Report from the Captain's Quarters

26 February. We are in Sete, France. Sete is at the head of the Gulf of Lions, an aptly named bay where fierce winds are the norm, especially in winter. Last week while docked (fortunately) in Marseille, we had winds of over 60 knots. This wind, when it comes in from the north-west, as it does all winter, is called the Mistral. The wind funnels through the Bordeauxregion, between the Pyrenees and the Alps, and kicks up a seriously nasty sea in the Med. It makes wonderful conditions for kite-surfers, but poor ones for sailors. Kite-surfers are folks that surf up and down the beach
behind very large kites. Looks like fun.

We waited for two days, 15 miles up the coast, carefully listening to the radio for the ship to check in with harbor authorities and announce their arrival. Typical Greenpeace action: days of planning, days of waiting, moments of adrenalin pumping activity and hours or days of waiting. Life in the fast lane, waiting. But this action features not only a new tactic, but a new Greenpeace weapon! This is not to be confused with the new secret weapon we
announced exactly 20 years ago. This one we have practiced with, and it will work! We think...

The m/v Agia Irene came in at 2245 Sunday night. Agia Irene is a 27 year old ship, whose next trip could be to the scrap yard in Alang, India. But you can not tell that by the way she looks, unless you are a sailor. Her paint work is in good condition. I have seen American ships that looked much worse. But when you look closer, you see that she has no Sat-Com dome. We have two. She has open, traditional life boats, and in general she looks as though she is sailing with the same equipment today that she was launched with. There is a wake up call in the merchant marine that starts off:

She's a homer,
She's a feeder,
She's a twenty knot speeder,

Agia Irene has two out of three. We started tracking her on the radar when she was 22 miles away, and she went between 9.6 and 10.2 knots. This is like a tractor trailer truck tooling down the Interstate at 50 miles an hour. Not good. Old bulkers do not have a good reputation in the industry. Agia Irene flys a very typical flag of convenience: St. Vincent and the Grenadines. She is owned out of Athens. The fact that her paint work looks as good as it does is a real tribute to the crew, who all earn about half of what we do on the Greenpeace ships. And do not even think about comparing their salaries to first world merchant marines'.

Wake up call on the Warrior Monday morning was for 0400. By 0530 the boats, our "big" 6 meter Avon and little 4.6 meter boats, were all loaded with climbers, chainers, and blockers, not to mention drivers for the boats and crews. As they left the Warrior for the half mile trip to the Agia Irene, I heard the Agia Irene call the signal station. What, I thought. Have they spotted us already?

Hardly. Agia Irene was calling to let the pilots know she would be delayed, as she could not start her engine. Call the press! Declare a victory! We stopped her without even stepping onboard! OK, Okay...

Because she was loaded, boarding was easy. Christophe of France and Anders of Denmark went up the masts. Bernard, deckhand, and Phil, outboard mechanic, both of Canada, and "Haussy," electrical engineer from New Zealand, put a metal cross bar through the anchor chain to keep it from being lifted. Remember, our objective is not to let the ship discharge her cargo. Kristina, deckhand from Germany, was to wait for the pilot ladder to be lowered, when she would climb half way up it to try and stop the pilot from boarding the Agia Irene. Rodrigo, deckhand from Chile, Dmitri (who needs a ladder?), 2nd mate from Russia, Francois and Sarah of France went aboard and boarded and hung the inevitable banners.

We are blocking a bulk carrier with roughly 10,000 tons of tropical trees. The wood came from Liberia.

Ending ancient forests means eliminating life on the planet as we know it. Raising your eyebrows? Try these: Jane Goodall says in ten years there will be no more wild chimpanzees. Klaus Toepfer of UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) said last May: "The clock is standing at one minute to midnight for the great apes. Some experts estimate that in as little as five to ten years time they will be extinct across their range." Are you a sports fan? Every second, we chop down two football fields of ancient forest! Do you have a young child? Tell them, tonight, that by the time they grow up, there will be no more primates left in the natural world. If you are not an admirer of warm fuzzy animals, then consider that we know only a fraction about the life living in our ancient forests. Will the next cure for cancer come from the forests? Not if we chop them all down.

The destruction of the Liberian forest is the old story of power and greed. Start with Charles Taylor, dictator of Liberia, and follow the story to Al Qaeda. Start with an unscrupulous dictator, throw in a former drug lord turned lumber merchant, and you can work wonders.

The logs on the Agia Irene are mostly from a company called Evergreen Trading, which only a few weeks ago was know as Oriental Timber Corporation. This confused campaigner Tim Birch for a while. He went onboard the Agia and could find no trees marked with the old OTC stamp. Then we found out that they had just changed the name and stamp! Evergreen is the company of Dutchman Gus Kouwenhoven, a former drug lord who now deals in trees and diamonds, and is the subject of a UN travel ban. Evergreen is by far the largest lumber company in Liberia. They do ten times more business than any other company. They have exclusive control over Buchanan, one of the two main ports of the country. Evergreen even has its own militia. I think the best description of Evergreen is
its plans for its future in Liberia. They expect to be "finished" in five to eight years.

And then where will the people of Liberia be? Poor and without resources. Less than 10% of lumber revenues find their way to the people of Liberia. The rest goes to Gus and Charles, who the May 27th 2001 London Observer call "closest associates". The same article called "Logs of War" tracks
the diamond smuggling from Sierra Leon through Liberia to Antwerp. Another good source of information is in the Global Witness report, "Taylor-made" of September 2001. (www.globalwitness.org)

For the details of why France is so committed to importing Liberian lumber, see Anthony Lewis's article in www.Globalpolicy.org. According to Lewis, "So if timber is the new lifeline (since the banning of diamonds) that now sustains Taylor... there is but only one way to stop this: cutting off this lifeline which has provided the necessary .. revenues. France ... can help bring an end ... by discontinuing any future purchase of this product.

Now not everyone will deal with Gus and Charles anymore. Well, of course France and China do not have a problem. But this is where Al Qaeda steps in. According to the November 2nd, 2001 story in the Washington Post, Al Qaeda buys diamonds from the RUF, the Revolutionary United Front fighting in Sierra Leon, that get smuggled through Liberia (for a price) at about 10% of their value, in return for guns and other weapons. Note that RUF is famous for controlling the local population of Sierra Leon by cutting off the hands and arms of young boys. "My, that is a pretty diamond you
are wearing, my dear."

Now because Charles cannot sell diamonds anymore, he sells trees! With his trees and his cut on RUF diamonds, he has built a personal fortune of around $400,000,000.00 U.S. That's four hundred million.

Now ask again, why does France import lumber from Liberia and Evergreen Trading Company? I can see the logs, right out my porthole, on the deck of the Agia Irene. But the logs do not all stay in France. Some of the cargo stays on the ship and will go to another European port. Some of the logs unloaded in Sete are going to a Danish company called DLH, who today very reluctantly admitted to buying from Evergreen. Remember market based campaigning? This is where market based campaigning comes in. And this is where actions, like the one we are doing right now, come in. We are using the action to let people know what is going on.

Stopping the Agia Irene is the first step.

Last year when we stopped a lumber ship from British Columbia in La Palice, France, we were injuncted after two days to the tune of $30,000.00 per day. This has not happened yet, but the courts have given police authority to remove us from the Agia Irene. So we wait, switching crews on the Agia, and jumping into our action stations about five times a day (and night) when an unidentified vessel approaches.

It is late and I am getting cross eyed. In a few minutes I will go up to the bridge and relieve chief mate Helen, and try to enjoy the moon, and calm winds. As in any action, sleep is a luxury, and I would love to get five hours tonight.

The story is getting good press. We were on page three of the Financial Times today. Ho humm. But we are all on edge, expecting the police to come out at any moment, when we will hopefully be in time to start the second phase of the action. And what of the new tactic and action toy?
Stay tuned!

Later
Pete

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