Rainbow Warrior on shipbreaking beach in Bangladesh | Hacker News Reader

Rainbow Warrior on shipbreaking beach in Bangladesh

mo.be

59 pointsTomte23 comments

"Fun" fact: when Jeff Gordon was in his NASCAR heyday, his car had a very colorful livery and his team was called the "Rainbow Warriors." This was when his main rival was Dale Earnhardt. Back then, the traditional NASCAR fans preferred the understated black car, car company sponsor, and "tough guy" image of Dale Earnhardt. Jeff Gordon decided to play up the opposite image, doing hugely colorful liveries, shaved his mustache to look more babyfaced, and embracing the outsider vibe. During the time they overlapped, Jeff Gordon was far more successful than Dale Earnhardt, much to the consternation of traditional fans.

The secret the whole time was the Dale and Jeff were not only friends, but Dale was Jeff's mentor.

Another "fun" fact: Rainbow Warrior is a term used by the Rainbow Family of Living Light, which includes everyone who attends Rainbow Gathering. Rainbow Gathering is the largest "anarchist" gathering in the United States and goes back to 1972. [1]

Its influences can be traced into the Occupy movement and Burning Man. The national gathering is essentially an off-grid annual hippy gathering and celebration of peace over the 4th of July weekend.

A Rainbow Warrior is someone who takes values from Rainbow Gathering and brings them out into "babylon" also called "defaultia" by burners and spreads these ideas into mainstream society.

I've been to three national Rainbow Gatherings and five times to Burning Man. If you have an open mind, hippy flair and are interested in "weird" experiences you should def check out Rainbow it moves every year and this year may be near you.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Gathering

That's Rainbow Warrior 2, after the French bombed the first one

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior

in Auckland, NZ killing 1 person.

I use this a data point supporting my contention that behind every terrorist group is a state or corporate security service.

I hope you realize that data like these can’t support a contention like yours.

I hope you realize that I have a long list of these associations.

TIL: The beach/shipbreaking yard that this ship is at apparently employs 200,000[1] Bangladeshis? This seems absolutely bonkers.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chittagong_Ship_Breaking_Yard

The scale is massive. Take a look at the satellite view here:

https://www.google.com/maps/search/chittagong+ship+breaking+...

You can scroll up and down the coast to see how many ships are beached and being dismantled.

If you check the scale of the map, you'll see that these are big ships. And most of the breaking is done manually, using torches and sledgehammers. This requires lots of manual labor.

So if you consider the massive scale of the shipbreaking happening here, combined with how labour intensive the process is, that 200,000 figure starts to make sense.

Greenpeace has made a few high-profile mistakes over the years which unfortunately seem to make more headlines than their protests, research and educational work. The Rainbow Warrior II ending up in a shipbreaking yard is particularly surprising given the fact that Greenpeace International and various Greenpeace country offices have been actively campaigning against unregulated ship breaking yards for a number of years. It's especially sad given the care and consideration given to the resting place of the original Rainbow Warrior, which was rather romantically turned into an artificial reef after the bombing by the French.

GP (int al) only have to make one cock up to be publicly vilified. The organisations and institutions they campaign at for change can simply say "whoops" and not suffer too much.

"mistakes over the years" is the key phrase that you might contrast to say "deliberate environmental abuse each day" (my words)

Greenpeace did wonderful work saving the lignite coal industry in Europe by making nuclear public enemy #1. The open pit mines are truly a great improvement over towns and trees.

Best part is GP now protests the problem they caused: https://www.npr.org/2018/08/06/635911260/germany-turns-to-br...

Greenpeace opposes both coal and nuclear in favor of renewables. Saying they caused coal is ridiculous; they are neutral on coal vs nuclear.

> Saying they caused coal is ridiculous

Renewables cannot practically replace base load at this time.

Name a group that's done more to oppose operating nuclear power plants. Not just planned new construction, GP actively opposes and tries to shutdown operating plants.

If you remove nuclear plants you have to replace base load generation with coal. Other than pumping hydro which has its own environmental issues and won't work everywhere... what else do you expect to replace that base load with in most of the world? Rolling blackouts?

So yes, I'm quite comfortable in saying they caused increased coal usage in their shortsightedness, with all the baggage it comes along with.

What has the Rainbow Warrior III been up to? The Wikipedia entry makes it sound like it's just doing press junket runs.

"After its launch in Bremerhaven, Germany, the new Rainbow Warrior toured ports in Europe (Hamburg, Amsterdam, London, Stockholm and Barcelona) welcoming supporters on board the new ship and holding specific events such as onboard concerts. The ship was also visited by celebrity supporters such as Radiohead's Thom Yorke, who was part of the ship's maiden voyage.[8] and 2 Michelin starred chef Diego Guerrero in Barcelona.[9] In January 2012, the ship travelled to the East Coast of the USA, planning to dock at New York City, Baltimore, Southport, North Carolina, Fort Lauderdale and St. Petersburg, Florida.[10] In March 2013, the ship travelled to Australia. "

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Warrior_(2011)

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:22...

Probably on it's way back from NZ to Europe?

> What has the Rainbow Warrior III been up to? The Wikipedia entry makes it sound like it's just doing press junket runs.

Greenpeace is a "Raise Awareness" organization. Publicity and a good relationship with the press are it's core functions.

Raising Awareness is the contemporary 'last refuge of a scoundrel'. Greenpeace lost any broad credibility as a maverick campaigning organisation a long time ago, it's now just another MOTR 'charitable' org that overspends on admin, salaries and PR.

"When Friendship suggested that the ship be scrapped at PHP shipbreaking yard in Chittagong, Bangladesh, GPI could have said no. But it did not."

Pure speculation: This sounds like a decision they may have been forced to make due to whatever alternatives may or may not have existed. They made the "bad" choice and immediatly followed it up with an "oops, sorry" apology in order to preempt any negative press from opposition interests.

When they refer to terrorist action, who are they saying were the terrorists?

The French secret service forces that acted during the operation.

> PHP shipbreaking yard

Sometimes truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

> PHP — in full Peace Happiness Prosperity

I really cannot tell if this is an expression of extreme cynicism or starry-eyed idealism.

Probably both... I've worked with a lot of people from Bangladesh; idealistic stated goals, paired with deeply cynical actions is a good, succinct and fairly generalisable summary in my experience.

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