Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Breaking news – Greenpeace have stormed an oil rig being towed to Seattle.
According to The Guardian;
Six Greenpeace activists protesting Arctic offshore drilling on Monday boarded a drill rig as it was transported across the Pacific Ocean toward Seattle, where it will be staged for drilling on Shell leases in Alaska waters.
The 400ft (122 meter) Polar Pioneer, owned by Transocean Ltd, was on board a heavy-lift vessel about 750 miles (1,206 km) northwest of Hawaii when the activists approached in inflatable boats and used climbing gear to get on board, Greenpeace spokesman Travis Nichols said.
They plan to unfurl a banner in protest of Arctic offshore drilling but have no plans to interfere with the ship’s navigations, he said.
…
Shell USA spokeswoman Kelly Op De Weegh said by email that Greenpeace protesters illegally boarded the vessel, called the Blue Marlin, jeopardising their safety and that of the crew.
Greenpeace appear to have stepped up activity against arctic petroleum interests recently, with an attempt on 25th March this year to board a Russian oil tanker Mikhail Ulyanov, while it was docked in Hamburg. This is not the first time Greenpeace have targeted the Mikhail Ulyanov – Greenpeace also targeted the tanker in May 2014, while it was delivering oil to Rotterdam.
Greenpeace seem happy to conduct protests against all parties operating in the Arctic, including Russian businesses – though so far Greenpeace appear to be avoiding Russian controlled territory, presumably to prevent a repeat of the 2013 Arctic Sunrise fiasco.
They should be arrested and jailed.
Their real motive is to enable the Western World to have available affordable and ample energy. They have been set up by Soviet/KGB to undermine/weaken the Western World, and they do a great job at that. Put them in jail NOW.
“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.”
— John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001
I bet they drove their cars and rode in a motorized boat to get aboard the rig.
Unable
their next move? they will start beheading the climate denialists apostates and put the video’s on tube for the entertainment of the ‘settled science crowd’. watch your back
The conservatives are far better armed than the progressives.
Nope. The progressives have nuclear weapons.
@ozric101
How’s manning the drones right now? Would it be the one with the Nobel Peace Prize?
Please explain at length and in coherent detail.
The natural world is a dangerous place. Nature has been eliminating inferior genes from the pool for as long as life has existed. The pusillanimous among us believe utopia to be a world free of danger, where endless laws and regulations make it a safe place for everyone. This is contrary to nature and impedes the natural cleansing and refining of the gene pool. Some of us prefer fewer regulations and more personal freedom, allowing nature to take it’s course. The liberal greenpeace genes would be quickly eliminated from the pool, as nature intended. Hoping for a return to the natural order.
I’m with you on that score, sheer piracy!
In Yuma prison, with 19th century- pre fossil fuel- facilities
In a cell with a windturbine sunward of its window. That should drive them barking mad in a few weeks.
Actually, they should be considered potential pirates and taken out by a marksman.
Just shoot the Dinghy. If you can determine which is the dinghiest
I was thinking similar. What if those were hard core terrorists hiding under the Greenpeace banner? If it had been then they would have easily seized control of the vessel.
Actually, I think the correct move would be to leave them on the rig and keep towing. How they handle things when they get up in the Arctic is their problem. Oh, and by the way, bill them each cab fare for the ride.
Or worse yet leave them on until they get to their present destination, Seattle. That’ll real teach them a lesson.
And jam their communications.
It’s already certain they will have better luck with the US that they had with the Russians.
It would cost us taxpayers a lot less money if they simply hire some funny looking bald guys to do a piece of work.
They should have been thrown off the platform out at sea
UNITED STATES V. ANDERSON.
[10 Blatch. 226.]1
CRIMINAL LAW—BOARDING VESSEL WITHOUT
PERMISSION—BOARDING-HOUSE
RUNNER—FOREIGN VESSELS.
1. Section 62 of the act of June 7th, 1872 (17 Stat. 276),
making it an indictable offence to go on board of a ship
about to arrive at the place of her destination, before her
actual arrival, and before she has been completely moored,
without permission of the master, is a valid enactment.
2. The offence is indictable, under section 62, and is
punishable, on conviction, by the imposition of a penalty
not exceeding $200, and imprisonment until the payment
thereof, not exceeding six months.
3. It is not necessary for the United States, in such a
prosecution, to prove that the prisoner was not in the
United States’ service, or was not duly authorized by law
to go on board of the vessel.
https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F.Cas/0024.f.cas/0024.f.cas.0812.pdf
That is an act of piracy. The Greenpeace individuals should have been repelled with physical force, including all alternatives even unto death. No need for some nebulous authority to arrest and jail them
Hypocrites
They used inflatables which are fabric that comes from petroleum raw material. Dugout canoes are sustainable. If they are rigged with wooden spars and cotton sails. No comment on the stinky outboard motor.
If they are in international waters, should they be reclassified as pirates?
I believe the term is piracy. They could be shot out of hand for it. Stupid people.
They could but it’s good that they aren’t.
Children playing dangerous games are still children.
dead people that played dangerous games are people too.
but they are still dead as they should be.
Calling full grown adult pirates “children” as a reason for excuse – is no excuse at all. Young adults must learn the meaning of consequences. Playing dangerous games must have dangerous consequences and such people should not be shielded from them. Reality applies to the young and old alike. Risk applies to the fool as well as the wise. GK
These are NOT children; they are adults. These are NOT games; they are CRIMES.
Their attitude is that of children.
Is that worth the death penalty? Do they know they are criminals?
We should be careful of bloodlust. Passing permission for shooting people is not pleasant.
They are NOT children, they are fanatics and unless they are stopped their actions will become more extreme. Once you have conceded their immunity from prosecution the next step could be scuttling the vessel.
Assumedly, none of them were minors. Regardless of which, you’re still allowed to defend yourself from feral children.
But the problem here is that you have a collection of individuals that are intentionally setting out, with malice aforethought, to victimize people. That’s not known as ‘childish’ but as ‘conspiracy,’ ‘criminal,’ or ‘socipathic.’
I agree with the others that have said that these people that did this are not children. When confronted with a rabid dog the “humane” thing to do is put it down as quickly as possible, why is it any less “humane” to put these “people” with a rabid mentality down? Should everyone wait until their irresponsible and illegal action cause someone else to die or perhaps cause a huge disaster? Whether or not they “know” their actions are actually within the definition of piracy is irrelevant as adults they should be held fully accountable for their actions and for piracy the fullest extent is death on the spot. I like to think of it as the circle of life… the pirates who happen to be rabid environmentalists get to give back to nature by being chum for the ocean food chain, with the side benefit of those particular “stupid genes” are removed from the gene pool of humanity.
/rant off
Cheers,
Joe
MCourtney says:
Their attitude is that of children. Is that worth the death penalty?
No. But that isn’t the point. The point is that an example or two would take the wind out of their sails.
Do they know they are criminals?
Without a doubt. But they don’t care, since they’ve been given a free pass by the authorities.
We should be careful of bloodlust.
Agreed. Just set an example or two. Of course, it would be far better and more effective to simply eliminate their tax-free status. OUCH!!
That kind of sums up that generation. The fact that 20 somthings still act and think like children is truly sad. Time to start demanding more!
If they don’t know that they are doing something illegal, then they are criminally stupid and need to be locked up before they hurt themselves or someone else.
Regardless, they are quite aware that what they are doing is illegal, they just don’t care, because their “cause” justifies breaking laws.
If they really did it as agents of the organisation, that organisation should indeed lose its tax-free status for several legal reasons and its directors be held accountable. Where there is unavoidable cost to the directors should be held responsible.
If they really were just joyriding by far the best way to handle it is to maintain silence and put them ashore for trespassing at the first convenient port which might be in Eastern Russia.
@M Courtney
Indeed. Many of the replies propose hugely disproportionate responses to this “storming” by half a dozen imbeciles with a banner. Having these fools assassinated is an insane proposition.
MCourtney,
Rather naive labelling the activists as children. Or perhaps playing word games to downplay the seriousness of their actions. They are legally adults and therefore responsible for their actions. And as ferd has indicated above, their action of boarding the ship appears to clearly be in violation of existing statute.
For the rest of you calling them pirates and terrorists – grow up. You are also adults and should comment as such. At most they are guilty of criminal tresspass. Hardly a crime requiring the application of deadly force.
I saw on a news program the film shot from the greenpeace boat. The first thing I notice was the tattoos on the idiots clamming the ropes. I read the following from a “Fortune 500” Company employment sheet,
Tattoos, 76% of all prisoners worldwide, have Tattoos before the go to prison, 95%+ when they come out, to go to prison you must be stupid or have done a stupid thing, our Company dose not employee stupid people, when taking the medical the Doctor will advise us if there are any tattoos present, stupid is stupid !,
If we start killing people for being idiots, it will certainly take care of the population problem.
My point is; advocating leads to action and it never stops with one side because the radicals on both sides feed off the radicals on the other side. They could be shot for piracy, but they shouldn’t be and we shouldn’t advocate it. We don’t want them to become “climate related deaths” and we all know they would be characterized as such.
There are no “climate related deaths”, only “deaths due to climate related policy”
I’m sure the spin-masters would ignore that distinction.
I’m uncertain as why this notion shouldn’t be considered ‘concern trolling.’ I see no reason a person “shouldn’t” defend themselves and their property. Doubly so when the only possible police response is on the other side of a small ocean.
Besides, if they were shot, it wouldn’t be ‘climate related,’ but a case of ‘environmental lead poisoning.’
The death penalty seems rather extreme in this case. Something along the lines of hooliganism seems more appropriate. Also, did you call me a troll?
As always, its necessary to qualify this with IANAL but apparently this is NOT piracy (as much as I might wish it was). From http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/P/PiracyMaritimeLaw.aspx:
Any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends…
Its that “committed for private ends” that makes things shaky, IMHO. GP can argue that they are acting for public or civil ends or some such.
That’s not to say they’re behaving legally, it just means they can’t be strung by the yardarm (or what ever the prescribed method of deal with pirates is these days).
IANAL
Also, I am not any of the other Brian’s (IANATOB).
Seems the definition of Piracy has been constrained quite a bit by the courts.
I’m with M Courtney on shooting anyone. The title of this thread is supposed to be outrage that climate zealots would suggest incarceration, beheading, etc. etc for sceptics. The shoot-em-all rhetoric only gives credence to the clime syndicate’s characterization of sceptics as right wing, gun toting, antediluvians.
Wasn’t it Napoleon B. who said to never interupt your enemy while he is making mistakes.
Offer them no way off of the rig – then charge them for food and water…
And suspect there’s a fire, so turn the fire hoses on them.
I suspect that such a hosing would be the first bath many of these clowns have had in months.
I disagree. They voluntarily boarded the vessel they should have thought about the consequences!
Better yet. Offer them no way off the rig ….. without food and water. Then they would get a first hand experience of what a world without petroleum would be like.
If anyone knows of a protest mission to hijack a convoy of low-loaders carrying several 300 foot worse-than-useless wind turbine columns (plus their enormous blades), then please count me in. I guess we need to intercept them before they reach the giant windfarm site at all costs.
I wonder what Greenpeace would have to say about this?
There are some lovely little ports on the Kamchatka Peninsula with a local constabulary.
Discussing this with other in Johannesburg. The proper answer is humane treatment, no publicity, no fuss, and drop them in the nearest port as they sail to the Arctic Ocean. That is likely to be a Russian Island or mainland port.
Russia is no longer bothered by Greenpeace boardings after showing their opinion fairly clearly. I believe China would also know how to deal with people climbing over the side. We don’t hear much about Greenpeace storming Chinese vessels and boarding them ‘in protest’. I wonder why that is.
Welcome on board!
Rooms £25,000/night/person (no shower, bring your own pillow).
Why aren’t they storming Fukushima??? Seriously, it is the worst thing for animals in the oceans at this point.
Really? How is that?
Because of all of the additional fossil-fuel pollution being spewed into the atmosphere as a result of Japan’s hysterical decision to shut down its nuclear fleet.
Fukushima continues to make news – article the other day reported radiation measured off U.S.
coast – but hardly worth mentioning – the scientists said a person would have to swim in the ocean
for 6 hours a day for a long period of time to receive less radiation than from a dental xray.
They measured some cesium radiation and as said you’d have to swim around in 4C sea water for a year to get the same dose as ONE tooth X-ray
There hasn’t been any issues with radiation sickness, nor do they expect any.
http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/en/pressrels/2013/unisinf475.html
VIENNA, 31 May (UN Information Service) – “Radiation exposure following the nuclear accident at Fukushima-Daiichi did not cause any immediate health effects. It is unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future among the general public and the vast majority of workers,” concluded the 60 th session of the Vienna-based United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effect of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR).
Radiation below the level that causes acute radiation sickness is not shown to be harmful, but rather beneficial, as it activates cellular repair mechanisms.
Learn about people who live near natural deposits of monazite, or incidents such as this one in Taiwan:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708/
Radiation hormesis:
Radiation hormesis (also called radiation homeostasis) is the hypothesis that low doses of ionizing radiation (within the region of and just above natural background levels) are beneficial, stimulating the activation of repair mechanisms that protect against disease, that are not activated in absence of ionizing radiation. The reserve repair mechanisms are hypothesized to be sufficiently effective when stimulated as to not only cancel the detrimental effects of ionizing radiation but also inhibit disease not related to radiation exposure (see hormesis).[1][2][3][4] This counter-intuitive hypothesis has captured the attention of scientists and public alike in recent years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
Not sue what I wrote that caused my first comment to go to moderation. Moderators, can you tell me why?
[Sorry, it’s probably WordPress. Often we don’t know why either. ~mod.]
emsnews:
You have been directed to this well-informed article about the truth about Fukushima before. This time, try reading it.
Quote from below article:
“At Fukushima a couple of weeks ago, some mildly radioactive water leaked into the sea. The volume of water was about equal to a dozen home swimming pools. In the ocean this really is a ‘drop in the ocean.’ The radiation content was so little that people could swim in the ocean without the slightest cause for concern. Any ocean naturally contains some radioactivity all of the time anyway. ***
All that is left is a bit of radioactive Tritium. *** The Tritium heavy water is very mildly radioactive and is found normally in the sea all over the world all of the time. *** ”
Source: http://www.cfact.org/2013/10/12/physicist-there-was-no-fukushima-nuclear-disaster/
Who the hell is swimming in the “ocean” off Japan at this time of the year?
Maybe in June to September, but not early April. It would freeze the balls off a billiard table..
By the way, the people most regularly exposed to gamma radiation are long haul (high altitude) air crews – not people who work in uranium concentrators, enrichment plants nor with reactors.
Red granite counters and floors tend to be above background radioactivity. A few would be ore grade at a few hundred dollars a lb U3O8. I was in the stone business 40 years ago and I may have had something to do with present awareness on this subject. Testing revealed that virtually all red granites are detectably radioactive but a few are perhaps of some concern. This was basically a secret until a few decades ago. Of course people get an exaggerated view of this sort of thing. The most beautiful blood red granite from India proved to be quite radioactive and you could get quite a tattoo of clicks from a geiger counter approaching a building in Ottawa, Canada. I had thought that it might be a good exploration target in the area where it comes from. Anyway, the entire Canadian Shield is predominantly Precambrian granite.and a lot of people live long healthy lives on it. I suspect that the amount in question is probably good for you.
You are dealing with a true believer. Facts don’t matter.
He knows that radiation, at any level, is DANGEROUS, and that’s all it wants to know.
The older parts of the city of Aberdeen are built of Rubislaw Granite. We looked at thin sections of this in my Geology classes. The uranium is incorporated in crystals of Zircon (zirconium silicate), as Uranium and Zirconium behave similarly in silicate minerals. The zircons can be seen as inclusions inside crystals of biotite (a mica) and you can see radiation damage around the zircon. Neat.
Just remember that it has taken about 470 million years to generate this effect.
@ Gary Pearse…that is very interesting. I enjoy and value these bits of information and wisdom shared on this site.
Since Fukushima is much better than ex-Soviet Union around Chernobyl 30 years after ‘the thanksgiving’, I’d swim at Fukushima any day if you pay the tickets.
Better ask for a wet suit as well. It’s cold there this time of year.
But you don’t need an axe to make a hole for a dip. Here you need.
Where is your facts behind the claim? Radiation past a certain point is dangerous. if you’re afraid of Fukushima hurting sea life, you better not fly. The amount of radiation you will receive is much worse, but still safe.
Are you still trying to push that old lie?
There isn’t enough radiation leaking from Fukushima to endanger anyone living outside it’s walls, much less hundreds or thousands of miles away.
I am in agreement on this one. Let them storm the broken reactor vessel to prove how dangerous it is.
And they’re still puzzled about “The Pause”? Have they ever considered their own contribution to it?
What fuel does the Greenpeace boat run on?
Pixie tears and unicorn farts.
my exact thought…good one mate!
the standard AGW preferred fuel – unicorn farts
/snark
So unicorn flatulence isn’t a GHG?
Who knew….
Jimmy Haigh asks what fuel does the Green-pr!cks boat run on?
Judging by the smell of excrement that was described manifesting itself around the occupation areas of Transocean Spitsbergen’s decks after she was boarded by vermin in the Barents Sea last year, their boats probably run on all-natural, manure derived, methane. Apparently if you’re a professional protestor, it’s preferable to sit in a pile of your own jobbies than allow it to pollute the pristine ocean, the way whale poo does.
Still, the added bonus is that when the ship’s fuel tanks run low they can just start talking their politics (which to say, they can stand around dribbling sh!t) in order to replenish at sea.
Dyrewulf says “…charge them for food and water…”
Charging them for food might be difficult; they’ll have brought a month’s supply of tofu, soy milk and space cookies aboard with them. Once that’s run out and the media get bored of the sideshow, they’ll leave peacefully, having expensively delayed the operation for a few weeks (among other things, once the filthy grots eventually sod off, the rig will have to be deloused to make it fit for normal people to work on).
It’s the peanut butter and bananas they run out of; high demand during stress.
They were going to try an alternative power source, but the Rainbow-voltaic cells from Solyndra kept cracking and failing.
What on earth do they use to power that big ship they have?
Diesel, of course. What else?
They can’t stop an oil company without their product, now can they?
Twin engines I believe.
Twice the pollution.
All the better to get from one photo op to the next, quickly.
In addition to the activists who illegally boarded the ship, they should likewise prosecute those who help fund the Greenpeace criminals.
Frank K suggests prosecuting the Greenpeace crooks.
And you’re right, it would be the most effective way to respond. Once the side-show is over Shell’s accountants should tally up the cost incurred by having a rig, and in this case a heavy-lift vessel, tied up by Greenpeace’s useful idiots and then sue for the losses incurred; since the Polar Pioneer probably costs between a quarter of a million and half a million beer tokens per day just to sit around, a delay of even a week or two will quickly become expensive.
Sadly, I doubt ‘big oil’ has the nerve to get financially assertive with these gobshites on account of the storm in a teacup that would undoubtedly be unleashed in the media to the chagrin of big-oil’s media relations people. One can also ponder whether it is possible to find a judge sane enough to find in favour of nasty big-oil should they sue a group who are legally considered a ‘charity’ (and you could bet that would be milked for all it’s worth).
@Erny72:
Remember that Hansen and a British (?) court already made a precident that PC Vandalism is legal… if you are on the Progressive Side you get topcover… See Hillary and Lerner for examples…
Yes. Read more here. It’s criminal these people get away with such blatant law breaking.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Kingsnorth_Power_Station_(Proposed)
Greenpeace is engaging in civil disobedience. I seriously disagree with their “cause”, but this seems like a good place to pose a question: do you believe civil disobedience is inherently wrong, or is their a time and place where it’s a moral imperative?
I believe that our Constitutional rights are under serious attack right now. Under this administration (and possibly the next), there are executive actions and laws on the books, and many more coming down the pike, that utterly disregard the Constitution. To put it bluntly, they want to criminalize many of our inherent freedoms.
At some point you will be breaking laws just trying to live in freedom. If you aren’t already.
Is it morally wrong to disobey any law? Not for me it’s not. I think we have a moral obligation to disobey unjust law.
A stunt like this seems to be a fairly dangerous form of civil disobedience. Granted Greenpeace seem to have ensured the activists conducting the stunt are skilled and well trained, but if anything goes wrong when conducting a high risk stunt like this, the lives of the crew could be endangered while trying to rescue the Greenpeace activists.
Look, I am not by any means apologizing or making excuses for Greenpeace. They are flat-out wrong in cause and action.
My point is that there is soon coming a time when all of us will need to decide whether to obey certain laws or not, as did Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. Actually, that time may be here already.
“Eustace Cranch
April 8, 2015 at 6:05 am
My point is that there is soon coming a time when all of us will need to decide whether to obey certain laws or not, as did Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. Actually, that time may be here already.”
Rosa and King broke laws, which were clearly racial and unjust, and the poor treatment of African Americans. Two very brave people during that time.
I don’t see how these Greenpeace “activists” are breaking ANY unjust laws and the poor treatment of anyone, in fact quite the opposite! (Yes, we know what their excuse is).
Patrick, I suspect Eustace is talking about regular people reaching that point, not Gang Green activists who already have.
It is not civil disobedience. It is piracy, whether they interfered with navigation or not.
Not piracy unless they try to take over the ship. Trespassing? Maybe. Pointless stunt? Probably
I would certainly not define them as pirates. However, they are definitely stowaways and trespassers …
w.
Willis, maybe they’re just hitchhiking to Seattle. Which suggests the crew of the lift vessel must be Democrats. 🙂
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/17/would-you-give-this-man-a-ride/
BrianK:
preying upon:
greenpiece activists have seized occupation of property that is not theirs upon the high seas.
greenpiece prevention, obstruction or delay of full and complete rig utilization will constitute damages.
The mere fact that activists known for their disregard of private or public property, have seized and are holding a rig hostage, means that no owner or lessee can trust the rig’s safety and utility until a full safety and functionality security check is performed. This certification is expensive in terms of time and costs.
greenpiece activists are not on a lark nor are they taking over a merry-go-round at a kindergarten playground.
1300 miles from Hawaii, whose constitution applies? It sounds like piracy in international water to me.
Not piracy. Check Article 101.
http://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/part7.htm
Re Brian
And causing economic harm to the owners is not depredation?
any delay causes economic harm, and their intent was to delay the use of the vessel.
generally there are 3 elements to piracy.
1: International waters — check
2: boarding from another vessel — check
3: intent to cause physical or economic harm to the ship, crew, passengers or cargo. — check
the only problem is that most nations have given up the death penalty for piracy.
Nations that can legally file charges.
Nation of registry — probably Bahamas or Panama
Nation of ownership
Nation capturing
Earl – You’re going to have a hard time proving #3. The definition of depredation is vague enough
cont: to have doubt, after reading the entire article and link, that the act intended anything other than publicity for their cause. That does not amount to depredation.
BrianK:
Under UN Article 101; the greenpiece pirate actions are clearly piracy.
Explicitly Article 101,
Also applicable are:
Geenpiece’s pirate actions places their culpable ships and gear up for seizure by any country if they’re on the open seas. Inside a country’s 200 mile navigational borders, most likely, they’re up for seizure by the country affected or their allies. Dumb as greenpiece may be, they’re not stupid enough to give Russia or other countries such an opening, greenpiece is most likely within USA or preferably Canadian waters. Canadian waters since a judge in the USA has already declared greenpiece actions as acts of piracy several years ago.
Childish actions or maturity does not make willing participants children; they are adults and deserve proper justice.
ATheoK –
Please explain to me what you think qualifies as:
“…any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation,…”
in their boarding.
Eustace Cranch
April 8, 2015 at 5:37 am
“Resist much, obey little.”
Walt Whitman
“Resist we much” Al Sharpton
Al Sharpton resists paying his personal taxes and business taxes. What he takes out of his employee’s paychecks has never made it to the IRS either.
Eugene WR Gallun
I agree we do have a moral obligation to disobey unjust law.
But does that apply here? I think not for two reasons.
1) This is not a case of trying to stop the rig – if they truly thought it was as dangerous as they say they do then they ought to sabotage it or scuttle it. This fails the test of serving a higher law. It isn’t doing anything important.
2) The impact of this act is to attack another private company’s freedom to go about their business – not to attack the force of law.
There seems to be a difference between resisting the imposition of controls on yourself and imposing your version of law on another – in a democracy at least.
Have they exhausted all other means of influencing the law before they start imposing their own rule by force? The oil company has permission to act as they are. Why did they not object to that permission? Or why do they now not accept that permissions has been granted by the will of the people expressed through the ballot box?
Is this really the time of last resort?
My conclusion is that this is a fund-raising stunt aimed at getting publicity. There is no higher motive than the mercenary.
M Courtenay,
Given that green peas should face the legal consequences of their illegal acts;
They are trying to stop the rig but they want to stop all rigs so they allow Coventry to be bombed.
They want to change The Law, that is the body of Law, whether that means repealing laws or enacting new ones. All of the laws we have, many of which we have no quarrel with, restrict somebody’s freedom.
Of course, the stunt is for publicity but that’s a means to the end of eliminating oil rigs so we can all live carefree under the swaying palms of paradise at just the right temperature. They’re trying to get us all to agree with them, for our own good.
How are they doing, so far?
Morning Eustace,
Seems to me there is a principled difference between testing a law you think is legally invalid, and breaking the law to get publicity for your cause. Those situations are easy to evaluate. The real problem, which you pose, is what do you do with a law that is legally valid, but unjust?
As for Greenpeace, they clearly are publicity hounds, and their behavior is, as others have pointed out, dangerous to themselves and others.
You disobey it.
No-one can tell you to be immoral or unjust. Following such a law would make you immoral or unjust – in your own eyes.
Of course, to maintain a stable society we must share our individual sovereignty, so we must accept the consequences of following our conscience. We must accept that the State will punish us. But we do not have to obey, just take the punishment.
I give as an example those who refused to fight on pacifist grounds during the world wars.
M Courtney, what law are you talking about that is unjust?
mikerestin, Any law that is unjust.
Being a law doesn’t make it automatically just.
Admittedly, most countries try to be just and so unjust laws aren’t common.
But if that weren’t true I’ld be a hypocrite or a jailbird.
Civil disobedience is a catch-phrase, not a thing.
If you do something that is proscribed by The Man, then, you’re disobedient.
Contumacy is cute when you favour either the individual or the cause but it’s an outrage to others.
Of course, flouting laws that are perceived as stupid or “morally” wrong might be an effective approach to getting those laws repealed but it wouldn’t be much of a law if there were no penalty for contravening it, and protesters run the risk. Just ask Jim Hansen.
I tend to agree with Eustace Cranch. I don’t want to put a hammer on civil disobedience. Greenpeace did it at the Nasca Lines in Peru and received world opprobrium for it. So be it. Now, these douchebags are flirting with trespassing on foreign ships and creating havoc. All of our lives are threatened the moment we drive down a street. Fear porn is not sufficient reason to silence them. Breaking the law is. You need to let the process work itself out, and hammer them later for what they caused.
Eustace Cranch
The problem with your thinking is that is the boarders were not protesting an “unjust law”. They were protesting the rights of others to go about their business. The protesters want to IMPOSE laws on people — they are not protesting an existing law.
Name the specific law they were protesting. Can you? They were actually protesting “evil carbon”. That is not a law.
GreeDpeace does these things to gin up its money making machine. Long ago money became central to all the activities of GreeDpeace.
Eugene WR Gallun
The problem with your thinking is that is the boarders were not protesting an “unjust law”.
I invoke the Willis Eschenbach Rule: Please quote the exact part of my comment where you think I said that.
Eustace Cranch
April 8, 2015 at 5:37 am
Greenpeace is engaging in civil disobedience. I seriously disagree with their “cause”, but this seems like a good place to pose a question: do you believe civil disobedience is inherently wrong, or is their a time and place where it’s a moral imperative?
I believe that our Constitutional rights are under serious attack right now. Under this administration (and possibly the next), there are executive actions and laws on the books, and many more coming down the pike, that utterly disregard the Constitution. To put it bluntly, they want to criminalize many of our inherent freedoms.
At some point you will be breaking laws just trying to live in freedom. If you aren’t already.
Is it morally wrong to disobey any law? Not for me it’s not. I think we have a moral obligation to disobey unjust law.
Eustace Granch
You claim that you never said that Greenpeace was protesting an unjust law.
The opening statement of your post is (and I quote exactly) — “Greenpeace is engaging in civil disobedience.”
I suggest you look up the definition of “civil disobedience”. Below are some examples of different phrasing of definition that all have the same central point — WHICH ALWAYS SEEMS TO BEGIN THE DEFINITION. —
1) Refusal to obey a law as a result of moral objections, especially through passive resistance.
2) The refusal to obey certain government laws or demands in order to to influence legislation or policy, characterized by non-violent methods such as non-payment of taxes and boycotting.
3) A refusal to obey laws, pay taxes, etc: a non-violent means of protesting or of attempting to achieve political goals.
4) A symbolic, non-violent violation of the law done deliberately in protest against some form of perceived injustice.
So by saying that GreeDpeace was engaging in civil disobedience BY DEFINITION you said that GreeDpeace was protesting an unjust law.
Please continue our discussion. I am extremely curious about what you will say next.
Eugene WR Gallun
Constitutional guarantees and protections do not apply on the high seas and piracy is NOT civil disobedience.
*sigh* An accepted definition of civil disobedience is “nonviolent resistance.”
Beyond that- for those absolutely determined to misread my original point: it’s your problem, not mine.
Hey Eustace! Just in case you feel like you are being smothered in responses from people who did not clearly understand your point, I think you ask a very important question. Yes, the Greenpeace pirates are wrong — but the question of whether it is ethical to refuse to obey unConstitutional or immoral laws is a separate issue. As for me, I think we have a positive duty to disobey bad law, especially any law that requires us to do unwarranted harm to others. For example, if a law were passed declaring that religious education is a form of child abuse, does a parent have a duty to obey it? If a law is passed that “climate deniers” need to register, or to no longer be employed, what is your ethical duty as a business owner?
And if I think it’s moral to capture wild children, butcher their carcass whilst they are living, and then dine on their livers, is it relevant what view of a ‘just’ or ‘moral’ law is?
I do not doubt, nor disagree, that there are people that violate the law intentionally and for some personal moral purpose. I may, in some cases, share their view of morality. None of that changes that they have broken the law regardless.
And if your point is that they are being consistent to their morality, then that’s fine. I too find the same and congratulate them for it. Just the same that I would congratulate the victims for making a moral choice to defend themselves and their property. Consistency to your morals is worthy of respect. But it doesn’t dictate that I must sign onto your morals or give you a pass for being strong-willed.
Though, given that I’m the most stubborn mule I know of, using the claim of “He’s a jackass” as an affirmative defense in court would be personally rewarding.
As a relic from the 60s, part of civil disobedience was not following the law you disagreed with and being willing to suffer the consequences of that act. These clowns think they can get of Scot free from their actions.
The laws against piracy are hardly unjust.
The reality is these people have unlawfully boarded a vessel on the high seas with the intent of interfering with its lawful operations for their private purposes. This will cause a large financial loss to its operators. That is just as much piracy as the seizure of ships in the Red Sea by Somali pirates.
Yes you can choose to disobey the law but if you do so you must also be prepared to face the consequences.
What you are missing is that the consequence of civil disobedience has evaporated over the years. Ghandi, Rosa Parks, MLK, South Africans – all expected and received JAIL TIME for their violation of “civil law” in order to make their points. Today’s “children” think they have the moral high ground and as a result should be immune from any censure or punishment for their acts.
Civil disobedience is against unjust laws of governments. This is violating other people’s rights of free commerce.
There is no right to free enterprise. Refer to: Article 1, Section 8 Clause 3 of the US Constitution commonly called the Commerce Clause.
BrianK, your general notion is permissible, but your support doesn’t cover it. Notably, the US Federal government is not — despite common misconceptions from all sides — *the* government of the world. And of course, even under Natural Rights theories there is no perfect right to commerce, only an imperfect one. You can dispose of Natural Rights as a background understanding, natch. But in so doing you’ll need to establish the propriety, or even the right, to have your own conscience as well as to give voice to it.
If there is no right to free enterprise, then we are all slaves to the govt.
Regardless, the so called Commerce Clause merely gives the federal govt the right to resolve trade disputes between two or more states.
The fact that the courts have tortured it to mean that the federal govt can regulate anything and everything is an eternal shame on the courts. Read the writings of the people who wrote the constitution if you want to know what that clause actually means.
The Commerce Clause gives congress the power “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;” Since commerce is not transacted by the states but by businesses, it pretty much gives Congress the power to do anything it wants in that regard except for businesses that only operate within a single state’s boundaries. And yes MarkW, we are slaves to the Federal Government. That was pretty much decided by the Civil War.
Who gets to decide which laws are unjust and which aren’t?
Do I get to decide that speed laws are unjust and ignore them?
Civil disobedience implies a willingness to deal with the consequences.
After you’ve had you say by vote. You should have no right to protest.
Hogwash.
By that logic, the minority have no rights.
So if a German Chancellor is elected in the 1930s… and then starts a Final Solution…
That’s OK with you?
I think you’ve become too extreme in your trust of Governments.
That only works if we work under the theory of a pure Democracy. In a Constitutional government it is a different consideration.
Eustace Cranch
Do you know what a sophist is? And how they argue?
You open by making the false statement that the boarders were engaged in civil disobedience. They were not. You are attempting to establish a false premise.
Then you wish to discuss whether civil disobedience is inherently wrong or if there is a time and place where it’s a moral imperative. Only extreme authoritarians could possibly believe and argue that in all cases civil disobedience is inherently wrong.
So all people of good will would agree that that there is a time and place where civil disobedience is a moral imperative.
Well, the boarders say they believe that they are trying to save the earth from total destruction. Can you name a greater moral imperative?
Therefore if we agree with your false opening premise that the boarders are engaged in civil disobedience then we have to admit there is a moral justification for their actions.
There is no moral justification for their actions because the boarders were not engaged in civil disobedience.
Sophists are not moral people
Eugene WR Gallun
Civil disobedience is a reaction to actions by government in one form or another. The exploration for oil on public lands in the Arctic is only allowable through government action. Civil disobedience is properly used in this instance.
Eugene, I believe Eustace was looking at the huge (apparently invisible problem to most I guess from the comments) that freedom as known and enjoyed in America is under severe attack by the present administration and they are passing laws by fiat and regulation. Hey we are already close to breaking the law by dissent on CAGW. Isn’t the President encouraging the faithful to call us skeptics out? Now why would he want to have law abiding citizens called out and harassed? She doesn’t believe Gangrenepeace is right in cause and deed. That is a point of view, and hey the guberpeacers believe theirs is a moral imperative. I think the juvenile disobedience and pain in the butt behavior of Gpeas is a tiny issue compared to the issue Eustace is concerned about. Her point: when things get bad enough in such directions that ordinary citizens come out in throngs to protest, civil disobedience is highly justified. If it gets worse, uncivil disobedience and fireworks are justified. Don’t let chartered accountant semantics occlude a good point by Eustace Cranch on this important subject.
Briank,
You say — the exploration for oil on public lands in the Arctic is only allowable through government action. Civil disobedience is properly used in this instance.
Try to think. What was being transported was an OFF-SHORE oil rig. What does that have to do with public lands. Get it????
Eugene WR Gallun
Gary Pearse
First off — Gangrenepeace == love it.
Alright, I admit I got the tone of her intent when she dumped on OBummer. The Left IS the Democratic Party now — and the Left is, has always been and will always be authoritarian. (The base of the party are its “useful idiots”.)
Never-the-less Eustace should never have said that the boarders were engaged in civil disobedience. That is not how to start a discussion on civil disobedience. (Civil disobedience, by the way, has a legal definition. My last quote posted far above gives the first part of it.) That statement irritated me.
Alright, I made a claim that she had intentions that she did not have. I called her a sophist. At least she did not claim I hurt her feelings. WUWT is not a “safe zone”. (Well, lots of pretty graphs and some cartoon videos have put in an appearance — but no crayons.) The moderators do a good job of keeping things under control without impinging on anyone’s right of free expression. (Notice how carefully I sneak in that mollifying complement.)
What is most interesting about her question is that certain states have been talking about not obeying OBummer’s regulations calling them unconstitutional. States have a legal standing. It would seem that they also can, by definition of law, engage in true “civil disobedience”.
Oh, well, let me apologize to you, Eustace. I should not have dragged you through the muck.
Eugene WR Gallun
Eugene – Are you being deliberately obtuse? They don’t drill in water, but the land under the water. Off shore is certainly not private land. If it’s not private, it’s either national public land or subject international treaty. Both of which are governed by law.
Briank — You got things wrong a second time. Try to think — Public lands are lands that you can actually walk on. Off-shore oil rigs are not used on public lands. You cannot protest laws about public lands by going to sea and obstructing the transportation of an off-shore oil rig.
Lands under salt water (not lands under fresh water lakes and rivers, just telling you that so you don’t make another mistake) are called “off-shore lands”. Lands called such extend out to the end of the continental shelf.
Now listen up and learn. Civil disobedience requires the deliberate non-violent breaking of a law considered unjust. All the laws the boarders broke had nothing to do with with arctic drilling. They may have protested arctic drilling but they broke no laws concerning arctic drilling. Therefore it is impossible to claim that what they did was civil disobedience. The legal definition of civil disobedience says they did not commit civil disobedience.
Was it the law forbidding the boarding of a vessel on the high seas the law they were protesting — because that is the law they broke. But laws against piracy are not considered unjust laws. Therefore they did not commit any type of civil disobedience.
Stop being deliberately obtuse.
Eugene WR Gallun
Eustace Cranch
I need to apologize to you. I was out-of-line when I implied you were a sophist. You see my hemorrhoids are acting up and that puts me in a foul mood. Picture me as just a poor lonely old man hunched over his keyboard while sitting on a donut cushion — and then forgive me.
Eugene WR Gallun
Eugene,
I know your comment was intended for other than watchers and lurkers, but I don’t really want to picture you that way … can you provide an alternative image … maybe one with a dog at your feet as you sit by the fire?
Eugene –
You’re wrong:
TREATING OFFSHORE SUBMERGED LANDS AS PUBLIC LANDS: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Robin Kundis Craig
William H. Leary Professor of Law
University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law
But don’t let that stop you from being a pompous ass.
Civil disobedience is a cover for law breaking with a noble cause, as defined by the law breaker. There is a long tradition of it in Western societies and very short spurts of it in the East.
My mother was one of the women who occupied a brick house on the Pickering Airport site in the 70’s to prevent the destruction of a beautiful example (one of two that existed) of architecture of the period. That was civil disobedience. It was illegal, technically, to be in a house that was slated for demolition. The government contractors circled the house for days with bulldozers hoping to intimidate them. Crowds gathered to watch daily. The pressure grew. They said they were not coming out until the airport was cancelled. The upcoming election loomed. They cancelled the airport, the women emerged.
They could have been arrested and prosecuted for trespassing but were not. It was already too humiliating for the ruling party who had already lost the local seat to a nobody-member of People or Planes. I am not sure how that applies to people who ‘attack’ ships violating the Law of the Sea. The captain has a lot of jurisdiction in the matter.
The airport struggle lives on with Land Over Landings http://landoverlandings.com/ who are trying, anew, to prevent the airport going ahead again now that it has been revived by the Feds (a lot of people don’t know that). I do not know if civil disobedience will be involved. The evictions and demolitions continue and paving over some of the best farmland in the world is still on the books. They are inspired by the success of the first time in Canadian history the local people prevented a government project from going ahead.
If these guys ever grow a pair, ISIS has some terribly dirty oil production and refinement facilities that could be protested, maybe a banner or a flash mob. They are natural partners, both are interested in a global government with a substantial reduction in population and living conditions similar to the 8th century.
classic
+2
Nice one, too true!
Oh yeah? Then explain this:
“Leader of Al Qaeda group in Iraq was fictional, U.S. military says”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/world/africa/18iht-iraq.4.6718200.html
It’s the NYTimes that is fictional. As a news organization.
Hate to burst your bubble, but Europe would not have had its scientific renaissance without Islamic Science. In fact, you wouldn’t have an iPod without it. Want to see their engineering prowess? Look up Al-Hambra.
While Europe was full of kings and queens who were living in single room barns with their animals and a single ceiling hole to let the smoke out, Islamic scientists in Cordoba were living in a city with a million people, paved streets and raised sidewalks, intellectual excitement and scientific advancement. 15,000 markets with products from China and Russia; almost 1,000 public baths. The trees lining their sidewalks were lit with lamps every night. Tens of miles of trees. They were doing calculus and trig while the luddites in Europe were struggling with Euclid’s Fourth Principle. This continued for almost 1,000 years. Christian monks and Jewish scribes made pilgrimages to Cordova in 900 AD to get the translation of their science; that’s how we know what was there. A friend of Leonardo Da Vinci and Copernicus brought the Islamic Science of how the planets revolved around the Sun to Italy in the mid-1400s. That how Leonardo knew about flight, and that’s how Copernicus knew about the heliocentric view of the world.
You can stand on your educational ignorance and sound like the house-painter Sean Hannity. But it would behoove the scientific community here to correct their general historical ignorance. God knows it’s painful enough to listen to it from the Joe Romm crowd.
And, oh, BTW? overtime you go to a hospital today you can thank Islamic medial science for inventing the surgical tools some doctor is using on you. They were invented 1200 years ago. Ditto eye surgery, which they invented and are still in use today.
“overtime” should read “everytime.” Mac Autocorrect BS.
Not true. Nice “politically corrupt” (er, correct) claims, but they re only politically correct – not factually true.
Islamic “science” did “pass along” theories and concepts they stole from the lands and people whom they conquered between 700 AD and 2100, but they never invented nor started anything. Islamic warriors burned the library at Alexandria when they conquered Egypt; their religious mandate is to execute, convert, or tax every person they conquer.
Yes, MRW, a fine way to dispassionately express your interpretation of events in history; denigrate your audience.
We’re aware of the view that you are championing and we don’t agree with it.
We also note that what prompted your diatribe was the quote “living conditions similar to the 8th century”.
The muslims invaded Cordoba in the 8th century. Your thousand years is a marvellous flight of fancy, but you can call it history, if you want. You’re only off by 500 years.
“They were doing calculus…” Really? Calculus was developed by Newton and Leibniz 200 years after Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Moors from Spain. As for medicine, those were Jewish doctors, even then.
MRW:
Woulda, shoulda, coulda. That’s the position of Islamics. They had the thought, but they couldn’t put it into action. The West did.
I don’t ‘thank Islamic medicine’ for anything, as you propose. It would have been invented, and benefitted society eventually in the West. We had our own scientists, you know, and lots more of them.
Why is the West so successful, when Islam is such an abject failure? Niall Ferguson gives six “apps”:
1. competition
2. the scientific revolution
3. property rights
4. modern medicine
5. the consumer society
6. the work ethic
Islam is sadly deficient in most of those requirements, so just because a few Islamic scientists understood something, Islam itself never capitalized on it. So they’re a has-been culture.
MRW
April 8, 2015 at 7:36 am
“Hate to burst your bubble, but Europe would not have had its scientific renaissance without Islamic Science.”
Hate to burst YOUR bubble, but…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suda
Hate to burst your bubble, the Islamists never invented anything, at best they made use of the inventions of the people they had conquered.
“Hate to burst your bubble, but Europe would not have had its scientific renaissance without Islamic Science. ”
Really so why did the industrial revolution happen in Europe not Persia ?
The reality is that the scientific renaissance happened when philosophers started to question the old certainties brought from the Greeks by the Arabs. The moors like the catholic church at the time were insistent that the sun circled the earth and their ideas about anatomy were fanciful at best. The scientific renaissance was pioneered by people like Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Newton, Carl Linnæus who rejected and denied the revealed old knowledge pointing out that it did not match reality.
“Look up Al-Hambra.”
That’s architecture not scientific progress. Science stagnated under the Caliphate, preserving Greek knowledge was a two edged sword. Nobody bothered checking the ‘proven’ science even when it was clearly wrong.
“While Europe was full of kings and queens who were living in single room barns with their animals and a single ceiling hole to let the smoke out, Islamic scientists in Cordoba were living in a city with a million people, paved streets and raised sidewalks”
Incorrect. The population was around 500,000 at its peak. By the 12th century Moorish Spain was in chaos. The caliphate had disintegrated into dozens of warring factions. Cordoba had been fought over and pillaged many times. The vizier al-Mansur from in power 976 to 1002, burned most of the books on philosophy to please the Muslim clergy; most of the others were sold off or perished in the civil strife not long after.
By the time of the reconquest Cordoba was a shadow of its former self and the unquestioned seat of cultural, scientific and economic power was Florence.
And where do you think fundamental mathematics such as algerab came from. Or the basis for the sextant?
Sigh, algebra!
This museum exhibition on 1,000 years of Islamic Science has been circling the earth for about three years. Guess you didn’t hear about it.
http://www.1001inventions.com
Alternatively, read Robert Briffault’s The Making of Humanity (1919). Part II, “The Genealogy of European Civilization.” If pressed for time, you can start around page 188.
https://archive.org/stream/makingofhumanity00brifrich#page/6/mode/2up
Also Joseph McCabe, circa 1938, although I can’t remember the name of the book.
Oooooooh, a museum exhibit.
And that proves all scientists and historians wrong.
That’s really cute.
It’s the other way around. The Moors mocked the European idea that the sun revolved around the earth. Robert Briffault in his book The Making of Humanity names the man who brought back translations of Islamic Science to Copernicus (during his sojourn to Italy mid-1400s) and Leonardo da Vinci. I link to it above.
Christian historians wrote Muslims out of the history books starting in 1492 after Queen Isabella kicked the Jews out of Spain (she had already dispensed with the Muslims during the 1480s). The ensuing Inquisition didn’t help either.
But there is one small problem with the real history. When the Christian monks (and a few Jewish scribes) started making pilgrimages to Cordoba in 900 AD, they left records in monasteries. 19th C British Arabist historians published some of these records when anything Arabian was all the rage.
So what did Al-Haytham invent the scientific method for 1100 years ago?
http://harvardmagazine.com/2003/09/ibn-al-haytham-html
MRW keeps ignoring the fact that no how matter many small factoids are presented, the Islamic culture never capitalized on them. They failed to make use of their discoveries, which is probably why they’re still culturally in the 7th Century A.D.
Islam is nothing without the West. They had their chance, and they blew it big time. Now they’ve been left in the dust of history — and they still don’t produce anything worthwhile.
Really? Then why did Plutarch accuse Caesar of burning the library?
Saudi Arabia has produced very little, and they would have produced nothing on their own. ARAMCO built the oil fields — and ARAMCO was run by Westerners.
Hey, this is just like playing Whack-A-Mole!
dbstealey April 8, 2015 at 3:07 pm,
What an odd comment. Why would a religion need the west? One quarter of the world’s population practice it. “still culturally in the 7th Century A.D.?” When Isabella kicked the Muslims out of Spain, the majority went to current day Istanbul where they created the Ottoman Empire.
“Islamic culture never capitalized on them?” The works of people like Al-Haytham and Al-Jabar (algebra) live on today: http://harvardmagazine.com/2003/09/ibn-al-haytham-html
It took 20th C civil engineers to replicate the irrigation system they developed bringing water underground from the Sierra Nevada mountains to their vineyards (yes, you read that right), crops, and the fountains, gardens, and public baths in Cordoba. That was 1200 years ago.
We’re not taught this history in schools so we don’t know. Just as school kids are now taught complete nonsense about the climate and environment as if it were the truth. Sorry, but I don’t buy into Steve Emerson and Pam Geller’s uneducated knee-jerk brand of Islamophobia. And in this Islamophobic culture, real history is the first to go.
The Greeks had Hytham beat by several thousand years.
The Moors knew the earth revolved around the sun, now you really are making things up.
Sheesh, is there any lie you won’t believe?
Is “several thousand years” like Al Gore’s late show contention that the earth is millions of degrees just a mile down?
Actually, you’re correct that Islamic Science was the local extension of Greek thought. Greek knowledge did not go west. It went east and south to Baghdad, Tehran, and Egypt, and culminated in the European hubs of Cordoba and Toledo.
fercrissake. Plutarch wrote that Seleucus of Babylon (circa 200 BC) was the first to prove the heliocentric system, although the only remaining copy of what Seleucus actually wrote is in Arabic. Here’s the History Wiki on the History of Physics and the History of Heliocentrism. Knock yourself out. Lots of go for links.
“local extension” should be “logical extension.” Autocorrect rewrote it. “Lots of go for links” should be “Lots of good links.”
MRW says:
What an odd comment. Why would a religion need the west?
You’re trying to re-frame the debate into religion. I never mentioned religion, I mentioned the Islamis culture.
And maybe the religion doesn’t need the West — but the Middle Eastern countries sure need the West.
And I gave you six reasons above why your example of someone designing water systems in the U.S. Sierras succeeds — and why the Middle East country he came from is such an abject failure.
Whack-A-Mole! ☺
@Ron House:
Ronnie, still bird-dogging my comments, I see. If you had paid attention, you would have seen that the debate was over things that happened 1200 years ago. You’re trying to move the goal posts. Islamic culture has been an abject failure because it lacks the requisite legal system, competition, and other necessities for scientific advancement. Half of them still live in tents.
Yes, there are forward looking countries like Dubai, but it is far from being an Islamic dictatorship, and it didn’t even exist back then. To the extent that it prospers, it can than Western culture, science, commerce, and all the other superior factors that they are emulating.
And your link supports what I wrote over what you believe: most of the countries mentioned are Western (thge UK, Israel, America, Greece). Without the West, and especially America, the Islamic Kingdoms would all still be populated by camel jockeys.
Whack-A-Mole! ☺
MRW —
Yes, and then along came Islam and the light slowly went out..
Eugene WR Gallun
If someone was lucky enough to be a member of the ruling class, or of the elite, in 9th or 10th century Cordoba then they might be comfortable. A few other locations in the world would also have been nice to occupy as a member of the upper class, but all in all 8th century earth would have been pretty stinky for most people (Cordoba or no Cordoba).
If I can sit here and imagine that I am superior to most others, and as such I would automatically be able to step into the upper/elite classes of Cordoba society had I been alive 1200 years ago, then I guess I could fool myself into thinking that 800 A.D. would have been a fantastic time to be alive.
… nope, can’t do it. I tried for the last half hour to convince myself that I am indeed superior to others with respect knowledge and personal gleaming presence … can’t do it.
MRW, how do your do it?
Uhh. It went from roughly 700 AD to 1500 AD.
For optics they should have used a sail boat to conduct this protest…even Greenpeace is dependent on the product they despise!
This rig was being transported on the back of a heavy lift vessel, therefore it was unmanned. They seemed have made no attempt to board the bridge or crew area of the heavy lift vessel itself. If they tried to board this rig when it was fully manned, I imagine they would have had a wee bit more difficulty.
Tom in Denver says “…If they tried to board this rig when it was fully manned, I imagine they would have had a wee bit more difficulty.”
Sadly not; no western oil company today is going to risk the bad PR that would result from allowing the rig crew to repel boarders in a decisive old school manner. No matter how many of the boys were willing to break up the monotony of a tow with some fisty-cuffs. If any one aboard did take matters into their own hands and administer a free session of contact counselling (to help the protestors see the error of their ways) the ‘promotion’ to an office job in the Upper Umboto Gorge or written final warning letter would very quickly be in the post.
Publically at least, eevil big oil agrees that gullible warming is the greatest crisis of our time, and there should be a price on carbon (dioxide), etc, etc. so it’s bad press to get confrontational with ecotards, even when they are acting like blowflies.
Erny72- Do you seriously believe that Transocean would allow these yahoos free reign of a platform, to hang signs and perform mischief at their leisure? There is always security on board, for liability alone these guys would be apprehended and locked in a secure room until they can be removed by authorities.
Private property is private property no matter where it is. You go try to enter Exxon or Shell’s office building in Downtown Houston without an invite and see how far you get.
While piracy is no longer a capitol offense, life imprisonment seems appropriate.
Just kids having fun, but the parents should expect to pay for any expense incurred by the owners of the rig.
I wonder when Greenpeace is going to demonstrate in Baotou, China where the environment gets destroyed for windmills.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth
Not to worry, the bird blenders will self destruct fairly quickly.
Send in the Russians, they know how to deal with clowns like this. The West is too soft on these anti-civilisation worms.
See 1:35
.
Although I was disappointed with the Russian prison. They should have sent the Greenies to a Siberian jail in the winter, and not allowed them any heating (apart from a solar panel) until they had made a video saying that oil was wonderful and beneficial, and we should expand oil exploration….
The isolation of the high seas creates special danger in an assault. That’s why there are piracy laws. This is not kids having fun; this is attempted murder.
Life imprisonment. The United States should declare Greenpeace a terrorist organization. All conspirators, not just those who boarded, should be indicted.
ralfellis,
I kept waiting for the Russians to cut the guy’s line that was trying to scale the side of the ship. They were much too considerate.
When I watched this video, I was glad to see what was done to these guys. I think they deserve what they got, and agree with DB that the Russians were gentler than they needed to be.
Check out the Greenpeace boat trying to ram the Russian Coast Guard vessel out of the way. That was an attack, and they would have been justified to shoot them, IMO.
Time for the corporations affected to sue Greenpeace for megabucks.
They’re a bit early, aren’t they?
International Talk Like a Pirate Day is on September 19th.
Perhaps they’re trying to institute an international act like a pirate day!
Large corporations give groups like Greenpeace large sums of money. Ransom/bribes which ever you prefer. Although I am in the jail them camp the corporations are getting what they sow.
Oil companies don’t care if the governments tax their product.
We bought all they could make at $4 – $5 / gal.
They know the people must still buy.
It’s not their fight.
It’s between the people and their government.
If there was no reward of press coverage for these acts and all that awaited the perpetrators was prosecution and due process of law, there would be little motivation.
Amusingly, the Green-pr!cks website shows that the student protestors have erected an IR camera ‘to protect them while they sleep’. Aiming to capture the hoped for violence on camera? The twit-derr gloating could be stopped in it’s tracks if the vessel’s navigation equipment had an unfortunate magnetic anomaly that jammed sat-phone signals. Just a thought.
I haven’t seen much in the Euro news yet, Google only hits CNN, the Grauniad, a bunch of blogs no one ever heard of and a heap of pages on Green-pr!cks.org.bs. BBC is busy telling us that the Russians invented a 10 year old artillery victim to make the Ukrainians look bad, that the poo is really hitting the fan in Yemen and that Greece is asking Putin for money to pay off the EU loan-sharks while also arguing that Germany still owes them war reparations. Even in the ‘Earth’ back-pages I couldn’t find any mention of this latest stunt. In other words, about as little coverage as it deserves (It must be too good to last though).
This a stunt to buy themselves street cred in a world that thinks that they are a bunch of screaming, smelly , wack -jobs. Even the former founder of Greenpeace has condemned GreenPeace.
They were there in the 1970s at a nuke plant where I worked, blocking the delivery of of the reactor core (Calandria). The zodiacs were crushed between the ship hull and the pier. Nobody was hurt.
I bet the jerk GreenPeacers are regretting protesting Nuke Power now, considering their recent obsession with fossil fuels. A-holes, one and all. Fringe, hippie leftovers. So whats for dinner?
Here is a video of the Nuke plant where I worked as young graduate engineer. There were frequent protests by GreenPeace there. I consider them essentially ignorant pests. They just want to be in front of the camera. Nuke power is awesome.
Video about Nuke Power at Point Lepreau
Most hippies are over 70 and have nothing to do with it.
Real hippies would be horrified to be associated in any way with these people.
Certainly the Original Hippies circa 1960s &70s are filling up the cancer & cardiac wards of the Obamacare waiting rooms, but Hippie is an attitude, not just a slice of the entitled post WWII generation of a-holes. Nowadays we have the offspring of dope-smokin Hippies… I call them Anak Hippies, or Hippieson, or Hippie redux, or Hippie echos, or Hippie 2.0, Hippie Clones, ….please add to the list… Occupites? general lazy socialist entitled ne’er-do-wells, who live in the basements of their hippie single moms.
If they look like a duck and walk like a duck and smell like a duck….
When the hippies of the 70s had their chance to be reasonable.. they weren’t. Were it not for them and their woodstock filth, we’d have nuclear power at the 80% capacity that France has.
Just sayin…
As a hippie over 70, I agree with Sasha.
We’ve got to draw a Nazca line in the sand.
Sell them to the Sierra Club as fossil-free, gluten-free, free-range beasts of burden.
Better still, have them watch this for Earth Day.
With a better(IMO) score. 🙂
Soothing sounds while watching nukes detonate
Funny how things change, isn’t it?
Twenty years ago the biggest threat to mankind was atoms from the East fusing, and coming our way. But now the biggest threat to mankind is an infection of the mind from the East, coming our way. I think I preferred the former to the latter.
R
Without a doubt!
One seductive bad idea is more powerful that 10,000 nuclear warheads. As such, I give you Marxism.
Pah! Marxism is but a puny irritation, in comparison to the Eastern infection. At least Marxism was trying to power forwards, albeit very inefficiently in first gear. But the Eastern infection has no forward gears, it only has reverse!
R
What do you mean by Eastern Infection?
You have not been reading the news lately, obviously. Where does all modern mayhem, unrest, depravity and terrorism come from?
R
Any of you engineers know what those contrails that can be seen next to nuclear detonations?
They are a bunch of vertical trails in a line.
Are they maybe rockets carrying detectors or cameras or some sort of test equipment?
OK THAT Eastern… I was thinking really east.
@Menicholas April 8, 2015 at 5:26 pm
They are rockets, the smoke trails used to measure the size of the detonation.
Menicholas, Stun is correct: the smoke trails provide timing information about when the shock front reaches them. That information, coupled with the time and distance required for explosion to give way to implosion, provides the input needed to calculate how much energy was required to displace the atmosphere, which is then used to estimate yield.
“Where does all modern mayhem, unrest, depravity and terrorism come from?”
Duuuhhh, carbon dioxide? 🙂
>>Duuuhhh, carbon dioxide? 🙂
Now that is a really good hypocorism, I shall have to remember that one…. 😉
Greenpeace should be sued; financial and criminal charges should be brought against the officers of greenpeace – as INDIVIDUALS – and against greenpeace as a criminal organization.
Surely, some sort of RICO charges should be filed.
Greenpeace is your proto-typical Stalinist / neo-NAZI organization that DEMANDS you conform to their religious beliefs. And they are also hypocrites.
Why don’t the tyrants at greenpeace invest their OWN MONEY AND EFFORTS in actually producing and operating energy producing facilities that they own and operate to show us all how it should be done??
Why don’t they just refuse to use any sort of hydrocarbon powered device?
Why don’t they call up their local electric and gas utility company and have them turn off their gas and electricity? ( don’t water pumps require lubrication with …… AH!!!!!……oil and grease?)
Why don’t they refuse to wear high end ” technical clothing” made from hydrocarbon by-products? In fact, why don’t they eschew the use of anything and everything that is produced or operated by hydrocarbons and its by-products? ( Geez, how did their laptops, iPhones and clothing get to the USA from Asia? How did the wood used to make their homes come from? Do trees just die naturally into piles of 2×4’s and magically become housing ?)
How does that coffee get into the Starbucks coffee shop? Do coffee beans magically decompose into ground coffee, and deposit itself into a barista device?)
Will they actually, really DO SOMETHING PRODUCTIVE? Or do they prefer to use Stalinist and Nazi tactics to coerce, to force, to compel others do what they demand.
They must look back in history and deeply mourn the days that Hitler and Stalin died . Greenpeace must have their office walls covered in Nazi and Stalinist posters, artwork and photos. But hey, they can still genuflect and pray to Kim Yoo Jung .
Welcome to the world of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm!!
You’d be correct, if doing something was their goal.
That died long ago.
The goal now is donations.
period.
I guess they gave up on the whales.
mike, I recently read about a barrier island in Alaska that the Department of the Interior was quite upset about disappearing due to erosion which, of course, made a great opportunity for them to announce all kinds of concern about global warming etc. But the funny part is they where wrestling with the price tag to relocate the local villagers (some 400 sturdy souls) who happened to be…whalers! So apparently the whales need to understand that if they get in the way of the global warming meme even their Greenpeace buddies will throw them under the bus.
“Surely, some sort of RICO charges should be filed.”
A question often asked but never answered
+1000
Off Topic
The link to Dr. Gray’s hurricane forecast on the weather underground tropical weather page seems to be restricted. This error (HTTP 403 Forbidden) unable to connect to the website, it does not have permission to view the webpage. Are they upset with Dr. Gray’s opinions?
Dr. Phil Klotzbach is currently lead author on the seasonal forecasts. Their forecast schedule link follows. The April forecast is due for release tomorrow. 4/9/2015
http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Forecast_Schedule.html
We all need a way to continue to play in our adult years. We also have to find meaning in life. We all need to be part of a group bigger than ourselves or be crushed by our petty identities. Cults like Greenpeace and Scientology, the Branch Dravidians and others provide all these things at the same time.
+10
I understand that, you’re right in your assessment. I don’t even mind that it occurs. I just draw the line when the afflicted want to take over the world.
Go after Greenpeace under RICO- no corporate shielding, personal liability of all parties involved, and those who commit crimes on the high seas should be treated no differently than Somali pirates.
Damn the Russians. They had a chance to set (re-establish) the standard by hanging the bunch of pirates. Now Kumi Naidoo feels he has carte blanche to send this bunch of brainless idiots wherever he’s paid to. They have attacked ships, buildings, pipelines and refineries. They have defiled and vandalized sacred sites. They have staged illegal protests and blockades that resulted in injuries and arrests. Enough already. The police will not or cannot stop these illegal actions because of political intervention. The MSM treat most of these criminals as though they were the modern day version of Robin Hood. It’s time our elected representatives grew a pair and stopped worrying about what’s political correct. They must ensure the police maintain the peace.
Storming an oil rig?
What’s the matter, don’t they have a World Heritage Site to deface?
+10
With the president we have in office these maroons will never be convicted of any crime.
He’s not suitably motivated in this case.
Now if they had seen fit to make a You-Tube they’d be banged up in a thrice…
bugger…typo…”You-Tube Video”
What kind of maroons? I like the pink ones even if they are a little sweet but they go well with coffee.
When a boat load of red paint collides with a boatload of blue paint, the sailors get marooned.
I think that the captain/owners made a serious mistake in not declaring a mayday for being boarded by pirates which would oblige all nearby ships to their location and more importantly require the U.S. coast guard to resond. I am sure that they have specialized troops to handle barding a hostile vessel if not i am sure the marines or navy would be happy to lend them.
Where’s Putin when you need him?
Throw the book at them.
Corporate America needs to cowboy up and cut off their money supply and go after Greenpeace in every legal venue available.
Greenpeace fat cats have gotten rich off of their greenmail scams long enough. Shut them down.
There should be a prison for them that has no product derived from our carbon based economy. I believe mud huts and food gathering is where they would end up. Good riddance.
Sounds like a lot of ‘heroic’ fun. Sailing across the northern pacific ocean, stealthily chasing, ‘attacking’, boarding, centre of attention and all that. Then plenty of ‘moral-high-ground’ tales of daring do when they return.
No wonder this Saving The Planet lark is so popular. #CompleteTossers
They plan to unfurl a banner in protest of Arctic offshore drilling but have no plans to interfere with the ship’s navigations,……
…..then tow their happy A$$es to Alaska.
Greenpeace and the other NGOs are running out of time to ride the CAGW express. Will Greenpeace protest solar caused global cooling?
Will 350.org celebrate and note mission accomplished when atmospheric CO2 anomalously drops below 350 ppm when the planet cools?
Will the Nobel Prizes for the ‘discovery’ of global warming be rescinded when observations prove that the majority of the warming in the last 150 years was due to solar changes, rather than the rise in atmospheric CO2?
Global cooling is on the way, due to the current abrupt change to sun. Record regionally cold temperatures is the first sign of cooling climate change (We are going to have a chance to see how solar changes cause Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle cooling) – record monthly cold temperatures, record sea ice in the Antarctic, record snowfall and anomalously cold temperatures on the Greenland ice sheet and so on are observational evidence that the pause in warming is over and the planet has started to cool . We ain’t seen nothing yet, based on the severity of cooling that has occurred in the paleo record when there was an abrupt change to the solar cycle.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog
Must be a bit too chilly in Siberia this year then!
To the best of my knowledge, Seattle is not in the Arctic.
No, but Alaska is and that is the end destination for the drilling rig.
Depends on what part of Alaska, some parts are only a few miles north of Seattle.
The article clearly states “Shell leases” in Alaska waters.
Their sign says “The People” versus Shell. I don’t remember signing up as one of “the people” so they need to change that sign to “Green Peace versus Shell”. Just another environmental “Big Lie”.
http://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_large/public/headlines/people_vs_shell.jpg?itok=_r6XyG59
The banner looks to be made of plastic. Oh the irony.
Make them walk the plank.
All Greenpeace members should be placed on the TSA’s No Fly list (oh, the ironing!).
All Greenpeace members should be placed in the NICS list.
Oh how I love oil.
I’m about to go cycling on a beautiful afternoon here on the northern Oregon coast. At the moment my chain is sitting in a luxurious hot bath of paraffin wax on the stove in a double boiler. When I’m done with my tea, I’ll take my chain out, wipe if with a paper towel, let it cool for a few minutes, slap it on my bike, and be off.
If any of you cyclists out there have never used paraffin, I encourage you to give it a go. It’s quick, easy, clean, silent, doesn’t attract and hold grit, plus your bike looks sexy all the time … chicks really notice.
(Cue Janice in three, two, one … 😉
I wonder what would happen if a bunch of oil industry execs were to storm the Greenpeace offices?