Source: The International Harpoon, No. 3, October 24,1997
A label pasted on the inside cover of the book Green Backlash, produced last year by one Andy Rowell, reads: "On page 19 a reference to the Washington Post erroneously states that the Washington Post is a "Moon-backed" organisation. The Washington Post has no affiliation with the Unification Church. We sincerely regret the error."
The label is intended to protect the publisher, the highly respected Routledge, against legal action. Significantly, however, it also speaks volumes about the driving force behind the book. Why? Because it’s not the first time that this bizarre correction has been spotted.
"Anti-Environmentalists"
Green Backlash is an attack on "anti-environmentalists", which basically means anyone who does not agree with "environmentalists", and its focal theme is to portray "anti-environmentalists" as violent or as encouraging violence.So it was interesting indeed to compare the book with a report produced some months before by Greenpeace, entitled "Driven to Extremes", on the relationship between whalers and the US Wise Use movement. For in this report, by the most remarkable coincidence, we find a hand-written correction replacing «the Moon-backed» Washington Post with the «Moon-backed» Washington Times.
And that’s not all. Whole sentences, and sometimes virtually entire paragraphs, from the Greenpeace report are repeated verbatim in Green Backlash, though no reference is made to the Greenpeace report.
"Independent" Source
Greenpeace has recently been putting considerable effort into attacking its opponents, attempting to link all sustainable use advocates with extreme right wing groups and ideologies in the US. Such attacks are, of course, more convincing if they appear to come from a neutral source, and what better way to do this than to have an independent source do the job for you, and then get it published by a respectable publishing house?Rowell is presented in his book as a «freelance environmental con-sultant», but Greenpeace has clearly been a good client of late. This much is spelled out in the preface, where he makes the extraordinary confession: «It should be added, in a sentence that will be repeated often by the critics of this book, that financial and logistical support for this project was provided by Greenpeace. This said, Greenpeace had no editorial control over the content.»
Rowell thus attempts to take the wind out of his critics’ sails before they can leave port — but without success. He asks us, in vain, to believe that Greenpeace has financed his work without a purpose. He asks us to believe Greenpeace did not provide him with ammunition, or make sure his gun was pointed in the right direction. Poobah!
Harpoon doesn’t want to land itself with a lawsuit, so we’re going to fudge this and say: one could be forgiven for thinking that the reason why the Greenpeace report and Green Backlash are so similar is because Rowell was the author of both.
"Luuvialut"
In addition to his book, Rowell has cut-and-pasted his material into several reports of late, all on the subject of «anti-environmentalists», and his apparently synergistic relationship with Greenpeace continues.For example, in his "special report" on CITES to the June '97 edition of BBC Wildlife, Rowell referred to Norm Snow as a member of the «Luuvialut Game Council». The Luuvialut are a race of people unknown to science until discovered by Rowell. And yet they were documented also in a Greenpeace briefing document for the media on sustainable use proponents at the same meeting of CITES.
For those in the know, our Norm actually represents the Inuvialuit Game Council, and the Harpoon awaits with anticipation more information about the obscure Luuvialut — either from Rowell or Greenpeace, it makes no difference!