aberkok

You're right, but I meant that having one's peace disrupted does not necessarily mean violence has been inflicted on them. No one was hurt on Lucifer's ship, yet the question was raised, "Do you call this a peaceful protest?"

If a protest doesn't upset someone's sense of peace, what's the point?

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mixedmedia

uh, I don't know fellas, I think the connotation of 'peaceful protest' is pretty obvious...I'd say there's some misdirected quibbling going on here.

Which kind of brings me back to what rb was trying to get at, and that is - is the issue this specific Greenpeace event or the idea of protest as a legitimate form of political action?

I'd guess the results of a poll on this thread to be about 50/50.

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Willravel

Economic violence? I'm kinda surprised at this sentiment. He caused a negative economic effect, of course, but to suggest that this was in any way something that can be called "violence" seems so totally incorrect that I've actually had to look up the word violence because I feel like I've lost my grip on language for a minute.

To make something clear, as one who has committed non-violent protest: when we, the protester, use the word "non-violent", we specifically are speaking of physical harm. When GreenPeace uses the word "non-violent" to qualify their protesting, they are specifically speaking to their not wanting to physically hurt anyone. We're not saying we're not going to inconvenience people. As a matter of fact, that's often the idea.

As for Martin Luther King Jr., inconveniencing some racists was the best thing he could have done and helped to change not only the transportation system, but actually brought about a real change in society. Had that bus company wanted profit, they could have caved before the planned boycott. Had the restaurant owners not wanted to take a hit, they could have allowed black americans to use decent restroom facilities, drinking fountains, and to sit where they please. It was up to them to figure out which side would be less profitable. If they had a lot more white customers, and were racist, they could have ignored the boycott. If, however, you realize your consumer base is black, then you plan accordingly. Instead, they stuck to their racist guns and took a hit. That's the free market.

roachboy

so maybe we should wonder what exactly "peaceful" means.
obviously the notion of "violence" is mobile, a political matter: what constitutes violence is a matter of argument or perception. generally, however, folk who talk about social violence build in assumptions about assymetry of power--so it follows that in this case, the greenpeace activists would not be committing anything like a violent act because (a) there is no explicit violence, only inconvenience and potential for physical harm--potential that was not realized in this case and (b) the activists are operating in an assymetrical context. the only feasible way to equalize the power relations involved with the action is to cut it off from all wider contexts, view it in isolation and then construct interpretations based entirely on this narrowed view--which is what this thread is about.

but does this mean that lucifer's interpretation of the action as violence is therefore illegitimate? clearly he felt victimized by the action...and mapping the response onto greenpeace results in the argument that the action is piracy--which operates to the exclusion of considering it a protest action.

so who gets to designate what is and is not violence?
if you push this terminology to include any real or perceived boundary violation, is non-violent protest possible?
but if any boundary violation can be interpreted as violence, then it would follow that political protest itself becomes impossible--because by its nature political protest involves boundary violation. even a licensed demo that walks meekly up a city street between rows of police, beneath rows of fbi arrayed on rooftops taking photographs in the way that the state "security" apparatus has since, say, prague 1968---even that involves boundary violation insofar as it transforms city streets from spaces of flows to spaces of protest and in the process inflicts Inconvenience on Others.
boundaries are maintained then when there is no Inconvenience, and violence is just another word for being put out by the actions of others.
in which case, the "ethical" argument is that there should be no Inconvenience. therefore there should be no political protest.
another way: the argument is that any boundary violation is violence, so therefore private property boundaries are sacrosanct and take priority over the right to protest. any violation of private property is violence, is terrorism: a kid who crosses your lawn on the way to school is a terrorist; a demonstration on the streets is terrorism, greenpeace activists board lucier's ship are terrorists. everyone who fucks with private property is a terrorist.

so a non-violent society, from a bourgeois viewpoint, would be one in which everyone "stayed in their place" and those places were understood as natural boundaries. political actions of any kind would then be violent IF they did not remain the affairs of authorized agents who operated in authorized spaces and did not in so doing pose any Inconvenience--which is apparently, judging from alot of the responses in this thread, the criterion around which distinctions between violence and non-violence are made, once you abstract the notion from wider political arguments and treat it as if it were still meaningful.

that's quite an argument.

the qualifications so far have been mostly on the order of: i support the right to protest in general, but oppose it in particular. so you like the idea of political protest and think that should be enough. we can think about protest, but any given protest is violence.

the other trajectory in the thread has been a strange indirect debate over the validity of the *cause* for greenpeace's actions. this seems entirely beside the point--a better question would have been whether it made sense to board the ship if the coal industry itself was the target. this because the fact that one might disagree with the way greenpeace frames its positions regarding energy production does not in any way impact upon whether greenpeace has the right to protest, to organize and act upon their views, regardless of your agreement with the arguments. that there is a debate about energy sources in this thread is an indication that greenpeace's action was justified because it engendered that conversation about alternatives to coal. so it seems to me that the fact of the debate above over nuclear power concedes the legitimacy of the greenpeace action. it demonstrates that the action was legitimate as a political action. engendering the debate is part of the point of the action--the action is not geared toward the assumption that you would agree with greenpeace necessarily--the action is geared around prompting debate. and it did. so the claims within that debate concerning greenpeace's action itself seem to me empty--you lost the argument when you started debating.

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Jinn

"Expecting to be in physical danger because of them is totally unreasonable and unfounded." How the hell am I supposed to know that this certain member of Greenpeace is going to be nonviolent? I don't go about my day assuming that everyone is not going to harm me (quite the opposite, actually). Believing that because someone is a member of a group they won't harm me is a great way to become a victim. Believing that is the "unreasonable and unfounded" assumption.

I'm with MSD.

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Willravel

Because I'm telling you?

Seriously, there are a lot of different socially active organizations out there that range from harmless to dangerous. GreenPeace is non-violent. That means they're not going to light anything on fire, bomb anything, or attack anyone. It's not an assumption; it's a fact. Contact GreenPeace or research them. GreenPeace is known for things like tying themselves to things, standing in the way of things, and tagging.

Lucifer

The point is that when someone breaks into your home, car or comes over the rail of your ship, you don't know that they are going to be peaceful. Unless you've got xray vision and can see under their clothes to see if they've got weapons, you have to assume that anything can happen! Just because someone announces that they are with Greenpeace and are non-violent, doesn't necessarily mean that they are! I can tell the world that I'm with Greenpeace too - it doesn't make it true. The 9/11 hijackers didn't wave their box cutters in the security line and announce that they were planning on being violent - they looked just like everyone else, which is why they suceeded.

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Willravel

They called first, identified themselves, and laid out clearly their intentions. Give me a break.

Lucifer

While, I can agree that Greenpeace is technically non-violent, the thing that has most of us worried, and this is what I said in my statement to the police, is that Greenpeace has effectively let the genie out of the bottle with this action. No ship has ever been boarded in the Great Lakes in this manner before. We are all afraid that we will see more types of this action in the future. While this protest may have been non-violent, who is to say that the next one will be. The next time it could be the Sea Shepard Society, or ELF, or it could be actual terrorists. The Great Lakes is the lifeblood of the American and Canadian industrial heartland. I couldn't count the number of American and Canadian Steel mills and smelters that are re-supplied from ships on the lakes, not to mention the grain ships from Thunder Bay, Duluth and Superior. Scuttling a ship in the Welland Canal, the St. Lawrence Seaway or the Sault Locks would effectively paralyze the industrial sector for months.

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Willravel

You can't say you're a member of GreenPeace and thus be a member of GreenPeace. All evidence available and precedence without exception can tell you that you're more likely drown in a puddle than be attacked by a member of GreenPeace. Again, it's unreasonable and unfounded to believe you're in physical danger from any member of GreenPeace.

I'm still surprised there's anyone in the coal, nuclear, or oil industry who haven't familiarized themselves with GreenPeace.

Lucifer

see my last (now edited) post #129

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Jinn

Will, are you just arguing to argue, or are you serious?

GreenPeace is an organization of people. People are inherently unpredictable. Your statement can be word-for-word translated to other organizations and you probably wouldnt agree:

Do you see how assuming something about someone PURELY based on their organization is a TERRIBLE idea? Do you see why it is unsafe? I don't care how convinced you are that they aren't violent, there are probably violent people in GreenPeace.

And you know what? If I were thinking of being a true pirate and taking over a ship at sea, I think wearing a GreenPeace shirt would be a really easy way for me to do it. I'm not actually a member, but if the boat is full of people like you, you'd immediately trust that I had no violent intentions.

Lucifer didn't know them from Sam; how is he supposed to assume they're not violent just because their jackets say GreenPeace?

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Willravel

This thread is showing me that a lot of people out there don't understand protesters at all, and it's really frustrating. I'm 100% serious.
The difference, of course, is that the Catholic Church, Muslims, and Congress never have suggested, as whole organizations, that they are non-violent, and also they have a history of being responsible for and directly connected to violence. Neither of those is true for GreenPeace.
It's based on precedence. GreenPeace has never been violent. Ever. In over 30 years and hundreds or possibly thousands of actions, not once has a GreenPeace member become violent. They've had violence done against them, of course. So, by precedence, the tanker crew is actually more likely to become violent than the protesters.

Sure, it's not completely impossible for a member of GreenPeace to become violent, but is so unlikely based on reality that planning for or expecting it is unreasonable. A Buddhist monk could become violent, too, but are you going to wear body armor into a monastery? Shit no. Why? It's completely unreasonable.
You'd be the first. Ever. In the history of the whole species. Think about that.

Frosstbyte

He'd be the first person ever to use group association as a means to gain implicit trust from another group and thereby infiltrate that group to his own ends? Or he'd just be the first person to do so imitating Greenpeace?

Either way, I think the question of "is GreenPeace" violent is somewhat less important than the point that lucifer brings up in his post 129. If these types of protests become more common in the Great Lakes, at what point do we decide that it's interfering too much with a vital trade route between Canada and the US. Since RB wants me to say it, I will just say that given the choice between the two, I'd have protesting go out in favor of trade with our biggest trading partner.

The concern is that this single incident looks like it cost lucifer's company in the neighborhood of $50-100k dollars in terms of actual expenses and opportunity cost. And the people who perptrated the act aren't really getting punished all that severely. That might make it a tempting way for other protesters to try to disturb this vital trade route. Furthermore, just because GreenPeace is the ones doing it now, that doesn't mean that ELF et al won't notice that it's not being taken very seriously and do something that's not "peaceful" on a ship. (yay I used a slippery slope argument)

Really, I think protesting is one thing. Boarding a ship is quite another.

Willravel

I meant GreenPeace, but I'm struggling to think of anyone becoming a member of a non-violent organization in order to mask his or her violent intent or actions. Nothing comes to mind.
They won't interfere with maple syrup or zinc. It's very specifically things like coal and oil. And if they succeed, then gas and coal prices will rise, and the industries will have to raise prices for consumers. In this way, GreenPeace and other organizations are forcing people to be responsible. Let's face it, leave most people to their own devices and they'll act like big idiots.
I think it's called a slippery slope fallacy. A fallacy is an argument based on flawed logic.

ELF knows it'll get punished no matter what it does because they are VERY violent. They are classified correctly as a terrorist organization, and are treated as such. If someone called ahead and said ELF would be boarding their ship, one could call homeland security and have helicopters there in minutes with armed men.

Jinn

On the flip side, you're showing me that you don't understand the "protect myself and property" mentality. I do not go about my day believing that no one will hurt me, or that someone does not wish to hurt me or my property just because they claim to be part of an organization that doesn't hurt people.

I'd much prefer to err on the side of being prepared and assuming someone is going to hurt me then be hurt and think "gosh, I wish I had been ready for that."

If someone is boarding my ship or climbing into my car without my permission I don't care who they are or what group they claim to be part of; they are a threat to my person and my property. Of course you have to match force with force, but the rule still applies that it's better to be safe than sorry.

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hagatha

if the aim of Greenpeace was to stir up the masses by this questionable protest, they really failed. i was in Ontario when it happened and it was on the media radar for about a day and then was gone.

I think the viability of such actions are questionable. They were trespassing on private property. Unfortunately, I foresee more events like this, particularly where greenhouse gases and global warming are a hot political issue.

I am biased, I don't like Greenpeace, I think they are just as corporate as the shipping company, only their business is "activism". And if the reaction of people in small town Ontario is a barometer of their success, they just came across as a bunch of assholes.

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mixedmedia

Welcome to the future of political activism. I'm overwhelmingly disenchanted with the tone of this discussion.



And you know, I hope everyone on this thread will take a moment and think about what their lives and our world might be like right now without the tradition of social and political protest.

And it's highly irrelevant - what you think of this protest in particular. The issues are not yours to pick and choose. What some of you are speaking for are the ideals of political repression and assassination and I think it's pretty ridiculous...to put it nicely.

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Jinn

Protests are not all the same.

There are plenty of ways to legally protest.

Illegally boarding and seizing a ship at sea is not one of them.

I can attack this protest without somehow subscribing to the slippery slope argument that if I block ANY protest they soon will never occur.

That's like saying that my by disapproving of PETA protests where they dump red paint on someone wearing fur I am supporting a protest-free America where we have Free Speech Zones.

"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins. "

There are plenty of effective and legal ways to protest coal and oil harvesting and transport, just like there are plenty of effective and legal ways to protest the skinning of animals for clothing.

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Ustwo

Dr. Moore is someone I personally respect and seems to understand whats going on in the environmental movement. What drove me from it in the first place. Of course now that hes not waving the anarchist flag hes considered nothing but a corporate shill, but then who would have thought the best way to help the environment was to work with the existing power structures to make it better when you could be painting 'no nukes' while pirating vessels on the great lakes. They call him an 'eco-traitor' I call him a grown up. Perhaps it coincidence he left the folds of the environmental left (though then it wasn't thought of that way) the same year I saw the light, perhaps thats when things finally got 'bad'.

Who would have thought the environmental movements would be a victim of the end of the cold war, but I can't fault his logic based on what I saw myself at the time.

Fear not fact, the montra of the modern 'environmentalist'.

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Jinn

For will:

You stand on a thin sheet of ice when you claim that something has never happened, particularly in the history of an organization.

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ubertuber

Seems like hyperbole to me mixedmedia.

My thought is that whatever economic damage greenpeace has caused (repainting the ship, salaries and operating costs of the ship for the time it was detained) should be repaid by greenpeace. I can't think of a sensical reason for them not to be liable. Maybe they don't pay indirect costs like lost sales, but direct costs seem like a no brainer to me.

And will, your definition of violence seems strained - I doubt you'd argue about the emotional violence inflicted by racism.

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Glory's Sun

I wonder if any of them thought about the fuel that was being let go by the ship the whole time the ship was waiting for these pansies to climb off.

Or the chemicals that have to be used to repaint the ship.. etc.

DUMB.

The shipping company can sue for the expenses incurred, because without the action of these noodles, the expenses wouldn't have been there. It's pretty simple.. really.

Infinite_Loser

I guess few people understand that protests are meant to inconvenience one party. If they didn't, they wouldn't be effective.

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mixedmedia

I am referring to anyone on this thread who advocates for the position that these people should have been shot. And those who believe that any protest that interferes with 'trade' is not legitimate.

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Infinite_Loser

I've said this about a million times before, but no they can't.

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mixedmedia

It is not hyperbole. I'm not saying that Greenpeace shouldn't be liable and I already stated that these folks should be charged with trespassing and vandalism - just like most political protestors who break the law in our more enlightened age (while it lasts).

Money is totally beside the point - to me. Only it seems that now I live in an age where money is the only point. Pardon me while I express a little dissatisfaction with that fact.

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Ustwo

Is an illegitimate protest like an illegal war?

No one has a 'right' to protest in an illegal fashion. This was not a 'legitimate' protest, it was a crime.

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mixedmedia

Since you probably don't know much about my stance on the war, I'm not sure what that comment is supposed to mean.

*edit* Many organized forms of protest break the law. That in and of itself does not make it illegitimate.

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ubertuber

You've repeated that over and over, but without any coherent logic or supporting evidence. That's why the issue is still being discussed.

MM - gotcha. I didn't understand that your "free speech zone" picture was directed at the shooters only. Regarding a world in which money is the only thing that matters... I share your dismay in a sense, but it's just how it is. I'm not condescing to you - I'm commiserating with you.

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mixedmedia

Well, uber, yes, the shooters.

AND the people who think political protest should be meek and mild and always performed within the confines of the law to be legitimate. This makes absolutely no sense to me given the history of political protest. It's nonsensical.

But, I wasn't feeling testy with you...sorry I came off that way.

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Ustwo

It doesn't matter what your stance on the war was, it was to make a point.

I always found the concept of an 'illegal' war asinine. No war is legal ever. Legality is not something that applies to war.

Much like the idea of a legitimate or illegitimate protest. It was a protest and it was a crime. I'm not sure what an illegitimate protest would entail, they could have blown up the ship and it still would have been a protest, and a crime. The two do not meld.

If you could give me an example of a illegitimate protest maybe we could get some where since criminal activity obviously doesn't make a protest illegitimate in your eyes.

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Willravel

Again, statistically it would be more reasonable to prepare for anthrax in the mail. Being prepare for a danger like GreenPeace attacking is about as reasonable as preparing for, say, the second coming of Christ. Some people may want to do it, but they're crazy for thinking it's reasonable. You're wasting your time and energy thinking you're in danger from or preparing for an attack from GreenPeace.
They shouldn't have boarded the ship. It was stupid. That said, there still wasn't any danger.
This is probably what we should be talking about (instead of preparing for an imminent attack from GreenPeace). Obviously, GreenPeace had good intentions, but not only was it dangerous to board a ship (for them, they could be shot boarding a ship if they were confused for a pirate, which I guess is a reasonable mistake...) but either no one knows or cares, or people are pissed. It was a big fat failure, and it's a shame that the leadership at GP wasn't able to formulate a better plan. I'm thinking about joining just to make them more effective in their tactics. Boarding a ship is exciting and fun for them, but it's the wrong way to deliver the message.

Thank you, hagatha, for reiterating an excellent point.

Ustwo, first off thanks for providing links. Second, read your post again. GreenPeace isn't doing anything violent, and the suggestion that GP is 'associated' with other groups like 'Black Bloc' seem to magically appear without any citation or evidence. One can say GreenPeace is associated with ELF if one was so inclined, but that wouldn't make it true. Sometimes they share goals. That's it.
Yea mean like comparing a peacefful protest to someone holding a gun to your head?

Jinn, those un-linked articles are pretty weak. Spraying seals with a dye isn't violence. There is zero evidence to suggest that it has any effect on their ability to stay warm, and The usually blue color that seals are sprayed with could theoretically help them more than hurt them when they're in the water, where they spend a vast majority of their time. As for Poor Paul, he he left GreenPeace in 1977, 10 whole years before the incident in question. Why was he kicked out? You'll love this. GreenPeace didn't approve of his tactics. Crazy, right? I'm sorry, but this is really cut and dry.
Emotional violence is different than physical violence. When GP says it's non-violent, as I've said, they mean they will not commit physical violence. They will commit emotional violence, and may even damage property (so long as it doesn't put people in danger), but they will not commit violent acts that put anyone but themselves in danger.

Infinite_Loser

What the hell...? I really think I type for my own enjoyment.

You can't sue for revenue you haven't yet earned, nor can you sue for the expenses you accrue due to operating your business. If you could, then no one would protest as any protest resulting in monetary losses to the company would be liable for suit. The point of a protest is to hit a company where it hurts, and that's it's wallet. They're meant to be inconvenient.

It's not hard to understand.

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The_Jazz

Ustwo, while I do agree with your point about the protest and it's "legitimacy", you're completely wrong about the legality of war. There have been rules and laws of warfare for well over 1000 years. Typically broken rules have only been enforced by the victors, but analogy that you're using to make your point sucks. You should find a new one.

You cannot apply the adjectives "legitimate" or "illegitimate" to the word "protest". The latter exists completely independently. Perhaps those words can be applied to the groups doing the protesting, but I do not see how any protest that is simply that can be legitimate or otherwise.

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Glory's Sun

You are sadly mistaken. You can hope that a corporation can't sue you for something.. but big business can do whatever the fuck they want. These expenses have nothing to do with future revenues.. it has to do with the fact that the actions of a certain group of people caused an expense to a company that was otherwise non-existant.

If I cause you to wreck your car and injure yourself, I'm liable for the damages and lost wages because of my actions.. just as these fucks actions caused expenses that would not have otherwise been incurred.

It doesn't matter if it's a protest or not. It doesn't matter if it was piracy or not. The fact remains that these people caused an inconvience to the corporation that resulted in a loss and it can be taken to court.

Even if a court decided they couldn't sue for the expenses of being held in port, they will be able to sue for physical damages.

The fact remains that if these people wanted to be "peacefull" about protesting, they could have simply rode along beside the ship with loud speakers etc protesting and proclaiming their message.. they didn't need to put people in danger and cause vandalism.

Willravel

WHOA, WHOA, wait a second. I enjoy them, too.

Ustwo

[Start Threadjack]
And none of them applied in any of those wars. It doesn't matter what people write down, it matters what they do and wars are never illegal or legal, they are just won or lost.

Was it legal to bomb Pearl Harbor? For the Japanese yes, for the Americans no, the answer was not decided in court but in combat, the US won and the attack was therefore 'illegal'.

The Japanese committed war crimes to the Chinese civilians and US POW's. Had they won, these would not have been war crimes. On the other hand the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the firebombing of Tokyo would have almost undoubtedly lead to US leaders being put up on war crimes charges.

There are no laws in war, only gentilemens agreements. No court can enforce its will on a hostile army, which is why the law does not apply. Only the side in power can decide after what was legal and what was not.
[End Threadjack]

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The_Jazz

Caveat - I don't know if this applies to Canada.

Yes, you can sue for revenue you haven't earned yet but expected to. Yes you can sue for EXTRA operating expenses.

The question is does the damage to your business trump someone else's First Amendment rights? Typically no, but most companies aren't motivated to sue because of the bad publicity.

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Lucifer

I can't see my company suing over this. We've already had a bad summer, publicity wise, and really didn't need anymore.

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I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.
- Job 30:29

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