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GREENPEACE PROBED
Tokyo-based New Yorker Gaijin Biker emails:
Here’s an analysis of Greenpeace’s claim that the Japanese whaler Nisshin Maru was responsible for the collision between it and Arctic Sunrise. Basically, I conclude that Greenpeace is full of it.
Always a safe assumption, that. Decide for yourself after reading GB’s post. In other whaley developments, BYF sends this note:
One of your commenters asked: ‘What’s Japanese for, “Take that, hippy!"’
I asked Sean Kinsell, and he gives the answer here.
whilst the greenpeace vessel is clearly in the wrong i too have little sympathy fot Jap whalers. I am hoping for a serious collision that sinks both vessels. A win win in my book.
Posted by Astonished on 2006 01 16 at 09:43 PM • permalinkYou know, I somehow rather doubt that there are many Japanese whaler crew members who are old enough to have fought in World War 2.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 16 at 09:46 PM • permalinkBefore getting into the cleaning business, I was employed by ANSTO at Lucas Heights when Greenpeace decided to jump the fence to get some media attention.
Their stunt prevented nuclear medicine deliveries across Australia including the delivery of pain relief medication to people dying of cancer.
When the government is finished with the student unions, the next item on the agenda should be a public inquiry into the activities of Greenpeace and the removal of their tax exempt status.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 01 16 at 10:14 PM • permalinkThe Greenpeace captain claims he tried to reverse, but clearly he waited until the collision was unavoidable. Pursuant to the rules I read, can’t he or his ship be held liable for damages by the Japanese ship? Historically, the most reliable way to stop depredations by idiotactivists has been to hit them in the pocketbook.
I have issues with the Japanese mostly because of their xenophobia, but come on, fellas. World War II was a long, long time ago.
#3, I had the exact same debate with a poster on JF Beck’s site here.
Posted by HisHineness on 2006 01 16 at 10:33 PM • permalink"You know, I somehow rather doubt that there are many Japanese whaler crew members who are old enough to have fought in World War 2."
There was a time when Australians wouldn’t get too worried over a bad day for Japanese whalers. I was just responding with an extreme “image” to give an idea of how much of a big fat nothing this issue means to me. “Japanese” had an effect on the generation ahead of me(and quite a bit on mine)like al-Queda has on some Americans now. Sorry if that doesn’t make sense to you. I don’t hate the Japanese but their whalers can sort their own problems out. The swampys aren’t exactly up to this sort of thing.
Are you completely unaware of the issues and war crimes that the japanese refused to deal with until just recently?.It’s a pity Greenpeace aren’t operating this vessel in the protest area- the Japs are notoriously myopic if you believe WW2 propaganda, so a bespectacled harpooner could easily mistake the ship for that beligerant blubbery blanco’d bastard and put a grenade tip straight into the engine room.
Does the Law of the Sea require you to rescue drowning hippies? With any luck there’d be a few orcas or leopard seals around which would make the matter a moot point.3 & 8.
I know that WW2 was a long time ago, but I’ll fess up to having not nice thoughts about Japanese as a species.I’ve known people who were POWs in Singapore, and who were in the forces during the war.
Individually, yup, lovely people. But the did commit some awful atrocities.
My grandparents lived in Cowra during the war, and were there for the breakout of POWs. It wasn’t a pleasant time there.
Long memories indeed.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 01 16 at 10:42 PM • permalinkEven better, what’s Japanese for “Sod off Swampy!”?
Now you’re really asking for it. I can’t even translate that without heavy losses into American English, and you want Japanese?
The poster linked to, when he says that “take that, hippy” translates to “kore de mo kurae” is fairly literal… he’s being literal. It looks to me like “this, some more, have.”
Doesn’t seem to pack quite the same punch.
Anyway, like Colin Powell (?) said, “It’s a shame they can’t both lose.” Though if I had to pick just one, let the Greenpeace eco-terrorists enjoy some of the “karma” they would surely lecture us about under other circumstances.
Posted by zeppenwolf on 2006 01 16 at 10:48 PM • permalinkIt says a fair bit about how greedpiece is when they actaully make me feel sympathy for the whalers.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 01 16 at 10:59 PM • permalinkWW2 was a long time ago, but after committing that many crimes, in that barbaric a manner, sort of like the germans, its wise to pull your head in for a bit and not go out aggresively p*ssing off the rest of the world… again…
plus if they even taught there young people in school about what they actually got up to in WW2, rather than glossing over it and spouting off about there wonderful Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere they were trying to establish, maybe they would get a bit more of a break from the nations around them....
it might be ok to forgive, but i ain’t gonna forget what they got up to....
but in this particular case, taking the side of greenpeace is not particularly inviting either.... pity we couldn’t arm the whales with a couple of sea skimming exocet missiles… :o)
Slightly O/T but Tim “Boy Wonder” Flannery is now going to save the planet.
I would have had no sympathy whatsoever for the whalers.
Then greenpeace go & get involved.
I would really love to see a few chickens come home to roost for greenpeace.
What is Japanese for “I really really thought that was a whale when I fired the harpoon, honest!” ?
Posted by Steve at the pub on 2006 01 16 at 11:18 PM • permalinkThe point the pointy heads miss is that there are X miles of empty sea out there. To either set your ship up for collision or instigate one should see the skipper responsible lose his certification.
One group is out there for a distastefull (to many) but legal activity, the other is there to disrupt them. I know which one Id suspect of crowding the other.
Does anyone know who, or which juristiction the skipper of the greedpiece boat comes under?Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 01 16 at 11:26 PM • permalinkDoes the Law of the Sea require you to rescue drowning hippies?
Yes. Drowning hippies poison the coral reefs.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 01 16 at 11:27 PM • permalink#17 - a bit literal, but we are talking colloquiliasms here. The de mo is an emphatic - sort of like “this, even” - rather than kore mo kurae, which would be the more literal tranlsation made (that might be more, “Take this, too!").
Posted by Bilious Young Fogey on 2006 01 16 at 11:35 PM • permalinkIt’s the height of Western cultural arrogance to hector the Japanese on killimn and eating whales. Why shouldn’t they? Just because Westerners think whales cute and cuddly? Eating whale is part of Japanese culture just as it is for the Norwegians, Icelanders, Inuit, etc. We eat cows and we wouldn’t take any notice of the billion or so Hindus in India who just might object. Aussies kill (and eat) kangaroos, which upsets a lot of other people, but that’s not going to stop us, so why pick on the Japanese?
The whales are killed as humanely as possible and there seem to be plenty of them.
I’d have some respect for Greenpeace, PETA et al if they turned their attention to the barbarous halal slaughtering methods of Moslems, but of course they won’t. After all, Greenpeacehey wouldn’t want to risk a fatwa.
I hope the Japanese sink their ship.
I’d like to see the Japanese add this ship to its whaling fleet. The wave motion gun would take care of any ‘right of way’ disputes.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 01 16 at 11:47 PM • permalinkWhat does it matter anyway, as Tim Flannery says we’ve only got a couple of decades to fix “everything”.
Pretty safe call really: if he’s wrong, who will remember his prediction? if he’s right, we are all dead anyway!
Posted by WeekByWeek on 2006 01 16 at 11:52 PM • permalinkWell the Iranians and north koreans i suppose really have the right to develop nuclear power, just like the jappoes have the right to go out and shoot whales. Even though i guess there is a moratorium in place which i’m not sure how binding it is… but all these parties assert their sovereign right to go and do whatever they want…
but sometimes when the whole world feels fairly strongly against whatever your doing, sometimes it might be time to think whether its really worth it, or do you obstinately stick by your “rights”??? and the jappoes can be pretty obstinate when they want to…
at the end of the day its obviously an emotional, not logical thing, that makes us swat flies, cockroaches and mossies, but swoon over the odd tiger or whale copping it… and its a tad hypocritical to eat chicken and beef while condemning the jappoes, just coz we don’t see what goes on at the abottoir....
but thats people for u… and maybe when they started Greenpeace had some merits in what they were trying to achieve, but fairly obviously they have become too radicalised and lost the plot at some point…
once again, neither side of this confrontation is particularly attractive to support…
Romeo Mike had a look into the Greenpeace claims, and came to the same conclusion.
For those too young to remember, try to get a book,any book, on the “Burma Railway” to get a small piece on WW2.And how Aussie POW’s under the Japs were treated.
There is a Whale Station museum in Albany WA where you can watch newsreels of the whale catching . The agonised screams from the whales when they are hapooned is terrible. No dumb animals these.
This museum is a memorial to the whales, it should be seen by all.I don’t understand why so many are declaring their lack of sympathy for the Japanese. Surely this is obvious? How much sympathy do you feel for the guy working in an abattoir? I don’t feel any. He does a job; he gets paid.
When eco-idiots swarm around, trying to hinder a legal enterprise, then I get shitty.
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 01 17 at 01:13 AM • permalinkwaussie: the Norwegians are particularly good at killing whales. 90% of the time they hit home - a grenade-tipped harpoon to the brain - which kills instantly. If they miss, the whale is quickly finished off with a shotgun. It’s all over in less than a minute.
Compare that to halal butchering…
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 01 17 at 01:16 AM • permalinkPersonally, I don’t think the “whole world thinks” argument is valid. The “whole world” is rarely that, in the first place, and it’s a political propaganda tool in the second place. No one knows what the whole world thinks at any one time. People think what they have been conditioned to think by media as well as by their culture.
Many people read something in the newspapers and they form their opinions that way. Many others may do nothing more than listen to CNN or Jon Stewart. That is no way to decide what you think about something because the information is filtered by Reuters, the BBC, AP and the other news agencies even before it gets to the Times or CNN, Bill Maher, Bill O’Reilly, etc. If the whole world were informed ‘properly’ about just what the situation is with the Japanese and whaling (for instance, what are the world’s stocks of minke whales, what are the number of whales the Japanese take, etc. and then also include the deals the Inuit get, the Norwegians get, etc., and then educate people on the reasons why whales might be needed and/or used, perhaps there would be a way to take the world’s temperature, but I wouldn’t count on it.
World opinion is a powerful thing, and it can and does move governments to sometimes make foolish decisions which may prove - when cooler heads prevail - against the best interests of their citizens and even the environment itself (e.g., the Kyoto Accords). World opinion is that people should not, probably, blow people up at bus stops and in night clubs. Oh, wait, no it isn’t. Much of the Islamic world and the American academic community has sympathy with the terrorists and probably approve of the slaughter of innocents. Well...wait, that isn’t necessarily true either.
We could take any situation in the world today and try and determine what the world thinks, and we would probably be wrong. In the case of taking whales, my opinion is not fixed. Because I don’t know enough about it. So I am not against the whalers, and in fact, from what I have known about Greenpeace over the decades, I am inclined to back the whalers against Greenpeace until I do know more.
James, i don’t feel any sympathy for the guy in the abattoir, why would i, nothings happening to him… its not a particularrly nice job i imagine, but no ones forcing them to do it… if i was going to feel sympathy it would be for the baby lamb or calf??? or the chickens who get gassed in the egg industry....
as i said earlier, humans aren’t particularly logical, we eat our food and go along happily without ever having to think what goes into, or how it makes its way to our table, and thats probably for the best…
in fact i am of the opinion that is probably better not to know what goes into much of our food or how its made, or i’ve heard a number of people say we’d probably lose our appetites if we did…
it may be hypocritical for everyone to be spared the slaughter process of their own food and munch away happily coz its not screened on tv, which then allows them to point the fingers at other people, like the people who wear the fur coats after the baby seals getting there heads beaten in… or we don’t like seeing the bears in china stuck in the cages getting their gallbladders milked coz even though thats traditional for the chinese....
i ain’t no dyed in the wool greenie animal liberationist, and have shot my fair share of rabbits and birds (and heard about it from my animal loving better half) and can see the argument from both sides, but still in a perfect world it would be nice if the whales didn’t have to cop it after there numbers have been so reduced (even if the minke’s are a dime a dozen, the other whales species should be spared)... if they do, then i’m glad when they are put out of there misery asap, hopefully it is the majority of the time, and they don’t take the mothers etc....
What gets me upset is the fact that if either of these boats gets disabled it’s probably the RAN who’ll have to risk their lives to save them.
Greenpeace have the right to be a nuisance, but they don’t have the right to put others peoples lives in danger.
Whilst the japanese armed forces were evil bastards i nthe second war, I’ve heard some old diggers tell the stories about what they did back to the japs, and they treated the jap pretty badly.
I don’t understand why so many are declaring their lack of sympathy for the Japanese.
My guess is to flaunt their non-PC bona fides in a barely-related topic (though why they feel compelled to do that here I have no idea; I didn’t realize this site had taken on suspicious Japan-fanboy tendencies that had to be smacked down). In any case, the topic of this post, I might remind people, is: the perfidy and hypocrisy of “eco-warrior” outfits like Greenpeace, not World War 2 atrocities by the Japanese.
..Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 17 at 02:12 AM • permalinkif i found out what the jappoes had done to my countrymen, and one of them fell into my hands, no doubt anothe war crime would’ve be committed…
plus the fact that most would rather die than be taken prisoner, and were just as likely to want to take u and them out with a hidden grenade, it would probably have been shoot first, ask questions later…
just like if i had been around when they liberated one of those concentration camps in germany, a few SS guards would have been stood against walls and the inmates could declare open season on them…
however, pointing out both sides (jappoes and greenpeace) have reasons to be disliked is relevant to the debate i suppose…
No it isn’t. It’s totally pointless to this comment thread. Quit it.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 17 at 02:24 AM • permalinkOmzig, if you lack empathy or interest in anything anyone is talking about here, then why are you even bothering to comment? Don’t you have another note? So far all you have had to say can be boiled down to: “well, I don’t care about [subject].” Yay for you. Strange—right now, the only thing I am feeling a complete lack of empathy for—not to mention sympathy for—is you.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 17 at 02:47 AM • permalinkAs to the whole world bollocks, I’d say at least half the world’s population are Hindu or Buddhist, and would regard we first worlders scarfing on bovine, ovine and avian critters as wholly barbaric and a guaranteed trip to one or more of their many hells.
Then again, probably 90% of the world don’t get sattelite feeds from the Southern Ocean, and don’t give a shit about some floundering blubbery critters who are so dumb they haven’t learnt yet to avoid the sound of diesel engines in the area they’re hanging about in performing krillocide.
Also probably 20-30% of the world would forgo their religious beliefs to chomp on a nice bit of minke jerky, if only to avoid starvation.
To these monomanaic self-important puffbuckets “the whole world” only includes them and like thinkers.Andrea, the anti-JA feeling is an Australian thing. Not a majority feeling at all - life here is too comfortable for that - but it is very deep among the Anglo section of the community for good reasons I will not go in to here. You’d not appreciate a post some thousands of words long!
The nature and depth of this feeling is simply not understood outside Australia, and I suspect that many who feel that way do not understand it fully themselves inside Australia.
The really odd thing is that the feeling is quite mutual in a section of JA society, and yet the two nations get along very well at a multitude of levels.
We’re a weird mob.
MarkL
CanberraThe fact that the whale whackers are Japanese, who are not considered to be terribly decent chaps by a very large slice of the Oz population, has probably encouraged Greenpeace to think that the same slice of Oz population is supporting them in their efforts to foil the Japanese research/culinary enterprise.
Wrong.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2006 01 17 at 03:32 AM • permalinkcasanova: The text book you are refering to isn’t used in all Japanese schools. Most Japanese learn from text books that didn’t gloss over the atrocities of the war.
The textbook that caused the controversy is used in junior high schools. Students would have ample opportunity to learn about war-time atrocities in primary and high schools (and they should, their university entrance test is the hardest in the world - schools won’t use text books that gloss over national curriculum standards even if they’re run by ultra-nationalists).
If you consider the culture of East Asia, the Japanese are far much more open and admissive about their past than their East Asian neighbours (PRC textbooks glosses over the attrocities of the Culture Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, ROK textbooks glosses over Chinese colonisation of Korea a few centuries ago, ROC textbooks glosses over, at least until recently, atrocities commited by marauding migrants to Taiwan at the end of the Civil War).
But if school kids aren’t taught about the war, how does that apply to Japanese whalers? Does being ignorant of their nation’s past, something that wouldn’t be their fault, bear any relations to the fact that they were rammed by a Greenpeace ship?
There are many aspects of Japan that I don’t like - it’s rigid culture, it’s xenophobia, it’s political system seemingly dominated by one party. But to hold today’s Japanese born way after the war responsible for their nation’s past doesn’t make sense. Otherwise, why doesn’t today’s white Australians apologize to Aborigines for what some of their ancestors did to them?
Inter-generational guilt makes no sense.
Sortelli:
“Besides, I want to try me some of that delicious whale, myself. Mmm.”It’s actually not half-bad. An old boyfriend of mine was from Hokkaido, where they eat anything in the ocean that isn’t a rock, and so whale was just about the tamest thing that would be plunked down in front of me at fish-market food stalls when I visited him. The red meat is pretty gamey, but it’s surprisingly tender--sort of like a slightly heftier tuna; the white meat is oily, but the ginger and scallions and stuff were a good foil for it. Of course, I have no idea what it’s like cooked.
“The Japanese were awful in WWII, but I’m much more comforted that they’re such good friends now such a short time later.”
Yeah, I know that people have provided themselves with a cheap and easy cover by proclaiming that, well, you know, Australia and Japan have this kind of mutual-hate thing going that’s only half serious, so anyone who takes it totally straight is just asking to be called uptight.
But I don’t mind looking uptight, so I will only ask: six decades after Iraq is democratized, will people be dismissing interference with its commercial vessels because of the unconscionable things that were done under Saddam? Even under the guise of an “extreme ‘image,’” for which the commenter should presumably not have to be held accountable because it was all just kind of an overflow of gusto?
Posted by Sean Kinsell on 2006 01 17 at 04:19 AM • permalinkI think the point of this thread follows fairly consistently with an earlier thread Tim put up about how Greenpeace damaged a reef with their boating follies. It’s not about the Japanese whalers.
To set it out more clearly, about five years ago, the Rainbow Warrior interfered with an Inuit tribal hunt (the tribe was allowed to kill 4 minke whales a year. Four. And they did it with a high-powered rifle which killed the whale instantly, then they harpooned it and towed it in. They were using an Inuit whaling boat with a small outboard motor on it. The boat is small, maybe 18 ft. long) and nearly tipped the boat over, swamping the Inuits. These were not Japanese, so all the ill-feeling (well-earned by the Japanese, in my book) isn’t necessary to point out the deficiencies in the insensitivity of Greenpeace. People are the last thing the enviros care about, unless it’s themselves.
Greenpeace harrassed these Inuit, who have to scratch a living out of the Arctic, a place their people have inhabited for millenia, until they about destroyed their ritual hunt. Greenpeace was charging around in their high-speed cruiser making right fools of themselves, and the bad press they got was well-deserved. I think that Greenpeace is about as hypocritical a group as there is. The whole thesis behind environmentalism has little to do with a tiny tribe trying to reconnect with their ancestors by killing 4 whales per year (that was their allotted number, it doesn’t mean they actually kill 4 whales), and trying to make some money to feed their children by selling part of the whale and using the rest as provender for themselves. It doesn’t matter to me whether the hunters are a big Japanese firm or a small tribe of Inuit, Greenpeace is an arrogant bunch of louts when they engage in this dangerous activity. Who but louts would do what they did to the Inuit, to the reef, and, possibly, to the whaling boat by putting in danger the lives of others? (we don’t know if that is the case yet, but since I get the impression that they are irresponsible fools, I give the Japs the benefit of the doubt here given Greenpeace’s less than stellar record in the past). The Inuit harrassing was disgusting, talk about David and Goliath.
ekw, but can a thread of 50 comments which are all variations of the same theme that greenpeace are contemptuous maybe get a bit monotonous??? even with a large and varied vocabluary from which to combine words and phrases??? although i guess some people might not be able to get enough of it???
its a bit like preaching to the converted maybe?? is there no room for other facets to introduced to the discussion??? just wondering??? or when the first person dumps on greenpeace and there tactics, maybe we could also say “i agree” and “spot on” etc???
Well I’m going to risk an attempt at linkage. Japan did it’s best to rig an international treaty conference with an arrogance and cynicism that was breathtaking. It may yet corrupt, bribe, threaten and stack the IWC out of the water and if it fails it will simply walk out and do what it likes. Again.
The blatant in your face “scientific researh” lie may be consistent with Japanese cultural mores. But it offends mine. Again.
Whale eating might or might not be part of Japanese cultural heritage. You would be forgiven for not taking the Japanese word for it. Whaling is also part of Australia’s heritage. As is shooting and skinning koalas. Who would get away with it today?
I have no sympathy for Greenpeace and other cults that challenge reason. But I am not about to feel sympathy for the whalers either. And sorry. Perhaps it is because I am an Australian of a certain age with relatives whose last record can only be found in Changi Diaries but I too find myself thinking about an earlier Japan when I see the way modern Japan behaves over this issue.
Geoff,
So basically your argument comes down to:
“I hate what the Japs did to Aussies in WWII, therefore, I hate that they hunt whales.”
Um-kay, I’m not quite sure how that argument goes, but, whatever.
And I’m sure you’re one of those people that absolutely NO ONE wants to sit next down to at your local tavern.
After all, how many times does the guy next to you want to say
“Huh?”,
“What?”,
“What the hell are you going on about?”,
“Geez, get a grip.”,
“What the fuck you going on about you stupid dick?”, and
“No officer, I didn’t do anything to the wanker, he just kept spitting and yelling about japs and whales, and I had to, you know, punched the crazy fucker.”
Posted by David Crawford on 2006 01 17 at 05:37 AM • permalinkDavid, if I may ask, where are you from?
Sean (post 56) “But I don’t mind looking uptight, so I will only ask: six decades after Iraq is democratized, will people be dismissing interference with its commercial vessels because of the unconscionable things that were done under Saddam? “
Umm, if they are Kurds, YES. And probably with gunfire.
MarkL
CanberraAnyhoo, I am damned if I can see what the brownbrains of Greenpeace are on about. It is just a fishery, but Greenies seem to worship bloody whales. Last time there was a whale stranding near where I lived, I wanted to roar down to the beach with a knife and fork and take a fillet back home as well. A coupla tons of fresh boneless meat for the freezer - yippee!
But this is actually illegal. I mean, WTF??
MarkL
CanberraDavid Crawford,
Thanks for providing some of that “empathy or interest” that we’re all looking for, but why pick on Geoff? I started it right from the first comment. I figured I’d get hell for it but I’m surprised how many comments were not negative. Perhaps you don’t know about Australian history and it doesn’t interest you. Too bad. I’ll get the flag out and screw you if you don’t like it. You are a pathetic goon.
MarkL,
And what does it matter where I’m from.
I was trying to illustrated someone (Geoff) trying to tie two comnpletely different concepts together (Japs treatment of Aussies in WWII, and Japs hunting whales in the 21st century).
I don’t understand how the two concepts tie together. Maybe you can show me the direct correlation between the two. If you can’t, then shove it up your ass. Sideways.
Posted by David Crawford on 2006 01 17 at 06:37 AM • permalinkDavid Crawford
So basically your argument comes down to:
“I hate what the Japs did to Aussies in WWII, therefore, I hate that they hunt whales."
How can I respond to this in language you might possibly understand without a complete re-write from you and does not allow space for the wilfully obtuse?
Hmmm. A tough one. Let me try this.
No.
Go away son. You bother me.
0mzig,
So, maybe you can explain to me one thing. Tim Blair posts about Japanese whaling in 2006, and the VERY FIRST COMMENT is about Japanese treatment of Australians in 1941-1945. Please show me the connection between the two? Come on little boy, it shold be easy as you were comment #1.
Posted by David Crawford on 2006 01 17 at 06:55 AM • permalinkImperialism, contempt for other nations opinions.
Long memories? No.
Just a generation away.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2006 01 17 at 07:50 AM • permalinkCasanova, if the direction of comment threads here aren’t to your liking, I suggest you get your own blog, set up comments on that, and invite people over.
The rest of you sense-of-history flag-wavers: the next time some earnest, guilt-ridden lefty starts blatting about how awful your white, European ancestors were to the aborigines (and let’s be fair, they weren’t exactly all charity and smiles from the get-go), and how the stain of their deeds could never be washed away except by continued picking at old scabs and pouring salt in ancient wounds, I expect to hear nothing from you back at them except agreement. Also, I am sure that none of you have ever owned any Japanese products, such as Playstations, cars, motorbikes… After all, it would be wrong to uphold the economy of a nation that was so cruel to your parents and grandparents, right?
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 17 at 08:14 AM • permalink#40 jpaulg what are you thinking -the RAN can sit safe and dry and not fret about the fracas.NEW ZEALAND’S AIRFORCE is monitoring the action end they’ll give everyone heaps, don’t you worry about thet..
Yeah why don’t we start ww3 and go in with all guns blazing.Our fisherfleet is repelling armed boarders (Indonesian fisherfleets) without the assistance of the Remote Area Nurses so why worry about whalers and swampies.Let em sort it out themselves.Andrea, others --
I’m American, but I recognize the attitude some Aussies have. My Dad felt the same way. It didn’t stop him buying things from Sony or Nissan, or even Mitsubishi, and he knew the Japanese were trying to “go straight” and behave more in keeping with the modern world, but it bothered him deeply, and he had to make an intellectual effort to avoid the bigotry. When an attitude is deep-down emotional, as the result of either traumatic experience or childhood training, it can slip up on you unexpectedly even though you’ve changed your mind. The forebrain isn’t completely in charge.
Where it ties together is that Greenpeace, whether or not knowingly, have taken advantage of that residuum in Australian and American society to gain support for their actions they would not have otherwise gotten. There are loads of people [assertion—ed. yes, I know] who have supported the “anti-whaling” campaign, mostly tacitly, not because they are pro-whales but because somewhere in the back of their minds they’re still a little anti-Japanese. Talking about the issue may be useful to help everyone realize that, hmm?
Regards,
RicAndrea,
Afterall it would be wrong to uphold the economy of a nation that was so cruel to your parents and grandparents, right?
Actually Andrea, wrong.
Let me try this again. I own three cars. One is German. The other two are Japanese. I routinely do business in Germany and Japan and I visit both places regularly. Both are countries I care about. Both are nations I could have nothing to do with if being “cruel” to my relatives more than sixty years ago was somehow some kind of prohibition. Not a word I would have chosen BTW. “Cruel”. “Vicious cold blooded pre-meditated sadistic torture, humiliation and murder” would be closer to the mark.
But I have never had any difficulty in distinguishing between the individual and the nation. Especially individuals who weren’t even alive sixty years ago. Nevertheless there is a thing called “nationhood” that transcends the generations and in my experience most people take it seriously. It’s an all or nothing concept. You can’t pick off pieces of it and leave the rest on the plate.
Is there anything uglier than a German neonazi? The Germans know this and that is why they have special laws. Among other things. Even though nearly all the old nazis are dead.
And when Japan behaves like a conniving deceitful cunning bully at an international official forum of nations trying to agree terms on a longstanding treaty, is it any wonder that many people contemplate the nature of Japanese nationhood informed by memories barely a generation old? Even as we go on buying and selling goods and services freely. The Japanese are people and are entitled to all the courtesy that entails. Japan is a nation which should be afforded the dignity and respect that comes with that. Including responsibility and accountability.
andrea harris your comments are way out of line and disgusting and demean the memories of all the butchered war slaves (POW’s and asians)that suffered under the co-prosperity sphere. Given these people are our fathers and grandfathers and mothers and grandmothers I am ASTONISHED you are so insensitive. The CONNECTION is that Japan is flouting the opinion of 100 % of the nations in this part of the world just like B4 is covering its tracks with propaganda (the so called science program) and its media and education system is turning a blind eye to this just like the ww2 attrocities. Incidentally what evidence do you have that oz settlers treated aboriginies like the japanese treat whales? More rude an offensive typical north american ill informed clap trap about aboriginies i think. Apalling.
Posted by Astonished on 2006 01 17 at 09:59 AM • permalinki nominate andrea harris as Hillary clinton of the week for ill informed biggotry.
Posted by Astonished on 2006 01 17 at 10:01 AM • permalink#75 Sigh. Why don’t I ever win the Hillary Clinton of the Week for Ill-Informed Biggotry award? I mean I try real hard ... I make snide comments about Lithuanians ... I subtly disparage the Norwegians ... and I’ve had my hair done in this really nice blond perm that looks very senatorial. But no, Andrea gets the award again. It’s just not fair!
Moving right along, this thread has become a negative popularity contest between Greenpeace and the Japanese. I don’t like Greenpeace much, but if you put every stupid and underhand thing they’ve ever done together, and multiply it by several million, it doesn’t even come close to the evil the Japanese inflicted over the world. It was 60 years ago, but ...
a) They don’t seem as willing to acknowledge guilt as certain other Axis countries of that era.
b) They play underhand games at the IWC and just lie, blatantly and continually, about their “scientific whaling program”.
c) If I remember correctly, DNA from genuinely endangered whale species has turned up in whale products in Japan, so they don’t seem to give a rat’s about conservation.
d) And killing whales humanely doesn’t always happen.
If it were up to me, the Japs could do penance for their WW2 sins by going on a whale fast of a few centuries or so. So on this issue (and no others) I say “Hooray for Greenpeace!”
Posted by Lionel Mandrake on 2006 01 17 at 10:58 AM • permalinkHaving also had relatives in the South Pacific during WW2 (The War, as it was known then), I am actuely aware of the Japanese atrocities that were committed upon Australian and New Zealand soldiers, nurses, et al. Some Americans - and Poms - were also there and were set on marches that killed more than half of them and permanently debilitated many of the survivors. That, as I see it, is one thing.
This same nation is now the largest nation to still engage in the whaling industry. They may be open to attacks on that front by drawing a conclusion that it is the Japanese penchant for cruelty that makes them stand out for acts which disgust many, but whales are not people. I cannot say that Japan may not take their alloted limit of whales but make an exception for an Inuit tribe which takes only 4. What I see is that people hate the idea of killing whales, period, and Greenpeace seems to me to be using that plus the hatred of the Japs in the ANZAC nations to get their back - odd bedfellows, etc.
But, while Greenpeace cannot hold even a tiny smoldering piece of dried grass to the Nips for criminal behavior it doesn’t mean Greenpeace can act irresponsibly and behave in a reckless manner - endangering lives - when at sea (or anywhere else). When whaling, the Japs are not hunting Australians, Kiwis, Brits and Americans (and Canadians!), which seems to lead to one of the more specious subtexts here, a subtext created by Greenpeace - that the whalers are the children and grandchildren of monsters and therefore any action which creates havoc among them is OK. I don’t agree.
Astonished, I nominate you Crybaby of the Week. Make that Year.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 17 at 03:18 PM • permalinkOh, and geoff: obviously I wasn’t talking to you if you can at least acknowledge that Japanese people are as human as everyone else, and entitled to be treated as individuals, not mindless flakes off the ancestral DNA tree.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 17 at 03:22 PM • permalinkLionel: sorry, you’ll just have to try harder. Well, I’m off to polish the spike heels on my jackboots—wouldn’t want to accept my prize without them!
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 17 at 03:24 PM • permalinkBut, while Greenpeace cannot hold even a tiny smoldering piece of dried grass to the Nips for criminal behavior
Aw, c’mon, give Greenpeace a chance!
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 17 at 03:50 PM • permalinkThe bottom line to all of this is, when Greenpeace rammed that Japanese whaler, they were endangering people. It isn’t about whales, or about old wartime atrocities. It’s about a boatload of sanctimonious ideology-driven airheads endangering another boatload of people. They care more about whales than they do people. In my book, that’s just wrong.
RebeccaH,
That’s the bottom line on the entire environmental movement’s ideology: animals, trees, rocks, icebergs, all are more important than people. This extreme - at least with regards to animals - is taken ever further by the jesters of PETA. It is interesting to see these self-hating humans operating in the world, enfolded in the self-righteous notion of themselves as saviors of the “earth”, all the while expecting other, braver souls to rescue them should they ever be in danger (the Coast Guard, the Marines, the Police, whoever is possessed of the charter to provide rescue and protection). Then they rail against these vey services and hate the people in them for interfering with the greater, holy work of disrupting capitalism. I have read quotes in which members of PETA and some environmental alliance groups have said that, faced with the decision to save a human or an otter (or a redwood, etc.), they would not hesitate to save the otter and let the human die.
The rest of you sense-of-history flag-wavers: the next time some earnest, guilt-ridden lefty starts blatting about how awful your white, European ancestors were to the aborigines (and let’s be fair, they weren’t exactly all charity and smiles from the get-go), and how the stain of their deeds could never be washed away except by continued picking at old scabs and pouring salt in ancient wounds, I expect to hear nothing from you back at them except agreement.
Yes, the shift in opinion when it’s not somebody’s own ox that’s being gored is quite interesting.
You know, I just now read Astonished’s comment in full (I only skimmed it earlier), and it’s even crazier than I thought it was. For example, nowhere did I say “oz settlers treated aboriginies like the japanese treat whales,” I used that as an example of the sort of attitude that holds people of succeeding generations accountable for what their forefathers did, whether or not they agree with the actions of their forefathers.
See, I thought we had rather thoroughly beat the Japanese in the war. I seem to remember a couple of largish explosions in or around the vicinity of Japan that seemed to take the wind out of their sails for some reason… And I seem to remember something else that I thought was part of Western culture (you know, that culture that the Japanese had contempt for then and our current enemies have contempt for now?), something about being a good winner. I thought that unlike many of the cultures we have found ourselves at war with, we have this thing about playing “fair,” and not being the sort of victor that takes revenge on the vanquished, even out of justified anger, and even if the ones we vanquish don’t act as we wish in the future.
I may be “insensitive,” but I thought that constant self-righteous bringing up of the wrongs of previous generations was a pastime of our enemies. Excuse me if I don’t care to play.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 17 at 08:30 PM • permalinkI vividly recall about three years ago a certain Government in Europe used all the diplomatic clout it could muster, including its membership of the Security Council, to outflank and undermine a US-led initiative that could have avoided a war in Iraq altogether. This grandstanding overbearing self-important European country gave the Saddam regime hope that it could bluff its way around an UN ultimatum at the very moment that international unity and resolve was called for.
My point? France attracted, and still attracts, an enormeous amount of thoroughly deserved criticism for its petulant and vainglorious behaviour. To put it as mildly as I can, the French let the side down. They turned and ran when all they were asked to do was shut up and stand firm. The criticism flowed frank and free in my country and especially in the US who afterall would be expected to do more than its fair share of the bleeding when it comes to the fighting. Again.
See the point yet? A lot of the critics of France did not hesitate to spice their comments with references to French behaviour going back a century. Especially WWII. Considering the quanity of US, British, Australian, NZ, Canadian, African and Asian blood that drenched French soil last century, I thought this was fair comment at the time. Still do.
And now Japan does what it can to cynically corrupt an international treaty, albeit about whales, of which the US, Britain, Australia, NZ and Canada are members. Some people say what they think about Japan as a nation partly informed by memories of WWII.
Why are we so surprised? Why are we so off-topic?
Okay. I guess I used too many big words. Alpha, for the last FUCKING TIME, I did NOT “compar[e] the Japs treatment of POWs to early Australians treatment of the blacks”—I used that to show you how STUPID such arguments are. ARGUMENTS IDIOTS LIKE YOU ARE MAKING.
Oh and Geoff? No one would be saying boo to the French about how they acted in the past if they weren’t being shits now about the SAME issue, which is: what to do about an intractible enemy that wants to destroy your culture. The French answer, then as apparently now (at least on the part of its elite ruling class) is “bend over and take it, it won’t hurt after a while.”
As for the rest of you, NUKE THE FUCKING WHALES. Because I doubt you give a real crap about them.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 17 at 09:13 PM • permalinkI looked the above over, and it still looks too “wordy.” Grunts and squeals not being readily translatable into text, I will try with the simplest English I know:
re: the Japs. WE WON. THEY LOST. What more do you want?
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 17 at 09:14 PM • permalink...I thought that constant self-righteous bringing up of the wrongs of previous generations was a pastime of our enemies.
Exactly. I’m not all that fond of the Japanese disguising whale hunting as research, but I see that as a ploy to get around laws and regulations. Which everyone has done in their lives, possibly more than once (for example, income taxes. Or making a right hand turn without really stopping).
The Japanese don’t have a pretty history, but they got the bejesus kicked out of them in WWII, and as long as a new Imperial Japan doesn’t arise, I refuse to hold WWII against the current generations....although I will remember my history.
On the great scale of things, I rate Greenpeace pretty close to the bottom, barely above PETA and Stalin. Whale hunters are not unlike any other commercial hunters, stockyard workers, or butchers. I eat meat on a near daily basis, and I appreciate that someone has to harvest that chicken I had for lunch today. I don’t care to try whale, but I don’t begrudge the Japanese their whale meat, since my steak could well be next on someone’s agenda to do away with.
Ultimately, I am “human first”, and we are on top of the food chain through the use of our hands and brains. The eco-system is here to support us, and that means its maintenance is of high priority. This translates into not abusing the system by overharvesting and reducing pollution. The Japanese seem to understand this, and apparently act accordingly.
Therefore, I rate whale hunters much higher, since they at least are supporting the human population to some small degree.
Greenpeace and their ilk are not “human first”, as ekw and others have pointed out. If the whales being hunted are in fact intelligent mammals (a large assumption, especially for minke, as I recall), this would be a somewhat different story. But they’re not, Greenpeace is anti-human, and that’s why I am dumping on them, and not the Japanese.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 01 17 at 09:18 PM • permalink’ll reply in kind. Go fuck yourself.
See? Pathetic loser talk. Sad, really.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 17 at 09:22 PM • permalinkBy the way, for his considered and delicate response, Mr 81Alpha has been banned. And no, it wasn’t because he used the word “fuck”—obviously I have nothing against that word—but because instead of coming back with some kind of reasoned argument all he could say was “go fuck yourself.” Yep, that comeback really made me think, ya know? Mostly that 81Alpha is a jerk who can’t handle being disagreed with any more than lefty trolls.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 17 at 09:28 PM • permalinkGetting back semi-on topic:
When the US Navy deciphered the Japanese cryptosystem in the 1920s it hired an expert American linguist to translate the Japanese words into English. There were many words and phrases that he did not recognize. They sounded Japanese, but they were not Japanese words. An example was Baru and Struada Reinda Fuanda. So the Navy brought in one of its few officers trained in speaking Japanese, Ellis Zacharias, to see if he could figure them out. He immediately recognized them as transliterations into Japanese of English technical words. In the case above it was Barr and Stroud Range Finder.Also I gather the Japanese refer to beer as “biru”.
In the spirit of this method I propose a transliteration of “Sod off Swampy.” Sod-u off-yu Swampy-san.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 01 17 at 09:51 PM • permalinki think this thread has just about passed its use-by-date… i think some of us will just have to agree to disagree about the relative merits of this issue and some of the parties involved....
but i must say The_Real_Jeffs, its hard to comprehend how u could compare Greeenpeace and Stalin in the same sentence… i don’t like Greenpeace either, but what they perhaps talk about doing, Stalin did on a scale most people can’t imagine…
You know, it’s really the Germans you should be watching out for.
Kidding! Joke! All friends now! Smilies abound!
Heh. Let’s just say, this whole thread sounds oddly familiar to me.
Maybe I’m biased, but while “never forget” is perfectly appropriate, I do get a bit irked by people who turn it into a “never forgive” inter-generational guilt trip instead. (Not the least because, as Andrea pointed out, that’s exactly the lefty modus operandi.)
By all means, folks, get on the Japanese’ case for being obstinate idiots on the diplomatic stage, or for their stupid “we only whale for scientific reasons” charade, but justifying your opposition to Japanese whalers with 60-year old war crimes is intellectually weak, though perhaps emotionally satisfying. But you know which political camp that puts you in.
As for myself, I can’t forgive the Japanese for introducing anime to the world. Destroy Sailor Moon! (That last was for casanova.)
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 17 at 10:07 PM • permalinkPW, please don’t start labelling some of us as being in certain camps just becoz we choose to take various things into account when forming our opinions on complex real world issues…
we can agree to disagree without having our cultural/political/belief system credentials called into question… i think practically everyone here dislikes/is suspicious of Greenpeace and their methods… some of us just don’t necessarily think its that black and white an issue… which we’re allowed too…
but at the end of the day, i suppose the japanese have their right to go take whales, and i’m sure they will keep exercising it....
BTW, on a lighter note: I took part in a seminar class on environmental economics last weekend, and boy was Greenpeace unpopular. Students critical of Greenpeace easily outnumbered the defenders 4 to 1, and the handful of defenders only made half-hearted attempts to defend Greenpeace’ “activities” these days.
Even accounting for the fact that we were mostly econ students, that lopsidedness surprised me...there certainly was no shortage of lefties and confused liberals (in the classical sense) in there who, say, advocated for the teaching of “facts” about Global Warming in school, and persisted in that opinion even after it was pointed out to them that it’s pretty much impossible to separate facts from ideology in that particular topic.
Do Greenpeace even comprehend what economics, environmental or otherwise, involves, or advocate a new workable system??? short of going back to subsistance farming in an agrarian socialist setting???
i didn’t think they proposed any new system they liked, they just keep dumping on the present one??? so i imagine they wouldn’t have much to offer in such a forum??
PW, please don’t start labelling some of us as being in certain camps just becoz we choose to take various things into account when forming our opinions on complex real world issues…
Feel free to ignore that quip, then, since the substantial part of my post was that this kind of reasoning is intellectually weak.
(I could now point out that taking offense at superficialties while ignoring the substantial points is also quite leftish, but then you’d only be offended again...)
we can agree to disagree without having our cultural/political/belief system credentials called into question…
Well, I’m sorry if my perception of your cultural and political belief system doesn’t quite mesh with your own self-perception. Them’s the breaks on the internet. I don’t particularly mind or care if you or anybody else needs emotional crutches to justify their political beliefs, but don’t expect others to sugarcoat or ignore that fact.
i didn’t think they proposed any new system they liked, they just keep dumping on the present one??? so i imagine they wouldn’t have much to offer in such a forum??
Hmm, I should have been more clear. They only came up as a topic, but weren’t actually participants. Personally, I don’t think Greenpeace has or even needs (in their opinion) any kind of workable alternative. They’re just there for the flashy show - somebody else can work out the pesky details, for all they care.
I like to compare Greenpeace to performance “artists”. Juggling dog poo while blindfolded, ramming ships into other ships...same deal, when you get down to it.
but i must say The_Real_Jeffs, its hard to comprehend how u could compare Greeenpeace and Stalin in the same sentence… i don’t like Greenpeace either, but what they perhaps talk about doing, Stalin did on a scale most people can’t imagine…
Stalin was a bloody handed murder for his personal gain of power. Greenpeace doesn’t have the blood of millions on their hands, but they are certainly are equally callous of human life, short term and long term. Stalin was pro-Stalin and murdered people; Greenpeace is anti-human, and doesn’t care if people live or die. Different approaches, but with similar impacts if Greenpeace ever got their way.
If it makes you feel any better (not that my opinion actually matters in this world, but just as a courtesy to you), I rank Greenpeace slightly above Stalin. But only because they remain a marginalized protest group bent on self-aggrandizing publicity stunts and other meaningless activities.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 01 17 at 10:48 PM • permalinkHum! If Greenpeace is Hitler, and Bush is Hitler, does that mean Bush is Greenpeace? :-P
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 01 18 at 12:05 AM • permalinkgeoff:
“And now Japan does what it can to cynically corrupt an international treaty, albeit about whales, of which the US, Britain, Australia, NZ and Canada are members. Some people say what they think about Japan as a nation partly informed by memories of WWII.”Sorry, buddy--the “albeit about whales” part appears to be an afterthought to you, but I think it’s kind of a major issue. The problem isn’t that, say, Japan is playing fast and loose with its treatment of foreign nationals in prison for drug trafficking, or whatever other peacetime circumstance might call forth memories of its viciousness toward POWs. We’re talking about animals.
I find it odd that this needs to be repeated over and over to people who are pretty clearly on the right-ish end of the political spectrum, but WHALES AREN’T PEOPLE. Of course, they suffer when they’re killed. So do animals in labs where cancer treatments are being tested. So do foxes in fox hunting. I haven’t seen any evidence that Japanese whaling ships are making sport of torturing the things or doing anything else that we might consider similar to, say, cockfighting. You can probably only minimize distress so much if you’re going to end up with usable whale parts.
And as far as “cynically corrupt[ing]” international treaties goes, Japan has been very open about thinking the whole thing is rubbish. It didn’t, to my knowledge, invent the idea of killing whales for research purposes as some kind of sly way to cover its hunting. Rather, that’s an allowance built into the agreement by the IWC, so Japan has basically said, “Fine--call it research.” That may be obnoxious, but it’s not exactly sneaky.
If we’re going to bring in how Japanese bellicosity toward people is being channeled, let’s not forget that the Koizumi administration has stood firm in its allegiance with the US and the rest of the coalition in the WOT. The SDF is in Iraq doing as much as the Japanese constitution allows, and its deployment has been extended more than once. The US and Japanese militaries are cooperating so closely as to have a joint project for a missile defense system going.
Posted by Sean Kinsell on 2006 01 18 at 12:35 AM • permalinkHey, 100 comments and nobody’s blamed the meeja yet!
You know, if the dirty rotten MSM wasn’t so addicted to footage of Greenpeace’s cheap stunts…
I suspect Greenpeace really don’t care whether we love ‘em or hate ‘em, so long as they get 30 seconds on the nightly news. But why are these publicity stunts news?God only knows—I think the eco-hippies are boring as hell, and I don’t know how the reporters stand their B.O. Perhaps they interview them upwind.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 18 at 01:53 AM • permalinkAndrea Harris,
“re: the Japs. WE WON. THEY LOST. What more do you want?”
I’ve guessed from your response to geoff, Astonished, 81alpha, that perhaps you never lost relatives to the Japanese in WW II.
My parents both served in the forces but it was a subject they never broached and it was only when certain relatives and other people would visit, when they’d toast absent friends, that we children would have a sense of a experience they shared but would never speak about. They kept their medals and photos of the ships, shipmates, airfields and aircrews from that time in an old shoebox in the back of their dresser.
Like many, they never went to the R.S.L or did the ANZAC Day marches, they just wanted to put it behind them. But there was an abiding hatred of the Japanese or the “Yellow Peril” as they were known in our house that existed side by side with their ownership of series of Datsuns and Toyotas.
Only in dribs and drabs did we find out from some of our aunts that our parents had lost close friends and relatives on the Burma Railway and to summary execution after the fall of Singapore. I think it was because these people were prisoners and thought of as safe for so long that the shock and manner of their deaths has burnt itself into our national psyche. VJ Day, perhaps feels more of victory for you, you dropped the bomb, had Gen. Mac swanning around taking all the credit and running the occupation whilst most Australian troops were still losing their lives in futile mopping up operations. Later most of the war criminals who were responsible for the atrocities committed against allied prisoners were given a free pass in the interest of American policies to normalise relations with Japan. It never felt like victory and it wasn’t an end to the misery, for so many here it was the end for the hope of thier fathers, sons and brothers coming home.The way I feel is not personal or ever directed at any of the many Japanese exchange students and tourists I’ve met, it’s not rational or justified but it is something that has permeated my conciousness to the point of being a reflex that floats to the surface when I least expect it.
I’m no mad greenie or minkie fan and I respect the rules of the sea but watching footage of the Greenpeace ship going up against the whaling fleet, my gut reaction was, “ram the bastards”.Posted by Bluebottle on 2006 01 18 at 02:08 AM • permalinkI’m getting sick of this. Why is this so hard to understand? Whales are an international resource in one form or another and are rightly the subject of an international treaty. Have been for years. Treaties also cover water, fisheries, shipping, space, industrial discharges, the flow of rivers, tariffs and restraints on trade, air travel, nuclear weapons, the commercial exploitation of the ice caps and the oceans, scientific research in Antarctica, the treatment of diplomats, heritage sites ...
By and large treaties are the way to go. They are far more civilised than many of the other ways traditionally employed by nations to resolve disputes. That is why the behaviour of Japan is so appalling. It doesn’t get its way under a particular treaty. So what does it do?
We know about the Japanese presence in Iraq around here. After all their engineers are being guarded by Australian soldiers. Who incidentally have been in Iraq from day one. Even before the main land invasion. How does the involvement of Japan in its own clear interests make it immune from criticism about whaling? Or import quotas on primary produce for that matter.
Of course it’s all about people. Treaties always are. If you want an argument with Greenpeace go and argue with Greenpeace. Don’t try painting their colours on me.
BTW please do not call me “buddy”. Where I come from that’s regarded as offensive.
I still think a really good collision resulting in the foundering of both vessels in the icy waters of the sourthern ocean is a win win. I additionally hope there are not enough life boats, leonardo dicapriwhatever is onboard and celine dion is available to sing a song.
Posted by Astonished on 2006 01 18 at 02:29 AM • permalinkPost 64
David, how… polite you are.
I am asking where youa re from because the Australian opinion re Japanese actions in WWII< and our present relationship with Japan, are very poorly understood outside this country.
To make it simpler for you, ‘how much Australian history do you know?’
I was trying to illustrated someone (Geoff) trying to tie two comnpletely different concepts together (Japs treatment of Aussies in WWII, and Japs hunting whales in the 21st century).
I don’t understand how the two concepts tie together. Maybe you can show me the direct correlation between the two. If you can’t, then shove it up your ass. Sideways.
I do not care much about the fishery issue (provided it is not over-exploited), and to my mind these two concepts are quite separate, except in one area which I do not think you have the slightest understanding of.
Looking forward to your polite reply - or not.
MarkL
CanberraI enjoy telling Greenpeace salespersons along with Some AID groups that I will not donate money to their particular clique until they stop donning Dubya,Howard,Uncle Sam etc masks or paper machier heads and marching against Australia or America.
I donate money to good causes (including tsunami)but am very selective in choosing the Aid group.This was in the Oz today:
Japan plans to catch 935 minke whales and 10 fin whales this season. It also wants to increase its quota of fin whales in future and start taking humpbacks as well.
Trust the
bastardsour bestest buddy allies to want to take humpbacks, which as far as i know are still recovering from over hunting… why do they always have to push things to far, to cause more offence than is strictly necessary??? :o?anyway, i won’t lose sleep over it, but it ain’t the way to win friends and influence people… i hope those whale steaks are worth the damage they do their national reputation [in some people’s eyes].....
geoff:
“BTW please do not call me ‘buddy.’ Where I come from that’s regarded as offensive.”It was not, I hasten to assure you, a sincere extension of matey fellow-feeling. And where I come from, patronizingly thorough explanations of things people already know perfectly well are pretty offensive, too.
Then again, perhaps my phrasing was misleading? The “whole thing” I was referring to was, as I figured was clear from the rest of that paragraph, building in a loophole allowing for research culling and then going postal when people use it. (And while it’s an open secret that they’re not the primary purpose of the whale hunts, population and migration data are collected from hunted whales.) The Japanese officials I’ve heard opining on the IWC have said, essentially, “Which is it? Are a few hundred whales a year expendable without destroying stocks, or are they not, in which case they shouldn’t be killed for ‘science’ any more than for anything else?” That’s not an unassailable position, but I don’t see how it’s dismissable on its face.
In any case, I was not coming down against international agreements on principle. Neither is Japan. Indeed, Japan is not coming down against treaties about whaling in particular. The IWC has had proposals to allow limited hunts for, IIRC, sixteen-ish years and hasn’t done anything with them. The mere fact that treaties and accords are better ways to prevent Tragedy-of-the-Commons-type doesn’t indicate whether any given specific treaty is, in its existing form, the best way to manage the relevant resource.
BTW, what’s your position on Norway? Unless things have changed and it signed on when I wasn’t looking, Norway remains an IWC member in good standing but is exempt from the moratorium on commercial whale hunting because it filed a formal objection in 1982. Is it your view that that’s more honorable and less objectionable than Japan’s practices?
Posted by Sean Kinsell on 2006 01 18 at 05:02 AM • permalinkMarkL,
You wrote:
“I do not care much about the fishery issue (provided it is not over-exploited), and to my mind these two concepts are quite separate, except in one area which I do not think you have the slightest understanding of.”
And this “one area” is what? Funny that you didn’t go into any detail about this “one area” that conserns you so much. Help me out here dude, what is this “one area” that so bothers you. Enquiring minds want to know.
Posted by David Crawford on 2006 01 18 at 06:23 AM • permalinkSean Kinsell
Actually mate I did not really think there was anything matey about your use of the word “buddy”. Mate.
I will be brief. I do not wish to patronize you with thorough explanations when short explanations will do that just as well.
Your point about there being some kind of built in loophole left there for the Japanese to lie their way through is crap. Scientific research is a legitimate exemption. So is self-defense. What next? They have to kill the whales before they ram their ships? Right now there is more than enough of this contemptuous spit in your face lying going on in the world without Japan joining in. The whole world knows that the whale kill has nothing to do with scientific research. And Japan knows the whole world knows. Not unassailable? Sorry mate. It’s immoral.
Besides you seem to have overlooked some other elements of the Japanese approach to international relations and treaty negotiations in this case. Like signing up Pacific micro-states and landlocked African countries immediately before the conference carefully bribed and with all membership dues paid up of course. Airfares and accommodation laid on. The linkage between aid and IWC votes. Threats. Intimidation with a bow and a smile. And that’s what we know about.
No treaty is perfect. They are human made. No law is perfect for the same reason. If there’s a problem with a treaty state your case for reform. If you carry the day on the power of persuasion you win. The same with a law. In the meantime obey it. Not that difficult really.
My position on Norway? As it happens Norway is not among my favourite countries for reasons I won’t go in to. As far as whaling is concerned I will make these points without in any way condoning Norway about anything :
- Norway is a long way away from these parts and as far as I know has not had any whalers in the Southern Ocean for decades
- Norway reserved its position under the 1982 moratorium which it was legally entitled to do under the treaty. Japan did not.
- Norway has consistently affirmed it will limit its kill to Minke. Japan has not.
-Norway has made it absolutely clear that industrial capital-intensive whaling is a thing of the past. Whalers are 50-80 feet fishing vessels in the off season that support small coastal communities carrying on a traditional livelihood that Norway wishes to preserve for public policy reasons. Contrast that with the Japanese “scientific” fleet.
-Norway is a long way away from these parts. Did I mention that?
That enough for now? Mate?
Posted by geo
Somehow I can’t get too worked up about Japanese whalers getting a hard time. I’m trying. Nope. Try again. no. All I’m getting is the picture of aussie POWs, hands tied behind back, heads chopped off and stuck on a stick of bamboo. I guess that 70’s history education stuck hard. Anybody out there want to run me down, go ahead.