Setting Up The Greenpeace Ship w/WiFi

An anonymous reader writes "If you're on any wifi related mailing lists, you've probably heard of Nigel Ballard of joejava.com, Minister of Propaganda for the Personal Telco Project in Portland Oregon. The Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise came into Portland and wanted some an alternative to Inmarsat for their Internet access. Nigel set Greenpeace up with equipment and got VeriLAN to provide access."

Comments

Funny.

[DAldredge]

I thought that greenpeace was against the use of fossil fuels(ship) and plastics(computers)?

Is this a case where it is OK for them to have it, just wrong when the 'lesser' people have it?

Re:Funny.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, waste and extravagance are subjective measures.

For instance, in 1997 Greenpeace circumnavigated James Ross Island in the Antarctic to highlight the problems caused by global warming (the island was previously attached to the mainland by a portion of the Ross Ice Shelf).

The vessel they used was the Actic Sunrise:
Gross tonnage: 949 tonnes
Length O.A: 49.62 m
Breadth: 11.50 m
Maximum Draught: 5.30 m
Maximum Speed: 13 Knots

This makes a your local radio station's publicity mongering H2 look like a matchbox car. But no, it was necessary. A satellite image of a big stretch of blue where none exited before just doesn't compare to the publicity generated by joyriding all the way to Antarctica in a 150 ft private yacht.

Hypocrites.

Re:Funny.

[onyxruby]

Wooden sailing vessels. They are wonderful sources of plying the seas and can be built from all natural materials. They even operate under this thing called wind power. Completely environmentally friendly. Capable of traversing the oceans and the globe itself. Only pollution is from the occupants of the ship. Used for thousands of years to go everywhere you can think of up to an including the first voyages to the Antartica.

They were not sailing a wooden vessel. Nor were they sailing a vessel with a hybrid sail / mechanical propulsion system. Instead they were using a decades old ship that has grossly ineffeceint engines. That ship does not have newer much more environmentally friendly engines, and greenpeace is more than capable of affording them, taking in millions of dollars a year. Greenpeace is chock full of hypocrites, like the ones on the ship.

Alternate energy sources, like windpower, are readily available, the just wont use them.

Re:Funny.

[Peyna]

So is their only option to completely remove themselves from society in order to prove their point? Everyone would just ignore them. It is necessary for organizations such as theirs to accept some amount of hypocrisy in order to exist at all.

It's sort of like how vegans can live with eating food which comes from fields which when harvested result in the deaths of thousands of rodents. It would be nearly impossible to exist without contributing to animal suffering in some form, but they what they can to reduce such suffering.

At least they are doing *something*, which is a lot better than sitting at home in front of your computer complaining about minor hypocricies in the grand scheme of things of which they are are trying to acheive.

Interesting ideology

[Anonymous Coward]

These are the same folks that like to release (um, set free) non-native mink into the natural environment causing devestation of the local animal population, right?

Greenpeace may cause some good, but I think they are terribly misguided at other things. I predict we'll hear a new phrase coming out of the Bush administration (if they survive the election): Eco-terrorists. Storming ships, and other acts (some of which are destructive) don't seem to be acceptable tactics to me.

Posted anonymously since my karma is more important than the air I breath. (or not)

Re:Interesting ideology

[Bishop]

On the radio there was an interview with one of the founders of Greenpeace. He was pushed out of the organization because he wasn't radical enough. Greenpeace was originally a group of environmentalists opposed to nuclear weapons. It was not the environmental activist group it has become. This founder told the story of how the ship's galley (kitchen) was subverted. First it was taken over by the vegatarians, then it was taken over by the vegans. This forshadowed what happened to Greenpeace itself.

Greenpeace is typical of too many activist groups. It has been taken over by a bunch of stupid angry people. The angry people might be in the minority, but their actions control the group. As a result the group's message is lost. The message is lost, not because the message isn't important, but because the methods used to convey the message overshadow the message itself.

Re:Interesting ideology

[Anonymous Coward]

And your little story is typical of many anti-environmentalist ones. First present "as fact" a couple of funny sounding anecdotes by people who are "on the inside" and then proceed to use those to tar the reputation of an entire group of people.

The guy you are talking about is Patrick Moore and he now works (for a LOT of money) for the lumber industry, and uses his "Greenpeace founder" credentials to shill for nuclear energy and genetically engineered foods. He has made a great little chunk of change on his much vaunted "change of heart" with respect to Greenpeace and gets a lot of mileage with his stories about how corrupt Greenpeace is, especially when he is talking to people in the Wise Use and anti-environmentalist movements who have been gunning for Greenpeace for decandes now.

Ecoterrorism

[onyxruby]

Greenpeace has a bad history of brushes with or outright supporting ecoterrorism. Why does this make the front page when other articles with similiar projects have been done elsewhere?

Their are many other upright environmental organizations that have worldwide work in very challenging locales, so why approve a greenpeace story?

Many of these conditions are very challenging environments that could be teach someone a great deal. Why choose a group that rightly shouln't be called a charity in the first place. /Environmentalist sick of ecoterrorists and extemists making the environmental movement look bad.

Re:Ecoterrorism

[RedWizzard]

Dr. Seiji Ohsumi, Director General of the Institute of Cetacean Research in Tokyo today referred to Greenpeace as an "eco-terrorist organization"

Consider the source. The DG of a "research" institute that is really just a whaling company operating via a legal loophole. Not exactly an impartial judgement.

Re:Ecoterrorism

[Dachannien]

It doesn't matter whether some guy thinks they're terrorists or not - let facts speak for themself:

At that time, the Greenpeace vessel caused a collision with our research ship. Greenpeace activities caused damage to property and included theft of personal property and trespassing.

Re:Ecoterrorism

[jabberjaw]

A quick google brought this to my attention. I do believe that the boarding of another vessel without the consent of the captain/crew is considered an act of piracy.

Re:Ecoterrorism

[RedWizzard]

It doesn't matter whether some guy thinks they're terrorists or not - let facts speak for themself:

At that time, the Greenpeace vessel caused a collision with our research ship. Greenpeace activities caused damage to property and included theft of personal property and trespassing.

The alleged facts, as reported by the aggrieved party, a group ideologically opposed to Greenpeace who misrepresent what they do in order to evade the worldwide moratorium on whaling. Hardly impartial, as I said.

Re:Ecoterrorism

[KjetilK]

A quote from Mr. Paul Watson [nationalcenter.org] (as a Greenpeace member, I'm certian you know of him, as he is a principal founder of your organization)

Paul Watson is a good example of an eco-terrorist, but to be fair, he left Greenpeace a long time ago. Whether he was expelled or just felt unwanted is an open matter, but Greenpeace is far more moderate than him.

Re:Ecoterrorism

[illumin8]

A quote from Mr. Paul Watson (as a Greenpeace member, I'm certian you know of him, as he is a principal founder of your organization)

From the article you linked to:
He was reportedly ousted from Greenpeace in the late 1970s for violating the organization's principle of "non-violent" action.

Clearly, you can't condemn an organization for the radical actions of one of it's members, who was kicked out of the organization because of those actions. If that was the case the NRA would have been called a terrorist organization decades ago. How many wackos and gun-nuts that went on killing sprees have been members of the NRA? Should we start calling the NRA a terrorist organization now?

Your logic is flawed. QED

Re:Greenpeace?

[galonso]

Yes terrorists.

I met Greenpeace folks in Portland that were proud to 'know' people who disabled brakes on logging trucks to scare/injure/kill the drivers.

I met Greenpeace folks who told me what they do is not breaking the law because, "We're right and the government is wrong, so the law shouldn't apply to us."

Greenpeace, on their site, has a story about "peaceful protestors" who are being denied (according to Greenpeace) the right to protest peacefully because they are being charged with trumped up charges. Never mind that they broke in to an energy plant (coal), climed a smokestack, and affixed a banner to it. Seems to me they broke several laws there . . . oh, my bad -- laws don't apply to them.

I hope the pub from this WiFi helps others to go to their website (as I did upon reading it) so they can see how Greenpeace really is. Some may agree, some may reach my conclusion -- that they are terrorists . . . But that's the beauty of the web . . . and a little thing called free speech.

mmm....Kujira

[terrymaster69]

Not to defend Greenpeace (I don't particularly like them), but the first article there made me chuckle a bit. Japan is one of the few countries operating a whaling business "legally" under the guise of the "research" quoted above. I'm sure that their findings are cutting-edge, nobel-prize worthy and the like, but they take a very small "sample" of the whale, then return the carcass to the mainland where it ends up in restaurants. I don't know why the Japanese government even puts up the pretense. They just like the taste of whale meat (it is pretty good...) Because the rest of the world criticizes this habit, the whaler^H^H^H^H^H^Hresearchers get really defensive about their bus^H^H^Hresearch, and issue statements like the one above, reminding the world of how benevolent they are.