GreenPeace - Cashing in on the Great Whales - Paul Watson

[Annces]

The Other Whaling Industry
Cashing in on the Suffering and Death of the Great Whales


Commentary by Captain Paul Watson
On Board the Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin

full article
http://www.seashepherd.org/editorials/editorial_080205_1.html


Excerpted:

As the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society struggles to borrow and raise enough funds to return to the Southern Ocean, we feel incredibly frustrated by the fact that tens of millions of dollars have already been raised to defend the whales yet this money is not being spent for that purpose and it will not help put fuel in our tanks to resume our defense of the whales.

Greenpeace ocean campaigners, are begging for money saying they will be fighting to help the whales escape and they claim that for every dollar donated they will be able to stay out another hour, another day, or another week “saving” whales. Their success will depend on YOU sending a donation NOW. Of course the word success means something different to Greenpeace. The Greenpeace campaign is not stopping whaling ships. Success to Greenpeace is about recruiting memberships and raising money.

What the fund-raising appeals do not say is that Greenpeace has already raised tens of millions of dollars this year to “save” the whales, and tens of millions of dollars the year before, and the year before that. In fact, Greenpeace has raised a mind-boggling hundreds of millions of dollars pretending to save whales over the years and yet they have not stopped the Japanese from killing whales.


Greenpeace is posing and marketing the illusion of saving the planet and they have an army of gullible volunteers and paid canvassers who have been talked into believing that Greenpeace is really, really saving the environment and saving whales in particular. When I left Greenpeace in 1977, I could have set up another knock-on-the-door-direct-mail- telephone-soliciting group to chase the green dollars. The problem is that I left Greenpeace to actually do something and that meant taking to the high seas to directly intervene against the slaughter of whales and the destruction of the ocean. The last time I saw a whale die in agony before my eyes was on my last Greenpeace whale campaign in 1976. When Sea Shepherd shows up, the killing stops and the whalers run. We don’t look for photo opportunities; we look for opportunities to shut down illegal whaling operations. We have shut down whaling ships permanently in Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Iceland, and Norway. We’ve sunk nine of them without injuring anyone and without being convicted of a single felony. The reason is that our targets are criminal operations.


In my opinion, it is completely immoral for organizations to be paying six-figure salaries to desk-bound bureaucrats sitting in multi-million dollar office buildings as real, dedicated activists struggle in the field to rescue injured animals or to try and stop the horrific slaughter of seals, dolphins and whales. This entire movement is held up on the blood, sweat, and tears of tens of thousands of individuals struggling for ecological justice with minimal resources while a small, elite group skims the vast amounts of money from the public purse to be spent on large salaries, public relations posturing, and fund-raising.




Co-Founder, GreenPeace

http://www.liefya.nl/canaljournal.htm

[DCKit]

1. I gave to the World Wildlife Fund once.

Then they built a huge, beautiful and ostentatious office building in my neighborhood, which I was privileged to walk past several times a week on my way to my second, part-time job.

[Annces]

2. Ya

I write on donation requests - please find a way for me to help without sending money.

[Arctic Dave]

3. My 2 cents

I think a lot of these groups end up this way. They start out truly being helpful and somewhere in the arc of their existence they become self absorbed and its no longer about the issue but about keeping them going.I wouldn't mind them asking for money all the time if it went to the issues but unfortunately its seldom does. I also think it is a sign that the creativity of group has faded when all they want is your money and not your help or ideas.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

4. I think this happens more than we know...

My sister had the misfortune to work as the assistant to the head of In Defence of Animals (Dr. Katz is certifiably insane, but that is a whole other matter) and she saw first hand what some of these "campaigns" were about. IDA had put out a mass mailing about their ongoing "campaign" to stop the Chinese dog fur trade -- send us money to help save the dogs of China! My sister opened one donation that broke her heart -- it was from an elderly woman on a fixed income who had signed the enclosed petition and scraped together $5 to help. My sister discoverd that the entire "campaign" consisted of the petitions that were to be delivered to the Chinese embassy in San Francisco. When she wanted to add the woman's contribution to the existing petitions, she was directed to a back room where she found them in a dusty stack -- they had never delivered in all the months the "campaign" had been in effect. When she left the job four months later they were still there.

It was really nothing but a total scam.