By Andy May
There is an updated version of the post here.
Donations to Greenpeace for 2014 are a reported $318 million. Fund raising costs are reported to be 36% or $116 million. Administration, including generous salaries for the executives, is another 16% or $51 million. Since over half of the money collected is spent on fund raising and salaries they receive a lot of criticism. India recently froze their bank accounts, accusing them of misreporting funds. New Zealand rejected Greenpeace’s charitable status in 2010 with the charitable commission stating:
Two of Greenpeace’s objectives – promoting “peace” and “disarmament” – were political, not charitable.
Greenpeace was involved in illegal activities, such as trespassing; therefore it was not maintained exclusively for charitable purposes as illegal purposes are not charitable.
In 2014 the New Zealand Supreme Court ruled that Greenpeace could reapply to the Charities Board to be a charity. Greenpeace is clearly a political organization, however the Supreme Court says that is not enough to exclude an organization from charitable status. The court did state that illegal activity, such as trespassing on ships or drilling ships, is disqualifying. So, the Greenpeace application may still be rejected on this basis.
Greenpeace has admitted using lying and propoganda in their regular affairs. As many of the Greenpeace founders have famously said:
“It does not matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
Paul Watson (a Greenpeace founder) attributes this quote to Dr. Patrick Moore, another Greenpeace founder, in 1981. Others have attributed it to Paul Watson or to David McTaggert (yet another founder of Greenpeace). Either way it was frequently said by the leaders of the organization. It has been sort of a mantra for them. The earliest published sources for the quote are Forbes November, 1991 and the authoritative book Environmental Overkill by Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, 1993. Dr. Ray was also the 17th Governor of the state of Washington. She was a Democrat, but critical of the environmental movement.
Click on image to see at source.
As for illegal activities, we all know about Greenpeace crimes, occupying drilling rigs, endangering lives and property, and trespassing on private property. We also know that Greenpeace activist Paul Watson (expelled from Greenpeace in 1977) has rammed and sunk ships. Even after Paul Watson left and as late as 2006, Greenpeace rammed ships endangering lives. In the 2006 incident, Greenpeace tried to claim the Japanese vessel rammed them. Which was a stupid claim since the Arctic Sunrise was damaged in the bow and the Japanese vessel was damaged near the stern, further the Japanese vessel was stationary at the time. An obvious act of trespass on the high seas can be seen here. Greenpeace activists have committed crimes. But what about torturing animals for video footage? From the book Arctic Wars: Animal Rights Endangered Peoples:
Mr. Poirier, who gave the following testimony: “I, the undersigned, Gustave A. Poirier, of the Magdalen Islands, declare having been employed by a group of photographers, one of which had a beard, around March 4, 1964, to skin a large seal for a film. I solemnly swear before witnesses that I was asked to torment the said seal, and not to use a stick, but just to use a knife to carry out this operation, where in normal practice, a stick is used to first kill the seals before skinning them”
Documentation of this and other barbaric film fantasies distributed by Greenpeace are documented here by Brian Ellison in The New American. Another propaganda film used by Greenpeace portrayed a Kangaroo being tortured in Australia. It turned out that again the torturers were paid by the film makers to do the deed. When Magnus Gudmundsson examined the evidence for these deceptions in a documentary film Survival in the High North, Greenpeace sued him. They lost of course, the paid torture was a matter of public record. But, Gudmundsson was forced to pay out over $40,000 for his legal fees. After the loss Greenpeace pulled out of Norway. From International Intelligence, October, 1992:
“The final blow to Greenpeace came when it lost the libel case in Oslo that it had brought against Gudmundsson in March, 1992. The chairman of the Norwegian Greenpeace, Bjorn Okern, resigned his post and stated that Gudmundsson was right about Greenpeace’s dishonest fundraising tactics, that none of Greenpeace’s money was used for ‘environmental protection,’ and that Greenpeace was an “eco-fascist” group. Okern was on the board of Greenpeace International.”
Click on image to see at source
Greenpeace crimes include possible piracy in Russia, trespassing and vandalizing sacred Indian sites, and trespassing and destroying private property in Australia. Greenpeace activists (along with those from the Sierra Club and Tides) are a “credible threat to the health and safety” of people and the environment according to a memo prepared by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for the Canadian government. The report also points out that:
“Those aligned with the most extreme factions use the internet to promote and instruct on the use of violent criminal techniques, including arson, vandalism and sabotage. Demonstrated criminal activity associated to this extremist faction includes: threats to life and property, improvised explosive devices, arson, vandalism, sabotage, thefts, and break and enters, most notably in New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.”
In essence, the RCMP has identified Greenpeace and other environmental activists as potential terrorists and has supported a law (Bill C-51, 2015) allowing them to surveil Greenpeace and other extreme environmental groups as potential terrorist organizations.
Other Greenpeace transgressions:
They stole a Finnish tree from a farmer (really!) and displayed it in a nearby town. They claimed it had been cut down in an old growth forest.
Greenpeace raises tons of money with their supposed “Save the Whales” campaign. But, in reality they are not opposed to whaling and even helped some Alaskan villagers tow a dead whale to their village. Some say the whale was already dead and others say the villagers killed the whale with harpoons. Either way, it was butchered by the villagers and it was illegal for Greenpeace to tow the whale to shore. It is illegal for non-natives to participate in any step of a whaling operation according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.
The cartoon above is about West Nile Virus, but it applies to malaria as well. Greenpeace was a leader in the attack on DDT which ended its manufacture in the US and elsewhere and was indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions of people, including young children, from malaria. DDT was instrumental in the eradication of malaria from the US and Europe and it could have ended this awful disease in Africa and South Asia had its production and use continued. As Dr. Amir Attran (Harvard University) notes South Africa had eradicated malaria with DDT, but stopped using it and malaria returned. Nearby Swaziland, which never stopped using DDT, experienced no problems. Environmentalists, including Greenpeace, succeeded in eliminating most manufacturing of DDT by lobbying the UN and spreading false stories about it causing cancer. In fact there is no evidence at all that DDT is harmful to anyone. There are some controversial studies that suggest DDT may harm birds or their shells, but the evidence is weak and the link is far from proven. However, with most factories shut down and the false stories fresh, DDT was done in. And, without it, malaria increases geometrically according to this CDC study. Now, that it is widely accepted that DDT is safe and, indeed, much safer than other insecticides; Greenpeace is suddenly claiming they are innocent and were never against DDT to begin with.
Greenpeace is very effective at raising money, but its real strength comes from getting its claws into government agencies and the media. For example, Greenpeace exerts quite a bit of control over the Guardian newspaper via Gary Evans (a Greenpeace activist who calls himself “Bluecloud” online) among others. Further, Greenpeace has a lot of influence on the New York Times. They actually published a made up press release from Greenpeace on their front page, disguised as an article by Justin Gillis and John Schwartz, without checking its veracity. A very simple check of public records shows this article to be false. Greenpeace spends a lot of time and effort winning over journalists who give them favorable coverage and they can be vicious when they get critical coverage, often suing papers and magazines that criticize them.
Conclusions
Besides news organizations, Greenpeace heavily influences the United Nations. They used their influence to try and eliminate DDT from the world as late as 2000. They didn’t back off of their opposition to DDT until 2004 and then only under intense humanitarian pressure. And as we have seen above, this was a disaster for malaria prone countries. The resulting factory closures were based upon false and distorted “science” or, more accurately, pseudo-science about the dangers of DDT. In addition, Greenpeace used horribly staged videos of torturing animals to affect public opinion so that treaties were created that destroyed legitimate businesses. It is possible, considering how much Greenpeace promoted these fake videos, that the film makers and torturers themselves were part of Greenpeace. We need to ask the question: “How did Greenpeace obtain the rights to the videos?”
Greenpeace regularly brags about the influence it has over the United Nations and United Nation agencies. Yet, in India, Greenpeace has been accused of improper influence on the government. When one considers that lying is an essential part of Greenpeace, we should be worried.
The Greenpeace campaigns to ban DDT and seal hunting based upon pseudo-science and staged torture films should be a wake-up call. Pseudo-science and made up films showing extreme weather events are now being used to frighten a gullible public about “climate change.” This is not a new act, they have done this before. The truth matters. We must be skeptical of all environmentalist claims and point out the deceptions and propaganda whenever we see it. It is apparent that the most obvious “end of days” fantasies today come from Greenpeace (and similar organizations) and ISIS.
January 2, 2016