Japan and Australia.

2500 unique views!
Go me! lol


I became involved in the whaling issue when the Japanese government announced its plans to launch a kill mission against the Humpback whales that I enjoy watching at my local beach. That was over a year ago now, and the facebook group to protest Japans whaling that I joined with a few thousand members, now has over 250,000! We all have our own reasons but one thing is clear, the future of the whales is a global issue and by a massive % the world wants the whaling ended.

Propaganda wars have raged accross the internet and there has been lots of nationalist mud slinging between the nations of Australia and Japan in particular.

I just read this bit of news here and noticed two bits that stood out.

"Japan has nil national interest in the whaling industry," Taniguchi continues. "The stake for Japan is near zero. If Australians criticise the Japanese auto industry, Japan must do everything possible to protect the auto industry. This is not the auto industry."

He is writing a long piece for a Japanese magazine, Wedge, to ask Japanese to consider the balance sheet of national interests. On the other side of the ledger, he contends, "this issue is doing substantial damage to Japan's image in Australia, the US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand," the entire English-speaking world.

For a moment this year Australia hoped the whaling problem would disappear. In May Taro Aso, then secretary-general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said if Australia's feelings towards Japan were hurt unnecessarily "only in order to sustain such a small industry", then Japan should "address this issue as quickly as possible", according to an official record of his remarks. Aso made fun of the whaling industry's pretensions to scientific legitimacy.

"Has anyone heard of any scientific results coming from Japan's whaling program?" he posed rhetorically.

So thats interesting but it still ended with a sting.

Many countries have an ugly blemish that mars the total image and makes other peoples recoil in distaste. China has Tibet, the US has Guantanamo Bay, Turkey has Armenian genocide, and Japan has whaling. Uneconomic and increasingly costly to Japan's image, Taniguchi expects it will disappear in a few years. But in the meantime, he fears that escalation could damage the interests of Australia as well as Japan. "Japanese children would be horrified to learn that Australians routinely kill and even eat kangaroos, which they think are much cuter than whales."

PS: If you are interested in Kangaroo conservation and protection try out these two links!
Link1, Link2.

The science of wrong.

"Practices are not prohibited because they are wrong, they are wrong because they have been prohibited."

~ Prof. Leslie A.White, The Science of Culture (New York, Farrar, Strauss and Cudahy, 1949)

Now.
This brings us to the Japanese saying they may lower their kill quota, then not, then maybe. Well... theres a very good reason why they may lower it and it has nothing to do with external pressure.

Rather it is because the kill fleet has lost their fuel re-supply and meat off-loading ship (The Oriental Bluebird) because it was busted doing illegal things & fined the maximum penalty and then de-flagged.

That and the fact that last year the Japanese didnt get any of the enormous endangered Fin whales, but only because they didnt find any. A Finwhale is a massive animal, the second largest ever, smaller only than a blue whale. So its doubtful they themselves expect to find and kill 50 Finwhales. Then again they have already killed 100 of the only slightly smaller sei whales Balaenoptera borealis and they did get 50 of the rare and fast bryde's whales Balaenoptera brydei so it is possible. Even so Finwhales, like brydes, sei and the kings the Blue whales are the most massive creatures. To kill and process is a major undertaking and conditions need to be right

Still the kill fleet includes 8 powerful fast hunter killer boats and a massive floating factory mother ship. This is a large kill mission, the largest of great whales on the planet.

So all the talk by the Japanese of dropping some of their tally in exchange for some sneaky change may all be a bluff, but it matters not. The kill fleet may only be setup to take at max half the butcher list, but if all goes to plan they won't get a single whale.

The anti-whaling crew will never give up.
Never.

A win for the humpbacks!!

In what is great news to read.

"We received a lot of pressure from around the world, but particularly Australia and New Zealand, so we will not be catching humpbacks as part of the research programme," said Mr. Takaya.

Post requests?

Curious if anyone browsing this has a subject related to the whaling they would like to know more about. Gimme a comment on this post and will see what I can rustle up!
:)

B00TY POST II

First there was the booty post and now, a simple update. Dedicated to the big fish. They were fun to catch while it lasted. If you enjoy random, you may just enjoy this post.
There are kittens AND vikings! There is the weird , the nerdy and the pointless!
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You can find hundreds of good documentary here and here. There is also the Zeitgeist movies and I think the second one of them says a lot of interesting things about our economy. Another good movie about money is this one.
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If you stumbled in, and enjoyed a thumbs up would be awesome!
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:)