Japan's Pro-Whaling lobby hijacking the International Whaling Convention!

[BreweryYardRat]

This didn't get nearly enough attention over in LBN when it was posted yesterday:

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article358190.ece

In a remarkable diplomatic coup, Japan, the leading pro-whaling nation, is poised to seize control of whaling's regulatory body, the International Whaling Commission (IWC), and so hasten the return of commercial whale hunting, which has been officially banned worldwide for the past 20 years.

While the world has been looking the other way, the Japanese have spent nearly a decade and many millions of dollars building up a voting majority in the IWC, by buying the votes of small member states with substantial foreign aid packages.

Their aim is to reverse the moratorium on commercial whaling brought in by the IWC in 1986 as a result of the long Save The Whale campaign by Greenpeace and other environmental pressure groups.

Looks like the rich bastards in charge of Japan's whaling industry are taking a page out of the Republicans' playbook: If you can't get enough votes for your abhorrent cause, rig the vote. The Republicans use machines, the Japanese are using good old-fashioned bribery...

They did so by a form of entryism - encouraging small, poor countries to join the IWC, most of which had no previous whaling tradition at all, and some of which - such as Mali and Mongolia - did not even have a coastline. In return, the new IWC members were given multimillion-dollar aid packages.

The Japanese have targeted two groups of nations in particular - states in west and north Africa, and small states, often islands, in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Largely as a result of this, the IWC, which had 40 members in 2000, now has 66.

It is likely that the full total of supporting states Japan has brought into the IWC since 1998 is 19; they can all be shown to be clients of Japan by the consistency of their IWC voting records. They can also be shown to be in receipt of substantial Japanese largesse.

For example, the Republic of Guinea, which joined the IWC in 2000, in 2002 received $6.55m in Japanese aid for construction of a fish market in Conakry, the capital.

And here's the goal...

The simple majority (51 per cent- plus) of votes the Japanese and their allies are virtually certain to command at the June meeting in St Kitts and Nevis will not enable them to scrap the moratorium outright - that needs a voting majority of 75 per cent.

But it will enable them to reshape the IWC comprehensively in a much more pro-whaling fashion - by stopping all its conservation work, stopping all discussions of animal welfare in relation to whaling, and promoting the trade in whale products.

It will also allow them to get resolutions passed approving Japan's so-called "scientific" whaling - the commercial whaling in disguise the Japanese have continued since the ban. (This year they are hunting nearly 1,000 minke whales in the Southern Ocean). Although their pretence of killing the animals for research fools no one - the meat is sold commercially - the Japanese are anxious for it to be given international legitimacy, in the face of continuing worldwide criticism.

But perhaps most significantly of all, the majority vote will enable the introduction of secret ballots in the IWC - where voting is at present open. This will mean that Japan's vote-buying can no longer be tracked, and will open the way for more countries to join the Japanese in their quest to have the moratorium ultimately overturned.

This is filling me with rage. These backwards, greedy fuckers in the whaling industry-most Japanese don't even eat whale-are about to get the power to hose multiple borderline-sentient species! Drooling primitive BASTARDS!!!

I wonder...if the people in charge of the industry were sent the severed heads of an entire whaling ship crew or two, would that change their minds? If not, what would it take?

The article says the leader of their whaling lobby is a guy named Akira Nakamae...

[Submariner]

1. Sounds like a good time for a boycott of Japanese goods

but it is the new millennium and I do not think people care about impacts to the environment like we did when we demonstrated during the early 1970s just after the inception of Earth Day. It would be great to get a movement going to picket dealers of Toyota, Sony, etc., but I doubt we could make it happen. When I see Jay Leno doing his "Jaywalking" routines asking people in the streets common knowledge questions and hear how stupid people are I am very discouraged about the survivability of the planet. The Japanese are fukking idiots for letting this bullshit "whale research" continue. They suk!

[BreweryYardRat]

2. kick for the evening crew

:kick:

Folks, I may tend to react with violence and insanity when it comes to threats to the environment, but if you've got better solutions, I'm more than willing to hear them!