Monthly Archives: November 2024

Nov 21 2024

Free Paul Watson!

The intrepid team of Burners at SHIFTPOD have recently been doing some extreme stress-testing of their products in the Arctic Circle – Greenland, to be exact. The products performed exceptionally, exceeding the team’s already high expectations. While there they discovered that Captain Paul Watson, the heroic founder of Greenpeace The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, had just been arrested – for something done by someone else 14 years ago. They were able to get an exclusive interview with Captain Watson in jail:

SHIFTPOD founder and CEO Christian Weber said:

Few individuals have shown such unwavering commitment to the planet as Captain Watson. He has risked his life repeatedly, placing himself between fast-moving whaling ships armed with high-explosive harpoons and the whales they target.  
 
Imagine being in a small rubber boat, navigating high seas at 20 knots, with a massive steel ship bearing down on one side and a majestic, intelligent whale on the other. This is the kind of desperate battle for life Captain Watson has faced countless times.
 
Today, Captain Watson is facing yet another battle. He has been jailed in Nuuk, Greenland, by the Dutch government and now faces extradition to Japan on a 15-year-old charge. His side of the story has yet to be told, and it is critical that the world hears it.

Source: SHIFTPOD.com

Captain Watson’s fierce battles against Japan and Denmark on behalf of whales have been well documented on the Animal Planet show Whale Wars, featuring boats donated by Bob Barker, Martin Sheen and the Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin.

He was arrested on July 21. His custody keeps getting extended, with the latest court date for his extradition hearing now set for December 4, 2024.

He has been charged with “obstruction of business”, “trespassing”, and “conspiracy to trespass” based on a 2010 incident when the Japanese whaling trawler Shonin Maru rammed Pete Bethune’s vessel the 78-foot trimaran Ady Gil off the coast of Antarctica in the Southern Ocean.

Paul was 300 miles away on a different boat when this happened. Pete Bethune later boarded the Japanese vessel to make a citizen’s arrest under International Maritime Law despite Watson’s recorded statements on camera saying he didn’t want to be part of it. Bethune was arrested by the Japanese authorities, and after spending four months in jail in Japan he was told that if he said he acted on the orders of Watson he would be released with a suspended sentence, a deal he took. Two years later Bethune signed an affidavit that his statement was not true and made under duress; this was accepted by then U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry who granted Canadian-born Watson a visa.

Source: Wikipedia

This Interpol Red notice was gone last November. People from Denmark’s Faroe Islands, who have an annual blood sacrifice of whales and dolphins called a grindadrap that Watson’s team have frequently disrupted, tipped off the Japanese, who re-issued the Red notice just to Denmark. When Watson landed in Nuuk, Greenland from Ireland, the 73-year old was met by 15 (!) Danish police who took him immediately to custody – where he remains today, despite the local punishment for these alleged “crimes” being a $600 fine. Japan wants to put him away for 15 years, surely a death sentence.

Captain Watson was denied an interpreter or any ability to present evidence.

“It’s obvious to me that Japan is seeking revenge for the international humiliation caused by the Whale Wars TV series, reporting our actions against illegal whaling,” Watson said in a statement to the court. “But my two little boys need me more than Japan needs its revenge.”

Source: DiverNet

Thanks to SHIFTPOD for this excellent interview, please help us all get the word out. We must free Paul, he cannot be left to rot in a Greenland jail or tortured in Japan due to political pressure from countries violating the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling as well as a 2014 ruling from the International Court of Justice.

Here’s some of the back story. This was a big deal Down Under in Australia and New Zealand when it happened 14 years ago.

Shonin Maru rams the $2 million Ady Gil, nearly killing 6 people, over an $800 fishing net:

Whale Wars – Pete Confronts The Captain:

Paul Watson on video saying “it’s really Pete’s call, I would leave it up to Pete, whatever Pete thinks”:

Nov 11 2024

Burning Mansplainers Savaged as “No Burners” Trends on Dating Apps

Image Credit: Brian Rea

Cate Twining-Ward just wrote a scathing and hilarious “Modern Love” op-ed in the New York Times Style section.

I used to be the type of person who enjoyed dating in New York City. A summer afternoon rendezvous perhaps, one that begins with the smell of sticky sidewalks and Aperol and ends with the cheerful patter of synchronized footsteps.

Instead, I have been subjected, time and again, to Burning Man — specifically, to men who feel the festival experience has imbued them with esoteric meaning, a purpose which they never seem able to fully articulate.

I ask this sincerely: Am I the only one in the city being lectured on dates about Burning Man?

Not to be confused with post-festival passion or the harmless “Were you at Burning Man?” inquiry. I’m talking about the drawn-out and increasingly predictable “How Burning Man changed me” speech that inevitably ends with the sentiment: “If you haven’t been, you just don’t get it.”

Cate talks about a range of dating experiences involving Burning Man enthusiasts, for example:

Not long ago, I agreed to meet a seemingly normal non-Burner stranger at an Upper West Side speakeasy. His profile was desert-free, and the frosty season provided some assurance that there would be no mention of the upcoming summer festivities.

Everything was going decently well until I noticed his feet — which were bare. Bare as in he was not wearing shoes or socks. It was February.

His explanation? After attending Burning Man, he had committed to building a new routine based on the “authentic actions” he had learned there, one aspect of which included running to work (at a hedge fund) barefoot. [Source: NYT]

The author has had quite enough of Instagram Burners putting their playa pics on dating apps:

Bleak flashbacks to the many skipped Hinge profile pictures of men standing, hips thrust, in ski goggles and without shirts fluttered in and out of view

The environmental argument is one I find especially bizarre, given the famously negative planetary impact the festival has.

Wasn’t it just last year when hundreds of protesters demanded that private jets, single-use plastics and the burning of propane gas be banned? And might we be forgetting acknowledgment of the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, whose original territory includes Black Rock Desert, where Burning Man is held?

…I asked why he picked pictures of himself at Burning Man for his dating profile.

“I’ve always seen including one as signaling, ‘I’m up for adventures,’” he said.

Two years later, “No Burners” is a trending prompt on Hinge, a fad of which I’m highly supportive.

[Source: NYT]

Her impression of Burner culture, the year round expression of the Ten Principles that needs your donation immediately, is that it encourages “a toxic spiritual superiority”:

My software developer date described his own lavish accommodation to me in detail: a decorated campground powered by propane so that music, air conditioning and light shows could run 24 hours a day.

“I’m curious to know your thoughts on unlimited generator use in respect to principal eight,” I said, out loud this time. I knew I sounded like a jerk, but the hypocrisy was deafening.

These reflections come with no self-prescribed Kumbaya. I am all for promoting nature connectedness, artistic expression and the occasional psychedelic drug. But I can’t help but feel discouraged by this wave of first-date virtue signaling. It encourages a toxic spiritual superiority, one with no basis in reality.

[Source: NYT]

Read the full article at the New York Times.

We urgently need your gift now! Gifting is one of the Tin Principles, look it up! If you don’t give generously we won’t be able to keep up the toxic spiritual superiority for 12 months of the year so you can have 1 week of partying. After all, “the world needs Burning Man now more than ever”.

See also: Vox: Burning Man’s climate protestors have a point