Paul Watson interviewed by Jason Miller
Simulposted with Thomas Paine's Corner
“Well, as usual, you people have everything all upside down and turned around and back to front.”
–Mel Gibson as Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon 2
As a species of beings that reflexively and unequivocally identifies itself as “superior,” we human animals have taken self-deception to a level of inimitable brilliance. And we Americans who have self-servingly cast ourselves in the role of moral beacon to the world (while engaging in industrialized wholesale violence against humans, animals, and the Earth on a breath-taking scale) are the living embodiments of the word hypocrisy.
Need proof of the systemic rot eroding the very cores of our souls? Look no further than the meteoric rise of the grossly under-qualified, hyper-ambitious, morally retarded narcissist who still has a realistic chance to be one heart-beat away from ostensibly ruling the most powerful nation in the world. Palinesque tendencies to “drill, drill, drill,” exploit obscene technological advantages to “cull predatory species,” employ our “justice” system to accelerate the extinction of yet another species (to advance the interests of Big Oil no less), and perpetuate the murderous “sport” of hunting with the intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt justifications of “necessity” and “cultural tradition” serve to shred our ridiculously thin façade of humanity and reveal the truly barbarous nature of Western “civilization” and the “American Way of Life.”
While the speciesism and capitalist obsessions with property, growth, and profit that contaminate nearly all aspects of our cultural and social modes of being are not unique to Western industrialized nations or the US, we wield the most power in the world, and hence inflict the most pain on other species. And while our economic and technological advantages endow us with the potential to shift the paradigm and significantly reduce the unnecessary suffering our non-human animal brethren experience as a result of reification, greed, and exploitation, we choose to fight tooth and nail to preserve our “right” to dominate, torture, and slaughter for profit and pleasure, while portraying those who dare to take direct action against our murderous system as ‘eco-terrorists.’
Frightening and dangerous as it may be, let’s get inside the head of a leading member of the radical environmental defense and animal liberation movements, which the FBI continues to target as America’s “number one domestic terror threat.”
Here is the back and forth between Captain Paul Watson (animal defender extraordinaire, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and courageous practitioner of extensional self defense on behalf of marine animals) and Jason Miller (associate editor of Cyrano’s Journal Online and founding editor of Thomas Paine’s Corner):
Jason Miller: You were reportedly expelled from Greanpeace in 1975 for your refusal to embrace their dogmatic adherence to non-violence. What were the events prior to and during your expulsion?
Captain Paul Watson: I was not in fact expelled from Greenpeace. I was voted off the Board of Directors because Patrick Moore had just replaced Robert Hunter as President. The excuse he used was that I had broken the law by grabbing a sealer’s club and throwing it in the water thus stealing and destroying his “property”. I then resigned from Greenpeace however the proof that Greenpeace was not opposed to my methods can be found in two pieces of evidence. (1) After I hunted down and rammed the pirate whaler Sierra, Greenpeace published my story as their headline article in the Greenpeace Chronicles. And (2) I was one of the 8 signatories for the formation of Greenpeace International in October 1979. My main reason for leaving Greenpeace was because I was tired of protesting and seeing whales and seals die. I established the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society not as a protest organization but as an interventionist organization to specifically target illegal operations. We remain non-violent. Since I founded Sea Shepherd in 1977, we have never injured a single person, we have never been convicted of a felony crime and we have never been sued. That’s a better record than Greenpeace has.
JM: What is your opinion of the Greenpeace that exists today?
Captain Paul Watson: It is the world’s largest feel-good organization. People join Greenpeace to feel good, to believe they are a part of the solution and not the problem. Greenpeace is where liberals send their money to appease their conscience. It is an organization of posers doing stunts to grab media attention for the purpose of fund-raising. They bring in some $300 million a year. They spend some $75 million on direct mail fund-raising and they have an army of street and door to door solicitors that receive good money to recruit for Greenpeace and that is why I once called them the Avon Ladies of the Environmental Movement. These big organizations are large parasitical bureaucracies that don’t give much bang for the buck unfortunately.
JM: Please tell us a bit about your organization, Sea Shepherd, and its efforts on behalf of marine life.
Captain Paul Watson: Damn, that would take a couple of books, which by the way I’ve already written. The brief answer is that we have successfully shut down hundreds of criminal poaching operations around the world over the last three decades. We operate globally and we have tackled poachers in all the world’s oceans and we continue to do so.
JM: How does one join and/or donate money or time to your organization?
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