The struggle against vicious, reprehensible and insolent Japanese whaling continues...

[GliderGuider]

An anti-whaling ship sets sail from Albany

The windy southern city of Albany is the final port of call for the Sea Shepherd vessel the 'Steve Irwin' before it sets sail in the Southern Ocean to hamper the efforts of Japanese whalers.

On what the whale conservation group says will be its most dangerous and challenging campaign yet, three vessels will attempt to get in front of the slipways of the Japanese whalers' vessels.

According to Captain Paul Watson, who will be skippering the Steve Irwin, Sea Shepherd forced the Japanese fleet to call off the hunt a month early and return home with just a fifth of its quota during the last whaling season.

Captain Watson says Albany is an appropriate port to depart from. "When I think that 35 years ago that this was the last place that a whale was killed and that this whaling nation of Australia has now become the most passionate country on the planet defending whales, and that gives me a lot of hope that we can achieve the same sort of success in Japan," he said.

It has now been over 25 years since the world declared a moratorium on the killing of these sentient co-inhabitants of our blue marble. Japan remains the only outlaw nation to continue this mass murder. It's long past time for them to be shamed and brought to heel.

Between their poisoning of the world's oceans with radioactive isotopes and their insolent continuation of the despicable slaughter of its remaining largest inhabitants, it seems Japan is intent on desecrating the very ocean that gave them life.

God speed Sea Shepherd, on your mission to defend the oceans from the sociopathic greed of all those who look at other life and see nothing but resources.

[XemaSab]

1. Why doesn't Australia just go arrest the whalers?

Or does Japanese money grease the skids there?

[kristopher]

3. Because the headline is false, the whaling isn't illegal.

Unethical yes.
Wrongheaded yes.
Illegal, no.

You might like this interview with Roger Payne:
'The whalers have won absolutely everything': veteran activist

Biologist Roger Payne played a key role in helping end the wholesale slaughter of whales. In this interview, he talks about the threats they continue to face
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/14/whalers-won-veteran-activist

Website for Payne's organization 'Ocean Alliance'
http://www.oceanalliance.org/

When you start your activism from false premises like claiming the Japanese are engaging in illegal activity, the reasoning that follows in the search for a solution is bound to be flawed.

[joshcryer]

4. I'd say it's immoral and unethical, anyhow.

[kristopher]

7. We finally agree on something.

[XemaSab]

13. O RLY?

You've been an apologist for Japanese whaling for years.

On a thread about Sea Shepherd protesters being offered the meat from slaughtered whales as their only food, you said:

"I think it's funny. The Japanese have a terrific sense of humor, IMO. I don't endorse whaling, but, the Japanese have legal right to do what they are doing. They have gone along with completely illogical restrictions on whaling that, once at risk populations stabilized and recovered, have no basis in "scientific management" of the whale as a resource (which is the premise of the IWC).
We (in America) have extended the umbrella of human compassion to marine mammals and that is the real basis of our effort to halt whaling. When we argue at the IWC however, we make claims of extinction risk that are so obviously and grossly exaggerated that we end up just pissing them off.
This is the result of that dishonesty.
If we really want to stop them from whaling there is probably a way; but harassing them by ramming and boarding their ships is wrong and only serves to make them more determined."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3143254#3143463[/quote]

In other posts you have said that the reason that Japan continues to murder whales is because America makes them do it through continued opposition to whaling. This argument sounds an awful lot to me like a rapist blaming his victim.

[GliderGuider]

5. OK, since it's my own subject line I'll change it to be more in line with the actual situation...

It will just take a minute.

[GliderGuider]

6. Done. n/t

[joshcryer]

8. Substantial improvement.

[joshcryer]

10. I see nothing culturally biased about the OP. Are you saying their...

...reprehensible behavior is culturally acceptable?

[XemaSab]

11. So deriding Japan for their continued selfish slaughter of whales = racism?

[GliderGuider]

12. Gee kris, are you calling me a racist?

My problem is with whaling, and Japanese intransigence on that issue. I have problems with the practices of other nations, not their cultures.

[pscot]

14. You damned Canucks

You hate us for our freedumz.

[freshwest]

16. If you can edit out the word 'insolent' it might be helpful. I'm sure you didn't mean it that way,

But it sounds a lot like 'uppity' to me and there have been some pretty hot discussions over that term and what it implies. We are having a serious disagreement with the Japanese (and I believe the Norwegians have also been the subject of similiar outrage) about killing these creatures. Which I believe are likely to be sentient and not a proper item of commerce.

Only in terms of eliminating the starvation mentality, which Kristopher mentions the current generation of Japanese have not suffered, could the younger people be convinced that this is wrong. On our own continent, as far as I know, we still have clubbing baby seals to death to get good furs for commerce.

So I wish you'd leave out that one word, and consider we have Japanese and people I know who married Japanese people, posting on DU, too.

Other than that, I applaud your passion for ending the slaughter.

[GliderGuider]

17. Continuing the practice in the face of world-wide condemnation is insolent, as far as I'm concerned.

It's not the Japanese people that are insolent, it's Japanese policy.

I used the word very deliberately.

[Dead_Parrot]

15. Because trade agreements > environmentalism. nt