Nah. It sounds just smart enough to be directed at your petulant attempt at a hijack.
If you do not choose to discuss a topic, don’t post to it. If you are only going to post to a thread to complain that other posters should not express opinions, then stay out of it or take it to the BBQ Pit.
Wow. Just, wow. I don’t believe that I could ever possibly have a meaningful conversation with someone whose world view considers whales and human babies to be equivalent, in whatever sense you meant that. You and I live on different planets.
I might support them if they were simply honest and not hypocritical.
I have zero respect for Paul Bethune because he knowingly put his boat in harms way, and then whined that it was fair that it get harmed.
If he had stood up and said, “I risked my beloved boat for a cause that I deeply believe in, and lost it. No one is responsible for that but myself. I still believe in the cause and will come back to fight for it another day,” then I would respect him.
But instead of being mature enough to admit that he and he alone was responsible for the loss of his boat, he turned into a little child and blamed it on the other guy.
Same for the other Shepherds. If, when the Japanese fight back, they took it like adults who had knowingly run a risk, I might be able to respect them. But with them there’s always whining that the Japanese don’t play by the Shepherds made-up “rules”.
I’m falling behind a bit, but I feel compelled to repeat this from my OP:
Look, the guy said it himself, in so many words: He was looking for a fight. He wasn’t looking to lose, so when he lost he whined. What, he didn’t realize going in that the Japanese boat outweighed his by twenty times?
The guy asked for a fight, and he got it. If you’re not prepared to lose, don’t start the fight.
As for snipers vs. ramming, no one – not even you – can say for sure that it was the intent of the Japanese captain to ram the Ady Gil. It is quite possible that he meant to just get close, but either miscalculated or didn’t have the control of a large ship on a pitching sea that he thought. In any case, unless and until you can say with certainty that the captain had the intent of ramming, comparing what happened to using snipers is just disingenuous.
Morality is relative. The SS obvioously thinks whaling is immoral. They should do what they need to do to stop it, but above all, they should be effective.
[quote=“Muffin, post:113, topic:546987”]
Ah, so you agree that those who oppose gays, abortions, other things you might agree with that are morality based, should do what they need to do to stop it, too, huh?
Shouldn’t they first and foremost have objective, fact-based reasons as to why they think said act is immoral? And shouldn’t they above all be using rational, legal means?
Otherwise it sounds like you’re just saying, ‘if someone believes something is immoral, it doesn’t matter what they do if they’re effective in tring to stop it’.
That would seem to be condoning the murder of abortion doctors. Or killing people that perform gay marriages. You see where this ends up, right?
Yes, I live on a planet where people actually try to understand other peoples arguments. You don’t.
Anyone that equates a marine mammal to a human baby…well, let’s just say I wouldn’t spend much time trying to convince Teh Crazy of anything. Clearly a waste of time.
I understand being passionate about something, but if you’re equating whales to human babies, you have far deeper issues you should be worried about.
It’s an established fact that the only cats = human babies. 
The whole sea kitten thing was just a ploy.
I didn’t hijack, and I didn’t post just to “complain that other posters should not express opinions.” In fact, I posted to ask why WaM is not satisfied with JUST expressing his opinion. Instead of doing that, he has to attempt to elevate his opinion into what is OK and not OK on some grand cosmic scale. By doing that he is implicitly and necessarily saying that discussing whether something is OK or not OK has meaning and is different than discussing whether WaM likes it or not. That is the point I was contending with.
What research are they doing? Cite one paper or even one news story that shows that they are actually conducting research.
Specifically, the Japanese run the Institute of Cetacean Research, which under JARPA IIis permitted to kill whales in the sanctuary for research purposes, and which submits its findingsto the IWC Scientific Committee. For example:
Now my uneducated opinion is that the “research” program is simply a mechanism that permits what in reality is commercial whaling, for I really don’t grok how the research must be based on killing whales. Perhaps killing them is necessary. Perhaps it is not. I think not, but I am uneducated so my opinion is worthless. The fact remains, however, that for better or worse, the Japanese do have a research program, and through that research program they are permitted to go a whaling in the sanctuary.
What the Japanese are doing is entirely legal according to the International Whaling Commission and the sanctuary’s host nation Australia. When Watson and Bethune attack the Japanese whalers in the sanctuary, it is because they very much oppose what the Japanese are doing, but it is not because what the Japanese are doing is illegal. In that sense, the Sea Shepherds, who fly a pirate flag, who have sunk about ten ships, and who in the matter at hand tried to disable the propellors of a Japanese whaler with the intent of preventing the whaler from continuing its entirely legal voyage and continuing its entirely legal whaling, are pirates plain and simple. Pirates with a noble cause, but pirates none the less. Eco-terrorists, if you ask me.
If you are going to intentionally misunderstand why even bother posting at all? I don’t get it. Either argue in good faith or fuck off, those are words to live by.
Is that kosher in GD? Anyway…let’s look at what you said, shall we?
Bolding mine. Instead of thinking that whales should be considered a commodity like bananas or cell phones, you think whales = babies.
And I said: I understand being passionate about something. But I can not see how anyone can have a rational argument with someone who is going to equate a marine mammal with a human baby.
Two people have commented that your stance seems a bit of a stretch. Rather than actually have a debate, you’ve taken the crybaby ‘waah, you just don’t understand, so go away’ approach. ‘Argue in good faith’, my ass. Your stance seems a bit odd in a debate forum.
Are you going to come back with an actual argument as to why we should do as you do and equate marine animals with human babies? Or are you only capable of behaving like an adolescent potty-mouth having a temper tantrum?
I don’t think there was an intentional misunderstanding though you seem to have some difficulty understanding your own post.
Maybe you didn’t mean to do so. Perhaps you just intended to show folks on this board how you and many others feel about the issue but to a lot of us we just see that you equated the harpooning of whales with the harpooning of children. I know how I feel about harpooning children and there’s no way I’ll agree to the practice even though the little bastards are hardly endangered. I figure you must be the same way regarding the harpooning of whales because you equate them to children. So you’re never ever going to agree to permitting the harvest of even a single whale.
Therein lies a problem. The IWC is dominated by countries that just don’t like whaling on general principles never mind whether or not the whale in question is endangered. So the Japanese simply exploit a loophole in the rules that allows them to harvest a certain number of whales.
I do find it interesting that most of the anti-whaling propaganda I’ve heard over the past decade has been directed at the Japanese with very little criticism of other groups engaged in similar practices. The only exception I can think of from memory is when a Native American tribe on the western coast of the United States started whaling again.
I’d also note that Japan doesn’t even need to go through the whole ‘research’ mumbo-jumbo. All they need to so is object to the IWC, and the moratorium wouldn’t apply to it. At all. This is exactly what Norway has done.
Remember, Japan originally objected to the ban in 1982, only to be arm-twisted by the US to withdraw the objection: The US said that if Japan would agree to end whaling, the US would not cut Japan’s fishing quotas in US waters. Japan agreed - the fishing quotes were worth far, far more to Japan than whaling - and Japan withdrew its objection to the IWC ban in 1986…only to watch the US promptly cut its fishing quotas, from 900,000 tons in 1985 to zero by 1988.
Japan could also just leave the IWC - it’s not like membership is mandatory; heck you don’t even need to have a navy to be a member, unless there are some unknown oceans with whales in them around Switzerland or the Czech Republic. Canada and Indonesia are not members, and hunt whales with complete impunity from the IWC ban.
Japan is negotiating for controlled whaling with quotas for species which most people agree are not endangered. They provide some research, which seems to be of at least some use - apparently even the IWC has based some of its data on Japan’s research program. I also find it odd that Japan seems to get singled out by the SS nutjobs. It simply leaves them open to claims of blatent Euro-centric racism.
I am not arguing that whales are the same as babies. I am trying to help people understand how environmentalists (like myself) feel about it.
In this thread people compare whales to commodities and products. If you do that you will never be able to successfully communicate with anyone who doesn’t have the same emotional relationship to whales as you do.
In order to give you and understanding of the emotional value of it I asked you to imagine whales being babies rather than commodities, because even if you’re not emotionally connected to whales you probably are to babies. That is not hard to understand if you actually want to understand, I think. And if you don’t want to understand how the other side feels, that’s fine but it will also result in a lack of reciprocation.
If you don’t want to know how I feel, I don’t want to know how you feel. If you want to know how I feel, I want to know how you feel.
Didn’t the SS address in one episode why they go after the Japanese and not the Norwegians? IIRC someone said that the Norwegians and other countries mostly hunt whales in their own waters, or in nearby international waters, as opposed to a whale sanctuary. Attacking a Norwegian whaling ship in Norwegian waters would be something that even an idiot like Paul Watson would think twice about doing. But the Australian claim to the Antarctic waters and the whale sanctuary at least gives SS a legal argument, although admittedly a tenuous one, to make.
We understand fully well that you equate whales with babies.
What we’re asking for is some sort of rational argument as to why we should equate a marine mammal with a human baby.
I neither need nor desire to successfully communicate or debate with someone who is holding a completely irrational point of view. Your job is to convince us that your view is rational.