The Greenpeace activists cum burglars who stole whale meat from a shipping company in an earlier publicity stunt have just had arrest warrants served on them, we hear. Aomori police intend to arrest two people involved on the morrow, on suspicion of theft. Of course they are innocent until proven guilty, but Japanese arrests usually result in conviction. Via TBS.
The interesting thing about this story is not so much the dubious tactics of Greenpeace but the massive disparity in reporting between the international media and the Japanese domestic media (the international media uniformly bough Greenpeace’s tenuous claims that the whalers/scientists were guilty of staling the meat from their own ship), with a distinct lack of scepticism evident with respect to Greenpeace – irrespective of whether you agree with their objectives and methods, they certainly have a most impressive set of PR credentials to their name.
I have mixed feelings about Greenpeace, as do most of the people I know. Aside their honorable volunteer work to help the environment, some of their acts expresses “do first think later” level of recklessness (especially the whole Japan/whaling thing). But in the end it’s about results, and causing the media not to hate the problem but the country who caused it, is certainly an achievement in it’s own way. ;)