IWC: International Whaling Circus

We do not like (animals) much for themselves, for what they are — only for the fictions we have imposed upon them…We ascribe to the animals we like intelligence, compassion and a sense of playfulness; to those we despise stupidity, savagery and cold-bloodedness. The wolf, as a case in point, falls into the first category these days whereas 100 years ago it would have fallen most definitely into the latter.
– Rod Liddle, The Spectator

ONE OF MY UNCLES was known for having a quirky sense of humor. During the 1992 American presidential campaign, a three-way race involving George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot, he often said that he hoped for a Perot victory because “the circus over the next four years” would be hugely entertaining.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your taste in these matters), Perot lost, and Americans were instead treated to eight years of a different circus: the Clinton Administration, known in some quarters as the Exploding Cigar Presidency.

Who’s to say that a Perot Administration wouldn’t have been even more uproarious?

But with the emergence into the international Big Top of minor acts masquerading as center ring attractions, promoting self-important and eccentric notions as life-or-death issues, politics is no longer the only source for free circus entertainment. The ringmasters of the mass media give them microphones and the spotlight and give us the best seats in the house. Then they both turn all of us into their pantaloons.

The latest performance was sponsored by the International Whaling Commission during its annual meeting in Chile last week.

That doesn’t mean people were eating corn dogs and watching seals balance balls on the tips of their noses while the commission conducted its business. The delegates spent a week debating quotas and the question of whether the body should transform itself into a whale protection group or maintain its original function of being a conservation group. The countries that caught whales last year get to catch just as many whales this year. Meanwhile, meetings will continue to find a compromise between the whalers and the anti-whalers.

Japan can continue to hunt some 1,000 whales per year for scientific purposes after the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Santiago agreed Wednesday to postpone any far-reaching decisions on the protection of these cetaceans.

But nothing ever stops the media from painting a different picture, however. How’s this for a lead sentence to a news report?

Whales emerged the big losers as a weeklong International Whaling Commission meeting wrapped up in Chile on Friday, said conservation groups…

Let’s try that same approach to rewrite a lead sentence from a different story that appeared a month ago.

Cows emerged as the big losers as the South Korean government lifted a ban on American beef imports, said vegetarian groups…

Take another look at that Rod Liddle quote at the top of the post. The man’s on to something.

The lead sentence of the news report is written to make it seem as if whales are just as involved as a human lobbying group. Strange ideas seem to have captured some elements of the popular imagination. Try this from a month ago.

Great apes should have the right to life and freedom, according to a resolution passed in the Spanish parliament, in what could become landmark legislation to enshrine human rights for chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans and bonobos.

Both reports start with assertive declarations of goofy ideas as if they were actual facts, followed with a few words to weasel out of any responsibility for the game being played.

1. Whales are the big losers—say conservation groups.

2. Great apes should have the right to life and freedom—according to a Spanish parliament resolution

And journalists wonder why so many people give them a hard time.

The biggest surprise of the IWC meeting didn’t involve Japan. Greenland, represented by Denmark, applied for permission to allow its aboriginal inhabitants to catch an additional 10 humpback whales in addition to the special whaling concession they already receive.

The IWC’s scientific body endorsed this request. But environmentalism is now the hip religion, and we all know how the scientist Galileo fared against the Church. The request was denied, with the EU voting as a bloc against it.

Some found the European tactic difficult to digest. As we recently saw, South Korea has stringent restrictions on whaling (despite a long Korean history of whale-eating), and the EU move cheesed even them off.

South Korea described the EU bloc vote as “interference with the legitimate process of this organisation and the due process of law”.

How much longer will it take the Koreans to realize that in these enlightened Dark Ages, religious faith in environmentalism transcends science and the due process of law?

For the real circus atmosphere, the media had to go outside the IWC venue itself. They filed more stories about the whaling circus than they did about the decisions of the international whaling body itself.

Such as:

From Australia to Japan, California to Chile, surfers around the world are uniting to protect humpback whales from world No.1 hunter Japan – by getting towns and communities to adopt the giant mammals. Sixty towns in Australia alone have adopted whales under the initiative by Surfers for Cetaceans, set up by surfers to protect whales and dolphins.

In Australia, the markings on humpbacks’ tails – dubbed fingerprints because they are unique – are lifted up over the entrances of towns that have adopted whales so the flourishing whale-watching industry there can identify its adoptees.

“No longer are they just a whale out there in the ocean, they are a whale with a story, a name, a family, a history and a personality. There are some that are theatrical in their approach when they come in touch with humans.”

Rod Liddle’s starting to look like a genius.

They also filed this detective story for mystery fans:

Forensic-style DNA sampling of whale meat in Japanese markets turned up fin whales that can’t be accounted for, Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute reports….Meat from at least 15 individual fin whales was being sold in 2006 and 2007 — two more than the Japanese government reported killing as part of its scientific whaling program during the same period, Scott Baker, associate director of the institute, said Friday.

Consider if you will what sort of people would conduct “forensic-style DNA” sampling of whale meat in Japanese markets and trumpet the news that they found one John Doe whale a year.

Then consider what sort of people would think it was important.

Some people prefer eroticism to stories about sleuths:

For Yves Paccalet, a French naturalist and philosopher who helped push through the 1986 moratorium, the intelligent and highly-social creatures may be so exhausted from their centuries-long combat with humankind that they have simply have given up the fight.

“The psychological consequences of our aggression have compromised their will to live,” said Paccalet, who worked extensively with French marine explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau. “To reproduce, whales need a large number of individuals to ensure that they meet, and then to frolic and excite each other. Otherwise, a species may give in to a kind of sexual melancholy and simply stops breeding,” he told AFP.

Fancy that: A Frenchman speculating on whale sexuality.

A media circus with whales as the main attraction isn’t complete without an article hinting that the Japanese are still the cruel, unfeeling beasts of World War II. After all, look at what they do to their own children!

Japanese 10-year-olds taken on school trips to whale slaughter

Japanese children as young as ten are watching whales being slaughtered to teach them the “cultural importance” of Japan’s controversial commercial whaling industry.

This was the lead to an article ostensibly about the IWC meetings.

Never mind that it’s not controversial in Japan. Never mind that the whales were already killed and the children watched them being processed, not “slaughtered”. Some of those children have already seen fish being cleaned—people do catch a lot of fish here–so the sight of a whale being cut up is unlikely to cause nightmares.

If they really needed a shocking, bloody word, they could have used “butchered” instead. But that might spoil the fun.

After all, isn’t that what Westerners do to cows?

There have to be clowns to make it a real circus, and when it comes to a whaling circus, there’s always one man who can be counted on to wear the cap and bells—Jolly Roger himself, Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd. Here’s one report:

Canadian-born renegade sea captain Paul Watson has set his sights on sinking Japan’s whaling industry, the largest in the world — and reckons he is halfway there.

He reckons he’s halfway there because the Japanese took only half of their whale quota last winter after he harassed them with just one ship. Now he’s going to get a second ship.

That’s reminiscent of the famous fictional seaman, Captain Queeg:

I proved with geometric logic that a duplicate key to the icebox existed.

Clown isn’t the only word that could be applied to Cap’n Watson, however. There’s also pirate. In an excerpt from a Newsweek interview:

Q: You have argued that your tactics are legal. How so?

A: We are upholding the UN Charter of Nature and operating within the principles of this charter which allows for non-governmental organizations to intervene to uphold international conservation law. For instance, in 1986, we sunk half of Iceland’s whaling fleet…

And vigilante…

Sea Shepherd campaigns are guided by the United Nations World Charter for Nature. Sections 21-24 of the Charter provides authority to individuals to act on behalf of and enforce international conservation laws.

Go on a sea hunt of your own and see if you can spot any justification for his behavior in those sections.

And then there’s the word buffoon:

Paul Watson launched the 5th Sea Shepherd Antarctic campaign to stop Japanese whaling on Thursday June 26, 2008. The campaign is called Operation Musashi after the legendary Japanese strategist and samurai, Miyamoto Musashi, a personal role model and hero of Captain Watson. “Sea Shepherd intends to transform Setsuninto – the sword {harpoon} that takes life – to Katsujinken – the sword {harpoon} that gives life.” said the press release.

The media assures us that they are impartial, so surely there are stories presenting the opposite viewpoint. It took a bit of digging to find any, but here’s one about a colorful old salt from the whaling fleets. It starts off by telling us that the good guys in the white hats don’t like him:

Reviled by conservationists, Icelandic whale meat exporter Kristjan Loftsson is unapologetic, saying anti-whaling groups and nations are neurotic and that whale meat is highly profitable — and delicious.

“Those who speak loudest, the UK and US, Australia, they used to whale before but they couldn’t manage their whales, so everything is gone. So they have no interest in this any more,” Loftsson told Reuters in an interview.

“Whales are just like any ordinary fish,” he said. “But in Iceland the bottom line is it has to be sustainable. If it is sustainable you do it, and if it is not you stop. We also do that with fisheries, there’s no difference.”

“It tastes just like any ordinary, very good red meat. You can eat some of it raw. Depending on which loin (cut) of the whale, whale meat is most like tuna,” he added.

Just as consumers have to go upmarket to get quality in an automobile or fine wine, they also have to leave the mass market to get quality in journalism. The best place to find that last week was National Geographic:

If (Iceland, Norway, and Japan) are permitted to whale a little, the idea’s proponents argue, then their hunts can be monitored and the effects of these hunts better understood.

“It would resume our science-based methods for determining how many whales can be safely harvested from a particular population,” said Andrew Read, a marine conservation biologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, (who) has served on the IWC’s scientific committee for more than a decade.

Susan Lieberman is the director of the World Wildlife Fund’s global species program. She said whaling itself does not help conservation, but a compromise that ended unregulated killing would be worth considering. “I think governments have an obligation to try to see if they can bridge the gap here,” she said.

They even present an opposing viewpoint–but not first:

Patrick Ramage directs the global whale program for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which opposes any compromise that would allow for a resumption of commercial whale hunts. “We should be discussing how Japan, Norway, and Iceland will join the vast majority of IWC member countries in putting down their harpoons, picking up cameras, [and] going whale watching,” he said.

No wonder those sensitive whales are sexually frustrated. Who could perform with all those voyeurs watching your every move—and taking pictures!

National Geographic also wonders why everyone focuses on Japan.

Why is Japan’s Whaling Bogeyman when Norway Hunts Too?

For the anti-whaling lobby, Japan appears to be its Moby Dick, a foe to be singled out and endlessly pursued…But are the attacks fair, when other nations also engage in substantial amounts of whaling—and unlike Japan, in open defiance of international conventions?

…Japan is the “head of the zombie and needs to be cut off,” said Willie Mackenzie, oceans campaigner for Greenpeace U.K…

…Shigeko Misaki, a former spokeswoman for the Japan Whaling Association, said the anti-whaling campaign has gone too far.

“It has almost become a religion, that whales are the only symbol of the marine ecosystem,” she said. “People who believe this religion think all Japanese people are evil, because we kill whales…

Claire Bass of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, conceded that cultural differences do color the debate.

“Japan manages whales under their fisheries agency. They basically see them as big fish,” she said. “We see them as intelligent, charismatic, captivating creatures. So I wouldn’t deny there’s a difference in the starting point at which we view whales.”

You did read that Rod Liddle quote a second time, didn’t you?

Once upon a time, the circus paraded through town, pitched its tent, gave a couple of weeks of performances, and then left for a new city. Now, driven by the demands of the infotainment culture, the print and visual media offer us fire-breathers, sword-swallowers, and bearded ladies 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And they just give the tickets away.

Japan and Australia

Before the Chilean media extravaganza there was an overlooked prelude in Tokyo when Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd met Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo.

Last year, when Mr. Rudd was still in the opposition, he was free to talk tough about the cetacean slaughterers. He vowed to track every move of the Japanese whaling fleet in the South Pacific to collect evidence and haul them before the International Court of Justice.

Now that Mr. Rudd is in office and his words actually have consequences, his attitude seems to have changed.

Rudd told reporters at a joint press conference after the meeting at Fukuda’s office:

”On whaling, Prime Minister Fukuda and I agreed that you can have disagreements between friends. We’ve also agreed that this disagreement should not undermine in any way the strength and positive nature of our overall bilateral relationship and we will be working in the period ahead diplomatically in search of the solution on this question.”

Did Mr. Fukuda remind his visitor that Japan is the biggest customer for many important Australian exports? It’s more likely that Mr. Rudd didn’t need to be reminded and turned out to be a paper tiger instead.

This did not go over well back home in Australia:

In 2005 Kevin Rudd said: “We cannot afford another year of complacency. The Howard government must act immediately to take Japan to the International Court of Justice.”

In 2007, the then leader of the Opposition said it was necessary to “take Japan to international courts such as the International Court of Justice or the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to end the slaughter of whales”. He also said: “Obviously, that approach of international pressure through the IWC has not worked.”

The threat of taking Japan to the ICJ was not even raised in talks with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda….What has become clear is that Australia stands to lose more at an international court than Japan because it would expose Australia’s tenuous legal position of controlling waters in the Southern Ocean.

Following this costly debacle, Australia then went to the IWC meeting in Chile with a radical proposal to completely invert the commission’s role and turn it into whale protection group completely banning whaling, instead of a whale harvesting body setting sustainable levels of the hunt.

On the other hand, Japan went to the IWC with a plan to avoid divisive votes for a year and reform the processes of the commission. Japan, as an act of good faith, continued its own suspension of the hunt for 50 humpback whales but has kept the legal right to take 900 whales next year.

But one Australian found out that not all Japanese are barbarous whale-murderers.

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith met on the 26th for talks with Hatoyama Yukio, the secretary-general of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan. Here’s a story the latter told Mr. Smith, according to a report in the Sankei Shimbun.

“Actually, my wife served some home-cooked whale this morning. I don’t believe in eating whale, so I turned it down, but it is in fact a popular dish on the Japanese table.”

Back-translating from the translation into Japanese, Smith’s reply was, “You’re a braver man than I. My policy is to eat everything my wife serves.”

Mr. Hatoyama later said his wife had made a type of whale stew for breakfast. He also explained that he didn’t eat whales because people from the district he represents in Hokkaido were trying to develop whale watching as a tourism resource.

And yes, it is stretching it a bit to have us believe that the wife of a politician in his 60s doesn’t know he refuses to eat whale and serves it to him in a breakfast stew on the very morning he is to meet the Australian foreign minister.

But the Japanese will recognize the practical application of their proverb, uso mo hoben, or, circumstances may justify a falsehood. Mr. Hatoyama first established common ground with his visitor by telling him that he too, like most Australians, does not eat whale out of principle.

At the same time, he also made it known that plenty of Japanese like whales a lot–to eat. He then told the foreign minister that the extreme obstructionist tactics used by environmental groups for the whaling survey fleet “cannot be overlooked”.

I’m not sure that Mr. Smith swallowed the story about the breakfast any more than Mr. Hatoyama swallowed his wife’s whale stew.

But he certainly got the point, delivered most diplomatically.