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May 31, 2005
20 years on, the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior
Via Dave Walsh on the Rainbow Warrior...
HERALD ON SUNDAY (NZ)
29.05.05
'They didn't care if they killed everybody'
Rainbow Warrior skipper Pete Willcox says the two French nationals who planted the bombs on the ship knew exactly what they were doing - and the possible outcome. Picture / Chris Skelton
Twenty years after French agents bombed the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, the ship's captain has returned to New Zealand to face the past. In his first interview since the bombing, he explains to Leah Haines why he will never forgive, nor forget.
Captain Pete Willcox clearly remembers the days after the July 1985 bombing that sank Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior in Auckland and killed a member of his crew.
The young American sailor was finding it hard enough keeping his devastated team's spirits together, let alone dealing with his new-found fame as a character in an international spy scandal.
So when a tall, dark stranger sidled up to him at the Waiwera hot pools, where he had taken his crew for a break one day, he wasn't particularly keen to chat.
"I understand you're off the Warrior," the stranger boomed.
"Yup," Willcox replied, with a bowed head.
"Rough business."
"Yup," said Willcox, hoping the man would leave him alone.
The stranger was undeterred. Was Steve Sawyer, who had been celebrating his birthday on the Warrior the night it was bombed, with the crew at the pools?
"No!" snapped the captain, finally looking up to glare at the big man standing in the tuck shop queue next to him. "I'm sorry to bother you," the man smiled. "I just thought maybe I could save him a trip to Wellington. My name is David Lange. He's supposed to meet me tomorrow."
It's a reflection of those days that in the middle of an international spy scandal, New Zealand's prime minister would hop in his car, not a bodyguard in sight, and drive to the hot pools to find some bedraggled sailors.
It will be 20 years in July since French agents literally blew away our nation's innocence. Lange is now gravely ill and refuses to talk again about the bombing.
But Captain Willcox has returned to face the past, sailing into Auckland harbour last week at the helm of the new Rainbow Warrior, on a new environmental mission and demanding a long-awaited apology.
On July 10, the anniversary of the bombing, he will take the new Rainbow Warrior to Matauri Bay and visit his old boat for the first time, diving to the bottom of the sea where it was scuttled.
Sitting in his cabin abord the current Rainbow Warrior, Willcox looks out at Princess Marina through the same portholes he peered from 20 years ago when he was woken just before midnight as the first of the bombs went off.
The portholes, along with the ship's bell and its name, were among the few things he managed to salvage from the old boat before it was scuttled.
Willcox insists he holds no animosity for the French people, perhaps not even Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, the agents who were convicted over the affair.
They were mere soldiers, dumb enough to follow orders, he says. But after 20 years, it is time their Government said sorry.
"It certainly put a wrench in my life, not that I didn't survive [the bombing] quite well. But I had lived on the boat for four years, and was really looking forward to another three or four years of campaigning on the Rainbow Warrior in the Pacific, so I would have appreciated an apology. And yes, I think it's time."
It was the sudden silence of his ship, rather than the noise of the first bomb exploding, that alerted Willcox to the fact that something was wrong that dark night.
Grabbing a towel, he dashed out into the hall to find the engine room filling with water. The chief engineer was standing at the stairs saying: "Well she's finished, it's all over, she's done."
The crew were ordered out on to the wharf while he and a few others tried to get into the bottom of the boat to check everyone had got out safely.
Then the second bomb went off. Willcox left the ship as the water was finally creeping over the top of the door wells.
He refused to believe it when some of the crew said that photographer Fernando Pereira could still be down there. "I remember looking at the cold, black salt water and thinking 'I can't go down there'," he recalls.
By 3am he had formally identified Pereira's body.
It didn't take long for police to make the French connection.
The spies had run an almost arrogantly sloppy operation, leaving a trail leading straight back to France all over Auckland.
The diver who had planted the two bombs was seen by locals driving his Zodiac inflatable up to the shore and hopping in to a campervan rented by Prieur and Mafart, and had left French-bought oxygen tanks on the harbour floor.
Mafart and Prieur were pretending to be a married Swiss couple, but their ruse was instantly obvious when officers swooped on them two days later, police say.
Mafart was suave, straight-backed, professional, and handsome, with a deep scar that ran through his nose and a silk cravat around his throat. Prieur, on the other hand, was plain, jittery and dumpy.
Eventually France conceded the couple were Government agents; defence minister Charles Hernu and the head of the secret service Pierre Lacoste were sacked, and Prieur and Mafart were sentenced to 10 years in prison for manslaughter.
But they didn't stay there for long. After 18 months they were shifted to Hao Atoll in a United Nations-brokered deal to stop French trade sanctions intended to bully New Zealand into giving the pair up.
The couple were to stay on the island for three years, but France allowed them to leave within a year and a half. Prieur was pregnant and Mafart had a stomach complaint.
A New Zealand doctor who went to Paris to examine the pair found them in perfect health, but had his hotel room ransacked, and a threatening switchblade left on a shelf.
Meanwhile, up to 13 other French agents believed to be in New Zealand as part of the operation had slipped out of the country.
Police eventually identified several of them, issuing warrants for their arrest. But it was not until 1991 that one of them showed up on the international radar, when Gerald Andries attempted to travel to Switzerland.
In many respects, Andries was even more of a catch than Prieur and Mafart. Then-detective inspector Maurice Whitham says Andries was the person found to have bought the Zodiac inflatable and outboard motor used on the night of the bombing. "He was right in the thick of it," says Whitham.
But French threats again began to mount, and the National Government of the time buckled.
"The French president had just been out to sign a friendship treaty with New Zealand. Prime Minister Jim Bolger had wanted to put the whole thing behind them, not knowing that we still had three warrants out for their arrest," says Whitham.
The Government gave the police two weeks to prepare an extradition order - a seemingly impossible task which Whitham says was deliberate.
Officers worked around the clock and got the papers together, only to have the Government order them to drop the order against Andries, and throw out all the remaining warrants. So, did he make a fuss?
"We were not in a position to," he says. "It was the same as in 1986. We did our job. But yes, from our point of view it was disappointing."
Mafart and Prieur have since left the military and written books about the affair. Mafart wrote in 1999 of their devastation to learn someone was killed in the bombing - an unintended consequence, he said.
But Willcox finds that hard to stomach. "The power of the explosives they used blew a six-by-seven-foot hole, like you've punched your hand through a paper bag, and caused the boat to sink in 30 seconds.
"Shrapnel came up through my floor and the floor of another room right across the way. We were lucky more people weren't killed. No, they didn't care if they killed everybody."
About six weeks after the bombing, Willcox left New Zealand on the Greenpeace yacht Vega.
"I didn't want to stay here and see the boat I had spent four years putting together scrapped. I felt it was important not to be stopped by the French. So that's what we did.
"I sailed off to Moruroa where we were arrested for breaking the 12-mile limit and was held on board a warship for about five days, then deported and banned for life.
"So I can't go back to French Polynesia now," he smiles.
"Which is funny, considering everything that happened in the whole scheme of things."
- HERALD ON SUNDAY
Posted by Mark at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2005
Acid Mothers Temple vs Stella Maris Drone Orchestra!
Posted by Mark at 12:12 AM | Comments (0)
SF Led Zep talk & Mindstates conference
From Erik Davis:
For those of you in the Bay Area, please consider attending the one and only local book reading I will be giving to plug my latest mini-tome: _Led Zeppelin IV_. Part of Continuum's 33.3 series of short books on classic rock albums, this snug, nicely priced pocket item follows some Techgnostic threads about occult media into the dark forests that surround this record, the pinnacle of heavy rock. Besides probing the occult fixations of Jimmy Page, the book goes into satanic backmasking, ringwraiths, and the mystic fetish of the 1970s gatefold LP. It's a Friday night, but don't let that scare you! It'll be a hoot.
Friday, June 17th, 7 pm
Booksmith
1644 Haight Street
FREE
In addition, the excellent Mindstates conference will be going down at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts this weekend, beginning this Friday at 11 am. Visionary artist Alex Grey and psychonautical superstars Sasha and Ann Shulgin will be speaking, along with a host of fascinating characters. I am particularly looking forward to Michael Crowley's talk on Buddhism and psychedelics, Ramez Naam's pro-posthuman overview, and Mark Pesce's intriguing-sounding "hyperpeople."
http://www.mindstates.org
Single-day and full conference tickets are available. The complete conference schedule is posted at:
http://www.mindstates.org/schedulefor2005.html
Posted by Mark at 12:06 AM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2005
Sue Blackmore on Drugs
I take illegal drugs for inspiration
from Daily Telegraph, Saturday May 21st 2005, pp 17-18
Every year, like a social drinker who wants to prove to herself that she's not an alcoholic, I give up cannabis for a month. It can be a tough and dreary time - and much as I enjoy a glass of wine with dinner, alcohol cannot take its place.
Some people may smoke dope just to relax or have fun, but for me the reason goes deeper. In fact, I can honestly say that without cannabis, most of my scientific research would never have been done and most of my books on psychology and evolution would not have been written.
And also...
Psychologist Susan Blackmore, neuro-scientist Colin Blakemore and author Mike Jay will be appearing at the Cheltenham Science Festival (June 8-12) to discuss whether drugs can teach us anything about ourselves. For tickets to the Altered States session at the town hall ( £6, 4pm on Saturday, June 11) or for any other festival event , please call 01242 227 979 (information: http://www.cheltenhamfestivals.org.uk)
Posted by Mark at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2005
The Dinosaurs of Creation
A good article in the Observer about Arkansas' Museum of Earth History. Like the Natural History Museum on God, it presents a Creationist view of our planet's beginnings, complete with a rather special sounding life-size diorama.
Posted by Mark at 07:46 PM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2005
Stellas Shots
Some great photos of Stella Maris Drone Orchestra in action at their already legendary Klinker gig a couple of weeks ago. All shots by Phil Worman.
SMDO next return to Barden's Boudoir for the Psycick Dancehall event, with The Faculty, The Projects and Sonic Boom.
Posted by Mark at 11:33 AM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2005
Paul Devereux presentation, tonight in London
Apologies for the short notice...
Paul Devereux will be giving a short presentation (with slides and soundtracks) on "Site and Sound" as part of the "Future of Sound 3" event at BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London, on the evening of Tuesday, 10 May. A limited number of seats are available: contact events@bafta.org or phone 020 7292 5806.
Paul will be giving a major presentation on the same theme at the British Museum in the Autumn, and possible also at Trinity College, Dublin. Details will be circulated later.
Posted by Mark at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)
May 03, 2005
Circle of Sound Exhibition at The Foundry, London
Click the image for a readable, full size version of the flyer.
Posted by Mark at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)
Melek Taus III : Final Flight
from Barry Kavanagh
Dear believers,
For one last time, the wings of Melek Taus III flap into motion. It shall imminently retire, to perch itself high at the aviary of apotheosis (no less). The line up will be Barry K, Stephen M, Giles N, and Mark P. Expect more minimalist hypnotic abstraction, now with real piano!
Witness this ascendancy/redundancy on Friday 6 May, at The Klinker, back room of the Sussex, 107a Culford Road, N1. 9pm. £5 or £2.50. Other artists will include Synthia, Dave and Nigel.
Let the peacock's egg roll far!
Posted by Mark at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)