OUTRAGE OVER WHALING ... #2 <cont>

@dlowan,

These days, Deb, they are hardly maintaining the "scientific" whaling line any more & furthermore, have indicated that they intend to escalate their whaling activities in the future. They are a law unto themselves & seem to do what they will, regardless.

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@msolga,

I'd heard a story that the economic collapse has reduced the market for whale meat, and this might undermine the industry?

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

The Minke numbers themselves , however, have NOT been agreed to by any representative of IWC. In this fact the IWC is being truthful and not acting under pressure.

They were agreed to, then their withdrew their agreement. But right now they are operating under the 665,074 population figure, and while they haven't yet accepted this it largely reflects the inability to determine if the difference in the population estimates are a procedural issue or a result of real population changes.

But the point is, that they've agreed to quotas for much smaller populations, and if the IWC were not hijacked by the sacred whale movement they could do so.

Quote:

Id like to see some good science and some peered consensus on just how large the whale populations really are before we swing the term "sustainabile harvesting "around for all to see.

Well the head of the IWC science quit for a reason, the organization is currently not led by folks interested in conservation science as it relates to whaling. They prefer to suppress this science because it's extraneous to their goal of no whaling period (regardless of the conservation science) and by not sanctioning any science they can just deadlock the organization in its "moratorium".

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@dlowan,

Its a heavily tax payer subsidized industry in Japan (& Norway, too, for that matter). So loss is not a problem. Maybe the potential loss of employment is considered worth the subsidization? But for a moment there, it looked as though the recession might well impact on the industry - winding it down, but the Japanese government has since indicated otherwise.

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@msolga,

msolga wrote:

So loss is not a problem, maybe the potential loss of employment is considered worth the subsidization?

The main concern is strategic food resource, not employment. Within the lifetimes of many of the leaders of Japan, whale meat saved the day. For this reason they want to preserve the whaling industry even if at just survival levels just to preserve that strategic option.

For similar reasons, even though it might be cheaper to just import the food, many nations will subsidize farming to preserve this as a strategic resource (during war imports may not be depended on).

Japan has very high challenged on the strategic resources front when it comes to food. It already can't feed itself if it wanted to, and the sea is pretty much their equivalent to arable land.

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@Robert Gentel,

Quote:

The main concern is strategic food resource, not employment

Not any longer, in 2010, it isn't.

In the past few years advertising campaigns have been run to encourage the consumption of whale meat (whale burgers, whale kebabs, etc) because it was not in enough demand by the Japanese public. Also it was re-introduced into Japanese schools lunch programs, as a way of using some of the excess meat.

There are stories of whale meat being discarded, thrown overboard from Japanese whaling vessels, because they have killed more than can stored or can be used.

No, I'd say the subsidization is more about government employment programs these days.

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@msolga,

msolga wrote:

I totally disagree with you on the purpose of the Southern Whale Sanctuary. It is meant to be a sanctuary.

Yes, but under very clear rules such sanctuaries must be declared with scientific evidence that supports the case for conservation and it must take the whaling industry's interests into consideration. The IWC did not present this because the goal of this sanctuary is to prevent whaling of non-endangered whales and it would be difficult to generate such evidence.

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Just one question what compromises do you think it would be reasonable for the Japanese government/whalers to make ?

I think they would accept a legitimate, science-driven regulation with the aim of sustainable whaling. In short, how the IWC is supposed to operate. It should be issuing a quota for Minke isntead of trying to end whaling, and if it did so and it were science-based (instead of political) I think they'd accept it.

In practice, I think you could reduce their whaling by 50-75% in the short term and establish objective (and more binding) criteria for changing that status quo. So the IWC could do something like issue a quota of 450 Minke (instead of the quota of 825 the Japanese picked for themselves) and if it were a legitimate conservation organization (with the sacred whale argument kept out of the organization) I think the Japanese would cooperate.

But right now they can't cooperate with the IWC. The IWC and Japan do not share the same goals right now. Japan joined an organization dedicated to prevent over whaling and it was hijacked into an organization to prevent whaling period.

The threats applied to Japan to compel them to join the IWC and moratorium were already levied against Japan. It would be useful for the anti-whaling crowd to understand that as morally right as they think they are they lack the legal rights they claim and the leverage used to get Japan in this position is already gone.

If they want to keep that fight up against Japan I wish they'd do it through separate organizations. A conservation mandate is possible right now with Japan, a give-up-whaling forever is what they are refusing to accept.

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@dlowan,

dlowan wrote:

I think the lying is one of the thing that rankles the anti-whaling folk a lot...but I am also thinking that, as I understand it, Japanese culture does not value directness...sees it as rude and immature....so face-saving evasions are maybe seen as polite and acceptable for them?

What "lying"? The "scientific research" is not any more a lie than the creation of the sanctuary was. The rules of the IWC allow for scientific research (and their stated research is into whaling methods and viability, which is valid research for an organization dedicated to develop sustainable whaling) and not only allows for such catches to end up on a commercial market but requires the whales not to be wasted. Remember, the original purpose of the IWC is to develop whaling. In order not to lose their industry Japan conducts whaling under these rules. The west rejects the value of their scientific research now, because they disagree with the research goals: developing commercial whaling. But that is the original spirit of the organization and the organization itself was supposed to be doing sustainability research.

For real lies see Paul Watson and his endless PR hoaxes.

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@msolga,

msolga wrote:

Not any longer, in 2010, it isn't.

In the past few years advertising campaigns have been run to encourage the consumption of whale meat (whale burgers, whale kebabs, etc) because it was not in enough demand by the Japanese public. Also it was re-introduced into Japanese schools lunch programs, as a way of using some of the excess meat.

That doesn't mean it's not seen as a strategic food resource. In fact it only hammers the point home. Whale meat is cheap and Japan can get it directly without depending on others. This is why it's a good strategic food resource. Not because it's in demand. Even if all Japanese loved beef and hated whale whale would be the better strategic* food resource because Japan can get its own whale meat but must depend on other countries for beef. Food is one of those basic resources that are good to have as much direct control over (for situations like wars, embargoes, sanctions, economic upheaval...).

After WWII the US promoted whale meat consumption in Japan for the same reasons: whale meat is one of the best strategic food resources available to Japan. Whaling didn't commence because there was strong domestic demand for it, it began because it was the best strategic resource for them to be eating.

* by strategic food resource I do not mean one that is in high market demand.

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No, I'd say the subsidization is more about government employment programs these days.

You are welcome to your opinion, but whaling is a pretty bad choice for an employment program (huge costs to employ few people and come under cultural attack??) and a pretty good choice for a strategic food resource so I believe them when they say this.

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@Robert Gentel,

Quote:

Yes, but under very clear rules such sanctuaries must be declared with scientific evidence that supports the case for conservation and it must take the whaling industry's interests into consideration.

Which is yet another excellent reason for taking the matter out of the IWC's control altogether & replacing it with some properly constituted world body with powers to oversea & protect the world's oceans & marine life. You, I and just about everyone else who has participated in these 2 "whale" threads agrees that the IWC is ineffective. ... the health of our oceans & the marine life who live in them, in my opinion, is a far more important concern than mere regulation of the whaling industry. Which, as we both know, is what it was set up for.

Until there's a far more effective body in control of these very serious concerns, we can expect to see more hair splitting & self-serving interpretations of IWC rulings, degradation of the oceans, more depletion of marine wildlife, more "whale wars" in the Southern Ocean ....

It amazes me that some thing as serious as the health of our oceans has been so seriously neglected. I believe we will live to regret this neglect.

Finally, the establishment of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary was the result of IWC process & policies. If, as we've said before, Japan doesn't accept the collective decision, then it should leave the organization. Actually, I doubt this would make little difference to it's whaling activities in this region, anyway.

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@Robert Gentel,

Quote:

After WWII the US promoted whale meat consumption in Japan for the same reasons: whale meat is one of the best strategic food resources available to Japan. Whaling didn't commence because there was strong domestic demand for it, it began because it was the best strategic resource for them to be eating.

I know about the reasons for eating whale meat following ww2. Japan was an impoverished nation at that time & this was a solution to it's food needs. But I think we can hardly claim the same set of circumstances exists today.

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Robert.
What conclusions have been drawn from the japanese "research on whaling".
There are none that can not be reached without Killing. Last summer the Japanese wanted to harvest 50 or so baleen whales not just minke.

Radical groups and individuals DO sometimes have a role to play in highliting ineqities in this world and Paul Watson and MS OLGA are doing a fine job of publicising what they believe is a very great inequity.

In this world you can justify just about anything. Say something often enough and it becomes true. That is what you are doing whether you recognise it or not. When you get beaten down on one point you pick another to try and pick holes in.

YOU are wrong.

You have given so many reasons as to why you support whaling activities, from your aborhance of Paul Watson to the legal rights of japanese to do ANYTHING they want. All these arguments have been refuted again and again

You are wrong. Why can't you accept that. Am i getting through to you?

You did the same thing on the KFC thread. Turned the argument around and around until you could find something you could argue against. You just cant admit you may be wrong can you. you just cant admit that there may be something that does not have a legal or monetary value that may be worth fighting for.
Now i know you are gonna come back with reasoned arguments and reasonable tones and say "but i'm not wrong" and link 7 documents, bang a few related or twisted dot points in and cut and paste a few of the points that you CAN find opposing arguments about and go to town on me.

Quite frankly i dont care.

have you even considered that You might be wrong!

Stop forcing your view on to people who don't want it.
It would be nice if you could graciously bow out now and let Msolga get on with her dream of changing the world to what she thinks is a better one.

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@msolga,

msolga wrote:

I know about the reasons for eating whale meat following ww2. Japan was an impoverished nation at that time & this was a solution to it's food needs. But I think we can hardly claim the same set of circumstances exists today.

That's why it's a strategic food resource. Japan can be reduced to that state in about 30 days. They want to keep this option open as it is a valuable resource for strategic, not market reasons.

For example, what if their currency completely collapses. Depending of food imports suddenly looks dangerous. What if they go to war. Again, no control of your food resources means you are likely to lose. What about embargoes?

A strategic resource doesn't need to mean it's needed right now, but that it may be needed in certain strategic scenarios. After water food is one of the next critical resources, and Japan's lack of arable land means they really have few strategic options. Their geography and their recent history of needing this particular food resource should make this motivation fairly obvious.

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Amen, dadpad.

I'm tired.

I feel like I've been flapping around in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary all weekend! Laughing

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@Robert Gentel,

My honest opinion, Robert, is that the whaling industry is simply a part of the huge collective Japanese fishing industry. Which has has been the subject of a lot of pressure, on many fronts. Marine life depletion, primarily. I think the maintenance of the whaling industry is simply a part of the resistance to pressure on Japan to cut back on the entire industry.

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@msolga,

msolga wrote:

Which is yet another excellent reason for taking the matter out of the IWC's control altogether & replacing it with some properly constituted world body with powers to oversea & protect the world's oceans & marine life.

Ok, but the problem is that there is no such thing. International law lacks such an authority. You simply must use economic or military force to get your way.

So while no organization will have such an authority, you'd use an organization like the UN to try to get a bunch of people to deploy economic sanctions together.

Thing is, the IWC would work just fine if it's limited to the conservation argument, and your positions just doesn't have enough consensus to levy such economic power right now.

So that's why I'd rather just get rid of the sacred whale argument and get on with species conservation already. There's just not the political capital to marshal the economic capital to force that issue. But conservation is a shared interest that we can work out the details for fairly easily.

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You, I and just about everyone else who has participated in these 2 "whale" threads agrees that the IWC is ineffective. ... the health of our oceans & the marine life who live in them, in my opinion, is a far more important concern than mere regulation of the whaling industry. Which, as we both know, is what it was set up for.

I think the IWC was hugely effective as a whaling organization seeking to regulate its industries and prevent whaling to extinction. Those brakes worked.

But right after that got going, the organization doubled with a bunch of non-whaling nations and took it a different direction. One that the whaling nations did not agree to.

This is why it's ineffective, get rid of this corruption of the organization's purpose and it works pretty well. The current whaling is at scales that are unlikely to drive any species to extinction (which was not the case immediately prior to the organization's founding) and has the mandate to develop limits based on scientific evidence of the need for it.

However the conservation organization was hijacked for a culture war and the science went out the window. It's precisely because of the vegetarianesque position that the IWC is at a stalemate.

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It amazes me that some thing as serious as the health of our oceans has been so seriously neglected. I believe we will live to regret this neglect.

And this is why it bothers me so when these objective goals are hijacked by the sacred whale goal.

Quote:

Finally, the establishment of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary was the result of IWC process & policies. If, as we've said before, Japan doesn't accept the collective decision, then it should leave the organization. Actually, I doubt this would make little difference to it's whaling activities in this region, anyway.

It may well happen, but it'd be a pity. The organization dramatically changed the face of whaling and scientific cooperation on the conservation would be a worthy goal.

I'd much rather see the sacred whale politics leave the organization and let it run as a conservation society. That is a goal that goes part of the way towards the sacred whale folk's goals and that has been viable (in terms of cooperation) for a long time. By injecting a more extreme position into the organization the original purpose can't be met. I wish the sacred whale folk wouldn't ruin the cooperation that was going well for the whale conservation folk.

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I have run out of puff for today, Robert.

But you know what I think? I think whaling is a brutal, antiquated, totally unnecessary "industry" & I think we might just be witnessing its dying days. I fervently hope so, anyway.

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Quote:

Japan's lack of arable land means they really have few strategic options

what you really mean is they have eaten themselves out of house and home.
this to me seems to mean thay need to make some kind of cultural adjustment.
Regardless of what you say they would do this to the rest of the world if they were allowed. The japanese have single handedly decimated tuna stocks in the pacific with long line fishing and would do the same thing to the whale stocks if allowed to do so. They seem to belive that the worlds oceans are their farm and they can do what they want.
Well thats bullshit. We are not blameless in this situation either but i believe we have learned a lesson.
I'd love to see a moritorium on whaling outside japan's economic zone for the next 50 years. Allow the whale populations to rebuild and then see. Lets see them do some research into a stable whale harvesting program within their own economic zone.
If they want to overharvest and or over use the food resource within 200 NM of japan then thats to their detriment not the rest of the world.

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@dadpad,

Indeed, dp.

And let's see, if people must insist on doing it, if there's a less cruel & hideous way of killing the poor creatures!

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@dadpad,

You seem quite upset DP.

I think you're being unfair..(sorry if that seems a mantra!)

I agree that I want whaling to stop forever...desperately. It sickens and disgusts me.

But I also understand that this stems from my view that whales are special, and I think it is an example of the very thing that we were so upset about on the KFC thread, to insist that others share our view.

I very much hope Msolga isn't feeling beaten down; her posts here have been wonderful; but I feel Robert's arguments are very valid, and I have learned a lot from the discussion.

I also don't share your feelings about Robert's posts on the KFC thread, I think they were informed and reasonable.

I hope very much that we ALL become way more sensitive to cruelty and poor environmental practice...and I hope the Japanese come to share our views.

I also hope we the hell stop our terribly cruel practices against animals.

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OUTRAGE OVER WHALING ... #2 <cont>

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