http://www.greenpeace.org/~comms/rw/captain.html (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)
August 17, 1995
I'm Jon Castle, new captain of the Rainbow Warrior II, taking over from Dave Enever.
I flew over from Europe to Fiji around the 8th of August. Not an ecological way to travel, but one of the compromises we have to make sometimes, I guess. Still getting over jet lag. I haven't been out in the Pacific for 10 years or so, and it's good to meet some old friends, even be in the same hemisphere as some other old friends. Before flying out I met up with Steve Sawyer and Dave McTaggart for a half hour, worthwhile. The solidarity you only get from personal humor connections and feelings is often what you are left with, and need, at the end of the day, when doubts may in - steal. Remember the other side are often good talkers. They have all the money and can pay professional script writers and PR folk to write and mouth elegant speeches justifying everything from ethnic cleansing to clear cutting forests; selling milk powder to healthy mums; having 5 plastic wrappers on a loaf of bread to treating animals as economic units and keeping them in cages all their lives. So sometimes the slick talk gets you fuddled, but your heart still says no, hang on a minute, something smells wrong here.
Then the solidarity of friends helps to remind you where the straight track is - obscured by the smoke of PR maybe, but still there if you look hard enough.
To get to Tahiti for August 23rd we have to motor against Easterly head winds. It's uncomfortable, a moderate swell, the ship pitching and rolling day after day. Every evening we hear of other boats joining the Peace fleet, setting off. It's encouraging, touching. It seems down to a few individuals always. All the official bodies make tentative announcements. And to be honest the mass of people just go along with whatever the current establishment says.
The great ecological battle of the future must be to take power back to smaller groups of individuals. To empower people so they have self respect enough to be responsible for their communities and their descendants.
At present it's still all rushing the other way. Everything down to "economics", the non-science Power to the GATT, a world tyranny designed to mash the last vertigoes of communal links. human ties, turns us all into passive little frightened individual consumers, lost and alone in this dark universe. Instead of the alternative - all small parts of this wonderful community of nature and minerals on this living planet with a past and a future. A home where we belong, together.
From the pilot book I see the European discoverer of Moruroa was a Guernsey man like me, Philip Carteret. Lots of 'coincidences' all the way.
12 Nationalities out of 19 crew members - pretty good, but
still only 4 women to 15 men - more ladies please apply to
Greenpeace.
So China did do a nuke test after all. Bad news. Glad to see some Greenpeace directors relinquished their desks for a banner protest in Tienmen Square beforehand. Well done ladies and gents! A good example.
Ok, good wishes, one and all. Prayers and good vibes welcome out here.
Jon Castle
