Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.
...
With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the "war president." Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line -- and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.
Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn't have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.
I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush's Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.
Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you're doing it so you can "end the war") will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you've said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone -- and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout "tea bag!"
Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.
We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can't take it anymore. We can't take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of "landslide victory" don't you understand?
11.30.2009
"Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here."
Just read Michael Moore's open letter to Obama re: the war in Afghanistan. Powerful message, right on the money as always, from Michael Moore:
11.21.2009
Totally agree
Had no idea this was happening until I read about it in AMERICAblog, but happy to live in the city that has taken this step first:
I am very proud to say that Ross Mirkarimi is my city supervisor — voted for him twice now. He's spoken at a few local Greenpeace events, including a rally outside of a Chamber of Commerce meeting last week.
The day after that rally we did a floating balloon banner inside the Chamber's conference at the ritzy Fairmont hotel. Check this out:
Don’t have your cat declawed in San Francisco, or West Hollywood, or you could face fines up to $1,000 and six months in jail. This month, the city by the bay became the first major metro area in California to outlaw the veterinary procedure, and was soon joined by Santa Monica, Berkeley and Beverly Hills. Los Angeles is expected to enact the ban next week.
"It’s a form of animal cruelty," San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, a major supporter of the ban, tells PEOPLEPets.com. "It would be unconscionable to ignore that fact."
I am very proud to say that Ross Mirkarimi is my city supervisor — voted for him twice now. He's spoken at a few local Greenpeace events, including a rally outside of a Chamber of Commerce meeting last week.
The day after that rally we did a floating balloon banner inside the Chamber's conference at the ritzy Fairmont hotel. Check this out:
11.09.2009
Free live Pixies tracks!!!
You gotta cough up an email address, and it has to be valid, but otherwise completely free live tracks from a show The Pixies played in Paris. The tracks are meant as a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the classic album Doolittle, which the band is playing in its entirety on their current USA Doolittle Tour.
11.03.2009
Final tour wrap-up
Sadly, this is my last post on the ship tour. I’m back in San Francisco. The tour wrapped up in the Cook Islands on October 21st. We ended the tour by hosting an “open boat,” where a couple hundred locals and tourists got the chance to tour the Esperanza, and by holding a press conference to inform local journalists about what we accomplished out on the high seas.
We also met with some folks from the Ministery of Marine Resources in the Cook Islands. It was a pretty exciting meeting for all of us, because just the week before we had busted the Koyu Maru 3, a Japanese ship we caught fishing in Cook Islands' waters illegally, as you might recall. The Cook Islands has started a formal investigation of the vessel with their counterparts at the Fisheries Agency of Japan, and this is sure to knock Japan down a peg at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) meeting this December, as they've enjoyed a squeaky-clean record until now.
The tour was a really amazing experience for me and I thought I’d share a few last videos.
We saw an abundance of amazing marine life, including dolphins, whales, flying fish, seabirds, and more. Here’s a video of a baby whale shark we encountered one day:
Our helicopter, Tweety, is an invaluable tool that we use to scout out the open water, document pirate/unlicensed fishing, etc. I went on one early morning heli flight to search for another two Japanese longliners, which we suspected might be fishing in the Cook Islands' waters with their sister ship the Koyu Maru 3. We didn't find them, but I put this video together anyway because I think it's interesting how a heli flight gives you a whole new perspective on just how small the Espy really is in relation to the deep blue sea:
We also met with some folks from the Ministery of Marine Resources in the Cook Islands. It was a pretty exciting meeting for all of us, because just the week before we had busted the Koyu Maru 3, a Japanese ship we caught fishing in Cook Islands' waters illegally, as you might recall. The Cook Islands has started a formal investigation of the vessel with their counterparts at the Fisheries Agency of Japan, and this is sure to knock Japan down a peg at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) meeting this December, as they've enjoyed a squeaky-clean record until now.
The tour was a really amazing experience for me and I thought I’d share a few last videos.
We saw an abundance of amazing marine life, including dolphins, whales, flying fish, seabirds, and more. Here’s a video of a baby whale shark we encountered one day:
Our helicopter, Tweety, is an invaluable tool that we use to scout out the open water, document pirate/unlicensed fishing, etc. I went on one early morning heli flight to search for another two Japanese longliners, which we suspected might be fishing in the Cook Islands' waters with their sister ship the Koyu Maru 3. We didn't find them, but I put this video together anyway because I think it's interesting how a heli flight gives you a whole new perspective on just how small the Espy really is in relation to the deep blue sea:
Lastly, I shot this video tour of the ship, which is pretty self-explanatory:
Oct. 24th 350 event on the steps of the Sydney Opera House!
I was on my way back to the States after the ship tour when Oct. 24th rolled around, which just so happened to be the largest day of climate action in history. I was lucky enough to be in Sydney, Australia. The event there was amazing, right on the steps of the iconic Opera House. I shot some video to share:
That’s Lord Mayor Clover Moore, Sydney’s first publicly elected female Lord Mayor, you see speaking in the video.
The culmination of the event was a group of people spelling out “350” with blue umbrellas. I got this shot of them while they were still organizing the umbrella-holders, but you can still make out the numbers pretty well:
Here’s me doing an obligatory tourist shot with the crowd and Opera House:
That’s Lord Mayor Clover Moore, Sydney’s first publicly elected female Lord Mayor, you see speaking in the video.
The culmination of the event was a group of people spelling out “350” with blue umbrellas. I got this shot of them while they were still organizing the umbrella-holders, but you can still make out the numbers pretty well:
Here’s me doing an obligatory tourist shot with the crowd and Opera House:
High seas action
I have been a bit remiss in wrapping up the ship tour here on LookAtTheWeeBeasties, so allow me to do so now.
We spent the last few days of the tour in high seas pocket number 3 (see a map of the high seas pockets here), looking for fishing vessels that are threatening the future of the Pacific. We had absolutely no problem finding them.
On Thursday, the 15th, we found a Taiwanese long-liner, Kai Jie No. 1, that had no license to fish in the waters of any Pacific island countries. This does not make it illegal for them to be fishing on the high seas, since these waters belong to no particular nation, but this is one of the main ways fishing fleets get around the regulations that Pacific island countries are introducing to better manage their tuna stocks.
We spoke with the captain of the vessel and explained that what he was doing was decimating the tuna stocks that Pacific island nations rely on and asked him to pull in his line. When he refused, we took action. We went out and, using a special contraption designed by our fitter from the first leg of the tour, Jono, to hold the line up out of the water, we went down the long-line and removed the bait from their hooks.
I shot this video of the action, in which our resident marine life expert, Gabe, explains more about the process:
This ship may not have been a pirate fisher in a legal sense — though it was operating in an area known to host a lot of the region’s illegal fishing — but it was certainly plundering the Pacific. That’s why we’re trying to shut down the four high seas pockets to all fishing.
The next day we spotted yet another unlicensed Taiwanese long-liner fishing on the high seas. It might seem fairly unlikely for us to come across so many ships in an ocean as vast as the Pacific, but when you consider that these ships are part of a massive fleet of more than 1,300 long-liners — and that’s just the Taiwanese fleet — you begin to realize how big the problem is and why we keep encountering them.
Again we went and spoke with the captain, passed him information about our campaign and the science showing that Pacific tuna stocks are in bad shape, and asked him to stop plundering the Pacific. He also refused to haul in his line, as you’ll hear our translator Tan-chi tell us in this video:
Riding along to speak with this captain had a pretty big impact on me. As you could see, the captain of this ship was quite an agreeable guy who seemed genuinely interested in what we had to say. He sat and read our campaign materials for several minutes. I thought he looked very sympathetic, for lack of a better word, when he sat down and read those campaign materials (despite the fact that he first snapped at the crew who had lined up on the ship's railing to watch us and speak to us).
The captain was even very hospitable towards us: when we refused the grape sodas he offered after reading our literature, he insisted we take them so vehemently that he actually threw them onboard our boats.
All of which made me realize: This guy is not our enemy. Neither is his crew. He is just a guy like me, trying to get by but — albeit with a job that I would not call easy by any means. So I want to be very clear in making this distinction: We are not trying to set ourselves up in opposition to this hard-working captain and his crew.
If anything, I'd say we're on this guy's side, in a manner of speaking. As Tan-chi translated for us in the video, the economics of the situation make it impossible for this captain to stop fishing and head back to port. And that’s what we oppose and are trying to change. You can read more about this situation — the vicious cycle of fishing in the Pacific and the diminishing returns these vessels are producing as Pacific fish stocks grow more and more depleted — in this blog by Karli, our onboard campaigner.
We spent the last few days of the tour in high seas pocket number 3 (see a map of the high seas pockets here), looking for fishing vessels that are threatening the future of the Pacific. We had absolutely no problem finding them.
On Thursday, the 15th, we found a Taiwanese long-liner, Kai Jie No. 1, that had no license to fish in the waters of any Pacific island countries. This does not make it illegal for them to be fishing on the high seas, since these waters belong to no particular nation, but this is one of the main ways fishing fleets get around the regulations that Pacific island countries are introducing to better manage their tuna stocks.
We spoke with the captain of the vessel and explained that what he was doing was decimating the tuna stocks that Pacific island nations rely on and asked him to pull in his line. When he refused, we took action. We went out and, using a special contraption designed by our fitter from the first leg of the tour, Jono, to hold the line up out of the water, we went down the long-line and removed the bait from their hooks.
I shot this video of the action, in which our resident marine life expert, Gabe, explains more about the process:
This ship may not have been a pirate fisher in a legal sense — though it was operating in an area known to host a lot of the region’s illegal fishing — but it was certainly plundering the Pacific. That’s why we’re trying to shut down the four high seas pockets to all fishing.
The next day we spotted yet another unlicensed Taiwanese long-liner fishing on the high seas. It might seem fairly unlikely for us to come across so many ships in an ocean as vast as the Pacific, but when you consider that these ships are part of a massive fleet of more than 1,300 long-liners — and that’s just the Taiwanese fleet — you begin to realize how big the problem is and why we keep encountering them.
Again we went and spoke with the captain, passed him information about our campaign and the science showing that Pacific tuna stocks are in bad shape, and asked him to stop plundering the Pacific. He also refused to haul in his line, as you’ll hear our translator Tan-chi tell us in this video:
Riding along to speak with this captain had a pretty big impact on me. As you could see, the captain of this ship was quite an agreeable guy who seemed genuinely interested in what we had to say. He sat and read our campaign materials for several minutes. I thought he looked very sympathetic, for lack of a better word, when he sat down and read those campaign materials (despite the fact that he first snapped at the crew who had lined up on the ship's railing to watch us and speak to us).
The captain was even very hospitable towards us: when we refused the grape sodas he offered after reading our literature, he insisted we take them so vehemently that he actually threw them onboard our boats.
All of which made me realize: This guy is not our enemy. Neither is his crew. He is just a guy like me, trying to get by but — albeit with a job that I would not call easy by any means. So I want to be very clear in making this distinction: We are not trying to set ourselves up in opposition to this hard-working captain and his crew.
If anything, I'd say we're on this guy's side, in a manner of speaking. As Tan-chi translated for us in the video, the economics of the situation make it impossible for this captain to stop fishing and head back to port. And that’s what we oppose and are trying to change. You can read more about this situation — the vicious cycle of fishing in the Pacific and the diminishing returns these vessels are producing as Pacific fish stocks grow more and more depleted — in this blog by Karli, our onboard campaigner.
10.17.2009
Whales!
That title is totally misleading, because you will probably be expecting whale photos, whereas you will not in fact find good pictures of whales in this post. This morning, however, the ship was SURROUNDED by them. Seriously, you could see spouts in all directions. We were steaming right through a pod of sperm whales, it was incredible.
We launched the boat and our photographer and videographer tried to get them on tape, but I heard it was difficult for them. I'll check and see if they got anything good, but in the meantime I thought I'd post a couple pics I took.
It's really hard to photograph whales from the ship, unless they come right up to us. This is the best pic I got:
Yeah, that leaves a lot to the imagination. Sorry about that.
We launched the boat and our photographer and videographer tried to get them on tape, but I heard it was difficult for them. I'll check and see if they got anything good, but in the meantime I thought I'd post a couple pics I took.
It's really hard to photograph whales from the ship, unless they come right up to us. This is the best pic I got:
Yeah, that leaves a lot to the imagination. Sorry about that.
Gratuitous sunset blogging
Behold:
Click on 'em if you want to see bigger versions!
And just for good measure, I thought I'd include a sunrise image. I promised a fellow Greenpeacer, the Oceans campaigner who got me on the tour in the first place, that I would wake up and watch the sunrise at least once. Well, I did, and it was cloudy. Still made for a pretty nice photo though, eh?
Click on 'em if you want to see bigger versions!
And just for good measure, I thought I'd include a sunrise image. I promised a fellow Greenpeacer, the Oceans campaigner who got me on the tour in the first place, that I would wake up and watch the sunrise at least once. Well, I did, and it was cloudy. Still made for a pretty nice photo though, eh?
Filming them filming us
So I went quiet for a spell there, mostly because we were in transit for a few days, going to a point about 100km off the coast of the Cook islands where we picked up some journalists from Australia's Channel 7, apparently the most-watched news channel in Australia.
I like this meta-photo of them filming us:
After we picked up the journalists, we went back out to the high seas and resumed the hunt. The girl you see on the phone there is Tan Tan (or Tan2, as she some times writes it to save space), our Chinese/Taiwanese translator. She is at that very moment speaking with the captain of a Taiwanese pirate fishing vessel. The captain refused to haul in his lines and quit plundering these waters, so we went out and removed all the bait from his long-line. My blog on that action is still working its way through the Greenpeace protocol, so I'll just leave it at that and let you check out that post later.
In the meantime, please enjoy, with my compliments, this photo of a totally amazing sky, with the Esperanza in the distance. This was taken from our inflatable boat "The Suzy Q" during said action:
I like this meta-photo of them filming us:
After we picked up the journalists, we went back out to the high seas and resumed the hunt. The girl you see on the phone there is Tan Tan (or Tan2, as she some times writes it to save space), our Chinese/Taiwanese translator. She is at that very moment speaking with the captain of a Taiwanese pirate fishing vessel. The captain refused to haul in his lines and quit plundering these waters, so we went out and removed all the bait from his long-line. My blog on that action is still working its way through the Greenpeace protocol, so I'll just leave it at that and let you check out that post later.
In the meantime, please enjoy, with my compliments, this photo of a totally amazing sky, with the Esperanza in the distance. This was taken from our inflatable boat "The Suzy Q" during said action:
10.10.2009
A heli ride, a buoy on the high seas, and the moons of Jupiter
Don't worry, I'm not going to try and spin some fantastic connection between those three, other than the fact that they all were part of my day yesterday.
It was a long day that started at about 06:30 when one of our onboard campaigners, a Kiwi named Karli, came and woke me up by asking, "How quickly can you be ready for a heli ride?"
"Very quickly!" was my response, naturally.
I jumped out of bed, threw my clothes on, ran up to the campaign office to get my camera, and was out on the heli deck 4 minutes later. I got video of take-off and landing, which I'll edit up and get someone on shore to upload to Vimeo for me. But for now, you may content yourself with these shots:
Here I am looking super tough in my heli gear.
Our pilot, another Kiwi, named Donal.
Here's the Esperanza looking very small and lonely way off in the distance. This was one of the things I was looking forward to the most on the heli ride: This ship has been my entire world for the past couple weeks, but it's a fairly large ship so I don't feel too cramped. Going up in the heli, though, gave me a sense of just how small the ship is compared to the vastness of the ocean.
Here's the Espy looking a little less small and lonely as we approach to land.
It was a long day that started at about 06:30 when one of our onboard campaigners, a Kiwi named Karli, came and woke me up by asking, "How quickly can you be ready for a heli ride?"
"Very quickly!" was my response, naturally.
I jumped out of bed, threw my clothes on, ran up to the campaign office to get my camera, and was out on the heli deck 4 minutes later. I got video of take-off and landing, which I'll edit up and get someone on shore to upload to Vimeo for me. But for now, you may content yourself with these shots:
Here I am looking super tough in my heli gear. 
Our pilot, another Kiwi, named Donal.
Here's the Esperanza looking very small and lonely way off in the distance. This was one of the things I was looking forward to the most on the heli ride: This ship has been my entire world for the past couple weeks, but it's a fairly large ship so I don't feel too cramped. Going up in the heli, though, gave me a sense of just how small the ship is compared to the vastness of the ocean.
Here's the Espy looking a little less small and lonely as we approach to land.The purpose of this heli operation (of course we refer to them as "heli ops," cuz we're that cool) was to look for this Japanese ship that is not licensed to fish in the waters of the Cook Islands, but was doing so anyway. We did not find that ship, unfortunately. But we did spot a little yellow buoy floating in the middle of the ocean.
So when we got back to the ship, we launched one of our Zodiacs, loaded it up with the diving gear, and went to have a look.
Here's the buoy. Looks harmless enough, but this could be a marker for a fish aggregating device, a long-line, or some other really destructive fishing gear.
One of our divers, a Brazilian chap named Gabriel, about to go snorkeling to have a look at the buoy and what it's attached to.
So when we got back to the ship, we launched one of our Zodiacs, loaded it up with the diving gear, and went to have a look.
Here's the buoy. Looks harmless enough, but this could be a marker for a fish aggregating device, a long-line, or some other really destructive fishing gear.
One of our divers, a Brazilian chap named Gabriel, about to go snorkeling to have a look at the buoy and what it's attached to.Turned out the buoy was just attached to a line about 15 - 20 meters long, not a FAD or long-line at all. We hauled it up onto the boat and brought it back to the Esperanza anyway, as it was essentially just a piece of trash floating in the ocean.
This trip was still totally worth it however, because I got to go snorkeling in the Pacific. It was amazing just how clear and blue the water was. Seriously, if a shark had come by, we would have seen it coming a mile away. It's incredible. We were about 5 miles from the ship at this point, so we didn't even have that obstructing our view whatsoever.
The rest of the day went by as normal — answering emails, editing photos and videos, etc. That night, however, we were lying in wait for that same Japanese fishing vessel, as we thought they might have come back under cover darkness, when they assumed we'd have given up and gone away. So there was a need to be extra vigilant, and I was asked to be on watch from 20:00 to 24:00. At first I thought it would be boring, but then I stepped out on to the bridge wings and looked up.
It was a very clear night, so clear you could see the Milky Way. So clear, in fact, that with the aid of our high-powered binoculars, I could actually see the moons of Jupiter. I wish I could have taken photos, but of course they never would have come out. Guess I'll have to keep that view all to myself.
Never did see that Japanese ship, in the end. Still a hell of a day though.
This trip was still totally worth it however, because I got to go snorkeling in the Pacific. It was amazing just how clear and blue the water was. Seriously, if a shark had come by, we would have seen it coming a mile away. It's incredible. We were about 5 miles from the ship at this point, so we didn't even have that obstructing our view whatsoever.
The rest of the day went by as normal — answering emails, editing photos and videos, etc. That night, however, we were lying in wait for that same Japanese fishing vessel, as we thought they might have come back under cover darkness, when they assumed we'd have given up and gone away. So there was a need to be extra vigilant, and I was asked to be on watch from 20:00 to 24:00. At first I thought it would be boring, but then I stepped out on to the bridge wings and looked up.
It was a very clear night, so clear you could see the Milky Way. So clear, in fact, that with the aid of our high-powered binoculars, I could actually see the moons of Jupiter. I wish I could have taken photos, but of course they never would have come out. Guess I'll have to keep that view all to myself.
Never did see that Japanese ship, in the end. Still a hell of a day though.
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