These are free-market conservative anti-activists, creating an information clearing-house website similar to those used by left-leaning groups for a few years now.
It's pretty clear when you come across prose like this:
We’re not a protest organization, we’re a policing organization,” Paul Watson has said of his Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS). A pirate organization is more like it. Sporting the skull and crossbones, his black or battleship-gray ships sail menacingly through the waves. They are painted with the names of the boats Watson has rammed and sunk.
The ships are fitted with water cannons, a concrete-filled bow made for ramming, and an attachment dubbed the “can opener” that can tear open a boat’s hull. In his book Earth Warrior, David Morris writes that Watson wears a long bowie knife at his side and carries AK-47s on board. He blasts Richard Wagner’s rousing “Ride of the Valkyries” to herald his arrival and terrify his victims.
SSCS’s mission is to stop fishing of which it disapproves. Its preferred methods? Ramming and sinking fishing ships, throwing butyric acid on their decks, and firing machine guns. Watson argues that United Nations resolutions authorize him to commit violent acts. But he regularly interferes with fisherman and hunters who are committing no crime. He serves as judge, jury, and executioner -- while enjoying the same tax-exempt status as universities and churches.
Uh, well, he's bit loopy, but he's actually enforcing international treaties -- ones that no one else enforces. His ships aren't black or grey, either -- he's famous for his yellow submarine.
Loopiness = PR, which is his main thing. I mean, being a real-life "pirate" (even if you're not actually engaging in piracy) makes for great news copy.
And despite the way that snip makes it sound, "butyric acid" isn't really, like, a dangerous weapon -- it's the chemical that makes feet stink.
So, if you follow the links off that site to the Center for Consumer Freedom website, and go to "About us" page, you read:
The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit coalition supported by restaurants, food companies, and consumers working together to promote personal responsibility and protect consumer choices.
Unlike the anti-consumer activists we monitor and keep in check, we stand up for common sense and personal choice. The growing fraternity of "food cops," health care enforcers, militant activists, meddling bureaucrats, and violent radicals who think they know "what's best for you" are pushing against our basic freedoms. We're here to push back.
Ah. McDonald's and their fans, then.
And, despite the mission statement of the activistcash.com site (exposing the funding sources of activist groups), they also say:
The Center is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation. We will file regular statements with the Internal Revenue Service, which will be open to public inspection. Our first such filing is expected to be completed sometime in 2003.
Many of the companies and individuals who support the Center financially have indicated that they want anonymity as contributors. They are reasonably apprehensive about privacy and safety, in light of the violence some activist groups have adopted as a "game plan" to impose their views.
They're headquartered in Washington DC, and appear (just a hunch) to be organized as a reaction to the growing tobacco-style class-action suits against fast food outlets. |
