After 26 days in custody, Junichi and Toru are out on bail and finally get to go home to be with their families.
Still, justice will not be done until a proper investigation of the whale meat scandal happens. The unanswered question remains - Why did the Japanese prosecutor suddenly drop his investigation into the stolen whale meat allegations, despite Greenpeace directly handing him the solid and compelling evidence?
Feel like making a film? Check out The Outlook For Someday competition - I’ve never thought about making films but I am now!
The Outlook for Someday, began last year as “A Sustainability Film Challenge for Young New Zealanders” and this has morphed into “The Sustainability Film Challenge for Young New Zealanders”.
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French state nuclear company Areva sponsored a nice ring of EU stars for the Eiffel Tower - probably to kiss up to President Sarkozy (who also serves as a kind of “nuclear power salesman in chief”). Some Greenpeace France activists decided it would be nice to complete the picture with a nuclear hazard symbol. (you might remember AREVA from the Americas Cup race in New Zealand a few years back)
From the International Herald Tribune:
About 15 environmental activists climbed the Eiffel Tower on Sunday to unfurl a banner protesting against France’s nuclear energy policies, on the day when it hosts a major summit of heads of state.
Campaign group Greenpeace said the banner showing the nuclear logo was placed in the middle of a circle of stars representing the European Union displayed on the tower to mark France’s six-month term as EU president.
“Since he was elected, President Nicolas Sarkozy has done everything he could to sell nuclear energy,” said Frederic Marillier of the French section of Greenpeace in a statement.
“At the U.N., as head of the European council, or just recently at the G8, he has behaved like a travelling salesman for Areva and has used political platforms to promote French nuclear power,” Marillier said, referring to the French nuclear energy producer Areva.
More on the Greenpeace International website, and a Guardian article about last weeks nuclear spill (in case you missed it).
Junichi and Toru, our two activists who exposed the Japanese whale meat scandal and have been held in detention for the last three weeks, have been charged with theft and trespass. This is despite pressure from more than 30 international organisations, including Amnesty International, the Lawyers Network for Human Rights Observation, International Fund for Animal Welfare, InArticle 19, Transparency International, Oceana, Ubuntu, and Oxfam, and almost a quarter of a million emails to Prime Minister Fukuda.
For now, they’re still in custody - stay tuned for updates on this.
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A survey out today concludes that New Zealand householders don’t want to pay lots of money for an emissions trading scheme (ETS). Talk about stating the bloody obvious. Of course average New Zealanders don’t want to cover the cost of big business’ pollution. Yet the survey questions aren’t put this way. They fail to make it clear to respondents that taxpayers are already subsidising polluters under Kyoto, and that with no ETS they’ll pay even more. Instead they present a case of “ETS and associated costs or no ETS”.
This is ridiculous. Even if there were no ETS in place this time next year, climate change will still exist, and so will our soaring Kyoto bill. An ETS is designed to shift climate costs from taxpayers to those doing the polluting. The New Zealand scheme will do this, albeit to a minuscule degree. Greenpeace has always said the scheme is weak, and this allocation of costs distinctly unfair. But it’s better than nothing, and without it, costs for taxpayers will be even higher. Read more »
10 July 1985, 11.38pm, a bomb explodes under the Rainbow Warrior making a hole the size of a car. This first act of terrorism on New Zealand soil killed Fernando Pereira, a Dutch photographer for Greenpeace, and sparked worldwide outrage that stopped the nuclear testing that the Rainbow Warrior was supposed to protest against.
In July 1985, Greenpeace had just renovated the Rainbow Warrior. It was fully ready to fulfill an important mission: stopping French nuclear testing in Moruroa, a French Atoll. A whole French special service team came to New Zealand to stop Greenpeace’s plans for a peaceful protest. One of those even worked at Greenpeace office as a volunteer and secretly investigated. Read more »
With typical hype and fanfare, Apple’s latest iPhone 3G is hitting stores on Friday. It promises to be faster, better and cheaper, but what have we heard about it being greener than its predecessor? Crickets.
An Aucklander by the name of Jonny Gladwell is aiming to be the world’s first iPhone 3G customer by lining up to snare his at 12.01 tomorrow night, however, another group is doing the same in New York in an attempt to use the attention this misguided fad of lining up for consumer products brings by doing it to promote organic produce.
A worthy cause no doubt, but that is as far as the “green” coverage is going. Well, that’s not entirely true. There is a rumour that the iPhone will be partly packaged in potato starch trays instead of plastic. Aside from that rather dull, and un-revolutionary (Motorola already uses them) potato titbit there’s no info yet on how green the actual phone will be. Read more »
Greenpeace receptionist Raechel Thomas had a nail-biting Saturday, wetsuit clad and on stand by to save a whale! Here’s her story…
When I heard that Project Jonah (a whales protection group) was running Marine Mammal Medic Courses, I jumped at the chance to get involved. The course was a one day intensive down at Long Bay Beach, designed to equip people to be able to assist in saving stranded whales. New Zealand has the highest number of strandings in the world, but it also has the highest rescue success rate - 95%. Besides illness and injury, whales strand because of landforms and the tide. Regular stranding points around the world all have the same characteristics - a thin wedge of land/sand, possibly hooked around. That coupled with incoming/outgoing tides churn the sand and therefore the whales’ sonar doesn’t read there is land behind it. Read more »
Our colleagues across the Tasman have just pulled off an audacious action at the Eraring Power Station.
In a 5.5 hour blockade of the coal fired power station, they stopped more than 10,000 tonnes of greenhouse emissions.
Welcome to the GPNZ blog! Here we'll tell tales, cast nasturciums, talk in parables and offer opinions on stuff that is, at least in some way, related to the work we do.
