Sea Shepherd: Heroism, terrorism or imperialism?
Posted on February 4, 2010 by
I wrote a post inspired by whaling on my personal blog last week and with your forbearance today, I’d like to follow that train of thought and, in the process, change my scientist’s hat for a philosopher’s.
Down on my side of the world, the sinking of the Sea Shepherd ship Ady Gil has received a lot of press and reignited the debate over Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean. Despite prohibitions put in place in the 1980’s by the International Whaling Commission, the Japanese have continued to hunt whales in the waters of Antarctica for ‘research purposes’ (read thinly veiled commercial whaling), much to the chagrin of environmental groups and the Australian and other governments.
Sea Shepherd is a fringe environmental group that confronts whaling vessels and seeks to stop them from killing whales using whatever means necessary. They’ve rammed whaling ships, used lasers to blind sailors, scuttled ships in harbour, and destroyed nets. The group self-identifies as environmental pirates and has been labeled as terrorists by Japanese whalers and Glenn Beck alike. However, the have become increasingly popular among many environmentally minded people, receiving celebrity and political endorsements from around the world.
Like most of you, I’m opposed to whaling for commercial or ‘research’ purposes. Cetaceans – whales, dolphins and porpoises – have relatively large brains and are thought by much of the scientific community to be among the most intelligent mammals. I’m not a fan of killing any animals, (although I am immersed in quite the ant war right now) but the slaying of very intelligent animals like primates and cetaceans is just abhorrent. But it is the methods that whalers use that I find most offensive. When a whale is spotted, whalers pursue and fire a grenade harpoon at their prey. If the initial blast does not kill the animal, then a second harpoon may be fired or whalers shoot the animal with a rifle until it dies. Greenpeace activists claim to have observed harpooned whales being dragged through the water until they drown.
I can see the appeal of Sea Shepherd. Frustrated by the lack of effective action taken by world governments and the international community to stop Japanese whaling they’ve taken the problem into their own hands. They are self-styled environmental pirates, with their ships flying the skull and crossbones. And they take the fight directly to the source, risking life and limb in the frigid Southern Ocean to directly interfere with the slaying of whales.
But I’m not sure that Sea Shepherd’s ends justify their means. The parallel that comes quickly to mind is the actions of extreme anti-abortion groups. Groups like the Army of God and the American Coalition of Life Activists have been directly or indirectly involved with vandalism, invasion or bombing of clinics that offer abortion services. Extreme anti-choice activists have murdered nine abortion providers or clinic staff since 1993. Sea Shepherd has not yet been responsible for any human deaths but both extreme anti-abortion and extreme anti-whaling advocates are taking an ‘any means necessary’ approach to stop a practice that they consider to be abhorrent. Why support one and condemn the other? Personally, I am sympathetic to Sea Shepherd but consider the Army of God to be a terrorist organization. But is that solely because of my personal political beliefs? I’m fairly sure that if we asked Glenn Beck he’d have a different opinion of both groups.
Beyond the ends versus means debate is an interesting thesis that one of my commentators brought up. I’ll let her remain anonymous as she fears nasty mail in her letterbox, but what if the (largely) white, (largely) Judeo-Christian Western environmental movement is attempting to impose its cultural norms on another society? Are Sea Shepherd and other environmental groups engaged in a type of cultural imperialism? Whaling has been a part of Japanese culture since the 12th century. Then in 1982, fifteen Western nations proposed a ban on commercial whaling, a ban to which the Japanese strongly objected. Now, Japanese whalers are under constant pressure from environmental advocacy groups to change a practice that has been a part of their society for 800 years.
But what if the tables were turned? What if, just for argument’s sake, an Eastern religious group placed pressure on Western nations to keep their women covered, to impose the burka or hijab into American or Australian society? How would we respond to that political pressure? Food for thought.
Enough from me, what do you think?
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On that closing thought (whaling vs. burka): One is attempting to force a culture to cease a practice while the other would be forcing a culture to adopt one. Big difference because no rights are impinged by not killing whales, especially the whales’.
I’ve always said that I admire, to some degree, the conviction of any kind of extremist. If you really believe in something and think it really is important, you should be willing to die for it (and maybe even kill for it), deluded and misinformed though you may be. But, since I disagree with the goals (and therefore methods) of Army of God, I’m not a fan. Sea Shepherd lines up more with my own philosophies, so their brand of extremism is more palatable. I’m picking sides, and I don’t think that creates any philosophical inconsistencies.
Shouldn’t we all aspire to someday be condemned by Glenn Beck? Oh, to dream.
Good post, and I agree that whaling is unconscionable in the 21st century, but surely there is a better way to deal with the whalers than to blind them with lasers. There are better ways to live up to one’s beliefs and convictions without stooping to violence. Fundamentally, I disagree with the whole “by any means necessary” philosophy because there is always SOME means that would be absolutely UNnecessary, no matter the situation.
As for imposing cultural norms on others, well, cultural norms are always changing. Whaling has been a part of Japanese culture for so long because it’s been a commercially viable industry for so long. I have a feeling that once people quit getting paid to do it, whaling will cease to be a part of Japanese “culture.” One could make the same argument that slavery was part of American culture for a long time, and while change didn’t come easy, America survived after it was gone. So will Japan.
I’m not even sure I buy the idea that any sort of industry is part of a region’s culture. Religion, food, clothing, sure. But industries grow because some people saw the opportunity to make money somewhere, and once that well dries up, they’ll go make money somewhere else. I’m not sure that culture suffers as a result.
In regards to the idea that ending whaling may be ‘cultural imperialism’ in disguise, one needs to understand that whaling is not a cultural issue, nor is it a race or human issue – whaling is both a moral and environmental issue. People can argue all day and night about whether Sea Shepherds brand of intervention is the most appropriate means to an end – I for one am thankful that a group of people are willing to stand up and stop the senseless slaughter of these intelligent sentient beings. Hopefully one day we will all wake up and cease this extermination of fellow living beings – not for legal reasons, but because we recognize that such practices are wrong and have no place in today’s modern world.
Courtney – The slavery analogy is a really good one. Part of the reason that slavery was eventually outlawed in the US was due to heavy pressure from Britain and the continent.
Their intentions may be sound and sincere OR it may be ruled by ego and pride to what they are doing. In my opinion, extremism is simply wrong, unstable, unbalanced. It is the balance of all living creatures to thrive and coexist peaceful is what every one is after. The idea that there is enough for all and no one group is being put to the edge for it. Sure, I am all about saving the whales…Very much so. I am an animal biologist myself and can stand to see the unrelention action being put on these amazing creatures. And I don’t agree with it one bit. However, this extreme endeavor of the Sea Shepard quite frankly is frightening. It is not at all “balanced”, it is completely “ANTI-” which raises all kinds of bleak resistances that only build up with rage over time and can in turn make things more devastating. If you ask a Sea Shepard crew, “How far would you go?” What would they say. Would this extremism narrow their eyes so much so that all that they can see is fulfilling out this disruptive behavior? Will the lives of other species’ suffer on this account? I think they’re are missing the point of their intentions. The point is, just like every other soul on this amazing Earth, the wish is to live peacefully. Maybe it is hard to find the answer to how we should deal with such oppositions. What am I saying “Maybe”? it IS hard. We’re all in this together. Only when we come together with peace in our hearts do we accomplish the greatest.
I think the cultural imperialism point has already been addressed quite intelligently…
The only thing I was uncomfortable about when I read your post was the bit about blinding sailors. But I looked up Sea Shepherds, and from what I can make out, what they do is merely “temporarily blinding and disorienting” them. Which I think is fair. If we have accepted the basic premise that whaling is illegal and immoral and should be stopped, I don’t see the problem in a non-governmental organisation doing what the government cannot do (or does not want/care to do). Protests obviously don’t work, and without the option of more subtle violence that governments can perpetrate, an NGO is left with relatively crude violence of the type that these guys are engaging in. What else can they do – arrest the whalers? Confiscate their property? No one has been murdered or maimed. Weigh the loss of property against the lives of animals we all agree should not be killed… I myself find it perfectly acceptable and fair.
Interesting post but all of your uncertainties and hesitations about The Sea Shepards and their mehtods are really pretty flimsy when you think about it.
Just because something has been part of a nations culture for hundreds of years doesn’t make it right. Quick example: People (usually women) are stoned in various countries around the world until they die. They dig a hole, burry the woman in it waist deep so she can’t move, tie her hands and throw rocks at her face until she is beaten to death. This has been apart of their culture for eons…does that mean we shouldn’t try to stop it? Why not just throw in the towel on every international human/animal civil rights movement because someone thinks we’re opposing their culture and trying to make everyone like us…
Sometimes inhumane things, no matter how long they’ve been in practice, just have to change. The difference between us eating chicken und beef and them eating Whale (and often unknowingly dolphins – the japanese ppl do not view dolphin as food but their government allows them to unknowingly be sold it) is that A: Whales and dolphin contain highly toxic levels of mercury. and B: Cows and chickens are not threatend by extinction in any concievable time in the future. and C: just because an animal is less advanced doesn’t mean it deserves to die, but as you said, dolphins and whales are one of the smartest animals on this planet.
I’m glad the sea shepards exist. Everyone critisizes their methods but what are those people doing to help the problem? They’re the most effective whale activist group in existence. They’re not killing people (like anti-abortionists) they’re using aggressive tactics to stop ppl from doing things that are already illegal and looked down upon by almost 100% of society. I say get over it, and do be such a pussy.
of course i meant *DON’T be such a pussy lol ^^
NEWS: “EATING WHALE MEAT FOUND *NOT* TO BE JAPANESE CULTURE OR TRADITION”
POLL: “96% of JAPANESE PEOPLE DO NOT or HAVE NEVER EATEN WHALE MEAT”
What does this mean? It means that the majority of Japanese people DO NOT eat and do not want whalemeat. It means that Japanese Whalers are actually the minority, pushing whale meat on Japan people against the will of the Japanese people. Over 96% of Japanese people don’t want it. And that leaves only 4% who even eat it at all, and making up a huge portion of that 4% are people who barely eat it once-a-month, and a huge portion are children who are forced to eat it as part of the Japanese national children’s school lunch program. The choice for the child of either eating it or going without eating food that day. Therefore Eating Whale meat is *NOT* Japanese a Japanese national tradition nor Japanese culture.
In the dark ages, the 12th century, nor in medieval times, nor in the paleolithic era did Japanese warriors take a 200-ton forged-steel fleet packed with telecommunications gear, radar and fish-finding electronics, and a conveyor-belt 9-THOUSAND miles completely out of Japan’s own waters, into the territorial waters of another continent and blow up whales with military-class Grenades and then “paddle” 9-thousand miles back home. The Japanese Whaling Fleet packed with guns and onboard meat-freezers is NOT a quaint old tradition of the 12th century! This is an organized-crime linked automated commercial factory operation!
And another thing, just because something “happened” hundreds or thousands of years ago, does NOT make it a fine upstanding cultural “tradition”! This is like saying that Europeans burned witches at the stake, so hey, that is a fine tradition that should allow us to continue to burn women to death today. (And if you disagree, that’s cultural imperialism! Forcing your pro-women beliefs onto a fine medieval cultural custom!-WRONG.)
Look, even if you dug up bones or artifacts in an archaeological dig showing that some one killed a whale 40,000 years ago, that STILL does not make it some kind of fine cultural tradition! This would be like digging up bones in an archaeological excavation site and finding a stone axe mark on a skull and saying Aha! This proves that a Japanese (or European, or African, or whatever) man murdered another one! That means it is a “great cultural tradition” spanning back thousands of years and demonstrates that we should continue it today too!(NO! WRONG!) One more time, just because something ‘happened’ thousands of years ago does NOT mean that it is a fine tradition, and most certainly does nothing to assert that it should be continued to be practiced today! And that goes for Mayans killing infants in infanticidal sacrifices, female genital mutilation, rape, honor killings where men kill their wives in arabian countries, and whatever other heinous crimes people have tried to falsely justify under the banner of tradition.
In fact, in the year 676 A.D. Japan’s emperor Tenmu BANNED eating meat. Eating meat at all was nationally banned throughout ALL of Japan! And this was practiced by nearly everyone throughout Japan for over a Millenium! And the ban on meat was re-inforced and renewed by each successive Japanese Emperor for over 1,200 years! Eating Meat at all is not even Japanese culture. This is a western tradition.
In fact, eating whale meat is not Japanese culture, it is a WESTERN cultural idea pushed imperially onto Japan by armed forces! Western General Douglas MacArthur wrought the surrender of Japan after bombing it in World War 2, and after forcing Japan to submit, and kneel before western power, as part of ‘restorations’, it was Armed Forces after world war 2 that pushed the modern idea eating of whale meat onto the Japanese people as a ‘protein source’ during the time when much of Japan had been devastated by a World War. This is not something the Japanese were doing, eating whale meat is actually cultural imperialism, eating whale meat is a WESTERN idea pushed onto the Japanese people by members of a western military group after being crushed in World War 2.
Therefore it is JAPANESE WHALERS who are forcing whale meat onto 96% of Japanese people who don’t eat it, and don’t want it. It is Japanese Whalers who are pushing a WESTERN cultural practice that was actually forced on Japanese people by a military power. And it is the Japanese Whalers who are against the Japanese people, against 1,200 years of Japanese cultural tradition of NOT-eating meat. And in fact, it is not Sea Shepherd, but it is the Japanese Whaling Fleet who are betraying the edicts of over a thousand years of Japan’s own EMPERORS! In Japan, the emperor is not only regarded as political, the emperor is regarded as divine, as in the Emperor is seen as a GOD according to Japanese culture, so a tiny pack of Japanese Whalers are actually going against 1,200 years of decrees which according to Japanese people are the word of GODs! Japanese Whalers are actually defiling the teachings of those regarded in Japanese culture as god!
Not only that, the dominant majority traditional religions of Japan are Buddhist and/or Shinto. In Buddhism all life is held sacred, and in Shinto everything is held to contain a spirit. Even the trees, water, and animals. Many Buddhist monks DO NOT eat meat. Eating meat is not a Buddhist tradition, eating meat and wantonly killing animals is taught AGAINST in Buddhism! Therefore it is the Japanese Whalers who are now going against the teachings of and beliefs of over 80% of Japanese people!
Japanese Whalers comprise only a couple-hundred men, and these have links to organized crime in Japan, the yakuza. This means 99.999% of Japanese people DO NOT participate in nor do they conduct whaling! Whalers are the “fringe group” here. Whalers are the killers. Whalers are the extremists who have lead to 3 HUMAN DEATHS (so far), and the fanatics who are Armed, with guns, and explosives, and are going on killing sprees against the will of their own people, against Japan’s own majority religion, and bringing disgrace and dishonor onto the entire nation of Japan and its flag in the eyes of the Japanese people and the world.
Whalers are a tiny faction. Japanese Whalers are the fringe group, numbering merely less than 0.00001 of Japan’s 157 MILLION population who don’t even eat whale meat.
In addition to this, Whale Meat has been found to be contaminated with Methyl Mercuric poison! Whale Meat is high in huge amounts of Mercury. Who says? The Japanese Ministry of Health published it! Japan’s OWN scientists have deemed WHALE MEAT UNFIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION, containing doses of mercury over the human limit. Japan’s own health department has issued alerts and warnings against eating whale meat. It is contaminated with toxins such as Lead, Mercury, Polychlorinated Biphenyls, (PCBS), Cadmium, and DIOXIN! Japan’s own Assemblymen and legislators have been fighting AGAINST Japanese Whalers and outraged that the Whalers have been selling whale meat and harming Japan’s own citizens!
Eating Whale meat contaminated with Methyl Mercuric poison can cause stunted brain growth, it crosses the blood-brain barrier, it lowers I.Q. in the human brain, it can cause liver damage, organ damage, and eating whale meat containing mercury can cause one’s future children to be born horribly deformed with birth defects. JAPANESE WHALERS are enticing Japan’s own children to eat it!
Japanese Whalers, with ties to Japanese organized crime, and saddled with now over 4-thousand TONNES of un-eaten un-wanted whale meat sitting in freezers for over a decade, have now pushed whale meat into Japan’s childrens school lunch program. This means that Japanese Whalers are actually poisoning Japanese people, including hundreds and thousands of Japan’s children!
The Japanese Whalers with their crime ties, and corrupt politicians who are helping them pull the strings (and also fraudulently spreading that whale meat is “japanese culture”), have now started attempting to push whale meat into old-people’s homes to be eaten by the elderly and frail, and they are trying to push whale meat as “Hospital Food”, to be eaten by patients. So now you have whalemeat soaked with mercury being pushed by Japan’s Whaling Fleet to the most vulnerable segments of the population including child’s brains, the frail and elderly, and to patients in hospitals already weakend by being sick from something. Japanese Whalers are knowingly pushing toxin-laced meat and poisoning hundreds and thousands of their own people, therefore it is the Japanese Whalers who are Terrorists and a tiny minority illegal fanatical fringe group of extremist killers. Japanese Whalers are mass-poisoning hundreds and thousands of Japanese lives!
- Therefore, any person who is AGAINST whaling and stopping the whalers is on the side of Japanese tradition. All activists, antiwhalers, SeaShepherd, and the majority of the world are a friend of the Japanese people, stopping a tiny sect of criminal whalers from poisoning Japan’s people, families and children.
- Any person caught supporting Japanese Whaling, or thwarting the actions of groups stopping the Japanese criminal whalers, is facilitating the perpetuation of mass-poisoning of thousands of human lives. Pro-Whalers are AGAINST Japanese culture, defile Japanese religion, defy thousands of years of Japanese tradition, are PUSHING IMPERIAL WESTERN culture onto Japan. It is the Japanese Whalers who are against Japanese cultural tradition and SeaShepherd and the majority of Japanese peeople and the world are working to stop the Japanese Whalers who are terrorizing the seas and mass-poisoning Japan’s people.