What? You want us to have a cow over whales?
Jakamo-feeno-na-na-nay. . .
Best pun thread ever
I keep reading reading the title of this thread as “some of your money is going towards whining.” I have no strong opinion on whaling, but I strongly object to government subsidies of the whining industry.
So if they don’t eat very much, we’re not talking about a lot of dead whales either are we?
Tell us how you really feel? If you point is that Japanese culture seems somewhat twisted and pedophilic, well its hard to argue otherwise. If your point is that the Japanese caused a mountain of suffering in Asia during their imperial phase, well its hard to argue otherwise. But to be fair most of the Japanese alive today have never engaged in genocide and if the cost of that is a twisted sexuality that encourages middle aged women to dress up as school girls, well its a small price to pay, no?
Actually from what I have read, they stockpile the whales because no-one wants to eat them. Supposedly the Japanese government subsidies the capture of the whales to the tune of some $33000US each just so that they can look at the rest of the world and thumb their noses at them.
This thread is fun for the puns though 
Where did you read that?
While I have no particular dislike of the Japanese whaling culture any more than I do of the Canadian, U. S., Greenlandic, Faroese, Icelandic, Indonesian, Norse, Russian, and Bequian cultures that also still hunt whales, if they’re wasting the harvest, I could think about it again.
I agree. I disagree that recompense (Anaximander?) shouldn’t be paid to the lords of the sea.
Ditto honk American yanquis about whom I hope destruction from above, in person of Donald Pleasance as a mad sleeper activator. Genocidal much? Yeah, against my own “kind.” Germans, English, Axis, on one side, strong Irish, Jew, and French take arms. Vahn vill eet shtupp?
That’s about $15 million US per year. Big deal. That’s less than 0.04% of the total budget of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. And gov’t subsidies make up less than 10% of the cost of the whaling operation, which is more than you can say about rice farmers.
What’s all this wailing about, anyway? Americans and Japanese are like two peas in a pod.
Friend, Japan and South Korea will be the last two countries on the planet to actually understand the concept of bad publicity caused by their own actions. On the other hand, they are pretty quick to take offense at portrayals by other countries’ media which show the aforementioned two clueless countries in a bad light. Never mind said media simply report the “pr gems.”
Case in point: every year the Japanese prime minister goes and bows to the souls of major war criminals and yet Japan still hasn’t figured out that it’s not the rest of the world doing something wrong when the rest of the world reacts negatively.
Actually, I’m pretty sure the last PM to visit Yasukuni was Koizumi. So it’s been 6 years or so.
About Bequia’s so called whaling culture, if you read up on it, it only started about a 100 years ago when a white guy from the US set up a whaling plant in Bequia. That’s not culture IMO.
Edited to add, I can’t remember where I read the figure per whale though.
Culture doesn’t have to be ancient. Something that’s existed as long as nearly everyone who’s currently alive can remember probably qualifies. Something that was started 100 years ago can legitimately produce people who can say: “my father was a whaler, my grandfather was a whaler, and my great-grandfather was a whaler”. Hell, I don’t even know my ancestors’ names further back than that.
I mean, look at all the shit-stirring in the US over cultural ideals that really only date back to the 1950s.
That’s not to say that the cultural argument should prevail. But you can’t just dismiss it because it’s not as old as you want it to be.
And they’re not specifically “bowing to the souls of major war criminals”. They’re bowing to the souls of the Japanese war dead, some of whom are major war criminals.
No it’s about boners 
LOL. Just kidding. Personally I don’t believe that something just over 100 years old can be considered ‘indigenous’ culture but that’s just me. YMMV. There was a lot of whaling done in the Caribbean including Trinidad and Tobago where I live now yet they don’t claim an indigenous right to harvest whales.