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Japan Announces Withdrawal From International Whaling Commission, To Resume Commercial Whaling (straitstimes.com)
Japan is withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and will resume commercial whaling next year, a government spokesman said on Wednesday, in a move expected to spark international criticism. From a report: "We have decided to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission in order to resume commercial whaling in July next year," top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters. "Commercial whaling to be resumed from July next year will be limited to Japan's territorial waters and exclusive economic zones. We will not hunt in the Antarctic waters or in the southern hemisphere," Mr Suga added.
The announcement had been widely expected and comes after Japan failed in a bid earlier this year to convince the IWC to allow it to resume commercial whaling. Tokyo has repeatedly threatened to pull out of the body and has been regularly criticised for catching hundreds of whales a year for "scientific research" despite being a signatory to a moratorium on hunting the animals. Mr Suga said Japan would officially inform the IWC of its decision by the end of the year, which will mean the withdrawal comes into effect by June 30. Leaving the IWC means Japanese whalers will be able to resume the hunting in Japanese coastal waters of minke and other whales currently protected by the commission. But Japan will not be able to continue the so-called scientific research hunts in the Antarctic that has been exceptionally allowed as an IWC member under the Antarctic Treaty.
The announcement had been widely expected and comes after Japan failed in a bid earlier this year to convince the IWC to allow it to resume commercial whaling. Tokyo has repeatedly threatened to pull out of the body and has been regularly criticised for catching hundreds of whales a year for "scientific research" despite being a signatory to a moratorium on hunting the animals. Mr Suga said Japan would officially inform the IWC of its decision by the end of the year, which will mean the withdrawal comes into effect by June 30. Leaving the IWC means Japanese whalers will be able to resume the hunting in Japanese coastal waters of minke and other whales currently protected by the commission. But Japan will not be able to continue the so-called scientific research hunts in the Antarctic that has been exceptionally allowed as an IWC member under the Antarctic Treaty.
Don't let yourselves be burdened by the know-nothing western leftards.
Time to nuke them from, Again.
Reap what u sow BITCH....
[($)]
SINK THEM.
Like withdrawal from the league of nations on 1933.
I predict a tsunami...
[($)]
The UK does not hunt whales. Why can't you copy that, too?
It is good at least Japan will stop hunting in the Southern Ocean. Go back to your own hemisphere.
I didn't know that the "scientific" hunts can only be done under the IWC. I don't like whaling but if Japan keeps to its own waters, hopefully the whales might learn (if possible) and move away from there.
I just need to figure out why. *turns on CNN*
Pull the 2020 olympics!
As long as it is only in Japanese territory their choice but how long they take to put the whale down should be taken into account, a cruel extended death should be banned and any method should require pretty much instant death for the whale. Not that I would eat whale or promote it's killing but prevention of cruelty to animals laws should apply.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
oh wait this has nothing to do with orangeman...
Whalehunters do give money to Japanese politicians. Lots of money.
Japanese politics is all about money.
If this has a negative impact on the 2020 Olympics, then whaling will be banned just as quickly.
Ah yes "research" whales that just happen to end up in the fish markets.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Whales shouldnâ(TM)t be hunted for food at all. They are nearly extinct.
If Japan starts whaling, so will all of east and south east Asia, and you can kiss whales goodbye.
https://youtu.be/4u_G8L-BIHU
Animals hunted and used everywhere around the world. Species are going extinct all around the world. I don’t know why people act outraged when the cute or glamorous ones are the victims. So if we’re gonna be outraged about this, we should just probably stop destroying the planet in the 1000 other ways. “They” always claim we’ll slow down economic progress, disrupt economies, etc, but somehow they’re perfectly fine with automation, globalization and Walmart ruining your hometown, by saying new jobs and economies will develop. So, by the same logic, if we eliminated environmental destruction and animal exploitation, we’d have new earth friendlier economies emerge.
"This research is delicious!"
Japan has a strange obsession with whale meat.
Table-ized A.I.
What is the difference between hunting whales and all the other animals we eat (besides tastiness level but that's opinion based)? Never understood why this is an issue or why it keeps coming up. Could you imagine if there was a Muslim community pressuring the world not to eat pig and being able fine those that do? Or a Hindu one for cow? Wouldn't go over well. So they just don't eat it and stay out of our dietary business. Why are whales an exception? I have had whale bacon, whale curry, and whale steak just to try it (and piss off hippies) but honestly wasn't a fan. That being said, there are clearly people that do like it and a market so to each their own.
Itâ(TM)ll mostly be electronics (no more Sony) and that means when itâ(TM)s new car time in a few years itâ(TM)s not going to be a Honda or Toyota...
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Except that won't be an effective boycot. Not all Hondas and Toyotas are made in Japan, and the ones made in the US, Canada and Mexico probably use a lot of NAFTA parts. Also, non-Japanese cars are still full of all kinds of Japanese parts-- headlights, air bags, stereos etc.
WindBourne, tell us how it's China's fault.
the Japanese people need to stand up and be counted...
is this acceptable for the government of japan to deplete stocks and allow China to take the moral high ground ?
Like invading China, death marching women and children, and raping Koreans.
Japanese politics is all about money.
What a strange thing to say - and American (or any democratic / capitalist) politics isn't about money?!
There's probably no other country in the World who is as well funded by large corporate interests as USA - look up lobbying (bribing).
Time to drop another nuke. Take out their whale processing stations and ports.
When you think about how a whale was the pilot of the Enola Gay, which dropped a nuclear warhead on Hiroshima.
After that, the Japanese began to systematically exterminate the whales as revenge for what they perceived to be the beginning of a nuclear holocaust during WW 2.
And who but the Nazis and the Whales would be cruel enough to try to genocide an entire species? (aside from dark skinned Africans and African-Americans in the 21st century who want to genocide non-black people and take their land, property, and money, of course)
What the Japanese are doing to the whales is just and right, and only people that support the use of nuclear weapons would think that the slant eyed Japs should not be killing the whales willy nilly. I bet the Japanese women have vaginas that are slanted sideways just to spite the Chinese men.
Worth noting... Japan's population is shrinking. They had 1.4 million deaths to less than 1 million births last year. Kids live in their parent's houses until middle age and are not having sex, marrying or coupling in general. The population is tanking. The antiquarians in the population save compulsively, and they spend nothing. About 20% of the population is over 65.
They've got a large economy but that cannot exist with a shrinking population. It's a serious issue. They have had negative interest rates for a decade.
That said, I wonder who there is pushing for whaling and what possible good it is to Japan? It certainly does not improve their status in my mind and I may make economic decisions based on it. (I drive a Toyota. Now. Maybe not the next car I lease though. I may go 'whale free'. ). They can't give the existing whale meat away, and at the current rate, there will be fewer and fewer consumers of the stuff there, anyway. And of course, they've put a lot of nuclear waste into the territorial waters since their Fukujima fukup, so maybe we don't need to worry too much. The whales likely glow anyway and every mouthful is a potential poison pill for the 50 people who even eat it. Oh, well. Enjoy your lunch, kids! Have another serving!
I guess we should keep in mind that this is the same country that used to have a game show that featured children being told their parents had died. They are 'different'.
Trump started this whole "Fuck you world! We're gonna do what's good for US!"
Rest of World, "Sounds good to us!"
Tune in people! There's more to come!!
One day we might get some independent data on the amount of radionuclides in Japanese fisheries considering the amount of radioactive effluents the ongoing Fukushima disaster is putting into their food chain. I wouldn't be surprised if they know all this and opening up options for themselves.
The volcanic region made seafood a rich harvest for Japan and now they have poisoned it. Bio-accumulation of radionuclides in the food chain is real no matter how much Japan suppresses information. It will continue to poison the Pacific until we take the clean-up effort away from TEPCO and make it an international issue that we address with maximum priority to stop it spreading any further.
That would be the honorable thing to do.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
His campaign to diminish experts and abuse the environment have been a source of inspiration for lunatics the world over.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
And America ranks badly on corruption, pollution, destruction of endangered species, destruction of areas of special scientific interest, destruction of history...
That it's the same in every othet corrupt nation shouldn't be a shock.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It is time we simply sink fishing vessels from many other nations. We should easily be able to make harpoons strong enough to take in whale boats.
Can you boycott iPhones while you're at it, please?
â(TM)â(TM)â(TM)â(TM)â(TM)â(TM)â(TM)â(TM)â(TM) FUCK OFF
My guess is that whaling in Japan is similar to coal in the US. Both are dying industries that still have enough political clout to get money from the government to prop up their businesses and keep them going long past when they should have died.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
They subscribe to ancestor worship, Buddhist doctrine. That the movies of The Superstar became an unlikely hit in Japan, much liked by the older generation shows they have some strong value system not visible to the West.
So, it is particularly disappointing that they don't value whales and they seem to condone exterminating a species. Hope something changes and they begin to see whales in a different light.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Their actual plan is to get us down to only 2 humpback whales, in the hopes of attracting starships from the future. They can then capture one and harvest the technology.
It's sad to have to destroy such an intelligent animal into pieces--to prove the point that it's not so different than killing wales.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/legendsofthemultiuniverse/images/8/86/Whale-probe.jpg
Your move!
Will have to make a return time voyage to stop them.
Is Trump running Japan now too?
Has anyone considered working with the whales on how they can defend themselves? Just a thought.
All bloody animals should fin die! Destroying our planet is NOT OK!
Collect the whole set.
"They can do what they want in their own country unless it's something very specific I care about. "
Does that kind of sum up your post?
Seriously. Fuck those fuckinh Nips. Fuck them in their radioactive sea asses.
But there you are, talking out of your asshole like Jim Carey. Fucking goof, go suck another rich mans cock already..
Protip: Whaling vessels are purpose-built
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against spreading this news and I'm not pro-hunting but Slashdot isn't the place for it.
This isn't news for nerds no matters how you want to look at it and I cannot ignore that.
There are a whole bunch of species of whale that are neither particularly smart nor anywhere near endangered, like the common minke whale. Anyone who isn't a vegetarian has no business pretending there's a moral issue here.
And the general IWC moratorium, now over three decades old, is in blatant defiance of the purpose stated in the convention that established the IWC -- to make the whaling industry orderly, in order to increase whale stocks, so that more whales can be hunted. A general ban on commercial whaling isn't what the Japanese signed up for, and it's ludicrous to claim they should be bound to keep going along with the abuse of a treaty that's been perverted against its explicit text.
Reading through the summary it seems like maybe having Japan hunt whales near Asher they live, may be better than having them hunt whales around Antartica (which is what they were doing).
Antartica still has a long way to go to recover from the whaling days, and if they are hunting locally maybe it will be more sustainable.
Too bad they can't just give up whaling altogether though,
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Does anyone here honestly think they have some sort of moral authority to cast judgment and aspersions on Japan for harvesting whales? Sadly, I think the answer to that is a zealous "YES!!!"
Listen, we are a predator species. We kill and eat other species. We even take joy in it (*gasp*). We also breath air. We also reproduce sexually. All of this is as natural to humankind as can be. Morality doesn't enter in to it. Save your moral philosophizing and righteous indignation for stuff that actually matters. Because whether Japan or any other nation continues to harvest and consume whale definitely does not.
Letâ(TM)s rape and plunder and burn it all ducking down! CAPITALISM! FUCK YA! Fuck you and fuck your childrenâ(TM)s childrenâ(TM)s future, thereâ(TM)s money to be made!
According to people in places with worse records.
We all know you have a hardon for irrational hate of the US, but you really should open your eyes in your old age lest be left in the "old man yells at cloud" category for your grandkids.
Fuck toy dolphin....fuck you whale!!!!!
Pitiful. You are nothing, worm, but a diseased and feeble mind.
Think about it, commercial whaling will be done only for profit. The things they did with research disguising was government paid. And all indications are that the younger generation despise whaling, and the older one only did it as a tradition (not for the horrid taste). Often whale meat was left to rot because nobody bought it. Thus if it is commercial whaling only... a few may try... Then with collapsing market and nobody buying it, it dies out. Win win on the long run : the japanese government can pretend it did what it's people wanted (well a few of them) and it is not their fault if the market don't buy, and in the long run they can point the finger that the whale number don't drop and tell people "see : nothing bad happens".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Win for Japan.
They'll do as they please and then claim it was an "accident" later if they've broken their word on both where they will hunt and what species will be targeted.
I doubt commercial whalers give a shit.
And then one day, the species on the red list will be accident-ed top extinction, sorry about that, it was totally a mistake.
Japan will get off scot free if they do.
The ban on whaling mainly because fucking whalers can't be trusted to not slaughter anything that has usable blubber and meat.
Commercial whaling to be resumed from July next year will be limited to Japan's territorial waters and exclusive economic zones
We can trust them for that until they will have extinguished whales presence in their exclusive economic zones, but after that?
I don't know what I would do without my daily dose of paid PR cleanup for the nuclear industry here on slashdot.
Yes, that's exactly how it works. America has been a top CO2 polluter for decades, it's in our culture. That's why it's OK for us to keep doing it, but bad if India or China do a small fraction of what we do.
--
WindBourne
[a] "native" populations in the arctic are allowed to harvest whales - it would apparently be racist to hold them to the same standards as anybody else. Therefore, the Japanese who also are of non-Anglo ethnicity should be eligible for this same exemption if they choose to start branding everybody else as racists.
[b] Human beings are simply evolved animals, like all other evolved animals, right? If so, then everything humans do is just as "natural" as everything any other species does. If it's OK for sharks to kill and eat a whale, then it certainly should be OK for humans to do it.
[c] If whales go extinct, something else will evolve to fill in the gaps in the environment. Everything that currently exists, we are told, evolved from a bit of pond scum getting hit by lightning in a toxic primordial Earth, so clearly all the diverse life ever seen on Earth can arise from even a hyper-toxic and lifeless world.
or, have the people who've been pushing multiculturalism and darwinian evolution been lying?
You seem to know a lot about where I live, work and what I think.
Please, tell me.
I'd be fascinated to learn.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Right?
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Whales are near the top of the food chain and long lived mammals and so they tend to bio-accumulate a huge load of heavy metals and other toxins in the oceans. They're probably not really advisable things to eat on a regular basis if you value your health.
for everything leading up to World War 2. If it wasn't for that event the Japanese Emperor wouldn't have regained power from the Shogunate and they would have neither rapidly militarized nor bred rapidly to make up their manpower shortfall. Instead they ended up westernizing rapidly, coming to the US to be educated, and eventually going back to Japan and using what they learned to rapidly industrialize it, far faster than Japan's resources allowed.
End result was they needed to wrest resources from their neighbors, and they became honorless dogs under the Emperor, leading to war crimes that even the purged samurai might have balked at (see the live vivisection work down in the South Pacific during WW2.)
Just terrible, like all the other senseless animal slaughter world wide of dissappearing species. Screw you Japan, you have lost my respect
Japan: "Hey, Trump doesn't give a shit. Why should we?"