Stealing whales, a Crime worth whining about?

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Joe Luxon, Jan 25, 2010.

  1. My intention with this thread is to gain a more objective view on whaling, by hearing other peoples opinions on the subject of Whaling, and specifically the Whaling that takes place each year in the Australian territorial Waters, by Japan.

    Every Country has its traditions, those that are tolerated by other countries, and some which are considered "taboo" by other cultures, but hey, diversity is what makes the world and interesting place.
    Each year Japan procures meat for traditional dishes, thus preserving their culture, and celebrating their ancestors traditions. I think every country has the right to do this, as long as its not violating "human rights" (eg female circumcision).

    What's got me upset tho, is that each year Japan pays Iceland for whale meat, both Iceland an Japan have Traditional Whaling cultures.
    At the same time, Japan Sends a Fleet of whaling vessels into Australian territorial waters, and poaches "Australian" whales. By poaching, I mean that they do not ask permission, and they pay no monetary compensation for the Whales.

    Why does Japan pay Iceland for whales, but poaches Australian Whales?

    Is this really a crime? Should the world's oceans be simply that, the world's oceans, and therefore accessible to fishing fleets from any nation?

    I'd like to hear other peoples opinions, not just ones that mirror my own, If you think you have a view that is different, and you think it will help myself, and other GC members gain a more objective opinion on the matter, please share.
     
  2. if you're talking about those in whale wars, are those even australian waters? i was pretty sure they were international. i think Paul Watson and his band of half assed boater hippy terrorists are a joke. i laugh when the japanese cut the whales up right in front of them.
     
  3. Yah, Australian waters, but not the normal coastal waters you associate with countrys, its something called the "Australian Antarctic territorial waters"

    Those hippys your refering to are basicly Pirates, so really not doing too much other than drawing attention to themselves. I think they're pretty dodgy, and when they inevitably kill a Japanese whaler, its going todo nothing positive for the cuase they're "fighting for".
     
  4. #4 SmokinP, Jan 25, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 25, 2010
    Dont fuck with the Japanese ...;)

    It took 2 nukes for you guys to stop them the last time..
    If one of those publicity whore hippies kills one of the Jap whalers, all hell will break out..
    Shots of saki and Japanese strapped to harpoons launching themselves at the hippies..
    Would make great TV though..:)
     
  5. Whales are pretty big man, I'd be pissed if someone stole my whale.
     
  6. well if Australia just says "Hey, that area around antarctica is ours." I'm not really sure its actually theirs. The wiki says only 4 countries recognize their sovereignty there.
     
  7. Yeah like Argentina still wont stop bitching about the falkland islands, they say it's theirs, but I recall the local population doesn't think so. And argentina also laid claims to antarctica.
     
  8. Aparently the Australian government will be taking the Japanese government to court in the next year, to try and sort the entire thing out..

    This will take place AFTER yet another whaling season tho :mad:

    It would be nice if a few other countrys supported our claim to those waters, but honestly i think the poaching there each year is becuase we're not assertive enough, and not exactly looking after it.
     
  9. I dont have any problems with whaling as long as they are smart about it and dont hunt them into extinction and are using the whale for food fuel etc... I dont believe needlessly killing any creature is something people should do but killing animals to live off of is something i can live with because everyone has to eat and cloth themselves
     
  10. Couldnt agree with you more.

    many whales are hunted each year (and hundreds of dolphins aswell), but if they're able to be hunted at those levels, and the natural population can handle it then i really dont think theres any problem with it.

    Hunting deffiently shouldn't be a crime... Stealing should be tho.
     

  11. the problem is the way the animals are treated and that the animals they're hunting are passing the threshold for inteligence.
     
  12. It's not right, in my opinion, for Japan to come into our waters and take whales when

    a) The vast majority of Australians are opposed to whaling
    b) We don't even get a "Cheers, thanks a lot!" from them, nothing at all

    Now, as you said OP, it's their cultural tradition and I totally agree with that. Japan has every right to carry on their traditions and such, and we have no right to pass judgement on that or try to enforce our morals onto them.

    The thing is though, it's THEIR cultural tradition, not ours - as I've said, most Aussies snub their noses at the practise of whaling and I'd certainly wager that most Aussies don't want Australia to be involved in whaling or support whaling. This is exactly what is happening, we're permitting the whales in our oceans (I'm pretty sure there's even a "South Australia/Antartic Whale Sanctuary" or something similar that the Japanese had the nerve to penetrate and poach from) to be killed, despite our national objection to it. Simply, it's not part of our culture, so don't involve us in it by making us a guilty party in the slaughter of whales.

    Japan can't just expect to kill whales in droves in the sea around them but be able to rectify their greedy depletion of whale stocks by stealing ours. That's not fair, it's like me smoking 200 packs of cigarettes a day and then expecting a non-smoker to donate their fucking lungs to me so I can continue smoking. It's not sustainable and quite disrespectful I feel to poach our whales.

    Now, how to solve the problem? Japan conducts 'research whaling', overseen by the IWC. One of the tennets of this is obviously that you can't catch whales for commercial sale/consumption - it's all about 'researching' them. How much research on whales has come out of Japan since 1988 (when the IWC legislation was signed)?


    That's it, basically that Minke whales breed a lot, eat a lot and should be culled like rabbits or kangaroos. In my view, that's quite poor progress - this information came from the IWC's official site, as seen here


    ttp://www.icrwhale.org/WhatsResearchAbout.htm

    It's quite obvious to me that Japan WANTS to whale commercially. Their scientific findings, funnily enough, make the Minke whale out to be truly 'the cockroach of the sea', as was famously said by one of the IWC spokesmen. So, why can't they? I don't know, I think they should be allowed to. Norway does, Sweden does, Iceland does, why can't Japan? Is it racism? I mean, I hate to call the race card, but seriously - the white nations are perfectly allowed to commercially whale and are given little negative publicity, but we pick on the Asians and don't give them the same priveledge of commercial whaling as the whites get.

    So, I say let Japan commercially whale, with regulations in place so that they don't kill ridiculous amounts of Minke whales or slaughter them cruelly. Then they wouldn't be coming to our waters for whales... or if they were, we'd have every right to accuse them of theft, since the product is going to be sold for profit whilst at the moment it's used for 'research' and the meat is embezzled by the workers. Legitimise it and we should solve most of the problems I say.
     
  13. Fuck man whaling in general should be illegal, has not mankind wiped enough animals off the face of the earth!
     
  14. Certainly, we've had an utterly catastrophic impact upon the rest of the animals of the Earth... but really, it's just another animal to eat I suppose, much like a cow or a sheep. It's a fine line man, why should whaling be illegal but not killing and eating kangaroos or ducks? The same argument applies, haven't we killed enough animals without killing kangaroos or ducks?

    Basically, it's rotten, whales and dolphins have highly developed brains. dolphins are said to be more intelligent than chimpanzees. But the alternative is uglier, to make moral judgements that are just fine for us but don't translate across the cultural divide very well. If I were Japanese, I'd be very much inclined to think "Listen to these white bastards, all high and mighty and insisting that we live up to their ridiculous and often hypocritical standards! We don't go around telling them to adopt elements of our culture and we certainly don't make elements of their culture that we find repugnant illegal to them, so why should they do it to us?!"

    You see what I'm getting at man, it's a shitty situation all around... but to me, it's far worse to enforce cultural imperialism, cultural elitism and such when we have no business doing so. All we can do is insist that if they're going to kill whales, at least do it as fucking humanely as possible.
     

  15. Alright.. Tradition or not the amount of whales/dolphins they capture in kill is harmful to their species, AND the ecosystem.. If there was a group of native americans whose delicacy was bald eagle and grizzly bears how would you feel about that then? I don't study oceanology but there is a delicate balance in every ecosystem and when you fuck with one part of the food chain you can cause harm to other fish and shit.
     
  16. Well, Aborigines up in Arnhem land have permission to hunt dugongs and big sea turtles as part of their tradition. The Inuit and related polar peoples get permission to hunt down whales and kill them for food, blubber and whatnot. American Indians DO get access to bald eagles, they are legally entitled to get feathers from bald eagles - my Dad, who's Comanche, has a whole shit ton of them which he doesn't use for any kind of traditional purpose whatsoever and just likes to have to remind him of America. Indians also get fucking peyote! FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU :D

    Edit; You're right though, the implications in the eco system can be potentially disasterous, you fuck around with the food chain and throw the natural equilibrium out of balance and you're just asking for trouble. This is why it needs to be done extremely ridiculously scientifically, to ensure we don't have a plankton surge and everything gets choked by the excess C02 or something :smoking:
     

  17. Yea I gotcha but the thing is japan's population is roughly 128 million, though on the decline and not all eat whale, native americans, Aborigine, inuit aren't even 1% of that i can only imagine so it's not even the same thing ahah .. and it's just straight wrong, and there are laws against whaling but their asses use loop holes by labeling their whaling as scientific research..
     
  18. First point is very valid, Japan has a shit ton more people than indigenous folks. Nether the less, it is a tradition in the same way that eating a Sunday roast is a tradition. There are 330 million Americans roughly. Once again, not all of them eat a Sunday roast, but you get the idea.

    However, eating a Sunday roast isn't the same as whale because there are a whole lot more lambs that are actually being farmed than whales, which aren't being farmed at all. What is the solution then? Manage the program efficiently, the first step to doing so would be to figure out roughly what the maximum amount of whale meat is that Japan would need to feed those who wanted to buy it etc. This is economics I guess, supply and demand, but you get the point - if the figure is sustainable (as Japan would have us believe in their studies of Minke whales), then it's all good I guess. If the figure comes out at a level that would deplete the ocean or negatively influence the food chain, it's unacceptable and Japan simply can't harvest that many whales. I guess they could buy the meat from Norway, Iceland and whatever, but they simply can't take unsustainable amounts of whales from the sea.

    And I agree whole heartedly man, Japan's 'scientific research' is a fucking scam, it's government sponsored poaching that uses Japanese tax payers dollars for the benefit of the whaling industry. It's corporatism under the guise of 'science', the Japanese government and their whaling program is corrupt and a sham. It's commercial whaling in sheeps clothing... which is why I say remove the fake woolen clothes and just let them commercially whale, with stringent regulations in place. My preferred solution would be to put a stop to it all together, not just for Japan but for all of the whaling countries. But, as I've said, that's extremely condescending, elitist, snobbish and I would even say EVIL to dictate to their culture how things should be done. So yes, regulated commercial whaling is probably the best solution :D
     


  19. I don't mind that they're doing "Research", or whatever reasons they use to collect Whale, The international community is cool with lots of crazy shit and lets them do it, I'm just Pissed it has to happen off our coastal waters, and our government isn't concerned enough to just say "oi, that's our waters, piss off"

    I'm pretty sure if the Japanese starting whaling off US waters, the call to end it wouldn't be because whales are cute, whales might be intelligent, whales can sing etc etc, it would be a simple case of "These are US territorial waters, fuck off"

    For some reason we have a chunk of ocean we call the "Australian Antarctic territorial waters", but we don't do fuck all about theft from it, and aren't bothered that only 4 other countries recognize it as our waters.

    Little offtopic, but to the dude that mentioned Eagles earlier: unlike bald eagles the hunted Whales/Dolphins aren't endangered, and culling looks like its sustainable. Whales aren't really a National icon like your Eagle is either, they're more of an oddity that we like to stare at from cliff at the beach while we drink beer.
     
  20. #20 20000678, Jun 13, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 13, 2010

    The only problem is that international laws say 3.5 miles from the coast. Anti-whaling legislation passed by the Australian Government applies to Australian territorial waters, however Australia's claims of sovereignty over the Australian Antarctic Territory—and thus sovereignty over Australian Antarctic territorial waters—are recognised by only four countries, not including Japan. Many others countries believe this is in violation of article 4 of the antarctic treaty. The UN agreed that Antartica is a no mans land, no country can claim it, any claim to Antarctica is bullshit. And I have just as much dislike for Australia pulling this shit as I do with Argentina, and the UK pulling it. I hereby claim Antarctica under the flag of GrassCity. And the only people who recognize Australia's claim also have claims to Antarctica, Pork Barreling cough cough, sorry I'm allergic to government swindling.
     

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