Excellent Responses Graham.

IMHO Greenpeace cannot expect to be allowed to justify illegal action because the Japanese might be deemed to be acting “illegally”.

The fact is Greenpeace are acting on their own initiative and are self appointed.

They have no licence or authority to act in the name of any recognised nation state, just as journalists have no authority to speak for any government or pretend they hold the right to represent a particular group of people.

The other ship in those waters, the one operated by Sea Shepherd represents an anarchist enterprise. On their web site http://www.seashepherd.org/ I quote

“The conservation ship Farley Mowat ordered the Japanese whaling supply ship Oriental Bluebird to leave the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary and then sideswiped their ship to convey a serious message.”

Without being appointed by any authority at least one of the “fleet” of self appointed anti-whalers have publicly admitted their criminal actions. Strange, Greenpeace should try to maintain their pretence as victim.

If the Farley Mowat had been Operated by Chinese sailors and in the South China Seas – it would have been called an act of attempted piracy.

Ultimately, it is very difficult for any one or any organisation to hold any other person or organisation up to a higher standard than that they practice themselves.

Apologists for Greenpeace might not like it but an organisation which engages in criminal actions is a criminal organisation.

Similarly, any journalist with public recognition (who wishes to retain that recognition) has an ethical responsibility to ensure the origins of their articles are truthful and free of criminal promotion and to readily identify where they have not established accuracy or credibility.

Tus – still speaking what I am thinking.

One passing comment regarding Geoff’s post “Walers set collision course with Greenpeace ship”.

Were they singing “We’ll keep a welcome in the hillside” as they collided?

Note – I deplore Whaling. The difference between me and Greenpeace is - I believe we should do things which are within our legal options or risk escalation of damage and entrenchment of positions

Graham,
it is good to see you are so interested in truth in the media.
There is very little of it around. Why did you choose greenpeace as a topic to push TRUTH in media, when the Federal Liberal party are masters at lying and deciept. The Federal Liberal party uses semantics to issue misleading bs.
Core and non-core promises, children overboard etc. There ars simply too many to count.
Until the truth is reported on major issues such as the IR laws, David Hicks and so on, it doesnt matter if the truth is told on the greenpeace issue. I still remember the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in NZ by the French, so I do tend to believe that the Japanese would be capable and inclined to act in an aggressive manner.

But really it doesn't matter until there is truthfullness demanded from the media at the federal and international level

Greenpeace is doing a good job keeping the Japanese whaling in the public eye.
Our own government would rather sit on it's hands that protect our oceans from being as overfished as Asian waters. In the name of trade [or a lack of courage] they allow Indonesians to plunder our Northern waters and reefs with the possibility of allowing diseases into the country that have been diligently kept at bay.
I wish Greenpeace or someone else with a bit of guts would set up patrols up there too.
This is just a beginning. When these countries find there is no opposition they will get bolder and bolder , they have a free go.

To my understanding, factual reporting by the media is a cornerstone of democracy, essential for us to cast considered votes. Most posters seem to think that this responsibility of the media is seriously lacking.
If this is the case then the situation needs fixing. .

We individually have access to the facts of very few media reports and so how do we know how widespread this poor media reporting is? Individually we can do little.
Graham Young suggests that we will be able to use the internet to overcome this problem. Perhaps our own media watch to pool our facts could be organized.

Good in theory but in practice facts become bias and bias facts to each of us.

Thus the problems of a biased media, imperfections in our democracy, low public esteem of our journalists and politicians will remain insoluble until posters are prepared see the essential nature of a good media, to place to one side their more obvious bias and pool our facts to hunt the offending journalists.

Browsing the posts this idea would appear naïve as many are intent on point-scoring for their side, left or right, green, blue or brindle, activists of all hues. I hope most people would place advantages of an unbiased, factual media ahead of their individual ideology but I wouldn’t put money on it

AKA, why did I choose Greenpeace? Because the truth is so bloody obvious, and it happened when I wasn't writing about other things. If you want me to write up every lie that has ever happened, I need a bigger budget. You might drop some money OLO's way at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/membership/, but make sure you put lots of zeros on the end of it.

Dear Graham,

My reply email to you was rejected as spam, even though it had a heading, was the only email I've ever sent to 'the editor', and only one copy was sent. So I've written it below instead:

" This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

editor@onlineopinion.com.au

Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 8): 550 Rejected by SpamCop (66.249.92.194)

- Original message -

Hello Graham,

Thankyou very much, although your correction was a little misspelt - 'Arctice Sunrsie'.. but never mind.. Your position at OLO must keep you very busy..

Thanks also for maintaining the forum itself. There are still very few online forums such as this in Australia. I appreciate the work you are doing, and consider it very worthwhile.

Regards,
Evan.
"

I hope my email address wasn't classed as a source of spam because I suggested that you relax! Being relaxed is something good. Don't take offence, as none was intended..