Back in the Seventies, I never could have imagined that the organization that I co-founded in 1972 along with a group of incredible talented and media savvy visionaries would end up supporting the slaughter of polar bears, seals and whales.
The Greenpeace Foundation International has completely betrayed everything it once stood for. The people who run Greenpeace today have literally smashed the foundation of ideals and principles that the Greenpeace name was built upon.
Their endorsement today along with the World Wildlife Fund of Polar bear hunting is a despicable act that will condemn hundreds of these magnificent animals to suffering and death.
Already facing the threat of climate change, the impact of oil exploration and the diminishment of food resources, the polar bear will continue to be hunted by trophy hunters so that a very small handful of Inuit guides can keep their jobs of leading overly privileged white hunters to their victims.
Guiding white hunters to kill Polar bears is not a tradition nor does it have any validity as being a part of Inuit culture.
Earlier this year the notorious Greenpeace Arctic Director Jon Burgwald accepted a gift of a seal skin vest from a Greenland fur company and proudly posed for pictures in a seal skin coat. Calls for his dismissal were ignored by Greenpeace.
Last year, Burgwald apologized to the Inuit for Greenpeace opposition to the commercial seal slaughter in the Seventies despite the fact that the Inuit never participated in the East coast annual massacre of baby seals. Now to further curry favor with the Inuit in an effort to enlist their support against the oil companies, Greenpeace has tossed them another bone – their support for killing the bears.
This is the face of the new Greenpeace and it is a face that every single living founding member of Greenpeace condemns. Greenpeace supports the slaughter of pilot whales in the Faroe Islands, the slaughter of dolphins in Japan, the brutal massacre of baby seals in Canada and the killing of Polar bears.
Last year Greenpeace brought in 375 million Euros in donations and spent $170 million Euros on fund-raising campaigns. It has become a great big mean green machine that now exists to generate donations for the purpose of supporting the employees of Greenpeace.
They lose members of course each and every time their hypocrisy is exposed but they bank on the apathy and the ignorance of the general public. As one former Greenpeace director once said, “it does not matter what is true, it only matters what people think is true.”
And thus Greenpeace has become a parasitical feel good corporation. What it sells is the illusion of caring. Support Greenpeace and be transformed into an environmentalist and no matter what you do, your conscience will be absolved because you hold a Greenpeace membership.
The World Wildlife Fund is no surprise. They have always been pro-trophy hunting, pro-sealing and whaling. No surprise there that they would endorse the trophy hunting of polar bears.
Greenpeace however was established to represent the victims of human greed. Now Greenpeace is championing the human predators.
It’s a bloody disgrace.
We almost had a win for the bears. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wanted a ban. The European Union wanted a ban. Even Russia argued that poachers from Canada were using Canadian bear permits to launder their illegal kills.
All of this was overturned by Greenpeace and the WWF.
And yet the public continues to support Greenpeace and WWF under the illusion that both these organizations are the champions of endangered and threatened species.
Some 300 Polar bears will die this year, brutally slain by high-powered rifles in the hands of rich psychopaths and all for the purpose of protecting the jobs of a few dozen hunting guides. And this number does not include the victims of poachers who will be able to sell their illegal polar bear parts under the guise of forged papers.
Greenpeace has embraced the philosophy that jobs are more important than the environment and the rights of killers takes precedence over the rights of threatened and endangered species.
The spirit of Robert Hunter has been forsaken and replaced by the greed motivated anthropocentric views of Jon Burgwald, placing people first and the rights of other species second.
Greenpeace will continue to churn out tens of millions of copies of their “green” propaganda aimed at pulling in donations for no other reason than to enrich themselves.
My critics will of course attack me for being critical of Greenpeace with the same old rhetoric saying I should be focusing on the enemy, and not Greenpeace. Unfortunately Greenpeace is now the enemy of the polar bears, the whales, the dolphins and the seals and that makes them my enemy also.
This is a poem I wrote a few years back. My allegiance is and always will be to the victims. I have no sympathy for sealers, whalers, dolphin killers and polar bear hunters or their guides. Jobs must never be a justification for slaughter and suffering, nor for the removal of a species from existence.
The polar bear is to the Arctic what the trees once were to Rapa Nui. When the trees disappeared so did the people of that island leaving only stone heads as evidence of their existence. Some day, in the not so distant future the same will be seen in the standing stones called the Inuksuit.
When the bear passes so will the people.
Captain Paul Watson
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
The Passing of the Bear
Like a ghostly wraith he drifted through the heavy snow and sleet,
Powerful muscles rippling, eyes taking in every dropping snowflake
Upon the ice he trod quietly on massive padded giant feet,
He lowered his head to lick the ice, his mighty thirst to slake.
Monarch of a whitish kingdom, unblemished and remote
Whiter than the Arctic snow at forty-eight below,
There is no garment on this Earth as warm as his white coat
With razor sharp ebony claws manicured into every toe.
He is living, walking, gleaming, iron, smiling, stoic and enduring,
There is no danger that he dreads, his dire anger strikes deadly fear,
He hides within the powdered snow, unwary seals he’s luring.
And men who try to track him often turn to find him to their rear.
He is Nanook, Lord of the frozen North.
His strength doth spread across the top of the entire world,
And all life trembles to see his silhouette as he strides boldly forth
Stalking through flickering darkness with the Northern Lights unfurled.
Those lights that define both polar space and time,
Lights dancing with greenish hues and silvered all ablaze
The Aurora and the bears movements both with nature rhyme.
As the one moves through the shadow of the other in a blinding haze.
And so it has been for thousands of years but not for a hundred more,
For now the ice melts underfoot and the wary seals grow rare,
The ice no longer extends from rocky shore to rocky shore,
And no longer can Nanook stride forth barely without a care.
His days are numbered as the ice retreats and the seals move far away,
Once he moved without fear, a life both noble and free,
But now his fate lies on the scales and there is nothing he can do or say,
For in a hundred years, no more will he walk upon the frozen sea.
There are few animals with such majestic flowing grace,
There are few whose babies are so deceptively cute,
A savage merciless temper masked by an innocent face,
Victim of pathetic men with little dicks that shoot.
In a fair fight, he would win, yes he would win for sure every time,
But little in this time and space is fair for plant or beast,
As mighty rivers grow sick and die and turn to putrid slime,
As species after species fade with the never-ending feast.
I watched him walk and his trail broke through the crusted snow,
His footfalls grew heavy as he searched for ice holes now long gone,
His body was growing lean and still the seals did not show,
In his mind he knew not why, but he knew something was very wrong.
I followed his tracks over the chalky waste, seeing sadness in every step
He was clinging to life as best he could in that vast white domain,
And at nightfall up to his silent unmoving form I cautiously crept,
And saw at once that his breath had ceased and so also had his pain.
I placed my hand upon his broad savage brow and felt that it was still warm,
I saw his eye, blue, and deep open wide in a vacant stare,
And in that eye I saw reflected the face of death upon my human form,
For life goes on each day down south and the fate of bears stirs not a care.
The wind blows harsh and silently across the frozen splendour of the North,
The Northern Lights still blaze in a spectacular symphony so rare,
But Nanook no longer prowls the ice or across the tundra sallies forth,
The Northern winds will mourn forever the passing of the bear.
Captain Paul Watson
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