60 Minutes discovers Paul Watson’s Whale Wars

PATRICE GREANVILLE

Capt. Paul Watson.

It only took the mainstream media several decades to discover Paul Watson’s brave defense of the whales, despite the fact that just about everyone in the animal rights movement and radical conservationism knew of his Sea Shepherd organization’s legendary work since the days it began with the support of visionary leaders like Cleveland Amory, Brigitte Bardot, and others of that caliber. It’s fortunate that Watson’s supporters are the kind of people who have little trouble seeing through the hypocrisy of those who accuse him and his methods of “vigilantism,” of being “violent”, or, as is the fad these days, of being a “terrorist,” —all of which is as ludicrous as it gets considering how easy it is to identify those who really make the wounds.

Courageous, well-informed, and frequent media coverage is the solution, but such coverage should not neutralize its potential good by yielding to the usual “she said, he said” reflex that so many members of the commercial press utilize to pretend professional objectivity. Many issues, as we have often argued in these pages, don’t have two morally valid sides, nor is the truth planted on some mythical midpoint defined by “reasonableness.”  Japan and other cynical marine exploiters are in the wrong in this case. Period. The mantle of legality they claim is only a result of political chicanery and scandalously deficient leadership, something we in the US should know something about.

No common sense in this world

Looking at the record it’s clear that most countries, starting with the United States, which seldom lacks resources to meddle in questionable if not downright criminal ways around the world, have played a largely feckless role in the defense of marine life in general.

To this day, US foreign policy does not include strong support for nor preventive and/ or punitive measures to insure compliance with regulations designed to protect animals from exploitative international trade, be they rhinos, elephants, lions, tigers, sea turtles, endangered birds, or whales, by offending countries across the globe.  (Spain, for example, has one of the largest fleets devoted to sharkfinning to satisfy oriental markets.)  In this as in many other instances the US and similar powers put economic and strategic alliances that benefit a puny minority way ahead of planetary defense, let alone invest public policy with a modicum of morality.

Speaking for myself, and am pretty sure I’m far from alone in this,  I’d much rather see the immense resources of the US deployed to protect the environment and animals instead of being used to advance imperial goals.  It’s a shame, and a reflection of how utterly ridiculous and irrelevant governments have become in regard to urgent issues, that a puny activist flotilla, legally persecuted at that, has to stand up for these victimized cetaceans, and wage risky “whale wars,” while American diplomacy and the great US Navy and similar fleets do less than nothing in this regard. I could go on but I think you get the point. Perhaps some day, after the world has undergone a true revolution, we will see public moneys spent in an intelligent and compassionate way.