Japanese whalers to fight back

IT’S ABOUT TIME: Japan has announced that its whaling fleet will defend itself during the current Antarctic expedition against those who would use force to stop them (i.e., Sea Shepherd).

If fact, the Japanese are even talking tough:

“We have stepped up measures to defend ourselves from possible attacks, although we cannot disclose any details,” Hideki Moronuki, the head of the whaling division at Japan’s Fisheries Agency, said Monday. “We consider any use of force to stop our legally valid activity as terrorism, and we do not tolerate it.”

One also has to suspect the Japanese realize the world’s media will twist any steps they take on their own behalf, but are finally past the point of caring.

The story is in this AP article carried by the English-language Mainichi.

It will come as no surprise that the AP slants the story. It leads off by saying that the last hunt ended in “chaos”. While the Japanese had problems during the last hunt, the word chaos seems a bit extreme. One of their ships suffered a fire, during which a sailor died, and which left the ship dead in the water for a few days. The fleet conducted its own repairs and made an orderly return under its own power to Japan, however.

This was a big letdown for the media, which was openly cheering for the Japanese to ask a Greenpeace ship to tow it home. Greenpeace certainly kept begging to handle the job, if only to show that their presence in the area wasn’t irrelevant.

The article fails to mention the real chaos involving the two ships operated by Sea Shepherd, which is funded by Hollywood celebrities. They had their licenses revoked because they lied during registration by claiming they were pleasure craft. They were on the verge of being arrested for piracy, and also ran out of fuel.

The story allows Sea Shepherd to have the first verbal salvo by repeating their description of the fleet as the Cetacean Death Star, obviously coined to promote media parroting.

Sea Shepherd’s leader, Paul Watson, has admitted his group’s tactics are designed to attract attention; he correctly observed that the media is more interested in drama than debate. But don’t expect the AP to cop to being an interest group stooge.

The AP mentions the sea battle…

In February, Sea Shepherd ships and a Japanese vessel clashed in the ice-strewn waters of the Southern Ocean. Both Japan and Sea Shepherd claimed their vessel was rammed by the other’s, and the Robert Hunter ended up with a 1-meter (3-foot) gash in its stern above the water line.

…but doesn’t mention the video released by Japan showing the Robert Hunter ramming a Japanese ship (taken from on board the Japanese ship). It also doesn’t mention that ramming is a preferred tactic of the group, which has used it successfully once in the past.

The AP reports what it says are Japanese claims…

Japanese officials said the activists threw ropes and nets into the water to entangle the Japanese ship’s propeller and prevent it from maneuvering, and threw smoke canisters and garbage onto the deck

…but doesn’t report that even Sea Shepherd admitted throwing butylic acid on deck and trying to nail a ship’s drainage ports shut with nail guns.

The AP recalls that two of the Sea Shepherd “sailors” were lost at sea for a few hours…

During the clash, two Sea Shepherd crew members went missing for several hours in a small inflatable boat but were later found safe.

…but forgets that the Japanese whaling fleet helped look for them. (One of the two lost “sailors” said on the group’s website last year that the two things he brought on the expedition were a borrowed iPod and a bicycle.)

Additionally, the AP remembers the objections of the Australian and New Zealand governments…

The confrontation drew protests from Japan, and even sparked strong rebukes from the strongly anti-whaling governments of Australia and New Zealand.

…but forgets that the Australian government found so Sea Shepherd detestable they kept the Japanese fleet informed of the group’s whereabouts.

At this point, it seems as if the AP and the rest will get what it wants: a dramatic confrontation. And frankly, I’m glad to see the Japanese are now willing to stand up for what it perceives as its interests regardless of the publicity, instead of either lying down or lying low.

Now if they would only apply that principle to international politics!