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... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.
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Originally Posted by Lucifer
NO, NO, NO.
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Don't make me post the chill pill again. I'll do it. I'm loco.
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Originally Posted by Lucifer
This 'whole big thing' as you put it, is cause Lucifer is trying to understand the limits of 'peaceful protest.' They said that they were going to protest us 'peacefully', we said 'okay', and kept on coming. If we'd understood that 'peaceful' in their eyes meant vandalism and trespassing, we'd have gone to MARSEC 3 at that moment, and either stood off shore out of reach of them, or had the whole crew out lining the rails so they couldn't have gotten on board.
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Peaceful is non-violent. That's how protesters speak. Did they shoot you? Did they strike you? Did they blow a hole in your boat? No? Then they were non-violent. If you get word again, phone the coast guard or whatever policing force has jurisdiction over your location. It's not difficult. If the protesters do something illegal, then they are stopped and arrested.
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Originally Posted by Lucifer
And if for anyone who thinks I'm wrong about my predictions of more incidents, here's a link to another site with story and pictures about them blockading and vandalising another ship, this time in the Saguenay River, on the 14th.
http://kleercut.net/en/node/895 |
I don't recall anyone in this thread saying this wouldn't bring about more protests.
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Originally Posted by Lucifer
And while we are on the subject of Lucifer...I seem to have been lumped in with 'the man' over the course of this thread, just because I was on the ship that was boarded. Just for the record, I support protest as an effective means of change, but I also support the law. For me, 'peaceful' doesn't mean anything that gets the police involved and someone gets arrested. I'm a member of Project Green, an award winning, student-led environmental group here at Memorial University. We have a bike sharing and a ride-sharing program in place, as well as other environmental initiatives. I don't own a car, instead I walk, bike and take public transportation whenever possible. I recycle, which in the city I live in costs me about $14/month, because the city doesn't have a recycling program in place. Instead, each household can put out up to 10 bags of garbage each.
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Wouldn't that make you a hypocrite for working for the coal industry? I mean if I, an avid anti-war type, were to work for Haliburton or be active in the military... well that would send out a rather mixed signal. I intend no offense, of course, but you have to see how being an environmentalist that ships coal is a bit odd.
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Originally Posted by Lucifer
Wil's comment about the 'maple syrup and zinc' trade not being affected by this action is probably the most asinine comment I've ever read in TFP.
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Well you need to do your homework then. Aside from the joking comment about syrup, playing on an old cliche, zinc is Canada's largest export. Hardly asinine when speaking of shipping, I'd imagine.
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Originally Posted by Lucifer
Did you ever wonder where the road salt for Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Toledo, Superior, Duluth, Cleveland, Erie and all the little places in between (like Muskegon, home of Iggy Pop) comes from? It comes from Goderich, Ontario, a tiny little town with a very large salt mine. And it comes in all year to American cities on Canadian ships.
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So you're expecting GreenPeace to stop a boat carrying... salt? I wouldn't call that asinine (that'd be rude), but it hardly makes sense. Salt isn't on the GP agenda.
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Originally Posted by Lucifer
An average bulk laker can carry 25,000 metric tonnes of cargo, not just coal, but salt, gravel, iron ore, stone, cement and other bulk commodities. In relation, the average dump truck can carry about 20 metric tonnes. So each laker is carrying the equivalent of about 1000 dump trucks. Think about that for a minute! That's 1000 more dump trucks on your highways for every laker that stops running. The great lakes trade is dying already. Each year there are fewer and fewer ships carrying cargo. We can't get crew and officers to work on them. The trucker's lobby in Ottawa and Washington is more powerful than the shipper's lobby. Already, some of our contracts have dried up and gone to the truckers, who can carry year round. Nanticoke generating station (and others like Lambton, Recors, Marysville) burns 5000 tonnes a day (!!) in the summer trying to keep up to the energy demand. When we made the dock finally and could start to unload, they were so desperate for the coal, we fed the burners directly from the dock. I agree the burning of coal is a bad thing (that's why I consistently support governments who promise to stop coal fired generating stations), but I also know that there is nothing in place to replace it yet. Windfarms are springing up all over the Great Lakes from Duluth to Sault Ste Marie to Tobermory, but there aren't enough of them yet. There is an overseas shipping company, the Wagenborg line, that has the contract to bring in the windmills. It would have been nice if an American or Canadian company had that contract instead.
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Perhaps the shipping companies will ship coal separately after this. That way only one ship gets stopped and the salt can flow. Or maybe, just maybe, they stop shipping coal. Now you see how GreenPeace works? All the salt, gravel, iron, stone, cement etc. will continue because it's still cost effective. The coal, on the other hand, will be less cost effective to ship. |