By now you probably know of Pete Buffoon – sorry, Bethune – the NZ guy under arrest in Japan for boarding one of their whaling ships and trying to put the entire crew under arrest. What a guy.
He failed, quite possibly because he ignored the golden rule when taking on anyone Asian; be extra careful because they probably know Kung Fu. They didn’t as it turned out, but the fact he was heavily outnumbered was obviously something he hadn’t planned for. Or did he?
He was on the Japanese ship because his catamaran, or rather Greenpeace’s, was run down by the said whaling ship a week earlier. We’ve all seen the footage of the moment it happened and as far as boats’ running each over goes, it was pretty damn cool. Disappointingly, there was no explosion. In the movies there’s always an explosion.
We’ve all played ‘chicken’ with someone or something in our time and this was the ultimate in both escalation and consequence. Again Bethune made an elementary error here; he tried to out chicken men from the country who gave us the Kamikaze during World War II. Good one, Pete.
Now some might say that it was karma that Bethune’s ride got sliced in half by the Japanese ginsu; payback for his running over and killing some fisherman whilst racing around the world (in the same catamaran), trying to beat some record that no one really gives a flying fuck about. Yeah. What a worthy cause that turned out to be.
That effort left Bethune financially crippled and his wife – who must have the patience of a saint – probably hoped he would give all the boat shit up, come home and mow the bloody lawns or something. Anything. But no. Some rich bugger bought the boat, gifted it to Greenpeace and asked Bethune to go with it. Some paramilitary looking wetsuits and acid throwing antics later, he finds himself facing charges in a country where the successful prosecution rate is a whopping 99%! What a peen-arse.
Now I should say at this stage that I support Bethune in his cause, which is to stop the Nips whaling the fuck out of our oceans. That I’m behind that 110%. But I have a heightened sense of distrust at some of Greenpeace’s motives and actions that start with the way their hippies keep trying me to sign up and buy one of their books on the street.
Watch any of the guys who are in cahoots with Bethune and you get a unnerving sense that they actually enjoy the chase they put in on these whalers. Once upon a time just bringing it to the world’s attention was enough for the Greenies but these guys have been sensing blood for a long time and it ain’t the harpooned whales in the water we’re talking about here...
Which brings us back to just who ran into who that fateful day and Bethune’s subsequent attempt at making Under Siege 3 onboard the whaler. Bringing attention to a worthy cause is one thing, attention getting because you’re a dick is another.
It doesn’t help that our government is doing sweet fuck all about the whole sorry saga. Rather than giving the Japs a damn good ticking off we have National talking about actually introducing a quota system for whale hunting. What the?!
That guy who used to sing for Midnight Oil and is now an Australian MP has gotten his stringer in a twist over our stance and I don’t blame. But then ‘Blue Sky Mine’ is one of my fave Australasian tracks of all time so maybe I’m a bit bias.
My dear old Granddad hated the Japs and he would be turning in his grave at the sight of this Bethune bullshit. He’d have one solution and it would involve the NZ Navy accidentally-on-purpose harpooning one of the whaling ships with a torpedo, like they would have done back in 1944. And he’d be right too; we could claim it was for ‘research purposes’ and that would be the end of it.
And we’d get an explosion. Just like in the movies.
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