Source: The High North publication, "The International Harpoon," July 3, 2000, published during the 52nd Annual Meeting of the International Whaling Commission held in Australia

Ahead of the IWC meeting in Adelaide, Greenpeace has taken upon itself to educate Australia’s youth on whales and whaling with the launch of a comprehensive “education” program on its web site. But parents and teachers beware: Greenpeace’s ability to distinguish between educational materials and propaganda is as lacking as its grasp on reality.

Your children are being taught, for example, that “whales have similar family groupings to humans.” Can it be so? Imagine living in a household of 20 women and children, like sperm whales, where no one knows who their father is. From time to time, your Mum and her friends let a man or two through the door to copulate indiscriminately with them all before running off. If you belong to a family like this, let us know ... and seek help!

Mainly Polygamists

Propaganda can involve any-thing from the selective use or manipulation of facts, to downright lies, and Save the Whalers are masterful exponents of them all.

The most outrageous piece of Save the Whale propaganda ever devised came out of Greenpeace Australia in the form of an early ’90s fundraising brochure entitled “Are Whales ‘Almost Human’?” This treatise on the family values of whales showed utter disregard for biology, instead dressing “the whale” up as a paragon of middle-class human virtues - a gentle-natured creature living in family groups. Living in “family groups”, “the whale” “has a gentle nature”, “is known to cry” and “chooses a partner for life”. All of which is nonsense.

It is as meaningless to summa-rise in a few sentences the biology and social behaviour of “the whale” as it is to summarise “the animal”. Killer whales are as different from humpbacks as dogs are from cows. Most mammal species, in fact, are polygamists, and in the few that do practice monogamy, the male has a clearly identifiable role in bringing up the kids. What species might they be? None of the more than 80 cetacean species. There is for example the

Californian mouse, the African hunting dog, and the Djungarian hamster, a litter critter that breeds when temperatures are around –10 C. The newborn hamsters are incapable of maintaining their own body temperature, and the male therefore fills an important role by performing an act known as “neonate cuddling”.

Killer Whales Terrorise School Yard

Assuming that Australian kids are similar to those in the High North, they will be fascinated by the strange and wonderful ways in which animals live. But that thirst for knowledge is not going to be satisfied by Greenpeace.

The teacher is told that “the perspectives, attitudes and values that are important” is “that the whale is very similar to humans”. Words “such as sister, brother, father, mother, aunty etc.”, should “be linked to ... the whale images”.

“The whale needs sanctuary for breeding and feeding, just as we need to come home and go to work safely,” Greenpeace opines. No mention is made, however, of the family values and social interaction exhibited by the dolphins of Scotland’s Mo-ray Firth where dolphins makes mummy harbour porpoise wait for daddy harbour porpoise to come home from the office until his dinner is cold. He is floating on the surface, head-butted to death. Meanwhile off the coast of Alaska, killer whales are known to rip big chunks of blubber out of bowhead teenagers on their way to singing class.

Could these possibly be the same whales that Greenpeace insists have “a gentle nature”?

Hamstrung

Part of an educator’s job is to help pupils differentiate between fact and opinion, and encourage them to examine all sides of controversial issues before reaching their own conclusions. But the only references provided by the Greenpeace education program are Greenpeace publications, which hamstrings teachers and students from the start.

Older students, for example, are asked to discuss the concept of “cultural diversity”, but without any information on the meaning of whales in other cultures other than that offered by Greenpeace. And just to cap things off, Green-peace attempts to persuade teachers to get their students involved in politics, armed with nothing but misinformation. “Please en-courage your students to thought-fully sign the petition for a Global Whale Sanctuary in time for the July 2000 International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting,” it urges. “It is a way that students can be involved and realise their personal power through political process. Sign the petition and collect others’ signatures.”

In the High North, this is not called education. It is indoctrination.  

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