]]]]]]]]]]]]]      A NEW PATRON FOR GREENPEACE        [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ 
                                                            (6/18/88)
     On the face of it, Greenpeace is just another sham-environmen-
talist organization using the nature-loving pretexts for political 
ends (and damaging the environment in the process).
     That description, as far as it goes, fits Greenpeace well: Their 
members have chained themselves to British ships to prevent them dump-
ing low-level nuclear wastes into the sea; but British coal ash is 
dumped into the sea also, and since the total amount of radioactivity 
in it exceeds that of low-level nuclear wastes, Greenpeace in prin-
ciple helps to make the seas more radioactive.
     Quite similarly, they paint baby seals red to make their fur 
worthless to seal hunters, but in fact they condemn them to a slow and 
horrible death since the paint destroys their thermal insulation from 
the icy water [AtE Dec 82].
     Like other "environmental" organizations, they also have lavish 
funds showered on them by an affluent class that seeks to avoid growth 
and upward mobility and to freeze society in the state where they are 
the ruling elite. They have an annual budget of $4 million, and a 
staff of 200 people in their Washington center and 7 US regional 
offices.
     But they differ from most other sham-environmentalists in three 
important respects. 
     First, they are more violent-prone than any other of their "envi-
ronmentalist" brethren except the "Earth First!" thugs. They have, for 
example staged a night-attack on the Zion, Ill., nuclear plant with 
flares and noise-producing explosives [AtE Nov 82].
     Second, they are more blatantly political than the "respectable" 
impostors like the Audubon Society, suing over lack of environmental 
statements for the MX missile [AtE Feb 84], actively opposing the SDI, 
etc.
     But the third point is an interesting one: they are openly sup-
ported by the Soviets. Greenpeace raised the whaling issue, which had 
tremendous funding appeal, and their inflatable speedboats Yet the 
Soviets treated them with leniency quite unusual for them.  or 
example, they were given permission to dock their boat in Leningrad 
harbor in 1982 in order to participate in an antinuclear protest. When 
they distributed leaflets demanding the cessation of nuclear testing 
by BOTH the USSR and the US, they were merely put on board of their 
ship and towed out of the harbor.
     In 1983, after informing then Soviet ruler Y. Andropov, Green-
peace's ship Rainbow Warrior entered Soviet water to within half a 
mile of the whaling center at Lorino. Three inflatable Zodiacs were 
launched and Greenpeace members went on shore to photograph whale meat 
being fed to minks on a mink farm. They were taken into custody by a 
unit of the Soviet army, but they and their boats were released four 
days later; the incident gained wide and loud publicity and lavish 
funds for Greenpeace. Nobody remarked on the strange difference 
between Greenpeace boats and Korean airliners violating Soviet fron-
tiers.
     Nor did anybody remark on the difference a year ago when Mathias 
Rust was sentenced to four years in prison for violating Soviet fron-
tiers all by himself and without taking any pictures (a serious crime 
in Soviet eyes).
     The big surprise came in September 1987, when the Soviet Commit-
tee for the Defense of Peace -- the Soviet member of the World Peace 
Council (a blatant Soviet front) -- announced that it was launching a 
Soviet Greenpeace Committee [AtE Nov 87]. (In Russian, there is no 
difference between Green Peace and Green World; the latter was a 
mistranslation reported by the US press.) That the Soviets, the 
world's biggest and most ruthless industrial polluters, should give 
support to ANY environmental organization was startling; but that they 
should give it to one that has harassed their whalers since the 70s 
and that had staged a publicity stunt by invading Soviet territory is 
almost incredible.
     I am not yet ready to classify Greenpeace as a Soviet front. I do 
not doubt that the Soviets have their trusted contacts, observers, and 
perhaps even "agents of influence" in Greenpeace as they have in most 
international organization; but that does not necessarily mean that 
they are actually directing it as a front in the manner of, say, the 
World Peace Council.
     But I am not discounting such a possibility, either. Greenpeace 
is ideally suited to one of the main strategies of Soviet covert poli-
cy, which is to "heighten chaos" (their actual expression as revealed 
by defectors from the KGB in congressional hearings) in the Western 
world.
     This the "environmental" organizations are doing very well all by 
themselves without the necessity of Soviet control. But if the Soviets 
did want to pick one of them for direct control, Greenpeace's politi-
cal radicalism and bent for violence, along with their far-flung 
organization would make them the ideal choice.
     They will therefore bear watching on this account; but either 
way, their past record well qualifies them as inhabitants of this rat 
hole.

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