Talk:Greenpeace

Big donations and Greenpeace

I'm finding conflicting information about the following claim on one of Greenpeace's web sites:

Greenpeace has a strong policy against donations from companies, governments and political parties, and big donations from single sources. The organisation claims this policy permit them the bigger freedom of movement in their action, and the ability to be supported from people from any political background.

From their staff profiles at http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/inside/profilestext.htm:

Penelope Winkler, Director of Special Contributors

Penelope directs Greenpeace's Special Contributors Program, overseeing some very talented Major Gifts, Foundations, Planned Giving, and Annual Giving staff. Penelope joined Greenpeace in 1999 after 16 years at World Wildlife Fund in the Development Office. In her life before WWF, she taught college English and edited a scholarly journal.

That would suggest that they do solicit "major gifts" and gifts from foundations as well as individuals, and have a number of staff members hired full time to solicit such gifts. In addition, their employee matching program explicitly accepts gifts from employers, i.e. corporations, that are matches of individual employee gifts. Wesley

Open campaign

I Removed the section below because it seems to be fairly off topic from Greenpeace SimonP 20:12 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

--- Viewed this way, Wikipedia is arguably an open campaign to create an online encyclopedia and Meta-Wikipedia is arguably an open campaign to govern an online encyclopedia. ---

I put it back. This was discussed and agreed on vfd. If not kept here, it will go back to open campaign, which is also fine by me.

I think it would probably be fine in open campaign, but I can't fathom what it would be doing in Greenpeace. - Hephaestos 12:22 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Because of this perhaps.

But putting it back over there is ok.

Ecoterrorism?

"Nevertheless, some people also consider Greenpeace an ecoterrorist organisation."

"Which people?"

"These people!"

"What, them? You can't be serious!"

"Well, how about this guy Dan S. Borne"

"He's the head of the Louisiana Chemical Association!"

"Umm ... how about the Institute for Cetacean Research?"

"You do realise that's the Japanese whaling industry you're talking about there, don't you?"

"Oh ... guess you've got a point."

"Ta."

Google finds about 600 pages explaining that Greenpeace is an ecoterrorist organization, and I just find it totally unacceptable to censor this important interpretation. The American Enterprise Institute in particular is a more serious and more influential institution than Greenpeace itself, and it is not justifiable to humiliate their classification. --Lumidek 16:04, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Lumidek, if you'd like to improve the article, why don't you contribute a well-researched, balanced section summarising the major criticisms of Greenpeace? Inserting claims about 'ecoterrorism' in the opening paragraphs does nothing for the neutrality of the article, and cloaking these claims in NPOV language such as "Some people believe" doesn't quite cut it either. The implicit claim that lies in the usage of the term terrorism (eco or otherwise) is that Greenpeace is an organisation that engages in violence against civilians to achieve political ends. Given that the mission statement explicitly commits the organisation to nonviolent means, this is not a credible claim to make.

Some people believe that the international finance system is controlled by lizards from outer space, but that doesn't mean the claim should be included in the Wikipedia entry on banking. Dirtbiscuit

American Enterprise Institute, for example, is not "some people" like those who believe by "control by lizards from outer space". AEI is a very influential think tank with $30 million of funding. This intitute is more valuable than Greenpeace, you, Connolley, and all other ecoterrorists in the world altogether, and if you want to continue in your outrageous insults, try to realize that there are courts that can punish such a behavior. --Lumidek 14:43, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Actually, the American Enterprise Institute, as influential as it may or may not be, doesn't appear to have accused Greenpeace of 'eco-terrorism'. They merely published a piece - in the daily, web-only 'Hot Flashes' column, mind you - by Marc Levin, of the 'American Freedom Center', which claimed that America was experiencing an "epidemic of eco-terror". The article then went on to detail the alleged activities of the so-called Earth Liberation Front in committing various acts of arson, vandalism and graffiti.

Levin's article is propaganda at its crudest. Despite liberal usage throughout the article, he makes no attempt to define eco-terrorism, a loaded term which, especially in the current political climate, invokes images of suicide bombing, aircraft hijacking and the horror of the September 11 attacks. In using it to describe the activities of ELF, Levin deliberately collapses the legal and moral gulf between vandalism and the politically motivated murder of civilians.

But he doesn't stop there. Levin goes on the invoke a third implied definition of eco-terrorism when he uses it to describe Greenpeace protests. Leaving aside his choice of pejorative verbs ("broken into", "overrun" etc) and the bizarre claim about a French sailboat being rammed during the 2003 America's Cup, Levin attempts to tar Greenpeace with the terrorist brush by gradually expanding the definition of terror from an act of political violence directed at civilians, to a politically motivated act of damage to property, to acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, including this!

But I suppose that's the nature of words like 'eco-terrorist'. Like 'communist' or 'fascist', they are at their most insidious when their definition is loosest. That way, they can be cast at anyone one happens to disagree with - which, Lumidek, you appear to have done not only in your edits to this article, but in your comments above. Dirtbiscuit

I apologize but the movements and ideologies called fascism, communism, and ecoterrorism are much more dangerous and insidious than the usage of the same words communism, fascism, and ecoterrorism. In fact, I am not aware of a single case of using these three words that would be comparably dangerous as these movements themselves. Therefore, your argument does not have any value in my eyes - the only value is that I think that your comparison of ecoterrorism with communism and fascism is apt, although exaggerated. Greenpeace and other ecoterrorists are not just disagreeing with me (or someone else). They are destroying the property, damaging the profit and doing other harm to individuals, companies and whole societies who usually don't violate the law, unlike Greenpeace. Yes, anyone who is doing such things (as Greenpeace) should be known. Finally, you should note that the definitions on the pages ecoterrorism and Greenpeace are virtually identical, and 30 percent of people immediately think of the other word if someone says one of them. From this point of view, censorship of the link between these two words is an unjustifiable act of censorship. --Lumidek 10:57, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 11:02, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)) How about addressing the point made above that the AEI doesn't actually accuse GP of ecot? Can you point us to some utterance (of the AEI) that supports your POV? (ps: even if you do this is still not appropriate for the intro: see dirtbiscuits suggestion above).

You can't expect that it is easy to find an official document saying "Greenpeace are ecoterrorists" because this is just terminology, and documents of AEI have some contents. Nevertheless, you can read [1], you can search for "Greenpeace" at [2] to see what AEI thinks about it, and you may also see the page about Public Interest Watch [3], where the ecoterrorist tag for Greenpeace was used by the president of the American Freedom Center. See also [4]. Read also this article [5] about the ultimate eco-terrorist, Paul Watson who founded Greenpeace. See other articles about environmentalism at [6].

(William M. Connolley 12:00, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)) This is good. Instead of just making claims, you have backed them up. I am now happy to accept that the AEI *has* called GP ecot's (the language is explicit; the document is copyright AEI). But the comments about positioning still stand.

Last night, Greenpeace tried to seize a giant cargo ship. 12 ecoterrorists (call them simply criminals, if you don't want to be specific) were arrested.[7]

Actually, of all of the sources cited by Lumidek above, only one - the article by Levin - uses the term "eco-terrorist" to describe Greenpeace. The others may use "ecoterrorist" interchangeably with "environmentalist", or refer to Greenpeace in passing, but if you're just looking at material published on the internet, direct accusations of "eco-terrorism" are suprisingly rare. Levin's article and a 2001 media release issued by the Institute of Cetacean Research (ie the Japanese whaling industry) are the most prominent, but you've got to look pretty hard to find much more than that.

I'm no lawyer, but perhaps the reason why it is difficult to find "official document[s]" which make this claim is that it could be considered libelous. If you use the word "terrorist" to describe an individual or an organisation, you are effectively accusing them of engaging in politically motivated murder of civilians, and its a not an accusation that one should make lightly.

Incidentally, do you think the article would be more balanced if the second paragraph included the sentence "Many people and influential organisations describe Greenpeace as sailormongerers"? Dirtbiscuit