From Captain Paul Watson:
"To be a Conservation Activist, one must be prepared to say things some people do not wish to hear, to do things many people do not like to see being done, and to provoke controversies many people would rather remain ignorant of. An Activist is like an acupuncture needle poking about for a reaction in an attempt to cure a problem. To do this we need to rock the boat, we need to get people's attention. We need to harness imagination and passion with courage and practicality. In truth I really don't care what people think of me. I represent my clients and their interests and my clients are whales, sharks, dolphins, seals, turtles, birds and fish. Not people."
Thank you to AdriaticDawn for sharing the words of Captain Paul Watson in this graphic work by Tom O'Brien
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=555161711172112&set=a.100829143272040.1705.100000348641195&type=1
The White House Government Petition to lift the Interpol Red Notice
for Captain Paul Watson.
Why did this petition not reach it's fulfillment goal of 100,000 signatures?
This issue still has me shaking my head, and based on recent conversations with a few
wonderful folks on Twitter, I'm not alone with my confusion.
SSCS had stated flat out that they don't usually work through petitions, so that in and of itself
implies that they are asking for some help from their supporters, us, and not merely suggesting that it might be a good idea to sign these petitions, if we could remember to, if we could get around to it sometime.
From what I can see on Captain Paul Watson's Facebook page, there are .........."likes", and
over on the Sea Shepherd Conversation Society Facebook page, there are......."likes".
That support was not visible when time came to sign this petition as far as I could see. When SO many "die hard" supporters would not sign and circulate that one action that would have had an impact, how are we going to rally 5 times that many folks to sign another one that is floating around?
Rumor has it many SSCS supporters were reticent to register their name or have their IP address logged at the White House petition site.
Come on folks, that was the flimsiest excuse I can think of, and it just doesn't hold water.
What, do we think for a moment that the USA government doesn't already have our IP address?
Heck, any savvy techie could probably figure out how to find it in minutes.
The White House Government petition site is cumbersome.
I had to ask for my password to go through 3 times, but it finally did, and then it took 30 seconds tops
to register my name.
Even SSCS issued an action that would enable supporters to register their name and address, in the
event that they had encountered difficulty accessing the WH GOV petition site, and their would be counted as being signed.
We are supposed to be supporting a global network of folks, our SSCS heroes, who literally
not only risk being rammed by a ship many times the size the size of the vessel they are on, they
do and did get rammed.
We're not speculating about the possibility, it already happened and it has been well documented on film.
All you have to do is visit youtube, punch in Sea Shepherd + Nisshan Maru and see the videos for yourself.
Again, and again, and again.
From many angles.
Take your pick.
So, my frustration stems from the fact that the discomfort level of having to register a name and an email with the White House Government petition site appears to be greater than the discomfort of living on a ship at sea, being rammed by bigger ships at sea, in order to make sure that justice is done for the Cetacean clients.
How did we not ponder what the ramifications of arrest and extradition for are for the man who would have benefitted from the action that drove that petition?
Namely at lot of days in a prison cell, probably not a very comfy one at that.
And that would be the best case scenario.
Good thing that it appears to be that we all have plenty of time now to ponder what could have been, had the armchair been less of burden.
The only comfort here is that Captain Paul Watson and SSCS are too darned smart and have been burned too many times to walk into a trap. They are under no obligation to inform you and I about their plans, and yet when they did, and asked for a very small token of support ~ a name and an email address on a petition site ~ we indisputably let them down.
I realize that this is probably the end of the line for quite a few of my "social media relationships"
that have developed during Operation Zero Tolerance.
That's just fine, nothing I can or am willing to do about it.
Disclaimer.
This one is mine.
Adelheid16
