the death culture of civilization: it’s a story larger than ourselves. We need to tell those stories, and then live them out.
Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a biweekly bulletin dedicated to promoting and normalizing underground resistance, as well as dissecting and studying its forms and implementation, including essays and articles about underground resistance, surveys of current and historical resistance movements, militant theory and praxis, strategic analysis, and more. We welcome you to contact us with comments, questions, or other ideas at undergroundpromotion@deepgreenresistance.org
