Next week Greenpeace will reveal its new seafood sustainability retailer rankings that will undoubtedly be followed by direct action against grocery stores that it deems “out of compliance” with its arbitrary and contradictory sustainability guidelines. And by direct action I mean vandalism, like it did in Canada last month-a publicity stunt that didn’t land Greenpeace too many headlines but did land its foot soldiers in jail.

It’s not new news that Greenpeace signed and continually violates an Accountability Charter that promises its agents will not be involved in “illegal or unethical practices.” But what is new is that as part of an environmental missive to the incoming Obama administration Greenpeace and the other signatories insist that the new administration has “an opportunity to restore the fundamental American tradition of fairness: the principle that no one, not even the government, is above the law.”

There is a rich irony in Greenpeace insisting on others taking the ethical and legal high ground when it has a history of vandalism and attempts to profit off of manufactured crises based on distortions.