![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
telemann.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
talkpolitics
Paul Watson, animal rights activist and Captain of the Sea Shepherd, has been detained in Frankfurt Germany,1 and Costa Rica has asked German authorities for extradition to their country based on a capias warrant issue, over Paul's interference with poachers in Costa Rican territorial waters (no one was injured and there was no damage to the poachers' boats).2 INTERPOL, has examined those charges, and found that they were politically motivated. The general Public Prosecutor to the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt has requested the extradition papers, but noted that the German federal government can stop this process if they feel it is politically motivated.
Paul Watson is the captain of the "Sea Shepherd" and other vessels that have successfully hampered illegal Japanese whale hunting in Antarctica, but also have raised public awareness of the Canadian baby seal hunts, and recently had focused on the Faroe Islands annual whale hunts (called "grinds"), and world wide overfishing of tuna, with some tuna species face complete extinction within five years (particularly in the Mediterranean), according to fishery experts.
The Discovery Channel recently featured Watson's Faroe Island campaign in a three part special called "Whale Wars - Viking Invasion," you can see highlights and a brief summary of what is going there in the following video clip. Please be warned, some of the footage is extremely graphic.
I'm generally supportive of Watson's actions, but the Faroe Islands campaign was a bit of a tougher moral dilemma for me, but ultimately it's a moot one. The inhabitants of the Faroe Islands have been warned by their chief medical officer to stop eating whale meat and blubber, because it contains too much mercury. In fact, the Faroese have some of the highest incidents of mercury poisoning in the world. Research there has "revealed damage to fetal neural development, high blood pressure, and impaired immunity in children, as well as increased rates of Parkinson's disease, circulatory problems and possibly infertility in adults." 3
That's the irony here for me, the thing that may end up saving a lot of fish and whales is the fact we've so polluted our environment could be the only thing that will save some of them. The real question is, who will play the clock out first?
1. Sea Shepherd organization's press release.
2. Summary of the charges and trial, etc. Prosecutors filed charges in 2002 against the Canadian captain for allegedly endangering the lives of eight fishermen and for attempting to cause a shipwreck. Watson did not attend a trial on June 26, 2006, and the Costa Rican courts considered him a fugitive."
3. New Scientist article: "Faroe Islanders told to stop eating toxic whales." by Debora MacKenzie, 28 November 2008
Many thanks to
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
mzflux who posted about this and alerted me about the story.
(no subject)
Date: 16/5/12 22:01 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/5/12 22:03 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/5/12 22:07 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/5/12 22:18 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/5/12 22:21 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 02:01 (UTC)I can't say that Germany has much of a choice here. It will be up to the courts, but the question is two-fold. First, if the charges are politically motivated, but second, if the charges have some legal basis. Just because an extradition request is politically motivated doesn't mean that the accused is innocent. There are a lot of considerations that the German high court will have to go through, but they didn't really have much of a choice in arresting Watson. They may also might not have much leeway in extraditing him. If he did the crime then he should do the time, regardless of motive on either side, and Costa Rica is the one responsible for figuring that out. I expect that German politics will interfere in what should have been a strictly legal decision.
(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 02:52 (UTC)What's wrong with doing illegal things to stop a predatory and environmentally harmful practice?
(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 03:02 (UTC)Personally I believe that people should stand up and do what they can, but they should be prepared to face the consequences afterwards. If you're going to go down that road, don't complain about where it leads to.
What Germany is really deciding is whether Costa Rica is competent to judge people. That's a much trickier question, and putting an entire country on trial is a difficult prospect - at least diplomatically speaking.
(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 11:38 (UTC)I will just point out that the legal system is almost always designed in the self-interest of the ruling class the enforces and makes it, hence I have little respect for it. I follow my conscience. But that doesn't mean that I think just because someone follows their conscience and the penalty is jail that they should just silently submit and face jail. That doesn't help them or anybody--it just silences their moral protest and deprives of their freedom.
Basically I think that fetishizing the law has got to stop.
But I see the point you are making here, just had to add that bit.
(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 14:06 (UTC)Now, if you're fighting the system as a whole, that's one thing. If the system is so broken that you can't remedy it, by all means try to knock it down. But groups like the Sea Shepherds exist inside the system, they're not in open rebellion. They claim to be protecting, and protected by the law of the sea. To my mind if you're trying to exist within the system, and claim its protection, you have to defend yourself using that system's own framework for dispute resolution, in this case the legal system. If he were going totally off the reservation, that's fine too, it has different consequences.
Shorter version: I think if you claim the protection of the law, you should be ready to suffer consequences if you break it. Doesn't mean you have to be silent about it, or not use it as a platform to broadcast your position, but it means you should at least be prepared.
The other thing I find disturbing is the spin that's going to be attached to it. After all, what happened here is that a relatively rich white person did something to a group of relatively poor brown people, and now a court, made up probably of rich white people, is going to have to decide whether a country of poor brown people is capable of judging a white person. It's not precisely like that, but that's the way it could be spun, and that's likely to cost a lot in the short run. Hopefully nobody will take it like that - but I'm not optimistic.
(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 21:09 (UTC)Very well put.
It's rather intellectually dishonest to try to use something in order to undo it. Open rebellion is so much better (if your out of reach anyway) :D
(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 17:50 (UTC)Answer is in the question.
(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 18:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 21:10 (UTC)Silly me, how could I not have seen it??
There is NOTHING wrong with it.
Thanks for pointing that out <3
:D
(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 21:14 (UTC)No obediance no protection.
(no subject)
Date: 18/5/12 00:48 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/5/12 16:16 (UTC)If you reject the cop's authority to detain or judge you theproper response to getting pulled over for a traffic violation is to either ignore themand keep driving or when they approach your window, punch them in the nose and peel out in a cloud of burning rubber.
Getting due-process or one's day in court is entirely dependant on living long enough to collect.
(no subject)
Date: 18/5/12 16:32 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/5/12 16:58 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/5/12 17:00 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/5/12 18:26 (UTC)The police are authorised by society at large to dispense violence.
In fact whenever some says "there ought to be a law" what they are really saying is "the police should engage in violence on my behalf to prevent X". Such is the nature of the system.
(no subject)
Date: 18/5/12 20:32 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/5/12 10:36 (UTC)The obvious problem, however, is that the state allows no means to actually do so--if you reject their "protection" and their laws they will attack and imprison or do worse to you.
That's why I think, at the end of the day, all the Occupiers can really ask for if they think about it is the ability to settle in unused space and be subject to no outside controls or forces or laws and enjoy the full fruit of their labor and the resources of the land and its productive potential and whatever free economy they engage in by choice rather than forced necessity. That's really all we want, after all, to be able to survive well without using the system our consciences abhor but yet remain free in the land of our birth with our friends and loved ones. Working for ourselves rather than some wretched corporation, sharing land and resource freely rather than enclosing and monopolizing it, defending ourselves rather than living under the occupation of the state, and doing our own thing.
(no subject)
Date: 18/5/12 02:06 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/5/12 16:08 (UTC)There should be consequences to breaking the law in any remotely equitable system. This was my intitial line of thinking but I didn't break it down far enough. To me it seems that you can hardly claim to live in an equitable society AND break the law without expecting the law to take action against you.
It seems to me that the those defending Capt Watson are angry that he's being prosecuted which strikes me as incredibly foolish. Afterall, what did you expect to happen?
(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 03:31 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 05:48 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 16:35 (UTC)I wonder where the whale food is picking up all of those toxins.
(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 17:10 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 17:13 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 18:01 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 18:10 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 18:13 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 18:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 18:17 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 18:19 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/5/12 18:22 (UTC)