Talk Is Cheap, Just Ask The Sea Shepherd
Image via Wikipedia
I’m not interested in talking about the antics of the Sea Shepherd any more; unless they repay the money my government has had to spend on rescuing their ADHD addled cronies from a Japanese whaling ship in the southern ocean. Seems they sink or swim on free publicity.
No more from me.
Oh, by the way, we’ll be having that GST back, too, thanks.
Idiots.
UPDATE: Here are the public facts about where the money comes from. Love the part about them being unable to seek charity status because, to paraphase, they don’t actually help the whales. Best government decision evar.
UPDATE II: It cost us one million dollars – the same one million dollars that had been allocated for policing of the whale sanctuary. Feeling sheepish yet, stupid hippies?
Whales vs. Whalers vs. Weasels
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The opening salvo in this year’s season was not fired from a ship’s deck – the oceans themselves have broadsided the ‘Brigitte Bardot’, and she has limped back to Fremantle, out for the season.
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“Sea Shepherd Capt. Paul Watson speaks from Southern Ocean about damage to ship Brigitte Bardot. bit.ly/tQE5Gj #whales #sscs
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Part of the Japanese fleet, the ‘Shonin Maru Two’ followed as the ‘Steve Irwin’ escorted the damaged ship back to Fremantle, and then waited off the coast for the Steve Irwin to rejoin the chase.
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“RT @abcnews: Sea Shepherd says two boats heading to Fremantle are being tailed by Japanese security ship bit.ly/zJ1iB7
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The government reached for a rolled-up newspaper:
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“Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd warned last week that while the Shonin Maru 2 was legally entitled to enter Australian waters it was not welcome and its crew could even be arrested should they attempt to port in Australia.
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The ship attracted some attention for the crew’s attire.
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“Japanese whale hunters wore top to tie black “ninja suits” to hide identity off coast of freemantle. #whaling #japanese perthnow.com.au/news/weste…
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(The eyewitnesses are mistaken that ninjas wear black.)
With only two ships left in the game, the Sea Shepherd resorted to a clever gambit, recruiting local forestry activists to jump on board the ship and request a lift back to land – hoping to create a moral and legal dilemma for both the Japanese captain and the Australian government.
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“A Japanese whaling ship has taken three Australian Sea Shepherd crew and are refusing to release them. They were taken in Australian waters.
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‘…are refusing to release them’ is overstating it: probably more like ’… are pretty busy and can’t stop to drop them off just now, thank you.’Or, possibly, ‘…aren’t about to show up in Fremantle to see if Kevin Rudd was serious about that whole ‘we’ll arrest you’ thing.’The ‘Australian waters’ phrase is critical and contentious, as is the precise location of the Japanese ship when the boarding happened.
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“A spokesman for the whalers at the Institute of Cetacean Research, Glenn Inwood, confirmed the men were still aboard the vessel.
“They are unhurt, they are being questioned and there has been no decision on anything beyond that at this stage,” the New Zealand-based Mr Inwood told AAP.
Mr Inwood said it was wrong to say the incident happened in Australian waters.
“Australia has legal jurisdiction out to 12 miles. The equivalent of that is 19km. This mooring happened at 40km out. So this did not occur within Australian territorial waters.”
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The Sea Shepherd folk say it all happened at
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“32 degrees, zero minutes south and 115 degrees, 21 minutes east
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… which, at 16.2 miles offshore, is outside Australia’s 12 mile ’territorial waters’, but inside its 24 mile ’contiguous zone’. I hope the Shepherd, sorry, the Forestry folk have good lawyers.
Editorial: Whales vs. Boats vs. Bureaucrats vs. Brigands
Image via Wikipedia
The main reason this whole thing sounds like a TV show is that it IS a TV Show based on the shifting fortunes of a celebrity-centered fundraising organisation. Complete with expensive flying robot camera coverage.
Interesting to note that Animal Planet is hinting that this might be the last season for the mission’s reality show. A cynic might suggest that a manufactured series of desperate, headline-grabbing incidents – captured exclusively by the embedded television crew – would stave off the axe, and the lucrative sponsorships, for a year or two. It’s not like the captain is shy about his ‘interventionist’ approach to activism.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, the Japanese whaling industry isn’t glistening with rectitude over its admissions that part of the Tsunami relief funds have been redirected into the whaling industry, ostensibly to help revive the fortunes of the devastated city of Ishinomaki.
More New Scam Calls
They’re baaack. I’ve just received another of those calls from the “Windows Service Center” which I sadly didn’t have the time to entertain, as I’ve done previously. Being dinner time, they got short shrift, but here’s the latest spiel:
Hello, is that Mr. Cook?
Yes, it is.
Who am I speaking to?
It’s Ami, calling from the Windows Service Center – I was calling to ask if you have a Windows computer at your location in (wrong suburb)?
Yes, I do.
And are you the main user of that computer?
Yes, I am.
I see. Mr Cook, we are calling to let you know that our systems here are detecting a large number of error messages that are causing Internet users to complain to us, and they are coming from your address in (wrong suburb).
I see; that’s very strange. Why did you need to ask me if I had a Windows computer here? Wouldn’t the error messages tell you that information?
Oh, yes, Mr Cook, we know, but we needed to make sure we were talking to the right person, and that you know.
That sounds silly – i understand what you are trying to do, and I don’t have time to talk to you now.
Not even five minutes?
No, I think I’ve been already more than generous with my time. Thank you.
As always, the best advice in these situations is to end the call quickly without providing specific information beyond the phone book entry they have already consulted, and call your friendly local computer geek if you need more reassurance.
On the impracticality of a cheeseburger
At 2 minutes to 12, with a lunar eclipse fading in the sky, I finally learned my ‘something new’ for today. I can rest easy.
A cheeseburger cannot exist outside of a highly developed, post-agrarian society. It requires a complex interaction between a handful of vendors—in all likelihood, a couple of dozen—and the ability to ship ingredients vast distances while keeping them fresh. The cheeseburger couldn’t have existed until nearly a century ago as, indeed, it did not.
via Waldo Jaquith – On the impracticality of a cheeseburger..
To: My Elected Rep Re: Your Concience
Dear Sir/Madam
As my duly elected representative in a representative democracy, I write to remind you that your ‘Concience Vote’ in parliament does not belong to you.
You are elected to reflect the collective conscience of my electorate. The extent to which you reflect it will determine your success in the next ballot.
Please do not think that because you have been freed from the confines of party policies that you are entitled to reflect your personal views in parliament. You were elected because people believe you reflect views that closely match their own, and made promises which people felt were worthy of support. You are your electorate.
However, it is unreasonable to expect that you will be in-step with your electorate on every issue, especially those which carry significant moral and ethical contention. You must consult widely and reflect the view of the electorate in your conscience vote.
You are not in Canberra as my gladiator or superstar. I will not support your ‘courageous’ or ‘deeply held’ convictions if you cannot claim a broad consensus. I expect you to vote against your personal beliefs if you cannot convince your own electorate – your own neighborhood – of the merits of your position. If you are unable to represent my own position in Canberra, I will still support you if you can show that my own view is in the minority.
Because your conscience vote does not belong to you, it is not a commodity that can be bought or traded. You do not have my permission to consult with anyone other than my fellow electors when deciding the vote you will cast on my behalf. I expect you to be transparent and explicit about this process.
I wish you well in parliament. Please consult me, represent me, and let me know how you get on.
David
Tech in Times of Trouble – Fires in Perth and WA
It looks like this week’s ‘Morning Cafe’ with Rod on the wireless was a timely one – lots of bushfires underway or likely to be caused by continuing hot weather in Perth and WA.
We spoke about some of the ways that technology can help you stay informed when trouble strikes, but the real trick is preparation: knowing who to trust for information, and what to do with it.
(More episodes here)
Related Posts:
The Nineties Are Coming Back
Amex knows something we don’t know: after years in the wilderness, the Palm-and-stylus form factor is set to return.
(From the latest Amex marketing collateral)
BONWAG Turns 17
Another big BONWAG Birthday – it’s reached the age of consent for South Australia and Tasmania, but still has a year to go in Queensland.
To think that all those years ago there was no such thing as a ‘blogs’, ‘social networks’ or ‘web content management systems’ – BONWAG was ahead of its time as a web journal, lovingly crafted out of raw, grain-fed ASCII and free-range command line FTP and terminal sessions. It’s been many years since I needed to CHMOD 777 my CGI (as Geoff Petersen would say: is that code? Why, yes: yes it is.)
In the past year, I’ve probably shoveled more words into Twitter than this blog, but fear not – fairding.com will remain the one stop shop for all flavours of bonwaggery – from MySpace and Geocities to Unthink and Google Plus, and whatever comes next.
(BTW: why is is that even today, no-one ever gets the ‘fairding.com’ joke?)
For a dose of history; visit the first post, or visit the archive of the earliest known version of BONWAG.
Mount Everest on show
For no reason; here’s a shot of Mount Everest looking particularly beautiful today.
