Three activists 'prisoners' after slipping aboard Japanese ship

[DirkGently]

24. Obviously they are accepting the consequences of their actions. They knew exactly what would happen.

I thank them for that. I don't always agree with the specific tactics of the Sea Shepherds either, particularly in their more radical days. But I also don't think you can lump in the kind of monkey wrenching they do these days with general lawlessness.

There are times and places when nonviolent lawlessness and civil disobedience are effective and ethical. In this case, the Japanese fleet relies on the fact that, as a state actor, it can gloss over its completely blatant disregard for anti-whaling laws it claims to abide by, through the use of a defiantly transparent excuse ("scientific research&quot and the fact that there is no enforcement of anti-whaling laws.

Asking nicely, over and over and over again, as the Sea Shepherds do before they take their other direct actions, doesn't seem to work.