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October 2, 2009Marking Gandhi's birthday
One of our Communications Managers, Prajna Khanna, writes:
With the simple act of making salt, Gandhi concluded one of the most successful Non violent protests in History – the Salt march. He mobilised millions with his vision of a free state, symbolized by the freedom to make salt – the essence of Indian food. The United Nations marks the anniversary of Gandhi’s birth today as International day of Non Violence. And Greenpeace marks it with 22 activists in Svalbard – near the top of the world -- by blocking a shipment of coal..
CNN tour of the Arctic Sunrise
Our ship, the Arctic Sunrise, has spent the last months on an expedition to Greenland. We provided a platform for independent scientists researching climate change impacts, and independent journalists reporting on them.
During the journey, CNN filed this really lovely tour of the Arctic Sunrise. Kind of makes me homesick for the ship. :-)
Rex Weyler talks about Tar Sands and Greenpeace early history
Rex has been over here in Amsterdam for the last few days, and I've been lucky enough to hear him speak twice now. He's one of the greatest story tellers in an organization full of great story tellers, and a wealth of institutional history and perspective. I managed to capture his speech to our staff meeting on Friday on my iPhone and cut it into two videos.
Greenpeace response to Washington Times editorial
On Tuesday May 5th The Washington Times had an editorial that was all about Greenpeace, it was included in both the print and online versions of the newspaper. The editorial mentioned arson, and 'Nazi brownshirts' in reference to Greenpeace, but also hinted that Greenpeace had used the 1985 bombing of the flagship Rainbow Warrior by agents of the French government as a means to raise funds. Understandably, people were upset.
Today the Washington Times has published an editorial by Phil Radford, the Executive Director of Greenpeace USA that tactfully 'corrects' the previous editorial (which has since been taken down). It's a good read.
Greenpeace new employee induction speach
It's always a good idea to keep an eye on the blogs of your work colleagues. I should really do it more often. There's a great post on Brian's blog with his standard "new employee induction speech" (thanks for the tip Eoin!). Guess Brian was too shy to post it here himself. ;-)
Here's a little clip:
If you look back at Greenpeace campaigns to stop nuclear waste dumping in the ocean or save Antarctica from oil drilling, or stop nuclear weapons testing or save the whales — those all were impossible tasks when we took them on. And that’s part of the nature of profound change.It looks impossible when you start, and looks inevitable after you’ve finished.
None of those things were inevitable. They happened because a bunch of crazy hippies set out to change the world, and just didn’t know any better. They didn’t listen to the voices that said you’re stupid, you’ll look silly, you’re gonna get hurt. Every one of those actions was enabled by an individual choice, and Greenpeace is an engine and amplifier of those choices.
And that’s what Greenpeace and hippies were all about: that crazy notion that every one of us individually has the power to change the world. When you think about that, it’s more than a little crazy. It’s really nuts.
And if you, dear hippies, are going to make a difference in this organization, you’re going have to embrace that madness.
Sjoerd Jongens 1950-2008
Photo ©Greenpeace/Kate Davison
Sjoerd Jongens, 57 years old, died yesterday in a bicycle accident on his way to work here at Greenpeace International in Amsterdam.
He joined Greenpeace in 1987, when he took on the job of radio operator at World Park Base in Antarctica -- a place he loved for its beauty, its solitude... and the clarity of its atmosphere as a transmission medium for radio waves.
He was a veteran of two winters in Antarctica with the Australian Antarctic Division before he joined Greenpeace at World Park Base, as part of our ultimately successful campaign to ban oil and minerals exploitation in that fragile environment. He was most at home there or on the ocean, and he sailed with Greenpeace as a radio operator on many missions over the years, including voyages into the Southern Ocean to save the whales and a solar-powered "New Millennium" expedition across the international date line.
He moved back to his native Netherlands in 1989 and joined our international office as a new brand of staff member, a network support engineer. But that title hardly does justice to the role he played. I say this with the deepest affection: Sjoerd was a geek. His single-minded obsession with all things digital meant that he was constantly finding new ways to bend new technologies to Greenpeace's purposes, and he broke new ground for two decades.
Sjoerd foresaw that a new thing called " the internet" might be something we'd want to use in future, and he started a gopher, WAIS, and FTP server back in the late 80s. He registered the domain www.greenpeace.org and put our first website up in 1992, serving as the organisation's first webmaster.
He set up our first web server on a second-hand 386 PC with a 20 megabyte hard disk running Xenix. Keychains today have more memory than that, and Sjoerd was proud that his Linux skills allowed him to take a computer that most people would have thrown away, and not only make it work for Greenpeace, but turn it into a piece of cutting-edge technology.
He did a great deal for Greenpeace that will remain unsung -- both because he laboured so often in solitude and the nature of so much of his work was simply that it enabled others to do theirs. All most people knew was that Sjoerd was the server master, a practitioner of dark digital arts, the guy who stayed late into the night and made it all work. And the guy who couldn't take a vacation, because his beloved machines, like pouting pets, would throw a fit whenever he left the office and refuse to work for anyone else.
He was possibly the grumpiest support person in the history of IT support. And yet he was beloved by everyone who caught a glimpse of the heart behind the gruffness. His managers, myself among them, quickly learned to keep him close to the computers, far from the staff. Mike Townsley once approached him to say he was having trouble with his laptop. "No, Mike. I suspect we'll find that your laptop is actually having trouble with you," was the unironic response.
But those who saw him at sea or in Antarctica saw a different Sjoerd. He kept a diary of his stay in the Antarctic, and wrote this:
Life here is a very special experience, both professionally, domestically, and socially. You are sharing a year of your life with a group of very dedicated, passionate, intelligent, well-traveled, interesting and interested peers. The landscape is unique, impressive, and on a windless, sunny day the horizon surrounds you, colorful, tingling and stunningly clean.During a clear summer day, the Trans-Antarctic mountains on the other side of the McMurdo Bay are lit from all sides, 24 hours a day, thrusting their white-and-red peaks around 3000 meters into the sky. It's indescribably beautiful.
Even during the long polar night Antarctica remembers light, with the Aurora Australis, the millions of visible stars, and its sharply shining moonlight. You can never forget you are in a rare environment. People call this a hardship posting, but from me you'll hear no complaining. Do I feel honored that I had the opportunity to contribute to the preservation of this great continent? You bet I do.
There was a rainbow over Amsterdam yesterday morning, about the time Sjoerd would have been setting off on his last journey. I take some comfort in the thought that it may have been among the last things he saw, and in imagining that it might have been a tiny farewell gesture from the Earth, to one of the gentlest of her Rainbow Warriors.
Photo by Andrew Davies
This photo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
--------------------------
Sjoerd's funeral was on Thursday, November 20th. We presented the family with a book of memories and photos, including the comments and remembrances from this blog.
Mother Jones: Greenpeace and Black Ops
"Meet the private security firm that spied on Greenpeace and other environmental outfits for corporate clients. A tale of intrigue, infiltration, and dumpster-diving."
Just published on the Mother Jones website, an intriguing article by James Ridgeway about private espionage by an American security company called Beckett Brown International (later called S2i) against the likes of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Along with this excellent four-page article is a raft of support pdf documents for download.
Hans Monker
You would never pick out Hans in a bar as a hero. He just didn't have the look. But he went places most people wouldn't dare go, to do work beyond most of us - for Greenpeace, Médecins Sans Frontières and other groups.
He was born in the Netherlands, traveled most of the world (from the Amazon to Antarctica) and died in Vietnam - where he lived with his wife.
Recently, Hans checked into the hospital with pneumonia. He responded well to treatment, and checked out several days later - eager to get back to work on a Greenpeace project. Today, he collapsed and passed away at a hotel breakfast table.
Hans was a behind the scenes person. Not one for the spotlight. He had strong convictions though, and when pressed would talk about them. Here's his crew profile from our first ship tour together - a voyage to defend whales in the Southern Ocean:
It is important for me to participate in this campaign - for a long time millions of people all over the world have been united in voicing that whaling is just not on - we have a responsibility to make sure that we preserve whales, not kill them.One of mankind's greatest gifts is the one of creation - we have the ability to create both beautiful as well as destructive things.
Another gift given to mankind is freedom. We are capable of choosing to destroy or protect the earth.
Creativity and freedom are not for free - we also have the responsibility to use our gifts in a good way, that is: to make things beautiful, then we can enjoy them together, in freedom.
My personal goal to be with Greenpeace is to be part of a group of people that gives others food for thought.
-- Hans
I was lucky to know Hans, but I know a lot of you knew him better than I did. Please leave messages in the comments. We'll pass them on to his family.
Farewell, Mr. Bates
New comes today of the passing of A.E. Griffith Bates, Jr. You won't recognise the name. You won't have seen pictures of him chained to anything. He's probably never appeared in any of the many books about Greenpeace. But he was an extraordinary example of the many ordinary people around the world who make Greenpeace work.
Mr. Bates was a volunteer.
What does a Greenpeace Christmas party look like?
How do a bunch of hardcore activists take a break from saving the planet, kick back, and relax? They take a few Santa outfits, hitch themselves into their climbing gear, and perform a ballet on the climbing wall in the Greenpeace Action Warehouse in Hamburg, Germany for the amusement of their colleagues. The Action Warehouse is a big space that's a bit of a cross between Q's Laboratory, a banner factory, mountain climbing base station, a non-violent version of Langley's CIA training campus, and the Tracy Island headquarters of the amphibious Thunderbird crew from International Rescue. Please remember, these are trained professionals: don't try this at home.
Congrats Paulo!
Greenpeace Brazil campaigner Paulo Adário has been named one of the country's 100 most influential people by Globo's magazine Epoca. Paulo's been using that influence for years to help protect the Amazon. You can read stories about his work: in English, in Portuguese.
Time magazine special highlights enviro heros
Times mag has presented a list of environmental heroes, including Al Gore, Wanhari Mathaai, Chip Giller, Frederic Hauge, and our very own Von! I met Von some years ago in the US, and I've always been impressed by his willingness to get his hands dirty working at the community (and garbage dump) level. In 1999, the Philippines became the first country in the world to ban waste incineration nationwide, and in 2003 he won the Goldman Environmental Prize (his acceptance speech is here).
From the Time magazine feature:
The West likes to outsource to Asia: countless low-cost factories and call centers have been relocated to the world's most populous continent. But Von Hernandez, a former literature professor from the Philippines, drew the line at another lucrative export from the developed world: mountains of trash. Across Asia, waste incinerators pump out clouds of dioxin and other harmful chemicals that come from processing imported garbage. It's a highly profitable business for waste companies, but the onslaught of pollutants can wreak havoc on local health.
Greenpeace finally arrives at Amchitka
Kieran Mulvaney, sailing aboard the Esperanza, wrote the following for Undercurrents, the crew blog for our Bering Sea voyage.
Thirty-five years, eleven months, and eighteen days later, we finally made it.On September 15, 1971, a crew of twelve set out from Vancouver Island in an eighty-foot halibut seiner called the Phyllis Cormack on a daring, even foolhardy, mission: to steam to the Aleutian island of Amchitka and protest, or even prevent, the detonation of an underground nuclear test. When the plan was first hatched, the group that organized the mission went by the name of the Don't Make a Wave Committee. By the time the Cormack set out to sea, they were calling themselves Greenpeace.
The Cormack didn't make it to Amchitka. President Nixon delayed the test, the crew put into the Aleutian port of Akutan to figure out next steps, and the US Coastguard arrested them on a technicality. But the mission was a success: although the explosion, dubbed Cannikin, went ahead, it would be the last on the island: a further four tests were scheduled but canceled in the face of the enormous protests that found a voice in the Greenpeace voyage.
And yet, ever since, a circle has remained broken, a path unfinished. Almost thirty-six years have passed, the island has become a wildlife sanctuary, and a kind of calm has returned in this most remote of realms, and yet, no Greenpeace ship had completed the Phyllis Cormack's journey and reached the shores of Amchitka.
Until today.
Greenpeace scientist more important than Buddha!
It's official. Our scientist Paul Johnston, or PJ as he's affectionately called around here, is more important than Buddha, the Dalai Lama, and more weirdly, Jamie Oliver and Father Christmas. Today the Guardian names the Environment Agency's Top 100 green campaigners of all time, and PJ has come in at a respectable number 40. Nice one PJ!
Ozone healing nicely, thank you
Ah the ozone hole. I remember years ago when, going door to door for Greenpeace USA, I could barely find anyone except NASA scientists who even believed the thing existed.
Yet, just last Wednesday, the Antarctic ozone hole reached an all time big. But not to worry say scientists. This year's unusually large hole was due mostly to an extended South Pole cold spell. As the San Francisco Gate reports, the overall situation is looking good:
In fact, separate measurements show the amount of ozone-depleting bromine and chlorine gases at the surface peaked around 1995, and has been declining since then, mainly because of international restrictions adopted under the 1987 Montreal Protocol.
1985: Rainbow Warrior Sinking - French agents finally on TV!
I've just been watching online footage from New Zealand TV station TVNZ. They claimed legal history this week, after footage was shown in France of two French agents pleading guilty to manslaughter in 1985, following the sinking of the first Rainbow Warrior.
"Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, who admitted killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Periera, failed to stop TVNZ broadcasting their courtroom confessions and viewers have finally been shown the French spies admitting their guilt. The trial was covered by closed circuit cameras, but the visual record of the proceedings had remained under wraps as the pair fought for their guilty pleas never to be shown on television."
Happy Birthday, Greenpeace
Rex Weyler writes: "[September 15th] is the 35th birthday of Greenpeace. Some of the founders have passed on: Irving Stowe, Ben Metcalf, Davie Gibbons, John Cormack, and Bob Hunter. A new generation of environmentalists face challenges that we did not imagine thirty-five years ago when a little fishboat departed from Vancouver, Canada to sail into a nuclear test zone. The following accounts of that voyage are from my book: Greenpeace (Raincoast Books, Rodale Press): As May Sarton says: “One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.”
Read the rest at Common Dreams...
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