Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

It seems my reputation as an international eco-desperado has been notched up this week with my name posted by Japan on the Interpol “Blue List.”

It’s surprisingly exciting. I feel so Jason Bourne!

It’s kind of amusing really. Japan is becoming increasingly more desperate to stop our interventions against their illegal whaling activities. Earlier this week, they held a special session at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to illustrate and condemn the actions of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The presentation was complete with edited video images and glossy color pictures with circles and arrows on each one, explaining every “eco-terroristic” detail in numerous languages, of my merry band of eco-nauts against the poor, little, misunderstood, and pathetically whining rants of the whale killers.

Hell, you can’t buy this kind of recognition.

Outside the conference hall, it was also amusing to see Japanese delegates nervously scurrying past Sea Shepherd crewmembers holding up the Sea Shepherd’s Jolly Roger flag. They actually looked like they were in fear of their lives as if they expected to be pounced upon at any moment with cutlass and pistols.

These guys actually believe their own propaganda.

They deliberately ram and destroy one of our vessels and they rammed and damaged another only to play the victim when their sensitive little noses are offended by the aromatic intervention of our butter bombs.   

They hauled Captain Peter Bethune back to cherry blossom land as a prisoner of war and charged him with trespassing for daring to challenge the captain of the Shonan Maru 2, the same man who had destroyed Pete’s vessel the Ady Gil.

And now, they have issued a warrant for me to Interpol and I am now classified as “wanted under the blue list.”  Sounds kind of sad really, like a roster of depressed people.  

The Blue List is not an alert to arrest someone but simply an alert to question someone and to keep tabs on a person’s movements. They could have accomplished the same thing by monitoring the Sea Shepherd website or the Facebook and MySpace sites. My movements are not exactly secret. And despite the fact that a few simpletons have labeled me as an “eco-terrorist,” I still seem to have no problem crossing borders or flying on airplanes. Hell, I must be the only international “eco-terrorist” with his own highly rated television show, but then again the Japanese whalers have accused the TV networks of being terrorists also.  One blogger actually said that the very act of watching Whale Wars is an act of support for terrorism. Hmmmm… I wonder if watching television itself could be classified as a terrorist activity?

These days anyone who is disliked by anyone else for whatever reason is called a terrorist. In a world where the Dalai Lama is officially branded as a terrorist by China, it seems to me that the name has been ennobled and can be now worn with an air of pride and amusement.  

And while all this gnashing of teeth and wailing carries on in the name of defending the bloody slaughter of whales, an entire marine and coastline eco-system is destroyed by BP, and the criminals are allowed to keep the public from witnessing the incineration of the bodies of thousands of victims of their negligence. These oil thugs have destroyed the lives of tens of thousands of people and created one of the largest industrial disasters in history, and not one of them is on any Interpol list.

The strange discriminatory insanity of humanity is such that I actually find it both amusing and complimentary to have Sea Shepherd’s work recognized in such an official manner, for the truth is that we have pissed off a great many people who profit from the rape and destruction of our planet.  

When destroying life is good for the economy, it is good for society, but when saving life is bad for the economy, than it is an act of “eco-terrorism.” It’s always about the economy, which is why Sea Shepherd concentrates on cutting kill quotas and negating profits in our objective to sink the Japanese whaling fleet-- economically.

It is a simple fact that if you are effective at what you do, you make enemies. Sea Shepherd has a host of enemies, and we are making more every year. And our enemies are powerful and run the gamut of government, corporate, and organized crime. Hell, I’m surprised we have survived as long as we have.

But what is the alternative? To do nothing, to be another docile, submissive, unquestioning slave to a paradigm of blind greed?

No thank-you. Give me my name on a blue list, the red list, the black list, or the death list, for it is preferable to the I-don’t-give-a-crap list.