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Who commits Trespass, Piracy (robbery at sea)? Whaler or Bethune? Whale Sanctuary, 304 females killed: 192 pregnant, 4 lactating
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Responses to 'Is the Anti-Whaling Activist Who Boarded a Japanese Whaling Ship a Pirate?' Jim Says: The Japanese are trespassing and poaching within a known whale sanctuary. What type of research results in the SALE of WHALEMEAT to consumers - this is profiteering by the Japanese and they are the actual pirates? AnimuX Says: If Japan prosecutes Pete Bethune, he will become the political prisoner of a tyrannical government that has even violated the basic human rights of its own citizens (remember the Tokyo Two?) in order to support the whaling industry. Not to mention the fact that the captain of the ship that Pete boarded, Shonan Maru 2, is the same man who rammed and destroyed his vessel, Ady Gil, nearly killing Bethune and 5 members of his crew. If anything, the captain and crew of the Shonan Maru 2 should be apprehended and charged by New Zealand authorities for attempted murder.
As for the flawed concept that Japan is doing “legal” research in the Southern Ocean:
The first time Japan used Article VIII to justify whaling was in 1976. The IWC had just set the catch quota for Bryde’s whales to zero for purposes of conservation. Japan responded by issuing itself a science permit and proceeded to kill over 200 Bryde’s whales that season. Afterwards the IWC passed resolutions requiring any future use of Article VIII to be first evaluated by the IWC scientific committee.
In the mid 70s and 80s Japan and other embattled whaling nations (including the Soviet Union) fought the establishment of a global moratorium (despite the fact that the UN had passed a resolution in 1972 declaring a 10 year moratorium should be enacted). After a series of votes a moratorium was passed in 1982 and went into effect in the 85/86 season but Japan objected to it officially and continued to take whales under objection. This is normal under the rules of the ICRW (International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling).
The United States threatened Japan with economic sanctions including loss of access to Alaskan fisheries worth over $400 million USD. In negotiations, Japan agreed that it would stop commercial whaling by 1988 for access to these fisheries. However, Japan was busy preparing and presenting plans for “scientific research” to the IWC scientific committee.
The committee rejected the research proposals (submitted before 1988). And despite this, in the 87/88 season Japan started its research whaling program JARPA. Due to pressure from US fishermen and environmental groups Japan lost access to US Alaskan resources anyway in 1988. US President Ronald Reagan declared Japan was in violation of IWC regulations and officially sanctioned Japan under the Packwood-Magnuson Amendment in 1988 as well.
Since then, the IWC has almost annually issued resolutions, passed by majority, against Japan’s lethal research methods. Unfortunately, due to the lack of political will to take on Japan over whales and the lack of any punitive mechanism in the ICRW there has been nothing more than talk out of world governments.
Historically, Japan has violated whaling regulations such as size limits, species limits, gender limits, seasonal limits, sanctuary boundaries, and even supported “pirate whaling” (killing whales in secret around the world through front companies with foreign labor to smuggle meat back to Japan without reporting to the IWC).
Does any of this look like important legal science? Does it really look like Japan is honoring international conventions in good faith? The Australian Federal Court didn’t think so and it recently ruled that Japanese whaling in the Australian Antarctic Territory EEZ is illegal. Pete Bethune should be free and exonerated of any charges. The Japanese whaling industry should be shut down and the Shonan Maru 2 captain, the real pirate, should be arrested and put on trial.
Pirates'Booty Says:
Pirates don’t board on ships with letters. They board on ships with guns and ask for money at gun point.
It is the Shonan Maru #2 who should be charged with the sinking of the Ady Gil and with attempted murder. Shonan Maru #2’s skipper almost killed six human beings then run away, and under New Zealand law, a New Zealand citizen has the right to conduct a citizens arrest.
agent orange Says:
Japanese whalers are operating illegally by targeting endangered and protected whales in an established international whale sanctuary in violation of a global moratorium on commercial whaling, in violation of the Antarctic Treaty and in contempt of an Australian Federal Court order.
ddpalmer Says:
Japan kills over 1,000 whales and 24,000 dolphins every year. They are driving the overfishing of bluefin tuna. It’s just a resource to them and when its gone they’ll move on to the next one.
AnimuX Says:
One commenter wrote: “The Sea Shepherds have the same mentality as those who bomb abortion and Family Planning clinics because they don’t believe in it, even if it’s legal to do. I guess to them, murder is OK as long as you believe in what you are doing.” This is the biggest line of crap that comes out of Sea Shepherd critics time and time again. Let me spell this out for you.
Sea Shepherd shoots cameras instead of machine guns and throws stink bombs instead of grenades. They don’t hold people hostage for ransom. They don’t hunt people down or beat people up. In THIRTY YEARS of intervention against illegal whaling and other environmentally destructive industries Sea Shepherd has not killed a single person.
So don’t go flying off the handle with BS accusations of murder and wanton violence.
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Sea Shepherd is no more guilty of piracy than hippies who chain themselves to trees are guilty of terrorism. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop pro-whalers from comparing Sea Shepherd activists and “treehuggers” to Al Qaida.
Japan, on the other hand, has willfully ignored its international obligations, subverted internationally established conservation efforts and attempted to kill unarmed activists at sea by ramming and destroying one of their vessels.
I should make this point abundantly clear to all who read this. As a military man, I can tell you for a fact that the Japanese whalers are LUCKY that Sea Shepherd is not a violent organization. A truly violent group could have killed every whaler and sunk every whaling ship for a lot less than the cost of the Ady Gil.
This conflict continues for exactly one reason. World governments that established whaling regulations have utterly failed to uphold and enforce their own agreements. Sadly, it falls upon volunteers and an extreme interpretation of the UN Charter for Nature to attempt to do so without government support.
One government in Japan after another has purposely violated whaling regulations since 1930s by supporting the whaling industry politically and financially. The international community does not have the political will to put an end to this because Japan is the 2nd largest economy in the world.
AnimuX Says:
...most irrational and emotional arguments possible:
1) Alleging unarmed activists who’ve never killed or threatened to kill anybody are functionally equivalent to terrorists, pirates and abortion clinic bombers
2) Alleging activists who were about to be pulverized by an 800 tonne whaling ship purposely raced their boat in front of the oncoming juggernaut when video footage clearly shows the 800 tonne whaling “security ship” sharply turned toward an idle and much smaller activist vessel. Out of an entire open ocean for the SM2 to travel in, it curiously and suddenly altered its course to collide with the Ady Gil.
3) Alleging those that oppose the actions of the SM2 and the long history of Japanese violation of whaling regulations are racist and hypocrites who don’t show concern for other injustices in the world.
4) Alleging that any opinion in opposition to your own is mindless, brainwashing (kool-aid), or foolish despite the long list of scientists, legal experts, national leaders and others who have voiced opposition to the Japanese whaling industry.
Japan has failed to honor its international obligations and purposely subverted international conservation efforts since the 1930s. In predictable sequence with a historically verifiable pattern of this behavior Japan continues to financially and politically support whaling in opposition not only to international conventions but repeated (almost annual) IWC resolutions calling upon Japan to end its lethal research programs.
The captain and crew of the SM2 thought they could wreck an activist ship, kill her crew and call it an accident. They failed and it’s all on video record for the world to see. Those who are desperately and emotionally bound to defend the whalers struggle to make their case. “Look at how -after- the SM2 charges straight for the motionless Ady Gill that at the last possible second they just jump right out and get hit!” The most ridiculous and critically flawed argument to date since the Japanese government called Greenpeace activists “terrorists” after their members chained themselves to harpoon ships in Japan.
As for Greenpeace working from within Japan, I have no problem with that. However, the Japanese government’s continued irrational support for whaling can clearly be seen in the abuse of two Greenpeace activists who have been turned into political prisoners in their own country. Japanese Greenpeace activists had their basic human rights violated by their own government all for attempting to expose criminal acts of whalers. They went to the police with their evidence and they were charged instead of the real criminals.
All of this boils down to one simple fact. The Japanese government is willing to bend and break any rules necessary to keep whaling going regardless of international objections. World governments don’t have the political backbone to put an end to the whaling problem so civilians with an extreme interpretation of the UN Charter for Nature are doing the job of governments by attempting to enforce internationally established whaling regulations in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.
No detail has been missed doc. The big picture is quite clear.
THE diplomatic heat between Australia and Japan appears not to have deterred whalers in the Antarctic cold. As Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada met Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Sydney yesterday, the whaling factory ship Nisshin Maru was steaming through the heart of an Australian Antarctic whale sanctuary, anti-whaling activists aboard the Sea Shepherd vessel the Steve Irwin claim.
The pursuers took this image of the Nisshin Maru behind a GPS locator that showed its position as 65 degrees 11 minutes south, and 78 degrees 8 minutes east. That is only about 100 nautical miles from Australia's Davis Station in eastern Antarctica, well inside the 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
''It's almost like a slap in the face,'' Sea Shepherd leader Paul Watson said from the Steve Irwin. ''They were skirting the EEZ by about a mile until Friday and then they dove down into it.'' Mr Rudd has strongly objected to the ''slaughter of whales'' in the sanctuary declared throughout the EEZ. Whaling is banned in all Australian waters and the hunt's illegality in this polar sanctuary was upheld in a 2008 Federal Court case brought by Humane Society International.
The population of Antarctic minke whales has not increased even though larger whales they competed with for food were whittled down by hunting, according to a recent study by U.S. researchers, countering arguments Japan cites as a reason for conducting lethal research.
The Fisheries Agency and researchers have hypothesized that Antarctic minke whales may have increased as a result of lesser competition for the krill they feed on. But researchers at Oregon State University and Stanford University calculated that the population size in the early 20th century was roughly 670,000, a figure similar to or slightly larger than current estimates from surveys of sightings.
They analyzed genetic diversity of minke whales by purchasing 52 meat samples in Japanese markets to project the population number, according to the study published in the journal Molecular Ecology, posted online in December.
Scott Baker, a researcher at Oregon State University who conducted the analysis, said the latest results indicated the hypothesis by some scientists that the population has increased by three-fold to eight-fold over the last century is wrong. The Fisheries Agency has said in promoting the lethal research that there are calls for "thinning" Antarctic minke whales because that species could be hindering the recovery of the blue whale population.
Of 679 whales reported to have been killed during the 2008-2009 whale hunt in Antarctica, 304 were female. Four of the female whales were lactating, and 192 were pregnant at the time of death. The Japanese government's "Cruise Report" gives gruesome details on the fetuses killed. The four lactating females killed would each have had a dependent calf who would inevitably have starved to death.
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Photos courtesy of Takver - Sydney Indymedia, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Reuters, and AAP
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