Mutinous Revisionism and Shades of George Orwell
October 26, 2023
Wow, just saw the Peter Hammarstedt revisionist video. Quite the Orwellian spin. He is celebrating his 20th Anniversary with Sea Shepherd and Alex Cornelissen is claiming that the best decision he ever made was promoting Peter to be First Mate and then Captain.
Except that is not true. I took him on as a crewmember in 2002. I also appointed him as Quartermaster then as 1st Officer and then as Captain. Not sure why Alex Cornelissen feels the need to lie about that. I suppose that is the only narrative they could employ to make sure my name was not mentioned in that 20-year history. All part of their efforts to cancel me and to remove my history.
Both Alex and Peter are where they are because I trusted them, and they returned that trust by personally betraying me.
They also betrayed the Sea Shepherd movement that I created in 1977 by changing the course of our activism, moving to the mainstream and away from confrontation and controversy.
Alex was a failed graphic artist with no sea experience when I brought him on the crew as a cook in 2002. Peter also had no sea experience when he joined my crew in 2002.
They now both remind me of that old saying: Be careful who you let on your ship, because some people will sink the whole ship just because they can’t be the captain.
I mistakenly made them both captains, I made them television stars on Whale Wars. I trusted them as directors of Sea Shepherd Global. Now they are working in collaboration with corrupt African nations and with corporations like Lloyd’s, Allianz Insurance, The Austral Fisheries Corporation, the Japanese Maruha Daichiro Fisheries Corporation and with the Dutch Postal Code Lottery. And the price they pay for that government and corporate support is to not make waves, but to pretend to make waves, like when Peter went to the Southern Ocean last year to take pictures of Krill trawlers without lifting a finger to stop them.
They have replaced the reality of direct action with the fiction of direct action. In ousting me, they seized the ships, the list of supporters, the assets, and our archives in an attempt to remove me, to isolate me, to cancel me and to forget me.
Peter said that I was too old, and Alex said that he and Peter were the new faces of Sea Shepherd, and that no one respected me anymore and that because of my uncompromising position on activism I had become a problem. Specifically, they referred to me as the “Watson problem.” The corporate and government partners were not happy with my controversial reputation.
Except not all our supporters have forgotten and within just a year, we have our first ship and we will be securing a 2nd ship, we are allied with Sea Shepherd France and Sea Shepherd Brazil and Sea Shepherd UK has changed the name to the Captain Paul Watson Foundation.
Alex and Peter sank the Sea Shepherd movement just so they could seize total control of something they did not create.
What they don’t have is what made Sea Shepherd what Sea Shepherd became; the most badass and most effective marine conservation movement on the planet.
They took the material assets, but they tossed the most valuable assets out of the fleet. Those assets are the virtues I took into my lifeboat along with my many loyal supporters and veteran crew. The virtues of passion, imagination, and courage.
That’s all we need to rebuild and to carry on our strategy of aggressive nonviolence, the strategy that made Sea Shepherd world famous and effective, a strategy Alex and Peter have now abandoned.
What these four men, Cornelissen, Hammarsted plus Jeff Hansen and Geert Vons, have done is to dismantle what was an effective democratic movement of independent national entities and to replace it with total control by themselves. Four men with control of Sea Shepherd Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Italy etc.
They failed to bully Sea Shepherd UK, France and Brazil and because of that the Sea Shepherd name has not been completely compromised and stained, although they continue to sue Sea Shepherd France claiming 100% ownership of a name I created in 1977, and the logos I commissioned in 1985 and designed in 1991 long before any of these four men were involved.
I gave little thought at the time to something Peter Hammarstedt once told me when he said that he hoped to one day be like me. What he actually meant was that he intended to be me, and in order to do that he needed to rebrand our movement and to remove me permanently.
The four men removed both me and Sea Shepherd France President Lamya Essemlali without even the courtesy of a meeting, a discussion or a vote. We were both informed by an email that we were dismissed and not one of them has responded to us since nor have they been transparent with supporters about why they did what they did.
In maritime culture, the most egregious act has been mutiny and no matter what they now do, no matter what they claim to control, all four of these men have rebranded themselves as disloyal and cowardly mutineers.
#cpwf #SeaShepherd #SeaShepherdFrance #SeaShepherdBrasil #seashepherdglobal #cpwfuk #peterhammerstedt#alexcornellison #jeffhansen #geertvons #cpwfaustralia #seashepherdgermany #seashepherdswitzerland#seashepherditaly #seashepherdireland #seashepherdnewzealand