Home
News
In Focus
Business
Metro
Nation
World
Sports
Feature
Opinion
View more 禄Opinion Columns
Wan LixinOpinion deputy editor of Shanghai Daily
City-born architect lists inspiration behind his designs in a new book
Digitization helps preserve, disseminate intangible cultural heritage
Sunday
- Subscribe
Activists launch third Rainbow Warrior
Source: Agencies |
October 15, 2011, Saturday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
GREENPEACE yesterday launched a new Rainbow Warrior, a US$33 million schooner that replaces the battered 50-year-old boat that has suffered numerous encounters with whalers, seal hunters and illegal loggers.
The new schooner's first mission will probably be in the United States to campaign against the burning of coal for electricity. It will then head south to the Amazon to draw attention to rainforest destruction.
The 58-meter ship, with two A-frame masts soaring almost as high over the deck, is equipped with a heli-copter pad and rapid-action release system for its inflatable boats, which in the past have carried activists into confrontations at sea.
Melina Laboucan-Massimo of the Cree nation in Canada blessed the ship with a prayer in her native tongue, using smoke from sage and braided sweetgrass. The 30-year-old Greenpeace activist later broke a bottle of champagne over the hull.
The name Rainbow Warrior is drawn from a Cree prophesy that in the days when the Earth faces man-made devastation, mankind will join together to heal it and will be known as "warriors of the rainbow."
Those dark times "are upon us," she said at the shipyard naming ceremony.
"Until my generation, my family was able to live sustainably off the land," she said, adding that now northern -Alberta's watershed has been polluted, its air poisoned and its land destroyed by tar-sand mines.
Greenpeace's flagships bear the name of the first ship that was sunk by French intelligence agents in 1985 to prevent its use in opposing nuclear testing. The second Rainbow Warrior was retired this year to become a hospital ship in Bangladesh. Its last mission was to conduct radiation tests off the Japanese coast following the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster.
The new schooner's first mission will probably be in the United States to campaign against the burning of coal for electricity. It will then head south to the Amazon to draw attention to rainforest destruction.
The 58-meter ship, with two A-frame masts soaring almost as high over the deck, is equipped with a heli-copter pad and rapid-action release system for its inflatable boats, which in the past have carried activists into confrontations at sea.
Melina Laboucan-Massimo of the Cree nation in Canada blessed the ship with a prayer in her native tongue, using smoke from sage and braided sweetgrass. The 30-year-old Greenpeace activist later broke a bottle of champagne over the hull.
The name Rainbow Warrior is drawn from a Cree prophesy that in the days when the Earth faces man-made devastation, mankind will join together to heal it and will be known as "warriors of the rainbow."
Those dark times "are upon us," she said at the shipyard naming ceremony.
"Until my generation, my family was able to live sustainably off the land," she said, adding that now northern -Alberta's watershed has been polluted, its air poisoned and its land destroyed by tar-sand mines.
Greenpeace's flagships bear the name of the first ship that was sunk by French intelligence agents in 1985 to prevent its use in opposing nuclear testing. The second Rainbow Warrior was retired this year to become a hospital ship in Bangladesh. Its last mission was to conduct radiation tests off the Japanese coast following the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 娌狪CP璇侊細娌狪CP澶05050403鍙-1
- |
- 浜掕仈缃戞柊闂讳俊鎭湇鍔¤鍙瘉锛31120180004
- |
- 缃戠粶瑙嗗惉璁稿彲璇侊細0909346
- |
- 骞挎挱鐢佃鑺傜洰鍒朵綔璁稿彲璇侊細娌瓧绗354鍙
- |
- 澧炲肩數淇′笟鍔＄粡钀ヨ鍙瘉锛氭勃B2-20120012
Copyright 漏 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
