Month: September 2011

Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist

- Adam Clare

Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd have had a lot of success in stopping whalers from murdering defenceless whales and other sea life. Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist looks at the success of Sea Shepherd as well as the drama.

“There have been many films made about Sea Shepherd but none as hilarious and revealing as CONFESSIONS OF AN ECO-TERRORIST, which was three decades in the making.” Watson said. “Peter Brown, a Sea Shepherd insider expertly exercises aikido with his camera by turning a negative accusation into a positive confession of influential activism.

Filmmaker and longest-serving SSCS crew member Peter Jay Brown documented the mythic deeds of the organization while acting as the cinematographer, first mate, deckhand, quartermaster, Zodiac driver and officer/captain in Watson’s absence starting in 1980. He gives us an intimate and honest look at what really goes on behind the scenes on some of the most infamous environmental campaigns ever. He has recorded the breathtaking beauty of the life aquatic in all its glory, as well as anguishing despair, bearing witness to the brutal slaughter of the helpless.

Risking their freedoms and their lives, the renegade eco-warrior and his band of environmental pirates combat those who seek to pillage and profit from the destruction of the ocean and its inhabitants. Using guerilla tactics, they boldly, even jubilantly patrol the world’s waters targeting kill-happy poachers and covert corporate cabals, terrorizing and provoking confrontation while flying the Jolly Roger (skull and crossbones) flag of their fleet. Watson’s use of manufactured awareness and strategic media traps defies convention as he brilliantly navigates his fleet by ramming vessels, inflicting damage to whalers, drift-netters, long-liners, and seal hunters who operate illegally worldwide.

Here’s the trailer (some graphic animal killing inside):

Gamers Solve AIDS Enzyme Puzzle

- Adam Clare

If you thought playing games was just for fun, well Foldit is a game that has people solve problems for science. That itself is pretty neat, but what pushes this one over the edge is that Foldit has brought some great results and fast!

Developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, it is a fun-for-purpose video game in which gamers, divided into competing groups, compete to unfold chains of amino acids — the building blocks of proteins — using a set of online tools.
To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.
Cracking the enzyme “provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs,” says the study, referring to the lifeline medication against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
It is believed to be the first time that gamers have resolved a long-standing scientific problem.
“We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed,” Firas Khatib of the university’s biochemistry lab said in a press release.

Read the rest of the article.

Thanks Kathryn!

Greenpeace at 40

- Adam Clare

I’ll come out and say that I”m a keen supporter of Greenpeace so I’m happy to point out all the good work they’ve done over the past 40 years that they’ve been around. You can see what Greenpeace actions we’ve covered at Things Are Good in the past.

Greenpeace has put up a slideshow on their site celebrating the accomplishments, you can view it here.

You can read Greenpeace’s blog post on the event here.

From the CBC:

“We wouldn’t see the kind of action by governments that we’ve had in the last 40 years if you hadn’t had that kind of pressure applied by the environmental movement.”

Sept. 15, 1971, is cited as the beginning of Greenpeace, the day a group of anti-nuclear activists in Vancouver called the Don’t Make a Wave Committee chartered a ship with the aim of heading off underground nuclear tests by the U.S. government on the remote Alaskan island of Amchitka. In anticipation of the protest, the vessel, Phyllis Cormack, was renamed Greenpeace, a term coined by activist Bill Darnell.

The ship was ultimately blocked by the U.S. Coast Guard before it could reach Amchitka, and the scheduled tests went ahead as planned. But the protest aroused significant public interest in the group, which was renamed Greenpeace International in 1972.

Read more from the CBC on Greenpeace’s 40 year history.

Stoves and the Majority World

- Adam Clare

We looked at the Paradigm Project and Stove Man before in June. They have been busy making more videos about what they are up to in the world of helping people (and the planet) by providing them with efficient stoves.

It’s amazing what a stove can do.

Episode 3: Meet the Makers from The Paradigm Project on Vimeo.

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