Guardian/UK: Japan Buys Votes to Take Control of Whaling Body

[Nothing Without Hope]

This is very, very bad news for anyone who cares about the whales of the world being driven to extinction by relentless commercial exploitation. The Japanese have ALREADY been hunting something like 1000 southern minke whales a year, for example, for "scientific research"--with the meat sold commercially, of course. Now all the rules can be relaxed further and hunting of whales can be promoted by the countries that support this: Japan, Iceland, Norway.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0614-08.htm
Published on Wednesday, June 14, 2006 by the Independent / UK

Japan Buys Votes to Take Control of Whaling Body

by Michael McCarthy

(SNIP)

Its takeover of the IWC - likely to become clear on Friday - will be a major reverse for the international environmental movement, which has long thought that the fight for one of its iconic causes - Save the Whale - had been largely won.

It will be a considerable propaganda victory not only for the Japanese, but also for other nations who are determined to continue whale hunting in spite of international opinion, principally Norway and Iceland.

But Japan has done all the work. It marks the climax of a 10-year campaign of using substantial foreign aid packages to persuade small countries - often with no whaling tradition, or even a coastline - to join the IWC and vote on the Japanese side. While the world has been looking the other way, the pro-Japan vote has built up over the years towards a controlling figure. The Japanese thought they had secured a 51 per cent majority last year but some of their allies did not turn up to vote at the IWC meeting in Ulsan, South Korea.

At this year's meeting in St Kitts and Nevis in the West Indies, there is likely to be no such slip-up. Japan has persuaded three more small nations - Guatemala, Cambodia and the Marshall Islands - to join the IWC as its voting allies.

(snip)

[Kutjara]

1. The New Scientist magazine was warning about this six months ago...

...but nobody took any notice. Japan has been offering all kinds of lucrative deals to developing nations to get them to see things it's way. This is the fruit of their efforts.

It seems like the human race has collectively decided to prove once and for all that democracy doesn't work.

[Nothing Without Hope]

2. Yes, it's a demonstration of the effectiveness of bribery. An ancient

policy tool that has never been outdated. I'm betting there is bribery going on in the Japanese government too for them to keep pushing against world opinion on this issue. Bribery - it's just another business expense.

[Kutjara]

3. You're right on the money.

Japanese business and government is precipitated on bribery, so much so that it's not even considered to be anything to get upset about. The Asian traditon of gift-giving has been hijacked by the unscrupulous and the powerful, so that no deal can be finalised without a mindboggling amount of under-the-table money changing hands.

Many years ago, my father was Chief of Construction for Micronesia. He was responsible for a number of large public works projects (airports, dams, sewage systems, etc). There were inevitably a large number of bidders for these contracts, many from Japan and Korea. Even though I was young, I clearly remember the dozens of deliverymen who brought gift after gift to the door of our house. These gifts were from the companies bidding for contracts, and were often worth tens of thousands of dollars. My father later assured me that he turned all the gifts over to the Congress of Micronesia, but I am still amazed at how much a normal part of doing business such bribes were.

Seems little has changed.

[Nothing Without Hope]

4. A kick for what's left of the night n/t

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Remind me...what DO we get from dead whales that we can't do without? nt

[Nothing Without Hope]

6. Well, there's that great dog food, oil used in cosmetics and paint and

such, and meat eaten by people. All SORTS of irreplaceable treasures. :sarcasm: At the price of meat in Japan, 1000 minke whales must be worth a great deal. I unwittingly ate some many years ago when I lived in Japan - at the moment I got the fried meat on a stick from the street vendor, I didn't know what "kujira" was, so I was able to enjoy it. I felt rather sick after looking it up in the dictionary. Tasty, but not worth the price of killing whales.

ed:sp

[eppur_se_muova]

11. Ahh, dead whale meat--kind of a tautology.

Seriously, I think it used to be argued that the oil from whales was "irreplacable" because it was of such high quality, and was used to lubricate precision machinery. There are now synthetic lubricants to do that job.

Outside of the argument that "we've always done it that way" there just doesn't seem to be much of a reason to renew hunting whales at the first sign of their rebounding from the dege of extinction. Let the Japanese wipe out some other species for a while.

[Nothing Without Hope]

12. I agree. I believe the REAL reason for this "industry" is that those

dead whales are worth a lot of money in meat and byproducts and someone in Japan (and Norway and Iceland) wants that profit enough to bribe politicians to push for relaxation of the protections now in place. It's all about money, and isn't that a theme song these days.

[Nothing Without Hope]

7. kick for the morning crowd n/t

[Nothing Without Hope]

8. kick n/t

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. Are the Japanese driving whales to extinction?

Or hunting them responsibly?

[Nothing Without Hope]

10. As it stands with the regulations in place, they are already killing at

least 1000 southern minke whales a year. (They do this because of a loophole that says some hunting is allowed for research purposes. Of course this is all actually commerical and the meat is sold, but the Japanese claim it's "for research purposes." Wink, wink.) Possibly that is sustainalble for a while, though I think there are questioins about population distribution and dynamics and how the killing effect would be affected by these variables. But what this new development means is that they are moving to REMOVE as many of the restrictions on hunting as possible. Will Japan, Norway and Iceland then hunt responsibly? Based on the history of this issues, I'd say the whales would be in serious trouble.