No more whaling! No more poaching! No more killing!

DemocratLupis

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US, Japan seek support for whale hunting by indigenous groups by P. Parameswaran
Sun May 27, 6:22 AM ET



ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AFP) - The United States and Japan may be on opposite sides of the whaling debate but they have a common aim -- gaining support for whale hunting by their indigenous and coastal communities.

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Ahead of annual talks of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) starting in Anchorage this week, the United States, a strong opponent of commercial whaling, is nevertheless wooing members of the polarized 75-nation body to maintain bowhead whale hunting quotas for native Alaskan communities.

On the other hand, Japan, spearheading the pro-whaling group, is making a feverish pitch to allow its traditional coastal communities to catch an unspecified number of Minke whales under the same IWC rules that permit the Inupia and Yup'ik peoples of Alaska to hunt the giant creatures.

Even though the IWC, which regulates whaling and is in charge of conservation of the mammals, imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986, it has a policy of allowing people in countries such as the United States, Russia and Greenland to hunt otherwise protected whales to satisfy longstanding cultural and subsistence needs.

Japan has been campaigning for 20 years for so-called emergency relief quotas for four of its small whaling towns but its request has been rejected by the IWC, which argues that such an allocation would be a "commercial" quota disallowed under the moratorium.

Japan is going to try again this year and the move, experts say, could be a key focus of the meeting. Japan is already under fire from conservationists for exploiting a loophole in the moratorium, which allows killing of whales for "scientific research."

The richest Asian nation may even use its bargaining power over the United States' regarding aboriginal subsistence whaling quotas to gain votes to back its own demands.

For its request for whale hunting quotas for native communities to be maintained, Washington needs the support of three quarters of the IWC members. Japan and its allies hold enough votes to block such approval.

"We expect the same treatment to be given to any proposal from Japan for a quota for our traditional coastal whaling communities, where the whales would be caught locally, processed locally, distributed locally and consumed locally," Joji Mori****a, alternate IWC commissioner for Japan, told AFP.

"People need to ask themselves the question: does it matter whether a whale is hunted under the US's so-called Aboriginal Subsistence, or Iceland or Norway's commercial whaling or Japan's traditional coastal whaling?"

"Of course not. What is of the utmost importance is that the practice is sustainable. And it is," Mori****a said.

Japan has denied that it would block the US request to maintain its quota but experts say they are not sure whether its allies will toe the line. In 2002, a Japanese-led coalition nixed the US quota but later backed down.

Last year, Japan and other pro-whaling nations, notably Iceland and Norway, won a razor-thin 33-32 victory, passing a symbolic resolution saying the whaling moratorium was no longer necessary.

Japan, in recent years, supported continuation of subsistence hunting in exchange for the United States showing support in principle for Japan's commercial coastal whaling program.

William Hogarth, the US commissioner to the IWC, is reportedly wooing support particularly from Caribbean countries that are allied to Japan on the issue.

"Under the current international balance of interests, whaling would surely continue, at least in the short term," Hogarth said in a report circulated here.

"So any newly negotiated instrument would have to accommodate that fact," he said. This was apparently a response to calls to shut down the IWC following its failure to develop an effective whaling management scheme.
 
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What is your point in this? Alaska Natives have been hunting whales for millenia, the bowheads in question, are not endangered in that part of the world, when a whale is hunted, the meat is split among the entire community. This is not a mass scale industrial slaughter as the media might portray it. As for the Japanese, they as well have been eating whale for millenia, and if the population of whales is healthy enough where a handful can be harvested responsibly then they should.
 
If the species is not endagered, what is the problem? I hunt, and i love it to death. Whats wrong with whaling/hunting/fishing?
 
see thats the attitude which gets people totally away from GOD
nothing should have to be endangered to not be hunted thats like saying what if Animals could talk but we all know some animals are super smart and they know what we're doing to them What if Gorillas were like that of Planet of the Apes! the movies so Gorrillas could hunt us if they could until our numbers are low thats not right so what gives us the right to hunt
 
see thats the attitude which gets people totally away from GOD


While I am against whale hunting, I couldn't care less if it gets me totally away from God. And explain to me, why would God make whale meat taste so good, or any form of animal, if he doesn't want us to eat it?
 
While I am against whale hunting, I couldn't care less if it gets me totally away from God. And explain to me, why would God make whale meat taste so good, or any form of animal, if he doesn't want us to eat it?

You know, sublime, that's the first thing you've written with which I totally disagree. I have read that human flesh is quite tasty too, does that mean that God made it that way so we'd eat it? Look at the standard American diet, people love the taste of the crap they're eating and it's killing them wholesale. Taste buds should not be the final arbiter of good and bad. We have outgrown the habit of judging a person's worth by the color of their skin, perhaps it's time to stop judging a creature's value by the flavor of its flesh.

People hunt because it makes them feel powerful, this is just another example of the Might is Right philosophy that undergirds our culture. People kill for the sadistic pleasure it gives them. Cody Aragon said it so well, "I hunt, and i love it to death. Whats wrong with whaling/hunting/fishing?" He loves it, look up sadism in the dictionary, hurting for pleasure, killing for self-gratification. It's also cowardice, people kill animals because it's safe to do so, animals can't shoot back, animals have no weapons--all they can do is run away. And don't any of you silly hunters start in with the "big, dangerous animals" stories--it's a lie. Indigenous people hunting for traditional survival is a whole different thing from modern people and the savage ritual of "sport" killing.
 
What is your point in this? Alaska Natives have been hunting whales for millenia, the bowheads in question, are not endangered in that part of the world, when a whale is hunted, the meat is split among the entire community. This is not a mass scale industrial slaughter as the media might portray it. As for the Japanese, they as well have been eating whale for millenia, and if the population of whales is healthy enough where a handful can be harvested responsibly then they should.

Men have been beating their wives and children for millenia too, women and children are not endangered, therefore it's okay for the beatings to continue? Tradition just means that people have been doing it for a long time, there's no intrinsic value established solely from the longevity of a practice.

A better question to ask would be: Why is the human race so compassionless?
 
Men have been beating their wives and children for millenia too, women and children are not endangered, therefore it's okay for the beatings to continue? Tradition just means that people have been doing it for a long time, there's no intrinsic value established solely from the longevity of a practice.

A better question to ask would be: Why is the human race so compassionless?

Perhaps because most of us assign a different emotional value to a cow than to a human child.

Fact is, hunting is a natural thing. We're biologically designed to eat meat. It doesn't have anything to do with old customs or traditions, it has to do with basic functions of the human body. We eat meat. How do you get meat? You either hunt it or you grow it. If you ask me, hunting is the more humane way of doing it; it's more natural. Then again, that's just my opinion.
 
see thats the attitude which gets people totally away from GOD
nothing should have to be endangered to not be hunted thats like saying what if Animals could talk but we all know some animals are super smart and they know what we're doing to them What if Gorillas were like that of Planet of the Apes! the movies so Gorrillas could hunt us if they could until our numbers are low thats not right so what gives us the right to hunt

Oh boy, citing a fictional movie as your argument, wow, I'm impressed, you've changed my opinion. NOT
 
Men have been beating their wives and children for millenia too, women and children are not endangered, therefore it's okay for the beatings to continue? Tradition just means that people have been doing it for a long time, there's no intrinsic value established solely from the longevity of a practice.

A better question to ask would be: Why is the human race so compassionless?

Oh for crying out loud, you actually want to compare the beating of children with the act of putting food on the table?
Vanna wants to know if you want to buy a clue?
 
Perhaps because most of us assign a different emotional value to a cow than to a human child.

Fact is, hunting is a natural thing. We're biologically designed to eat meat. It doesn't have anything to do with old customs or traditions, it has to do with basic functions of the human body. We eat meat. How do you get meat? You either hunt it or you grow it. If you ask me, hunting is the more humane way of doing it; it's more natural. Then again, that's just my opinion.

Eating flesh is a habit, no more, no less. Indigenous people's are grandfathered through, modern people don't hunt because they need to, they hunt because they like the killing.

With the ongoing destruction of the ecosystems, due to the over-population and the under-cerebration of the human species, we need to come to the realization that the meat-based diet is too expensive, too resource intensive, and too destructive to the environment to be continued. Animal husbandry is the most water-intensive industry in this country and uses vast amounts of land and vegetation to produce a relatively small quantity of food which is harmful to humans in the quantities that we consume it.

There are a number of activities that humans have taken part in traditionally which are no longer good or useful things: eating flesh, making war, increasing our population, slaughtering animals into extinction, using drift nets or deep trawl nets to fish, strip mining, producing long-lived artificial chemicals and dumping them wholesale into the environment (PCB's and DDT are classic examples), clear-cut logging, burning forests to clear land for cattle grazing... and the list could go on and on. We need to grow up and stop judging our activities on the basis of short-sighted ethnocentrism, traditional habits, short-term self-gratification, and the pleasure of our taste buds.
 
Oh for crying out loud, you actually want to compare the beating of children with the act of putting food on the table?
Vanna wants to know if you want to buy a clue?

I wasn't comparing the value of the two actions, I was pointing out the insanity of continuing traditions without thinking about them. And it wasn't just the beating of children, it was wives as well, both of which have been traditional activities, completely legal and necessary according to many cultural and relgious traditions. Check out the Bible scriptures which demand the beating of children, for instance.

Not only was I not comparing the relative value of beating vs killing, I was using an example to point out the fallacy in the argument that it's okay to beat or kill creatures if they are not numerically endangered.
 
I wasn't comparing the value of the two actions, I was pointing out the insanity of continuing traditions without thinking about them. And it wasn't just the beating of children, it was wives as well, both of which have been traditional activities, completely legal and necessary according to many cultural and relgious traditions. Check out the Bible scriptures which demand the beating of children, for instance.

Not only was I not comparing the relative value of beating vs killing, I was using an example to point out the fallacy in the argument that it's okay to beat or kill creatures if they are not numerically endangered.

You used a strawman argument and I called you on it. You were trying to compare the act of child and/or spousal abuse to hunting which is just ridiculous. Now you want to cite shortcomings in the bible for your argument. Newsflash for you, the bible is so full of contradictions, fallacies and foolishness it isn't a reliable source for anything.
 
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You used a strawman argument and I called you on it. You were trying to compare the act of child and/or spousal abuse to hunting which is just ridiculous. Now you want to cite shortcomings in the bible for your argument. Newsflash for you, the bible is so full of contradictions, fallacies and foolishness it isn't a reliable source for anything.

I'm sorry that you were unable to grasp the concept I was trying to put across. Novel concepts can be difficult.
 
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