Their culture included eating prisoners of war during WWII.
Do you recall President Bush vomiting at a Japanese state dinner?
Some of his fellow aircraft crew were captured and eaten.
That’s a good example of the kind of “opinion” that drives the Japanese to reject and fight against all Western interference. Surely you don’t expect them to be sympathetic to your argument against whaling after saying something like that?
Sociopath or results? I’ll admit Paul Watson is entirely single minded in his pursuit of his ideals and doesn’t seem to care what anyone including other environmentalists think, he may or may not a sociopath.
As for results, you can’t argue with them. They have a solid track record of disrupting the activities of the Japanese whaling fleet in the antarctic whaling sanctuary. Their goal is to make whaling unprofitable by forcing the fleet to spend time chasing them away instead of catching whales. And they succeed, almost every year in forcing the Japanese fleet to catch less than their quota, often a lot less.
Don’t you understand that the Japanese whaling program isn’t about profit? It’s a government-funded propaganda program. The more attention they get from the likes of Sea Shepherd, the stronger the Japanese resolve to continue whaling.
It doesn’t matter about their resolve, it’s a battle they are going to lose eventually, whether its from the Sea Shepherds or other action by the international community. Let’s face it facing a resurgent and expansionist China, Japan has other issues of national pride to worry about (eg the Senkoku Islands). Sooner or later the government will realise that they can spend their money in more effective ways than a whaling program which captures whale meat that almost no one wants to eat. Do you really think younger Japanese under 60 care that much if they continue to whale or not?
By 2025 Japan will have stopped whaling, probably before then.
Which makes them more determined to resist any foreign pressure.
The whaling program is costing about $15 million a year. That’s less than 0.05% of their annual military spending.
Many do care about not capitulating to foreign pressure. I’m a 1-st generation Japanese-American in my 40s and I’m sympathetic to that point of view.
Perhaps. But not because of foreign pressure.
Fine, well it’s a matter of national pride for Australia / NZ to stop Japan whaling in what we see as “our part of the globe”, namely the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary:
Sea Shepherds have strong support in Australia and NZ by the broader community, and we’re stubborn bastards and aren’t going to back down either. Eg one of our members of parliament Bob Brown (Green party) took on coordinating the Sea Shepherds activities against the Japanese whaling fleet each year when Paul Watson had to step down because of legal action.
Since when do what amounts to eco terrorists speak for Australia or NZ?
Terrorists that have never injured anyone in 30+ years of operations? Sorry Terrorist does not mean “people you disagree with”. Here’s some polls:
94% of Australians oppose japanese whaling in the southern ocean sanctuary. 80 percent believe the government is not doing enough to stop japanese whaling.
http://www.seashepherd.it/news-and-media/news-100115-1.html
76% of Australians wanted the government to send a customs ship to monitor Japanese whaling.
The Sea shepherds office locations are public records, their ships operate freely from Australian and NZ ports. Hardly the mark of “terrorists”.
I have issues with the disengenuity of the Japanese industry, and with people claiming it’s an ancient Japanese tradition (not down in our southern hemisphere it’s not!) but on the flip side, whales eat tons of fish. I don’t mean a lot, I mean tons. And we (collectively) are fishing out the seas and eating the whales’ lunch. Kill one whale - save tons of fish. I can’t get too worked up about the whole thing.
Coda: Just checking now, it seems antarctic Minke feed mainly on krill, so in this case the saving fish argument might not apply to such a great extent.
Yep, the “tradition” of whaling by japan in the southern ocean dates back to the 1930’s. Traditional Japanese whaling was of course limited to coastal waters of Japan and had already declined by the 1870s. Read this and then decide if the current activities of the Japanese whaling fleet are “traditional” or not.
Why doesn’t Japan instead go whaling in arctic waters nearer to them? (hint Russia)
While not exactly a big fan of Japanese whaling activities, I am much less a fan of people who believe it is their right to force someone else to live according to their rules. To me the actions of the sea sheperds are in no way different from those of activists who set fire to SUVs, because of the pollution they cause. People who believe they are so much in the right that nothing they do can ever be wrong give me the creeps. The word for that is fanatic.
You mean police, magistrates and politicians? The sea shepherds aren’t forcing anyone to live by their rules, they are attempting to protect the lives of whales in an area the international community has declared is the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Similarly they do other actions against poachers in other parts of the world.
Yes they are fanatical in their defence of diversity in the worlds oceans, and I think thats a good thing. And, 30+ years, no injuries caused by them.
Police, magistrates and politicians possess an authority that is (at least in democratic states) derived from the consent of those they exert their authority over. They are bound by law and the law also limits the means they can use to exert their authority.
The Sea Sheperds have appointed themselves the police of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary - the IWC who established the sanctuary did not. The fact that public opinion in Australia and New Zealand (and pretty much nowhere else) likes to view the Sheperds as some kind of vigilante heroes does not provide them with any kind of legitimate authority.
As for your frequently repeated observation that the Sheperds have never injured a person: Neither have the ELF extremists when they went on torching SUVs nor the fanatics in Europe who burnt down houses scheduled become shelters for asylum seekers. Like all fanatics they pursue a cause that they feel strongly about to the exclusion of reason. Fanaticism is never a good thing - it prevents people from questioning their own actions, and that is something everyone should be ready to do.
Yes, those people who form the backbone of modern civilised societies and were either elected to their positions or are accountable to other people all with the same goal - ultimately making sure society doesn’t end up looking like Mad Max or Fallout (I’m deliberately being hyperbolic here, before you try and accuse me of linking a world in which people try and stop whaling off their own bat, and the post-nuclear wastelands of those popular fictional universes).
If the International Community was so concerned about the whales living in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, there’d be some sort of Joint International Naval Taskforce derping around down there with live rounds ready to make an example of people who want to catch whales there. Last time I checked, there wasn’t, so yeah, I think opposition to whaling is one of those issues where most people probably think killing whales on a commercial scale is bad, but not quite bad enough to warrant official involvement by a country’s navy. So what gives Sea Shepherd the right to go and be nautical vigilantes? Just because you believe passionately in a cause doesn’t make it automatically right to take matters into your own hands if you think the people in charge don’t care enough about it to do what you want them to be doing.
There hasn’t been a cruise liner sink at sea for decades yet the ships still carry lifeboats just in case, because sailing on the ocean is inherently dangerous. Just because no-one’s been injured yet doesn’t mean what Sea Shepherd does isn’t dangerous or without potentially deadly consequences.
My personal thoughts on the matter, as I’ve said before, is that I really don’t care if the Japanese are killing whales which aren’t endangered for [del]food[/del] “scientific research”. Nothing to do with me or anyone I know and none of our lives as individuals are collectively impacted by it, IMO. Given a choice I’d prefer they didn’t do it on such a large scale and for such a patently transparent reason, but like I said earlier, the Japanese don’t go around lecturing us on our eating of cow or pig or rabbit or duck, so why is it our place to tell them not to eat whale?
As has been mentioned before, the current situation with people like Sea Shepherd causing trouble is it means the Japanese can’t withdraw from whaling without losing face - "And we would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling [del]kids[/del] barbarian Westerners!. I honestly think the best thing Sea Shepherd can do is give up and go home.
Whaling isn’t economically viable for the Japanese and once everyone stops bothering them about it, it’ll quietly be discontinued for reasons that suit the Japanese and can make it sound like they’re doing it because they want to, not because the roundeyes ganged up on them as part of some possibly vaguely racist plot to bring shame to Japan or something.
What gives them the right is exactly the fact that they have a broad enough support base in Australia / NZ to keep them going financially and second they have good enough lawyers that so far have meant they haven’t had legal trouble big enough to shut them down. Obviously Australia / NZ could shut them down by refusing to let their ships dock to resupply. In actual fact what has happened on multiple occasions is that the Australian Air Force has unofficially told the Sea Shepherds where the Japanese Whaling Fleet is. (Source have friends that have done six month stints on Sea Shepherd boats).
The Australian public overwhelmingly doesn’t want the Japanese whaling in “our backyard” so why should you be surprised that the Sea Shepherds get support here?
That sounds like the same sort of legitimacy the Russians used to annex Crimea. “It’s legitimate, because our own populace supports it, and because we can. International law go to hell.”
That’s the ability, not the right. Different concepts.
I would suggest - leaving aside your cites from (let’s be fair here) less than impartial sources - that the Australian public overwhelmingly would prefer it if the Japanese didn’t go whaling in our backyard - not “Are overwhelmingly and vociferously opposed to it and sanction Sea Shepherd to go and foul their ships’ propellers and engage in other assorted shenanigans of a similar ilk”.
I wonder if their time would be better spent protesting in front of the Toyota dealership. Perhaps whaling would cease if it cost the economy. But I doubt that most people feel strongly enough about it to not buy cool cars.