Japan wins whaling motion

[quaoar]

http://www.itv.com/news/index_e44fb9d57b69f5cda74b614df8bc2805.html

10.48PM, Sun Jun 18 2006

Japan and its allies have won a pro-whaling vote for the first time in two decades at an international meeting.

A majority of nations at the International Whaling Commission approved a non-binding declaration that criticised a 1968 moratorium on commercial whaling, blamed whales for depleting fish stocks and said non-governmental organisations were a threat.

Earlier, Japan was left floundering after losing two votes on the whaling ban by large majorities.

[benburch]

1. Oh well... Whales were nice when we had them.

Now they are just meat for Japan for the two or three years it will take to hunt them to extinction.

[WindRavenX]

2. shit

I hope the Seashepherds sink every last boat.

[flvegan]

5. !

Greenpeace doesn't sink/scuttle anything. Nothing against them, just not their tactics.

But these guys do:
www.seashepherd.org

[WindRavenX]

7. whoops

The sentiment remains.

Fuck man. How fucking barbaric...I just don't get humans.

[Barrett808]

26. Greenpeace has abandoned the whales for 2006

Australia has no political will to patrol the Sanctuary. Only Sea Shepherd stands between the whales and the Japanese whale killers.

http://www.seashepherd.org/whales/whales.html

[flvegan]

29. Sometimes, quite literally...

A great read for anyone that hasn't seen it:

http://www.seashepherd.org/sscs_news/documents/National_Geographic_Adventure_2006_May_-_SSCS_article.pdf

[wordpix2]

74. please send Sea Shepherd a donation. I just did

[flvegan]

3. They won a criticism and lost 3 others.

Considering that they bought every vote they got (almost) I'll take that vote. Science will prove that depleted fish stocks are the work of man, not whales.

[quaoar]

8. I saw a quote in another story

that said blaming whales for depleting fish stocks is like blaming woodpeckers for deforestation.

[flvegan]

13. It's very true. Same goes with the seal hunt in Canada.

A big part of that is based on the complaints of commercial fisherman that the lack of a good fisheries stock is due to the seals.

Sort of like blaming sharks for the price of swordfish.

[Arkansas Granny]

34. Or blaming Native Americans for the slaughter of the buffalo herds.

[WindRavenX]

11. it already has been proven

This is why when people silence the scientists (and by scientists, I'm not talking about the whores hired by pro-whaling companies), this stupid ass shit happens.

Whales deplete fish stocks. Good god.

You know who else has damn near anihilated fish stocks in the world?

Homo sapiens.

Fuck. Just fuck. This makes me sick. There is no fucking reason at all for whaling. None. At. All.

[alarimer]

45. Overfishing is a human-caused problem

and a lot of the blame goes to the Japanese for that too, with their huge factory ships. They've depleted the waters around Japan, now they are raping and pillaging the seas everywhere else. Fishing can be done sustainably but not on that scale.

[Barrett808]

18. Science has *already* proven that humans deplete fish stocks

Those who claim otherwise are simply lying.

[flvegan]

21. Right, but the

research that has yet to come from this recent criticism will back it up. I'm simply speaking of this particular claim. They'll have to at least attempt to back it up.

[Lorien]

59. I wonder how many species that they plan to hunt

are krill, not fish, eaters.

Not like sweeping large sections of ocean clean with vast nets has anything to do with depleted fish stocks. :eyes:

[Canuckistanian]

81. Besides, whales eat krill, not fish

With the exception of the sperm whale and I think even it's main diet is giant squid.

[LeftyMom]

4. Evil bastards

Fuck them. No really, fuck them and the countries whose votes they bought. :grr:

[quaoar]

10. Six of those votes

Come from the following Caribbean island nations:

St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Grenada, Dominica and Antigua.

Since every one of those nations depends heavily on tourism, it would seem that a boycott would be in order.

[Benhurst]

15. ...

:thumbsup:

[LeftyMom]

17. And here at home

we need to be telling Japanese and Norwegian companies we won't buy thier shit. I have a Sony laptop and a Nokia phone but I'll look for alternatives from non-whaling countries when they are due for replacement and I'll let thier manufacturers know why my dollars go elsewhere.

[President Kerry]

67. Just don't punish Nokia - they're Finnish and have little to do with

whaling. Plus they have the best phones. :)

[LeftyMom]

77. Sorry 'bout that, I was in mid brainfart

:)

[eppur_se_muova]

50. Interesting connection between St. Vincent's and whaling ...

The lure of the whale trade
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website, St Vincent

At first glance, there is little to distinguish Barrouallie on St Vincent's west coast from hundreds of other Caribbean fishing villages.

Small wooden boats lie across the dark volcanic sand. A carpenter saws, goats wander, a radio plays; it's a traditional beach strip unvisited by the million-dollar tourist trade.

Only a series of wooden frames set up along the beach and a couple of huge upside-down iron bowls hint that Barrouallie's fishermen hunt more than tuna and kingfish. The special catch is the pilot whale, known locally as blackfish.

The wooden frames are for hanging carcasses out to dry before processing; the iron mounds were once set out in the sunshine and draped with slices of meat, using solar heat to melt and drain the blubber.
***
Mr Hazelwood can sell a carcass for about 3,000 East Caribbean Dollars - in the region of 1,000 US dollars. Sometimes, he catches dolphins too; it is a good living, and he is in no mood to give it up.
***
more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5088132.stm

on edit: The article includes some info on Japan's role in the local economy, and comments from a Japanese spokesperson.

[geomon666]

6. What the hell is that?

A majority of nations at the International Whaling Commission approved a non-binding declaration that criticised a 1968 moratorium on commercial whaling, blamed whales for depleting fish stocks and said non-governmental organisations were a threat.


Asshole, you are depleting fish stocks. What the hell are whales supposed to eat?

[Barrett808]

9. We'll take a lot of the biosphere with us on our way to extinction. n/t

[DRoseDARs]

12. "Blamed whales for depleting fish stocks" !?! Wow, just wow... n/t

[WindRavenX]

14. I am simply livid reading this

There are no words.

[rockymountaindem]

16. Is there famine in Japan that I haven't heard about?

Why else would they need to kill whales? And depleting fish stocks? Please...

[LeftyMom]

19. No, they have so much whale meat in cold storage already

they make it into school lunches and dog food. Oh, and a lot of what's sold as whale in Japan is actually dolphin, captured and killed under even more barbaric circumstances.

[Barrett808]

23. Sea Shepherd has documented the brutal dolphin hunt at Taiji:

Taiji Dolphin Hunt
http://www.seashepherd.org/taiji/taiji.html

[LeftyMom]

28. Have you seen the dolphin slaughter sequence in Earthlings?

They were dragging the still-live dolphins up the road behind pickups and they'd leave a smear of blood to mark thier path. Then they were just left thrashing to bleed out or be crushed by thier own weight. It was horrible.

[Barrett808]

32. Ugh. Was that in Japan?

Is that a film called Earthlings? I haven't heard of it.

[LeftyMom]

36. Yes to both.

movie here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3251419433163515470&q=Earthlings

[Barrett808]

38. Thanks for the link. I'll watch when I'm less depressed. n/t

[LeftyMom]

39. That's a good idea

I'd say that it's rough viewing, but that's a bit of an understatement.

[rockymountaindem]

30. So, why exactly are they doing this?

Just to piss off people who care about the environment, or do they really hate whales?

All this does is prove that every country has its problems. The Japanese, of late so pacifistic internationally, go and do this to whales that are already on the endangered species list. Who gives them the right?

[Barrett808]

33. National pride, as far as I can tell.

No rational reason, certainly.

[DRoseDARs]

20. Yes, there is. They don't have enough cheese for all their whines... n/t

[Odin2005]

22. Assholes!!!!!!!!

Why the fuck does Japan want to be allowed to hunt whales? Is this a nationalism thing?

[LeftyMom]

24. Pretty much

It all comes down to "fuck you, you can't tell us what to do." That's why they keep increasing catches when they already have much more supply than demand. They buy whale meat from Norway too, even though it's illegal to do so.

[quaoar]

25. And they have the audacity

to call what they do hunting for scientific research.

[WindRavenX]

27. as a biologist, you don't know how badly it hurts to read this being...

...called "science" :(

[Barrett808]

31. So, in your opinion, how long until we kill the oceans?

I'm curious about your professional opinion.

It seems pretty inevitable that we've already killed the biosphere in which we evolved. I'm just wondering how long until it's obvious even to Freepers.

My wife and I aren't having children, largely because we don't want to watch them starve to death.

[WindRavenX]

35. the oceans are fucked.

My marine bio professor, THE mollusk expert of the world (and a great classical pianist--true story!), said in his days, no one could have imagined the destruction of the ocean so quickly and on such a large scale-- I'll find some #s later showing the decline of fish species, and it is shocking.
But on another level besides biodiversity and the like, there is a huge problem with ocean currents slowing:



Many of the large currents, which are responsibe for circulating warm and cool water on the planet, are slowing down due to global warming, rising waters, and other factors. The end result is that the planet's climate will and is being changed dramatically, which will only further fuck things up.
People don't realize how important the ocean is for controlling climate; the amount of CO2 it holds and the amount of energy it holds is beyond comprehension.
Now I'm concentrated more in evolutionary genetics, but the eccologist/marine bio types have expressed that we're already pretty much fucked.

on edit, here's a recent article:http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/265052_acid31.html on the effect of global warming, CO2 absorption, and plankton death. If the plankton go, everything, and I mean everything in the ocean, fails.

another edit:

here's a year old link from NASA and on global warming and plankton: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2005/plankton_elnino.html

[Barrett808]

37. Right. I'm sure that some new climate/biosphere regime will arise...

...but many, if not most, of the species we evolved with will die off. After this sixth great extinction event, caused by humans, I wonder which species will survive to colonize all the empty niches?

On another note, how do biological and climate scientists deal with the catastrophe, on an emotional level? I find it increasingly difficult to watch us destroying the biosphere. I try to take a philosophical view: "Watching the world fall apart on TV may be too much for even the stoutest to take" -- Book of the Subgenius, http://www.subgenius.com. But it's becoming a daily agony to watch the stupidity, cruelty, and greed of humans erasing the natural world.

[WindRavenX]

40. many of my bio minded friends and professors have talked about this...

...a lot of us try to blank it out, because it's so painful to understand how life functions-- and then see it, quite literally, be destroyed in front of your eyes. Those who don't understand how life functions aren't able to see the planet die in front of us, but for those of us who can...it's soul crushing.
I have had depression all my life, and it doesn't get easier when you realize how badly we're killing the planet. It's as simple as that.

[quaoar]

41. The long-term problem is horrendous indeed

But there are things we can do about this whaling BS.

Punishing Japan is probably not going to be very feasible, but Japan's allies in this monstrosity -- the small nations they have bought off -- are highly vulnerable to boycotts, especially tourist boycotts. It's time they learned the price of their treachery.

[Barrett808]

43. So, how to go about organizing a boycott?

I know Defenders of Wildlife have a letter-writing campaign to keep Japan off the permanent UN security council:

http://action.defenders.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=11181.0&dlv_id=22301&JServSessionIdr002=vrh6ewgez1.app24a

IFAW might be a good vehicle for a boycott:

http://www.ifaw.org/ifaw/general

Is somebody on this already?

[quaoar]

46. The Security Council thing

is probably a waste of effort because China is going to block Japan from geting a permanent seat anyway. But a boycott is certainly called for, especially for the small nations Japan has bought off.

I would suggest a letter-writing campaign to the cruise lines whose ships stop at the six Caribbean nations who voted with Japan.

[Barrett808]

47. The cruise lines, good idea

As well as the nations themselves.

[Barrett808]

42. It's cold comfort to imagine a future biosphere after the extinction

I think the cockroaches and rats will do okay. When the carbon in the tundra is released in a few years, we'll have an atmosphere like that of the Carboniferous, so there could be big old mosquitoes and meter-long cockroaches again.

Re depression, I haven't been afflicted with a depressive brain chemistry, but the last few years have certainly been a trial. I think a good coping mechanism is to throw yourself into activism. For example, it's been helpful for me to hand out Sea Shepherd pamphlets in front of the Japanese embassy in downtown Seattle. My wife shipped out with them a couple of years ago, and they stopped some illegal shark finning operations at Cocos Island.

Of course, these efforts are a drop in the bucket, but they're better than suicide.

[pitohui]

48. stephen j. gould had an essay on this

i wish i could remember more details, the gist was that the shelled organisms -- and i don't mean a species but an entire genus of the organisms -- that he had studied in his early years had gone extinct in his lifetime!

can you imagine making yourself an expert on an entire group of creatures only to see them all killed, every one?

[ToeBot]

52. I was well into my junior year of an Ecology oriented Biology major...

when it hit me, I would be spending my life watching the subject of my passions being killed. Killed for no other reason that human selfishness. After I recovered, a few years latter, I went in to Computer Science. It's better to have some emotional distance from your career. It's a good thing that stereotypes are very often correct.

[Occulus]

56. Here's another question

It has taken a stunningly short time for that destruction of the ecosystem you're speaking of to occer; is it possible that a correction could be made by the planet, if left to its own devices, in an equal or nearly equal amount of time?

Otherwise, how long might such a correction take to happen?

[WindRavenX]

57. I'm not sure I know enough to answer this with enough detail...

...but from my reasoning, let's assume the following scenario:

One day all of humanity is gone. All of us. Not a single person left.

I think then the planet could return to equilibrium in a couple of thousand years-- I'm thinking it would take that long to get the carbon cycle back in gear.

I think any other scenario, even in the best cases where we decide to cut down on waste and respources even by 80% would still be too much to save most of the ecosystems, especially the sea.

But I'm not the person to ask this-- ecologists and earth sciences people probably have better answers :hi:

[Celefin]

61. It very much depends...

...on the ecosystem, or cluster of ecosystems, that you observe.

Speaking as a forest engineer (specializing in forest ecosystems and silviculture)
I know that after the last ice age the forests in central Europe never reached
the biodiversity again that they had before.
They may have made it in sometime, but man pretty much put a stop to that.

Ocean habitats now, due to their literally fluent nature, are often thought to
be able of recovering from disasters way faster.
Then again, everything influences everything... so what destroyed terrestrial
ecosystems mean for the different parts of the oceans, none can really say.

Where some cores species remain, it may only take some decades to a couple of hundred years.
Other areas will be uninhabited until a new (ore newly adapted) species fills the blank.
So, everything between 20 years to 20000 or more years. But I'm just guessing, of course.

Life has a habit of surviving :)

[Matilda]

68. The planet will survive.

But humans may not. That's what many people can't comprehend; they think we will survive even if
everything else dies.

We are the one species that has the ability to reason and to understand cause and effect, and yet
it's humans that are causing the destruction. We are the ones destroying our own habitat; something
that animals don't do.

[Celefin]

79. That's the beauty of it

...which gives me a little comfort (the planet surviving, I mean).

It would be interesting to have a view from some distant future on that
tiny blip in history that was us.

Probably it will convince the one looking back that humans just
went to show the gods enjoy a good joke like anyone else.

[pitohui]

63. isn't the standard answer 25 million years?

i am no biologist but i thought this the standard answer from geological (fossil) records

but, as gould reminds us, we never get back the same level of diversity

there were more phyla before the permian extinction than ever were or ever will be again, etc.

an example from post-permian times might be all modern birds are descended from one branch of one genus of carnivorous dinosaurs, now all dinosaurs are wiped out but birds, in a future extinction event, say maybe all birds are descended from just a few remaining families? oh i can't explain it right, find that essay!

the point is that we have already lost a great deal of diversity and you don't get it back

[Celefin]

62. I feel with you

I've been a forester for some years now and it is everything from
infuriating to just sad what people just don't see.

Just by observing some woodlands I know for several years I could
have told people about climate change.
Drought- and heat-resistant plants turn up in temperate Europe.
Other species vanish or simply get pushed out.
For the last two years there have been e.g. large problems with bark-beetles on beech.
There are NO known incidents of this in the records of German forestry.
But the beetles like warmth. And are breeding successfully. Go figure.

But it takes several years for old forest stands to succumb to the
rising hostility of their environment.
It takes time. It doesn't make it to the news.

Talk about soul crushing when you can watch scores of 200+ years old trees
slowly dying because of human ignorance and sheer stupidity.

[Name removed]

66. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[zonkers]

44. Time for a consumer boycott of japanese goods. Here's a link

to an article about it....http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0602/p08s02-comv.html


And here's a site about boycotting Palau which relies upon ecotourism while serving as a willing accomplice to whaling. http://www.cdnn.info/act-now/boycott_palau/boycott_palau.html

[quaoar]

49. Welcome to DU

Good links.

[Matilda]

53. I'd love to see a world-wide ban on sushi.

If all sushi outlets could be boycotted even for one day, it would send a strong message.

But how to do it?

[AuntiBush]

51. This is Heart-Breaking!

It's the Whales fault, just like it's any and everyone's fault for (fill in the blank) except corporations.

Will we ever learn that when Republicans hold office all things free, and all creatures large and small including human beings not affiliated with the power-corporatist connected internationally now mean nothing to 'them' - only profit.

[Bombero1956]

54. what

no boycott of Toyota,Nissan and Mitsubishi?

[AuntiBush]

76. Huh?

Nothing personal, but I'd love nothing more then to buy American made products. And, have advocated for Dolphins and Whales for eons. Went a long time without eating Tuna, and way, way back when, decades ago was the only (at least I felt) that did not drive anything but USA-made vehicles.

[goodboy]

55. Whaling is poaching, and these poachers should face the same fate as

poachers of elephant and rhinos in africa.

shot.on.sight.

[BreweryYardRat]

71. It's a good idea, but you're targeting the wrong people.

I suspect for most crewmembers on the whaling boats, it's a job like anything else. They're not bright enough or educated to understand that they're harming already depleted species. If the whales are gone, they'll just shrug and move on to some other job. There'll always be people like that.

You want to stop the whaling, strike at the top. Drop a whaling company CEO into a rendering vat or butcher Japan's commission head. Those fuckers know exactly what they're doing, and what the consequences to the environment are, and they simply don't care. So make an example out of them.

[goodboy]

73. Nice double entendre. "target" I see the point you're making, and...

to a certain extent, I do agree with you.

Yeah those poor panfaces on the boat are just doing their job, but if they knew that if they're spotted they'll be harpooned in their fish-suckin' face, maybe they'll find another line of work.

The justification "it's just a job" doesn't sit right with me...sounds too much like "I was just following orders."

Like those redneck fucks at Abu Ghraib.(ah-boo-gaw-reb) in bushspeak

[BreweryYardRat]

78. Not trying to justify their actions.

Just making my best guess at the thinking process (or rather, lack of one) the boat crews use. Sad thing is, you could shoot crewmen from dawn to dusk and it wouldn't make much difference. There'll always be people poor and desperate enough to take the job, even with the risk of death. The only people who can stop whaling are the ones in charge.

There are actually two choices for dealing with those: the one I mentioned earlier, and what the Sea Shepherd folks have done sometimes-namely, scuttle whaling ships in port. The pocketbook hit for replacing one has to be enormous, so do that a couple of times and the fat bastards at the top should go "not profitable" and get out of the business. Not as viscerally satisfying as making an example out of someone, but hopefully just as effective.

[ladjf]

58. Yesterday we read the Japan had lost the vote. Today we read

the opposite. I don't understand. Does anyone know what happened?

[LeftyMom]

64. They lost two votes but then

two of thier bought countries showed up and paid thier IWC dues, so they won the third. The good thing is that the votes they lost were changes in IWC policy but the one they won was just a non-binding resolution.

[cal04]

60. Australia promises whaling fightback

ENVIRONMENTALISTS today labelled a narrow win for pro-hunting nations at the International Whaling Commission meeting in the Caribbean a disaster but Australia promised to fight back.

Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell stressed that the vote in favour of a non-binding pro-whaling resolution "doesn't have any effect" on a 1986 global moratorium on commercial whaling.

He said a "magnificent coalition" of anti-whaling nations would be formed to counter Japan's push for a resumption of commercial hunting.

Japan and other whaling nations got the commission to criticise the global ban today for the first time in more than two decades, signalling they might finally have the muscle to challenge the moratorium.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19517464-1702,00.html

[Barrett808]

65. Color me skeptical -- there's that free-trade agreement with Tokyo

Australia seems more concerned with getting sweet trade deals than defending the whale sanctuary. I wouldn't count on their help at all.

[quaoar]

69. Except

that Norway has been ignoring the ban on commercial whaling for quite some time.

So any boycott needs to include the Norwegians.

[flvegan]

80. Oh, really. Is this the same Australia that did Jack Shit last year?

When Greenpeace was chasing the whaling ships and Sea Shepherd was ramming them, how Australia stood down, not even enforcing her own laws?

Wake me up when they do.

[Barrett808]

70. St. Kitts Declaration is an Insight into Human Ecological Insanity

Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd statement:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x218084

[and-justice-for-all]

72. HEY JAPAN!!!

A few thousand whales WILL NOT deplete fish stocks,But you know what does??

HUMAN OVER FISHING DEPLETES FISH STOCKS! NOT WHALES.
HUMANS INTERJECT THEMSELVES INTO THE WHALES ENVIRONMENT, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND!!

JAPAN, your dumber then I thought.

[natrat]

75. fuck japan -a nasty dirty country

[quaoar]

82. Japan's delegation celebrates their victory