How to deal with Sea Shepherd

ACCORDING TO THIS POST from Tim Blair, the French dealt with the eco-twerps Sea Shepherd and their leader Paul Watson much more assertively than Japan did.

As described in a link from the post, about 100 French fishermen were upset when Watson said the death of baby seals was a greater tragedy than the recent death of some sealers.

If you haven’t seen it already, please click on the first link (on the word “attacking”) to see a Japanese video of a Sea Shepherd ship deliberately ramming a Japanese whaling vessel. A similiar video was shown last year on the website of Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research (whose site is linked on the right sidebar).

Yet during the whaling season earlier this year, no one in the English-language mass media could bring themselves to call a spade a spade. They usually described it a “collision” rather than a ramming.

Would you care to speculate on their approach had the Japanese taken steps similar to those of the French fishermen?

It should be obvious by now to everyone that the daily media, whether print or broadcast, is little more than an infotainment vehicle for advertising, with little interest in the concept of journalistic integrity. It is time to draw conclusions from that fact.

Turning up their noses at Chinese seafood

THE WORLD IS WELL AWARE that the Chinese are choking on the polluted fumes they spew daily into the atmosphere, and that the noxious gases they export with their manufactured goods are causing serious health problems, particularly for their neighbors.

Now, reader S.B. sends along this article from the International Herald Tribune, which explains the Chinese have developed a large fish farming industry that has created water pollution problems so severe as to prevent consumers in other countries from eating the exported fish.

The country has become a global fish farming colossus:

China produces about 70 percent of the farmed fish in the world, harvested at thousands of giant factory-style farms that extend along the entire eastern seaboard of the country. Farmers mass-produce seafood just offshore, but mostly on land, and in lakes, ponds, rivers and reservoirs, or in huge rectangular fish ponds dug into the earth.

What has this accomplished?

The government hoped the building boom would lift millions out of poverty. And it did. There are now more than 4.5 million fish farmers in China, according to the Fishery Bureau.

They have gotten gloriously rich in the process:

The boom did more than create jobs. It made China the only country that produces more seafood from fish farms than from the sea. It also helped feed an increasingly prosperous population, a longstanding challenge in China.

Many growers here struck it rich as well, people like Lin Sunbao, whose 25-year-old son is now studying at Cambridge University in England. “My best years were 1992, ‘93, ‘94,” Lin said. “I only had one aquafarm, and I earned over $500,000 a year.”

That success has come at a heavy price, however:

But that growth is threatened by the two most glaring environmental weaknesses in China: acute water shortages and water supplies contaminated by sewage, industrial waste and agricultural runoff that includes pesticides. The fish farms, in turn, are discharging wastewater that further pollutes the water supply.

“Our waters here are filthy,” said Ye Chao, an eel and shrimp farmer who has 20 giant ponds in western Fuqing. “There are simply too many aquaculture farms in this area. They’re all discharging water here, fouling up other farms.”

The problems are just as enormous as the industry itself:

More than half of the rivers in China are too polluted to serve as a source of drinking water. The biggest lakes in the country regularly succumb to harmful algal blooms. Seafood producers are part of the problem, environmental experts say. Enormous aquaculture farms concentrate fish waste, pesticides and veterinary drugs in their ponds and discharge the contaminated water into rivers, streams and coastal areas, often with no treatment.

Now, no one wants to eat Chinese seafood:

Importers of Chinese seafood quickly caught on. In recent years, eel shipments to Europe, Japan and the United States have been turned back or destroyed because of residues of banned veterinary drugs. Eel shipments to Japan have dropped 50 percent through August of this year.

Do I need to tell you that some Chinese in the industry have found a way to be critical of Japanese behavior?

Some growers have lashed out at Japan, arguing that it keeps raising the drug residue standard simply to protect its own eel farms against competition.

Forgive the Chinese public; after years of government propaganda, they know not whereof they speak. Food safety—particularly for imported food products–is a matter of extreme public concern in Japan. According to an American source:

Japan has been developing the new regulations for more than three years…The new Japanese regulations are based on international standards established by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization to ensure food safety.

The same source notes that the American pork industry changed its behavior to protect its livelihood, and used the example of the Japanese ban on American beef as a cautionary tale.

Besides, Japanese domestic production of eel, beef, and pork is insufficient to satisfy domestic demand.

In fact, Japanese standards covered more than eel and pork, as this Xinhua report admits:

The new criteria involve 302 food products, 799 agricultural chemicals and 54,782 inspection criteria and is (sic) believed to be the world’s strictest by far.

Xinhua also notes that the standards have had the desired effect:

A ministry spokesperson has promised the ministry would follow Japan’s new criteria strictly so as to guide Chinese exporters. Since 2001, says the ministry, China has suffered 24 major trade and technical barriers hindering its exports of farm produce to Japan.

This is confirmed by Chinaview:

China has resumed exports of grilled eels to Japan after a four-month suspension triggered by reports saying banned drugs had been found in the products. Inspection and quarantine authorities in southern China’s Guangdong Province, the country’s leading eel exporter, said exports to Japan resumed in mid November…Chinese grilled eel products were taken off Japanese shelves in July amid concerns about the use of antibiotics and some banned substances, said Huang Weiming, Guangdong inspection and quarantine bureau vice director. He said Guangdong had not received a single order for grilled eel from Japanese importers over the past four months.

Some misunderstandings still remain, however:

Many Japanese love grilled eels from China. They make up about 80 percent of the market and are sold at prices 40 percent cheaper than similar Japanese products, Huang said.

Here’s how the first sentence should read: Many Japanese love the price of grilled eels from China.

Some Chinese are still blustering, as the IHT reports:

“Our market will expand in Russia and Southeast Asia, and the EU,” Wang said.

I wouldn’t count those eels before they’re hatched. Or at least before reading this from the Wall Street Journal:

The European Union said Friday that it will follow the lead of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which said it is stepping up scrutiny of Chinese farm-raised seafood.
EU authorities in Beijing are talking to Chinese authorities and conducting an investigation, said Philip Tod, an EU spokesman. They have already asked EU countries to increase their vigilance. “We will not hesitate to take action,” Mr. Tod said. “The same substances banned in the U.S. are also banned in Europe.”

Mr. Wang unfortunately has another view:

“In five or six years, as we transfer our export destinations, Japan will be begging us.”

I wouldn’t bet the fish farm on it.

Some observers think the Chinese will get it right eventually:

“Water is the biggest problem in China,” said Peter Leedham, the business manager at Sino Analytica, which advises companies in China on food safety issues. “But my feeling is China will deal with it, because it has to. It just won’t be a quick process.”

I wish I could be so optimistic.

Japan launches YouTube salvo against Australia

IT APPEARS THAT SOMEONE IN JAPAN has decided that enough is enough and they’re not going to take it lying down anymore.

There is now a 10-minute video on YouTube with English and Japanese titles that contains the following:

• The claim that Australia is a white supremacist nation prejudiced against the Japanese, backed by images from the Cronulla race riots
• The claim that Aboriginals and Asians are second-class citizens in Australia
• Several images of slain dingoes, which it claims are an endangered species, a wallaby being killed by a child slamming it against a wall, and a man taking a baby kangaroo from its mother’s pouch and stomping on it
• A young Australian woman using her hands to eat what seems to be a kangaroo limb at a barbecue, while a young Japanese woman delicately eats some whale with chopsticks as part of a larger meal. (The Australian woman is standing up while eating, or tachigui, which is considered rude in Japan. Unfortunately, this subtlety will be lost on the Australians.)
• An excerpt of a beer commercial in which two restaurant employees kill an obese Japanese who orders the whale course. The commercial calls for a boycott of Kirin. The Japanese brewer protested, saying they have nothing to do with whaling, and that the commercial is racist.

The Australians don’t care for the video very much, as you can see from the article here. Here is the link to the YouTube video.

The article says:

The video will inflame already high tensions between Australia and Japan over the whaling issue.

Sorry, but that excuse cuts very little ice with me. As we used to say in America when I was growing up, “You can sure dish it out, but you can’t take it.”

The article, of course, continues to self-righteously dish it out. Note their choice of words (emphasis mine):

The Japanese whaling fleet, which is in Antarctica hunting the sea giants, aims to slaughter up to 935 minkes and 50 endangered fin whales this summer.

The first word of the photo caption accompanying the article is “smear”.

I have no idea who in Japan put it together. They should have used a native-speaking translator for the English, but the language is very understandable.

Those who want to debate the accuracy of the Japanese claims, or the appropriateness of the tone, can do so in the comments section. What interests me is that the Japanese are finally starting to respond to the mudslinging to which they are subjected from some quarters overseas.

It’s about time. My only suggestion is that they use a bit more professional polish to package their rebuttals in the future.

And to those Australians who don’t care for it: Quit your whingeing, mates. The truth hurts. If you don’t like being on the receiving end of it for a change, you’ve got no one to blame but yourselves.

Update: AFP is carrying a report that says the YouTube video now has 100,000 hits and counting. Meanwhile, Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says:

“It is un-tasteworthy in the extreme, that’s the kindest thing I can think to say about it,” Smith told reporters. “Its general overtone, its general content, I absolutely condemn. It’s anonymous, so that tells you something before we even start.”

In other words, it’s just fine for Australians to broadcast and disseminate the bloodiest possible images of Japanese whaling ships catching whales, use language like “slaughter” and “kill”, and compare the act to cannibalism and human slavery, but when the Japanese broadcast and disseminate images of Australians doing the same thing to dingoes, wallabies, and kangaroos, and then eating the kangaroo at a barbecue, it’s “un-tasteworthy in the extreme”.

Yes, having one’s hypocrisy exposed can be uncomfortable, can’t it?

But untasteworthy? I’m not so sure. I’ve eaten kangaroo, and it’s not bad. But I think whale is better.

BBC: Inciting racial hatred of the Japanese?

Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you and be silent.
- Epictetus

THE UNITED KINGDOM HAS A LAW known as the Public Order Act of 1986. This website describes the intent of the law as follows:

The law covering criminally racist material makes it an offence to stir up racial hatred against a group of persons in Great Britain defined by reference to colour, race, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins.
This act makes it an offence for a person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if -
(a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or
(b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.

The website notes that the government has not put the text of the law online, though it does sell hard copies.

The British Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as the BBC, is based in the United Kingdom and is the largest broadcast organization in the world. The BBC motto is, “Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation”.

They operate BBC News, which is the world’s largest broadcast news organization. They present news stories on television and radio, and place the text and audio of some of these stories on their website.

One such story is “Can Whaling Be Justified”. For this story, BBC correspondent Jonah Fisher—an appropriate name for a journalist covering a whaling story–will report on the Japanese whaling expedition from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza.

The BBC allows its audience to comment on the stories it places on the website in a feature called Have Your Say. This feature has been activated for Jonah Fisher’s reports on whaling.

Posters must follow certain rules when commenting in the Have Your Say area. Some of them are as follows:

No defamatory comments. A defamatory comment is one that is capable of damaging the reputation of a person or organisation.
Do not incite people to commit any crime, including incitement of racial hatred.
Do not post messages that are unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, homophobic or racially offensive.

When they refer to the crime of racial hatred, they are referring in part to the activities prohibited by the Public Order Act of 1986, as explained above.

To make sure that posters abide by the rules, the BBC moderates this message board. There are two types of moderation. The type of moderation in force for the whaling story is “Fully Moderated”.

Here the BBC defines Fully Moderated:

This is also known as pre-moderation. Every comment submitted to a fully moderated discussion has to be checked by a BBC moderator before it is published on the site.

The readers of the website can complain about comments the moderators have allowed. The BBC explains the purpose of this option as follows:

It is only for serious complaints about comments, namely that they are obscene, abusive, threatening, unlawful, harassing, defamatory, harmful, profane, racially offensive, or otherwise strongly objectionable.
The Have Your Say moderators will decide whether the comment breaks the House Rules. If it does, they will remove it. If it doesn’t, it will be allowed to remain on the site.

The following comments were posted on the Have Your Say area of the BBC website in regard to the whaling story. Because this is a Fully Moderated topic, the BBC moderators read each one first and thought that racial hatred is not “likely to be stirred up thereby”. Also, if any of the posters complained, their complaints were rejected.

I leave it to the readers’ judgment to determine whether the following comments comply with the law of the United Kingdom and BBC standards.

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING:

1. The names and countries of origin of the posters have been removed. However, the posts here were sent not only from Great Britain, but also continental Europe, North America, and Asia.
2. The posts are copied exactly as they appeared, including punctuation and spelling.
3. They are displayed here in alternating italicized and bolded text. This is only to facilitate reading and is not intended to imply a special emphasis on my part.

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two words….. Enola Gay. Worked last time.

How about we harpoon a few Jap Whalers to let them know how it feels to have an exploding warhead tearing through them.

Are we allowed to hunt Japanese? Seems only fair.

Would anyone shed a tear if the whaling boat had an accident and sank it? Not me.

During the second world war propaganda said the Japanese were a cruel barbaric race…maybe it wasn’t propaganda

It is barabaric and wrong and any nation that undetakes it under any pretext demonstrates its savagery and lack of civility.
No need to say more.
Or should we hunt nips for research?

maybe they would feel a bit differently if we said we wanted to continue our scientific pursuits on nuclear fision by droppin a bomb or 2 on hiroshima or nagasaki again?

so those Nipponese love whale, some love other fish and they eat them. now i heard that some cannibals love japanese, they have less hair and smooth skin and can be easily consumed. i heard they are easily digestable too.

the Japanese have a long histroy of hunting things to extinction. 1000 whales for “research” who the he*l do think they are kidding. A barbaric culture that care for NOTHING but themselves.

Japan, you are whale and dolphin murderers and we still see you as sneaky liars.

It also used to be part of the Japanese culture, that a member of the samurai class had the right to kill anybody non-samurai jhust for the hell of it, if they so wished. “I’ve just bought a new sword I need to test its edge, you peasant come here and bow your head” SWOOSH, THUD “Ooooh lovely sharp sword”, “You peasant remove that unsightly headless corpse and clean up the blood, unless you wish to go the same way”
The Japanese have always been a brutal race, just ask any former Allied POW.

Japan never did care much about life anyway

…can the Japanese justify the slaughter of whales for research that never gets published? Then again, some of them can justify the treatment handed out to WWII POWs and ‘comfort women’ so who knows what goes on in their minds?

Whales are not a necessary foodstuff. Why doesn’t Greenpeace buy an old russian sub and torpedoe the greedy people who want to do this? Seems an infinitely more civilised use for them than their original purpose. “You want to go whaling? Die then.” Easy.

Its surely time that we boycotted all products form Japan until they start behaving a little less like the savages that they obviously are!

It is not just the Whales. The Japanese are a bestial nation as proved over and over in World War 2. Look at what they did to prisoners and the nations that they occupied.
Their whole creed was that the Japanese nation was superior to all others and therefore could do what they wished.
We stopped that nonsense the last time with two buckets of instant sunshine at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Obviously time for another one - perhaps on Tokio? Or are they going to learn?

Maybe we should start eating Japanese; it could become part of our culture.

Would the Japanese feel that it was okay to hunt them for food? Their numbers have been replenished since 1945.

If the Japs carry on with the hunting of the other two species of whale, gunboats by the international community must be used to sink the whalers. Any deaths of humans is purely by the by.
We have a duty to protect any species under threat.

I wish the slowest and most painful death possible for whalers. ME ME ME is all humans think about. We should be extinct.

Japan is, and always will be a boil on the backside of the earth.
It is a country steeped in brutality, and covered in the blood of the innocent. I cannot understand why we have anything to do with these people. I would rather shake hands with Mugabe.

Maybe seeing as whales are quite big we could start whacking a few torpedoes into Jap fishing boats as I suppose subs look like whales from a distance and they may steer clear of harmless mammals in case they get blown up. Just a thought.

The time has come to make an example “pour encourager les autres”. Target practice the odd torpedo on a whaling ship. Forget the toothless old UN.

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The BBC notes that they’ve rejected 192 comments on this topic as of the time I wrote this post. If this is an indication of what they think is acceptable, one can only wonder about the content of the rejected comments.

“Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation” indeed.

BONUS SECTION!

I offer the following comments here for your entertainment. Some of them might leave you laughing so hard that your navel could boil tea, as the Japanese would say. Note the sheer number of errors regarding easily verifiable facts.

Reading them calls to mind the observation by former American Vice-President Hubert Humphrey: “The right to free speech does not include the right to be taken seriously.”

BEGIN QUOTED TEXT

Our planet is on overheat, rain forests are fading away, acid rains are common, animals are going extinct by handfulls and the Japanese continue hunting down whales like on a picnic.

Save the whales, the planet, yourselves. Use birth control.

What is it with Asians and their culinary fetishes to eat certian species into extinction because it will give them sexual fortitude?

Mankind is so brave that it has to destroy beautiful and harmless creatures who were here a longtime before we were and have more rights to belong on this Planet.
Sometimes I wonder if humans belong here at all.

How would we like it if whales hunted us, and we were powerless to stop?

Has anyone ever tried Sushi made with Spam? Would be a more ‘environmentally friendly’ alternative to whale meat. Prefer to see whales in their natural habitat than used for humankind’s greedy purposes.

Is whaling more dangerous and harmful to earth, than, ” GOLBAL WARRING, GOLBAL WARMING, GENOCIDE IN IRAQ, NEOCOLONIAL THUGGGERY OF REST OF WORLD RESOURCES, UTTER POVERTY, & LIVING IN “STOLEN LANDS, WITH ,LOOTED WEALTH ” OF REST OF “FREE AND CIVILIZED HUMANITY ” IN THE 21ST CENTURY?.
White Neocolonial masters&their mobs are responsible, for all the above harmful effects ,in the WORLD, ever since evil white terrorist colonila thugggery genocide living mobs, drifted out of their slums in europe.

Do whales have large or small brains?
Whales actually have fairly large brains compared to humans. Whether they are large overall depends upon how you look at it. That is, compared to the size of the whale’s body, the whale brain is similar in size ratio to human brain-to-body. Especially the toothed whales whose brains are largely built to process sound. By the way, they have no sense of smell!

Leave the whales alone.
Do not ignore climate change.
Be nice to your neighbour.
Do not drop litter.
Recycle.

I think Japan should be HEAVILY punished for its dishonesty. It disgusts everyone. I think the controled whaling of certain species is great! I use expensive cream made from whale that is not synthesized by any company - because an equivalent formula is not available. Doctors are amazed at how well my skin is doing. I use this cream rarely. Greenpeace is doing a good job hasseling the sneaky whalers. We need controlled whaling. Eat organic beef - hug a cow today. Mostly, be real.

The Japanese claim they ‘have’ to kill whales for ‘research’.
What utter poppycock!
They like to kill these magnificent creatures because they want a gourmet food!
These are the same people who catch sharks, rip off their fins, & throw their (sometimes still living) victims back in the sea to die in helpless agony - and for what? A bowl of SOUP!
Despicable!
And what happens when the whales run out?

I’m not in Japan, but am very surprised at the Japanese…they’re so conscious about life, and health, even to point of not using the term “nuclear” (using isotope, instead), yet would consider slaughtering whales. I’m shocked!

The Japanese don’t study whales, they eat them, to study an animal it has to be alive. Iv’e never studied my dinner.

How can it be justified so Japanese men can have an aphrodisiac?
Give Greenpeace Haproons so they can sink the Whaling boats.

Don’t sperm whales eat giant squid?
If I was a giant squid I’d want all sperm whales wiped out.
By saving sperm whales we are condemning squid to death.
makes you think…..

I highly recommend that all commentators watch Star Trek: The Voyage Home to see the potentially devastating impacts of not having any whales on the Earth….Analysis and reflection: these form the basis of SF and is no different then Shakespeare.

What a lot of drivel on here about the sentience, IQ, free-spirit etc of whales….If they are so clever why do they spend all their time swimming around sucking up plankton? They’ve done nothing in the way of art, literature, science or technology. They just swim around and can’t even breath underwater like fish, they have to keep coming up for air. Stupid animals that belong on my dinner plate. Yum yum!

Most civilized nations revere cetaceans, but a few nations massacre them under the pretense of science. The Japanese revere the crane. What if an Asian nation decided to do “scientific craning” and invaded Japanese airspace to harpoon cranes to satisfy their drooling barbaric instincts?. Japan- clear up your act of continuing sadistic, primitive, caveman-instinct-driven behaviour.

Killing whales could have a positive impact on global warming.

And when the Greenpeace ship reaches the hunting ground, they will be pinging the oceans with their sonar equipments to find out where the humpbacks are. They will ping so hard and so furious that the humpbacks will go berserk. And then some of them humpbacks will commit suicide.

I have committed my life to making the world a better place because of what the country of Japan allows so that their restaurants can serve what they consider a delicacy. Sadly, they often discard most of the whale except the fin. What a shame!

Dogs aren’t even safe over there…they eat them too.
——
Actually, it’s not the Japanese but the Chinese who eat dog meat…

I mean, like, the Japanese live in a really sick society? one that eats whales ? like, every day whales are, like, murdered so that people can eat their filthy raw whales, and, like, society is immune to that, so it’s just a short step to killing people? i like screw you, i’m killing whales today so i’m killing people tomorrow?
i campaigned and gave a flyer to a guy, and i’m like, “hey dude, like boycott Japan?” and he asks if I’m gonna protest in front of halal butchers so i said “you racist”

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“Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.”

- Edward R. Murrow

China credits Japan where credit is due

THIS IS ALMOST A MAN-BITES-DOG STORY: The People’s Daily of China ran this article about a new yen loan agreement with Japan for environmental projects, and it sticks to the truth from beginning to end!

It reports that:

• The loans will help six cities and provinces in central and western China build six projects to reduce air pollution and deal with urban waste.
• The 46.3 billion yen ($US 420 million) loan for FY 2007 will bring the total amount the Japanese government has lent to China since 1979 to 3.316 trillion yen.

(These are de facto war reparations, though the article doesn’t go so far as to admit that.)

• Yen loans are part of Japan’s official development aid, and are used on environmental projects and infrastructure.
• Japan has been reducing its official development aid to China from a peak in 2000/2001 in view of its fast-developing economy.

It’s good to see Japan get credit where credit is due, though the Chinese will of course pitch the propaganda the other way whenever it suits their purposes.

But if the People’s Daily can play it straight every once in a while, why can’t the Western media?

Eat whale and save the planet

“LESS INTELLIGENT WHALE SPECIES are much like sheep and should be sustainably hunted.”

Is that an argument presented by Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research?

No, guess again. It was one of the key points of an essay titled Beautiful Lies written by Australian environmental scientist Tim Flannery and published four years ago.

Said Dr. Flannery:

“My view is that at present the anti-whaling lobby is frustrating the attempt to develop a sustainable industry based on these creatures, and is therefore frustrating good management of marine resources…I think the Japanese are right. They are actually trying to create a sustainable whaling industry.”

In an interview on Australian radio (transcript here), Dr. Flannery stated:

The issue of stopping whaling, for example, now really has no environmental basis. People are investing a lot of time and energy in protecting whales from being harvested for what is almost no environmental return.

Resist the temptation to label Dr. Flannery an oddball. Time Magazine International referred to him as a Hero of the Environment in 2007 in this article written by Peter Garrett, Australia’s new environmental minister. Mr. Garrett, a former singer in the group Midnight Oil, compares him favorably to Al Gore.

Of equal interest is the thinking of those who disagree with him. Here’s the reason one reviewer objected to Dr. Flannery’s argument:

“We need to consider the significant psychological impact on humanity of allowing the killing of such majestic creatures.”

Here’s another:

“The problem for me is we know that whales are intelligent, gentle creatures – and who are we to conduct cranial and virtual IQ tests on them to determine whether they live or die? Far better, for this reader, that they be left in peace to sing their songs of the deeps.”

Those who look askance at the quasi-religious nature of environmentalism can take no comfort from his other views, however. The issue of whaling is one of Dr. Flannery’s few forays into environmentalist apostasy. As you can see from this interview, he is livid about global warming (even though the subject is outside his field of expertise).

Note: I found the link to the first article on Tim Blair’s website and went from there.

Japan to postpone humpback whale catch

CHIEF CABINET SECRETARY NOBUTAKA MACHIMURA announced on the 21st that the government had decided to postpone their planned catch of 50 humpback whales during the current whaling expedition on the condition that the operations of the International Whaling Commission, in which whaling nations and nations opposed to whaling are in conflict, are “normalized”.

The intention to catch humpbacks created such an uproar in Australia and New Zealand that some countries pleaded with the Japanese to call off that part of the hunt. The Australian government planned to shadow the Japanese whaling fleet to film the operation for a possible legal challenge.

Mr. Machimura’s comments are worth noting. He said, “We didn’t give any consideration to Australia in particular, but hope this will result in improved relations…Some Australians cherish the humpback whales and give them names. Those sentiments are a little difficult for me to understand.”

One wonders what he would say about Sea Shepherd, which considers whaling to be cannibalism. That radical eco-group will still try to interfere with the expedition, regardless of the Japanese decision.

China at Bali

EARLIER THIS YEAR, pollution drifting over from China caused alerts in Northern Kyushu. Some Chinese rivers run black, with the sludge floating up on the shores of Taiwan and South Korea. The country spews mercury into the atmosphere, which winds up as far away as Massachusetts. Polluted water causes 750,000 premature deaths annually. And they ditched their Green GDP index when the results showed some regions posting negative growth.

Nevertheless, as Gordon Chang writes in Contentions, the blog for Commentary magazine, China is doing some world-class lecturing at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali.

“I just wonder whether it’s fair to ask developing countries like China to take on binding targets,” said Su Wei, a member of Beijing’s delegation, referring to mandatory caps on emissions of greenhouse gases. “I think there is much room for the United States to think whether it’s possible to change lifestyle and consumption patterns in order to contribute to the protection of the global climate.”

There should be no question by now that the Chinese are causing the world more harm than good. They never pass up the chance to pass up a chance to be cooperative. How are other countries to deal with behavior of this sort? This question is particularly pressing in northeast Asia.

Some might think it a short-circuit in logic to jump from environmental intransigence to weaponry, but the only way to protect oneself from people–or nations–such as this is to arm oneself with a big stick, just in case.

The time might not be far off when Japan concludes that the United States is an inconstant ally, and that the Chinese are an unstable and unpredictable neighbor whose immensity and endemic ethnocentrism mean that it will always insist on having its own way. There is no point in holding discussions with people who talk like Mr. Su.

And the biggest stick around is nuclear weapons.

How else to keep the Chinese at bay?

Note: Sorry for the blog-style posts, but translation work is still keeping me busy.

Meet Jolly Roger

WE’VE MENTIONED SEA SHEPHERD HEAD Paul Watson and his group’s efforts to stop Japanese whaling several times before. Kyodo is running a profile on him here.

“Put simply, there is no difference between opposing Japanese whaling and opposing people who are poaching elephants for ivory or robbing a bank,” he said.
Watson sees his adventures in the Southern Ocean not as a protest action, but as an “intervention” against what he calls a “highly criminal operation.”

How interesting that Kyodo refers to Watson’s actions as “adventures”. The Japanese call them terrorism. Last year, Greenpeace and the Australian and New Zealand governments refused to have anything to do with him. Quite the adventurer.

People say you can’t tell a book by looking at the cover. I’m not too sure about that one; I’ve always thought that people can–and do–tell a lot by looking at the cover.

The article includes a photo of Watson. See what you think.

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!