Who stands up to the whale killers?

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The Cove speaks about dolphins and the horrific things we do to them for our selfish ends. But it is not just the dolphins or bluefin tuna.

And now once again we are in the vast and remote Southern Oceans in search of the elusive whale killing fleet from Japan. How will we find them? The Australian government knows where they are but they’re not talking for fear of offending Japan. The United States Department of Naval Intelligence is monitoring our movements and relaying those movements to the Japanese whalers. The Japanese whalers have the full support of their government and military to track our movements. Even my old alma mater Greenpeace is not being cooperative but then again Bob Hunter and all my old shipmates who were once at the Greenpeace helm are regrettably no longer there.

From The Art of Finding Whalers, Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

Sometimes uncomfortable messages need to be delivered creatively to get people thinking. The music video for the Modest Mouse song, “King Rat“, directed by the late Heath Ledger, is one such creative message. It is fascinating. Allegory brought to its perverse ultimate outcome. What is its link to whale killing? Simply this: It sums up the situation for the whales well, and is factually fiction.

Just as disturbing: Is “Pink Gold” Coming To Your Local Grocery Store Soon?

Bad news abound for the whales: Japan is the leader of the whale killing pack. Iceland, which restarted its whale slaughtering pogrom 2006, then halted it in 2007, has resumed killing whale killing in 2008. Denmark has always maintained its annual pilot whale slaughter in the Faeroe Islands, Norway has been actively killing whales, like Japan. And padawan of the Japanese whale killers:  St. Lucia, St. Vincent & The Grenadines

MORE REFERENCE

– Save the whales at sea, too

– Most dolphin slaughter/capture (for aquariums and whatnots) is thought to occur in a tiny village called Taiji. Here’s links by credible and respected outfits on it:
– http://www.seashepherd.org/dolphins/sea-shepherd-in-taiji.html
– http://www.savejapandolphins.org/
– http://www.wdcs.org/stop/captivity/index.php

For ref, click here for a recent article about the link between the dolphin massacre in Japan and Swim-with-Dolphins programs in the UK.

Sadly: a fresh dolphin massacre, not in Japan, but the coasts of a country on the other side of the world, touristy Brazil

I believe the future IRs of Singapore will weigh in with their own contributions to the dolphin murders too, given their grand plans for marine-themes. And I’m certainly not happy about that.

As for eating dolphin, or eating dolphin-disguised-as-whale, click here for some facts about mercury poisoning in dolphin meat.

Regarding the oft-cited excuse that it is tradition, it’s just so much bullshit:
– http://www.seashepherd.org/editorials/editorial_060627_1.html
– local article: http://calsifer.wordpress.com/2006/06/24/today-20060624-scientific-study-my-fish/

Up-to-date whaling news can be found here. Out of that, worth a  highlight are articles related to the IWC meeting last year and this.

The gist is that Japan is buying votes on the IWC council to make it legal to commercially kill whales again. In this, it is not alone – Norway and Iceland hold up the other two axes of whale murders. Japan buys out countries like Grenada, Fiji, Carribean nations to vote with it. Holiday destinations. Japan has achieved several coup-d’tat:eg land-locked desertland, Mongolia has joined the party on Japsn’s side. To say that is very disturbing is understating the gravity of the situation.

For a list of IWC member nations, which really does comprise a few surprises, and the breakdown of the votes, view this: http://www.seashepherd.org/news/media_060619_1.html

The next time people go diving, snorkelling or just hoilday in hot tourist spots, I really hope they’ll give some thought to where their tourist goes… and to send letters to trade/tour reps of Japan’s whaling-cronies and tell them exactly why these countries aren’t getting their tourist dollars while they vote with Japan on its whale murder agenda. Jut as Belize, Japanese voting crony, was reined in by a conscientious pillar of the local society in 2006. There are friends, and then there are friends.

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