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UN Court: Japanese Whaling "Not Scientific"
First time accepted submitter Nodsnarb (2851527) writes "The UN's international Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that Japan's Antarctic whaling program is not for scientific purposes. In a statement, the court said that Japan's programme involved activities which 'can broadly be characterised as scientific research.' However, it said that 'the evidence does not establish that the programme's design and implementation are reasonable in relation to achieving its stated objectives.' It added: 'The court concludes that the special permits granted by Japan for the killing, taking and treating of whales in connection with JARPA II are not 'for purposes of scientific research' pursuant to [the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling].'"
How will the UN enforce this? This is nothing more than a symbolic gesture as I don't think sanctions are likely to hurt Japan all that much.
Guess I will have to just rely of Norway for my whale meat supply. It is rather tasty.
As opposed to those other countries, that haven't invented 'using euphemisms to evade established law' yet?
I'll be right back, the illegal enemy combatants in administrative detention are causing trouble again.
Australia had sued Japan at the U.N.’s highest court for resolving disputes between nations
Hold the phone--you mean there are ways to solve disputes between nations that *don't* involve firing artillery, invasion or threatening sanctions? Has anyone told North Korea, South Korea, Russia, Ukraine or the United States?
... tuna is actually more endangered than the minke whales Japan catch. Australia is a large producer of tuna. "Whale doesn't even taste good" is a common anti-whaling statement, yet neither does tuna. But Japan like tuna, so they won't protest it.
I've tasted whale, it isn't tasty.
Apparently most younger Japanese aren't much into it themselves either, and the "tradition" isn't, really. From this report:-
For [Mitoshi Noguchi] there is nothing wrong with eating whale, it reminds him of school lunch.
"When we were growing up we didn't have ample supply of food, so this was meat for us, our protein," he says. "So when we eat it now it's very reminiscent. It's delicious."
Mr Noguchi is in late middle age, but on the same table is one of his much younger colleagues, Yoshitaka Takayanagi, born after the meat was phased out in Japanese schools. Few Japanese eat whale regularly these days, especially the young, and he has only eaten it twice before.
This covers the phenomenon in general in more depth:-
So why does Japan exert so much diplomatic effort on this issue? The official line is that whaling is an integral part of Japanese culture, a practice dating back hundreds of years.
That isn't quite true. A few coastal communities, like Wakayama, have been hunting whales for centuries, traditionally with hand-held harpoons.
But the rest of Japan only became familiar with eating whale during the 20th Century, as modern ships with harpoon-guns became available. Whale meat was especially widespread in the difficult years after the Second World War, when it was seen as a cheap source of protein.
But as incomes rose, people switched to imported beef, or fish like tuna and salmon. With such an abundance of high-quality protein available these days, few Japanese see the point in eating whale, which doesn't taste that special.
There are other reasons for Japan's determined campaign.
"If the current ban on hunting whales is allowed to become permanent," says Hideki Moronuki, at the Fisheries Agency, the government department leading the campaign, "activists may direct their efforts to restricting other types of fishing."
As Japan consumes more fish than any other nation, it worries about possible curbs on its fishing activities in open seas for species like tuna.
Officials also like to claim that whales damage fish stocks because of the quantities they eat, although this is largely dismissed by scientists in the rest of the world.
But perhaps the biggest factor is resentment of being told by other countries what Japan can and cannot do.
"Why do people in the west make such a big deal about our very limited hunting of whales?" asks Hideki Moronuki.
"How would they feel if we told Americans they couldn't hunt deer, or if we told Australians to stop hunting kangaroos?"
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In the mean time, Japan - a country notoriously obsessed with cleanliness and purity - is eating discarded remains of scientific experiments.
There is not and never was any science involved. This was a fig leaf to protect commercial interests, nothing more. These were obviously fishing vessels for commercial purposes and everyone has known that from day one.
Actually that's a red herring with zero relevance to the subject of whaling. Siberian tigers are even more rare than tuna, so Japan should be able to haul in as many bluefins as they can catch. Or something.
Stop framing this as being about animal cruelty/cute animals shouldn't be killed.
Japan fights the whale ban not because they actually like whale, but as an issue of food security. Japan is an island nation with limited amounts of land. They want the assurance of knowing that, if for some reason they cannot rely on meat imports, they have an alternative. Australia has an incentive to prevent whaling, since it is a major exporter of beef to Japan.
If you really want to protect whales, drop the scientific catch requirements, give Japan a very limited harvesting quota, enforce it, and be done with the charade. This reduces the possibility of Japan giving the rest of the world the finger and hunting whales indiscriminately, as Norway already does.
You missed (or deliberately ignored, or agree with) the central untruth that made that concept suspect: Is dressing your soldiers up as civilians in voilation of the Geneva convention, and do such soldiers forfeit assorted protections afforded uniformed forces Yes. So far, so good.
If somebody isn't a soldier and commits a crime in civilian cloths (as civilians are wont to do), can you argue that he violated the Geneva convention? Hardly, it only applies to soldiers.
That is the big lie of 'illegal enemy combatants'. Had the State of Terrorstan actually sent disguised soliders in, the illegality of their activity under the Convention would be cut and dry. No such state exists. Instead, the US decided to apply the standards of the Geneva Convention (selectively) to certain non-state actors who, being non-state, didn't act in uniform, in order to keep them in limbo between the protections afforded civilians and the protections afforded regular soldiers.
I'm well aware that the Geneva Convention takes a dim view of spy types; but it is wholly orthogonal to the treatment of civilian criminals, no matter how noxious.