When Russia arrested the crew of the Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise in September for trying to mount a demonstration on an oil rig in the Barents Sea, it's fair to say that most of the earth's population felt relief that finally one of the world's largest military powers had found the courage to stand up to the bullying tactics of thirty environmental protestors armed with banners.
The Russians charged the Greenpeace 30 with piracy, and that's when the usual internet conspiracy theorists and mad-hatters started blogging about how these charges were groundless, unjustifiable, ridiculous. What is striking about this orchestrated campaign is how many of the logorrhoeic do-gooders involved claimed some kind of expertise in international law. Closer scrutiny shows all the authority they really have is their senior positions as international lawyers and professors of international law in law schools and universities around the world. In other words, a very narrow cross-section of the global population.
Luckily the Russians bravely refuse to be intimidated by these tactics, because they have seen through Greenpeace's long term plan of deception. Let's look at the facts.
SInce 1971 Greenpeace has patiently promoted itself as an environmental campaigning group. Then it suddenly turns up in the Arctic. Says it's there to protest against the exploitation of the fossil fuel reserves which lie beneath the ice. Says carbon fuels are causing global warming. That the carbon fuels at the North Pole can only be got at because the ice cap is melting. They then try to stretch it a whole other distance by claiming that the melting of the ice cap is proof that the ice caps are melting. And that this in turn proves global warming. In doing this, they are high-handedly ignoring the 1% of the scientific community who argue global warming is absolutely nothing to worry about. Even if it is happening, which it isn't, and that melting ice caps don't prove ice caps are melting, just that God has chosen to give mankind a break just as fossil fuels are getting harder to find. Greenpeace even suggest that this one per cent of scientists are biased in their findings because they are sponsored by the oil industry. Well excuse me, but doesn't an oil company sponsor the Tate Gallery? And doesn't the Tate Gallery have a toilet on display as work of art? And would your average oil executive see a toilet as a work of art? I don't think so! Do they insist it's removed? No! Bias? Case dismissed!
The failure of Greenpeace's argument reveals the big picture: clearly their long term plan was to spend nearly half a century cultivating an image as peaceful environmental activists so that they could take everyone by surprise with their real purpose - to seize an oil rig in the arctic and use it as a pirate base from which to control the northern hemisphere and collect pirate treasure and abduct girls who look like Keira Knightley.
But even if the Greenpeace cover story holds (and it might do - even in Russia juries can be swayed occasionally by the silver tongues of defence lawyers and evidence), you can understand why the Russians are pissed off; like all the world's major industrial countries they've spent a lot of time and effort over the last twenty or so years paying lip-service to the need for reduced carbon emissions while protecting profits by actually doing nothing. It's used up a tremendous amount of energy in public relations, in activities like redesigning corporate logos with lots of green in them, and sponsoring modern art galleries in order to appear broad-minded.
But here's the bottom line. It's all very well to talk about sustainable development and respect for the environment, but the hard fact is this: our present economic system cannot survive unless we continue to make the planet less and less capable of sustaining life. And when you put it like that, there is clearly only one option.
What nobody seems to fully appreciate is that environmental collapse and destruction of the planet is going to be a tremendous spectacle. It's going to make fantastic TV.
Low-lying countries disappearing underwater, weather systems going haywire - hurricanes, wildfires, mudslides, famine, drought. Like now but worse. (Or better, depending on where you are, how far above sea-level you live and how long your supply of canned goods will last.)
Just think of all that the heart-rending human tragedy; a whole new vista for big charity fund-raiser spectaculars, and for actresses to win Oscars playing grief-stricken mothers.
Fantastic TV? It's Must-See TV.
And must-see TV means lucrative advertising slots. It's all good for the economy.
Provided we have the electricity to power our sets.
The agricultural and economic systems of entire nations collapsing; infrastructure, law and order disappearing; more and more refugees desperately trying to reach the smaller and smaller areas of the planet where society still functions, thus providing employment opportunities for more and more border guards.
Territorial disputes over drilling rights within the arctic could lead to warfare in an entirely new climate zone. This means the next generation of war-films will have an entirely new look. And that's without factoring in the boost to the economy sustained properly widespread warfare always brings, or the way every episode of Springwatch will be a relentless procession of cute innocent species falling of the twig and choking in the ash-filled wastes of once verdant grassland, while viewers at home weep all the way through it: a veritable Snotfest. And Snotfest means boom-time for the paper tissue industry! Every last penny we can scrape together will spent on home security. Fences, weapons, CCTV. All to no avail ultimately of course, but by the time the last of us are wiped out - drowned, asphyxiated, burnt up, strangled by desperate starving migrants just as they themselves expire exhausted by that last futile gesture of vengeance - the Dow Jones could be going though the roof. And that's what really matters! You can't fight economic reality!
But before all that happens - there is another sinister side to the Greenpeace action. They have also been charged with having narcotics on board the ship. Their defence? These are painkillers which form part of the standard medical kit on any ocean-going ship.
Some say the police describing these painkillers as narcotics is a ridiculous, transparent distortion of the obvious truth. But I call it thorough. Let's be realistic here. Who's to say these tree-hugging environmentalists had not got bored of trying to save the planet and were looking to diversify into drug running to finance a glamorous luxury lifestyle in the world-famous upscale nightclubs and deluxe fleshpot resorts of the Arctic Circle. Carrying a medical kit would be the ideal cover for turning the densely populated areas of the northern tundra into a an army of drug-dependent zombies willing to obey any command however dangerous or depraved in return for their next fix. And here we come to phase one of the secret plan:
Anyone who has spent time in the company of drug users and even perhaps experimented with various mind-altering substances - and I know I do - will be aware that the euphoria of the high can lead to all kinds of flights of fancy and grandiose schemes. When put in that context, who can entirely disprove the rumour hurtling around the internet once this blog has been posted that the real real reason Greenpeace attempted to occupy that oil rig was to discredit and humiliate Vladimir Putin. Putin, clearly the most openly manly heterosexual man in the whole world, and not in any way a closet gay terrified of his own sexuality, as proven by the steady stream of manly photographs he releases of himself half-naked and manly in manly poses. A manly man, currently making a brave and principled manly stand against the depraved discredited sixties notion that anyone should be able to love whoever they want and to express their sexuality without fear of persecution. Of course, Greenpeace don't like that. So once Greenpeace's drug pushers had gained control of the whole of northern Russia by making them all dependent on the opiates secreted in their ship's medical kits, a team of fanatics handpicked from their zombie army of drug-crazed automatons would be sent to to kidnap Vladimir Putin, surgically remove his bottom and replace it with a replica. The original bottom would then be packed in the last of the polar ice and sent to Amsterdam where it would be tattooed with words "Vladimir Putin's Bottom" and then placed in a sex-club for the carnal satisfaction of predatory homosexuals, live on webcam 24 hours a day to destroy Vladimir Putin's manly humanitarian democratic reputation forever.
And that is why Greenpeace must be stopped.
http://act.greenpeace.org.uk/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=18&ea.campaign.id=23002&ea.tracking.id=rus02&utm_source=HPArctic30