http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060612/ts_alt_afp/environmentwhalingdiplomacyiwcjapanus_060612124210Japan tipped to wrest control of whaling commission
by Stephen Collinson Mon Jun 12, 8:42 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Japan looks poised this week to seize a dominant grip on the world body frustrating its commercial whaling ambitions, and to deal a sickening blow to the global Green movement.
Tokyo is tipped to emerge from a cliffhanger vote on Friday along with fellow pro-whaling states with a simple majority on the 70-nation International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting in St Kitts and Nevis in the West Indies.
Environmentalists fear Japan, backed by other pro-whaling nations, would use a majority to chip away at a two-decades-old moratorium on commercial whaling and to block conservation efforts.
They also fear Japan would try to remove Greenpeace's observer status at the IWC and introduce secret ballots.This is very distressing. This is my adopted country, but for some reason, the Japanese insist on continuing to hunt whales, and they want to take more. Why?!?! Today's Japanese don't even like whale meat. Even the amount they take now they have to mark down to get it to sell! Why this insistence on taking more? What's more, Japan and China are taking so much fish at this point that the fisheries around Japan and China are nearly depleted so that the fishermen have to go further and further out to catch anything.
It's really tragic, when you consider that here in Japan, so much of this food goes to waste. :-(