Will Potter, the author of Green is the New Red, which documents the rising rhetorical and legislative war against anarchists, environmentalists and animal rights activists, recently toured Australia and New Zealand. I spoke to him about the growing injustices perpetrated against activists in the US, and his own experiences of harassment and intimidation by the FBI.

Australia’s case against Japan’s Southern Ocean whaling program in The Hague is wrapping up after three weeks of hearings. The whole case hinges on whether Japan’s whaling program can be proved to be primarily for scientific reasons but what is emerging is an argument over the role and purpose of the International Whaling Commission. Both parties to the case are emphasising different elements of the 1946 International Convention on the Regulation of Whaling and the subsequent resolutions that the IWC has passed.

It is just water going up and going down,’ the captain said in his thick French accent. By that stage I was familiar with the going up and down, but water isn’t just water when it’s being churned up by the wind in one of the most inhospitable oceans on Earth. It is a force of destruction.