Tim Blair

Greenpeace has a recent "Save the Styx" campaign that involved posting messages to usenet containing every internal Gunns' email they could lay their hands on for the purpose of ensuring Gunns would be bombarded with spam.

Some public-minded citizen retaliates by regularly posting a "Chip the Styx" email with every global email Greenpeace publishes on its websites. The biter bit.

I would encourage every usenet user to do the same.

"If there is an attack on Iraq many civilians will suffer and it is actually more likely that weapons of mass destruction will be used as a result of the attack rather than the reverse."

Interesting to see that Greenpeace were confident that Saddam had WMD.

They seem to be laying off the scientific arguments for their GM objections these days. It appears to be more centred around terrifying primary producers about the abscence of markets for GM products. Markets that Greenpeace itself destroyed with baseless scare-mongering. Their storming onto private property to destroy scientific trials that might prove them wrong, seems more to me like a conservative, oppressive religious movement more than an arm of the (so-called) progressive Left!

How would France handle this delicate situation?

In 2001, I was working at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation at Lucas Heights when Greenpeace decided it would be a good idea to jump the fence for the purposes of creating a media event.

Greenpeace's action not only achieved national publicity for them, it also prevented that day's delivery of diagnostic and therapeutic drugs to cancer and other patients across Australia.

Amongst the worst cases were two patients in Perth who were dying of cancer who missed out on their dose of long lasting pain relief medication (known as Quadramet) that is made by the tiny research reactor at Lucas Heights.

As a result, these patients spent their last Christmas's on earth zonked out on morphine rather than on the more manageable drug.

A large contingent of cancer researchers were also locked out of the facility while Greenpeace enjoyed their moment of media glory.

No-one from Greenpeace has ever been made accountable for this.

From the last Victorian state election...

Loggers sabotage Greens office

Note that this was in direct retaliation for an action (and photo op) in which the candidate participated.

George,
It is ignorant of these people to cause such inconvenience and pain to others.
I grew up in Bankstown and was never concerned by the Lucas Heights Reactor. What these morons don't seem to realise is that the goods produced at Lucas Heights are for medical and industrial use. I worked for a company which built power stations and radioactive isotopes were used to check the welds on high pressure piping. I am angry at the protests of recent neighbours of the Lucas Heights facility who bought their land quite cheaply and now want the facility moved.

Kae,

Speaking as someone who lives 3km from Lucas Heights I am proud to report that the idea that local people oppose the reactor is largely a myth.

Politicians who have tried to oppose it in the local area have - one after the other - been rejected by local voters (including at the recent council elections), and protest meetings against the reactor in the Sutherland Shire can generally be held in a phone booth with breakout room.

Greenpeace had to import their protesters from interstate for the above-mentioned action which all goes to commend the good sense of many people in the Sutherland Shire.

I believe the shipping company is planning on sending Greenpeace a bill for a complete repaint of the vessel- part can't be stripped and repainted, the whole hull needs to be done. A couple of million should cover it.

Shouldn't interfering with the actions of the Royal Navy in time of war be countered with deadly force? The Captain should order a CPO to have the dinghies shot up with a .50 cal. We're at war, for God's sake, and they're on the other side.

The one good thing the Frogs have done in the last fifty years was blowing that bloody ship up.

Hi George
You must have a lovely home! (I am thinking Illawong, views of the river, etc.)
Glad to hear that the anti Lucas Heights protesters are mostly non-existent, and non-locals (maybe I should have realised that?).

David:

The French blew up a Greenpeace ship? when? i must know! also, isnt Greenpeace considered a terrorist organization by the US? if not, it should be.

Here is the skinny on the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior by French secret agents