Gerald
08-17-11, 05:02 AM
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/299/rainbowwarrior3976.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/690/rainbowwarrior3976.jpg/)
Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior II is retiring, but Rainbow Warrior III will soon take its place. How did the protest ship anchor itself in the public imagination - and can it continue to do so in future?
It has foiled and frustrated the efforts of governments, it has brought big business to its knees. For more than 30 years, the most enduring image of environmental activism has been a little ship on a roiling sea, the distinctive white dove on its hull dipping in and out of the waves.
"It's a small boat, a little untidy," said the Dalai Lama, when he visited the Rainbow Warrior in 1992.
"But it is a very powerful symbol and the spirit on board made my spirit stronger too."
In 1977, when the UK Ministry of Agriculture retired an old fisheries research boat, it sold it off to Greenpeace. Rusty old Sir William Hardy acquired a coat of colourful paint and a new identity, and began life as a protest ship. Soon, it became a campaigning icon.
"In the beginning, it was the romance of the story," says Kevin DeLuca, author of Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism, "a few individuals battling the evil empire of the Soviet Union, a primary propagator of whaling."
The ship delivered activists to far-flung regions where they chained themselves to harpoons, and positioned rubber rafts between whalers and whales.
They blocked the waste discharge pipes of factories and flung green paint on the coats of baby harp seals, rendering them commercially worthless.
Often, there was no immediate result - factory smoke swirled freely, seal pups continued to be killed - but the world began watching, simultaneously outraged and enthralled.
Exasperated
According to Rex Weyler, a co-founder of Greenpeace International, the organisation struck a chord because it adopted a form of civil disobedience - it did for the environment what the civil rights movement did for the dispossessed.
"Although we were by no means the first to advocate these ideas, we extended the concept of compassion to more than just people," he says.
In the organisation's parlance, each expedition of the Rainbow Warrior launched a "media mind bomb", eliciting a groundswell of public protest.
"The activists at Greenpeace were sophisticated media artists," says DeLuca. "A number of them were journalists - such as Robert Hunter, the first president of Greenpeace - and so knew exactly how to use images to exploit the infinite possibilities of television."
But in a perverse twist, what came to be the organisation's most famous mind bomb was one it had not planned.
In 1985, the Rainbow Warrior led a fleet of ships to protest against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific. Exasperated French intelligence services bombed the vessel, killing one activist and triggering widespread public outrage.
With characteristic determination - and with the slogan "You Can't Sink a Rainbow" - Greenpeace launched a second ship.
After 22 years of service, this second vessel is now retiring from service.
Unlike its predecessor, which was sunk as an artificial reef, Warrior II will serve as a floating hospital in Bangladesh, a country with a severe shortage of hospital beds.
In its place is the custom-built Rainbow Warrior III - and unlike Greenpeace's gas-guzzling vessels of yore, it will be among the most environmentally advanced ships of its size.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14530273
Note: 17 August 2011 Last updated at 00:11 GMT
Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior II is retiring, but Rainbow Warrior III will soon take its place. How did the protest ship anchor itself in the public imagination - and can it continue to do so in future?
It has foiled and frustrated the efforts of governments, it has brought big business to its knees. For more than 30 years, the most enduring image of environmental activism has been a little ship on a roiling sea, the distinctive white dove on its hull dipping in and out of the waves.
"It's a small boat, a little untidy," said the Dalai Lama, when he visited the Rainbow Warrior in 1992.
"But it is a very powerful symbol and the spirit on board made my spirit stronger too."
In 1977, when the UK Ministry of Agriculture retired an old fisheries research boat, it sold it off to Greenpeace. Rusty old Sir William Hardy acquired a coat of colourful paint and a new identity, and began life as a protest ship. Soon, it became a campaigning icon.
"In the beginning, it was the romance of the story," says Kevin DeLuca, author of Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism, "a few individuals battling the evil empire of the Soviet Union, a primary propagator of whaling."
The ship delivered activists to far-flung regions where they chained themselves to harpoons, and positioned rubber rafts between whalers and whales.
They blocked the waste discharge pipes of factories and flung green paint on the coats of baby harp seals, rendering them commercially worthless.
Often, there was no immediate result - factory smoke swirled freely, seal pups continued to be killed - but the world began watching, simultaneously outraged and enthralled.
Exasperated
According to Rex Weyler, a co-founder of Greenpeace International, the organisation struck a chord because it adopted a form of civil disobedience - it did for the environment what the civil rights movement did for the dispossessed.
"Although we were by no means the first to advocate these ideas, we extended the concept of compassion to more than just people," he says.
In the organisation's parlance, each expedition of the Rainbow Warrior launched a "media mind bomb", eliciting a groundswell of public protest.
"The activists at Greenpeace were sophisticated media artists," says DeLuca. "A number of them were journalists - such as Robert Hunter, the first president of Greenpeace - and so knew exactly how to use images to exploit the infinite possibilities of television."
But in a perverse twist, what came to be the organisation's most famous mind bomb was one it had not planned.
In 1985, the Rainbow Warrior led a fleet of ships to protest against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific. Exasperated French intelligence services bombed the vessel, killing one activist and triggering widespread public outrage.
With characteristic determination - and with the slogan "You Can't Sink a Rainbow" - Greenpeace launched a second ship.
After 22 years of service, this second vessel is now retiring from service.
Unlike its predecessor, which was sunk as an artificial reef, Warrior II will serve as a floating hospital in Bangladesh, a country with a severe shortage of hospital beds.
In its place is the custom-built Rainbow Warrior III - and unlike Greenpeace's gas-guzzling vessels of yore, it will be among the most environmentally advanced ships of its size.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14530273
Note: 17 August 2011 Last updated at 00:11 GMT