Article in the smh from Minoru Morimoto (san), Japan's commisioner to the Internation Whaling Commission.
quoting...
There are enough whales for both those that want to watch them and those who want to eat them.
I fully respect the right of Australians to oppose whaling for some "cuddly" reasons, but this does not give them the right to coerce others to end a perfectly legal and culturally significant activity that poses no threat to the species concerned.
Now that's a put down.
Basically his position is that whales are not people. We don't protect other animals that are not endangered. We can't consistently kill roos on farms and allow indigenous Aussies to hunt Dugong and tell Japan they can't hunt whales, as long as there are enough whales to hunt.
Japan reckons they are researching whales so that they can one-day re-commence commercial whaling and have a good idea of the stocks before they do so, and the amount of meat on any given animal too I guess. They may eat the results, but according to them the research is needed and sanctioned under international law.
I personally dont cry for the whales, but I don't want engangered species driven to extinction. My problem is that this just seems to be ganging up on Japan, an ally. We dont here Rudd telling off China for doing exactly this to their River Dolphin.
Rudd is supposed to be an ex-diplomat but he is potentially going to cause the biggest rift between between Aus and Japan since WWII. Either he his extremely clumsy and diplomatically inept, or he is doing it on purpose. I get the feeling that either Rudd is deliberately pissing Japan off to get in China's good books. Maybe appeasing the greenies at home is sufficient motivation for what he has done but it did not need to be handled by the RAN in a way that looked like and act of war.
And what of the RAN? Two protest vessels have found the Japanese whaling ship to date. One even managed to send two crew-members to board it and get captured. Why not the Australian Navy? Apparently Greenpeace have been tailing the Japanese form weeks and radioing back the coordinates to The RAN (read about this on monday in the OZ, can't find the link now). My friends and I have a theory that the RAN is 'losing' the coordinates on purpse and telling Rudd, "Sorry Sir can't find 'em. The dog must have eaten it". I'd say the RAN desperately want to avoid attacking a vessel from a country they do naval excercises with. Perhaps also the proud sailors of the RAN also dont take kindly to being relegated to the role of spies. They dont get paid to take pictures.
Japan and Australia, two powerful Pacific democracie's militray co-operation came to a zenith under Howard. We just signed a new treaty. Aussie troops are/were protecting Japanese engineering soldiers in Iraq.
Rudd's not a diplomat, he's a bureacrat.
