It seems that Australia was quite prepared to do a deal with Japan on whaling:
US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks reveal Australia was willing to compromise with Japan as late as February last year…A compromise under which Japan would kill 5000 fewer whales over 10 years – provided larger varieties such as humpback and fin whales were not taken and loopholes to allow so-called ”scientific whaling” were closed – was discussed.
Interestingly, according to the cables, Peter Garrett told a US diplomat the deal would involve the end of hunting fin and humpback whales, and 500 fewer minke whales taken over 10 years. According to Wikipedia, Japanese whalers have a maximum quota of 935 minke whales annually, so the cuts to minke whaling would only be minor (indeed, I’m not sure their actual take has actually reached quota, so it may not actually involve any cuts).
Peter Garrett – and public pressure by the Greens – appear to have been major obstacles to such a deal, with DFAT being keen for one.
That said, I think it’s a very safe assumption that no Australian government (at least unless and until we welcome in Adam Bandt as Prime Minister) will ever take any serious action against Japan over whaling, and it is insulting to the Australian people that they maintain the pretence that they will.
It was also interesting to read in todays Guardian that a wikileak has a cable from a US embassy recommending that those countries refusing GM modified crops, using US seed, be subject to “retaliation”.
Can’t say I’m dying of surprise.
“The cables reveal the US envoy to the International Whaling Commission, Monica Medina, held talks with the head of Japan’s fisheries agency, Katsuhiro Machida, in late 2009.
The two sides discussed the possibility of revoking the tax-exempt status of the US-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
In the cables sent from the US embassy in Tokyo, the Japanese were said to have appreciated the American idea to remove the group’s tax exemption.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/04/3105737.htm
Bastards!
SG, I trust that the Australian government would step up in that case and offer to help Sea Shepherd re-base in Australia and gain tax-exempt status here. Which would help a little. After all, Sea Shepherd is an entirely lawful entity if you use the Japanese definition of lawful.
I am reminded of the NZ govt response to the Rainbow Warrior incident[1] – they sent a frigate to replace the Warrior. Perhaps mentioning that possibility to the Japanese would persuade them to work with us to support Sea Shepherd?
[1] it was not a terrorist act because state actors cannot, by definition, commit terrorism. Which is one of the problems with the definition IMO.
Being devil’s advocate for a moment – how bad would this deal have actually been if it had gone through? While I take Robert’s point about the cut not having a realistic impact on the quota, that may have been worked out in negotiation. The ‘scientific whaling’ pretense is surely the major loophole here and appears to give the Japanese a license to keep doing what they want. Since the domestic anti-whaling lobby in Japan is brave but tiny an voluntary cessation of whaling by Japan doesn’t look likely. Therefore bringing Japan back into the international tent appears to be the only way forward. At the moment whaling has become immeshed with lots of unsavoury nationalistic sentiments in both Japan and Australia. But despite the hepped up rhetoric of sending in patrol boats – how aggressive do we really want to get about whaling? Our response will be considerably less than war. Ultimately we can’t force the Japanese to stop whaling unless the Japanese government accepts some kind of international framework, and accedes to some future domestic political pressure to stop whaling voluntarily.
For what it’s worth, Tim, I agree with you (and Australian governments past and present). I don’t support whaling, but neither do I think it’s worth having a serious argument with Japan over – both on environmental and animal cruelty grounds there are much more serious issues out there, but whales get huge amounts of attention because of the charismatic big animal effect.
But the chest-beating from both major parties on this issue, when they know perfectly well that they’re not going to push Japan too hard, is insulting and annoying.
So much for those who want to downplay the significance of the cables from Wikileaks. For mine the key facts in the SMH coverage is that the US has had the ear of Stephen Smith on the matter and, of course, that those pricks on DFAT staff continue to imagine that they better represent the will of Australian citizens than elected members of Parliament. More coverage here.
This is old news. The plan to cut a deal with Japan was floated publicly a few years back, and dismissed by Garrett. The real wikileaks juice will come if they can find the cable in which the Australian government admits that they’re encouraging domestic anti-whaling sentiment, and tolerating the sea shepherds, as part of their territorial claims on the southern ocean.
I also think it might be wise to cut this kind of deal with Japan. The domestic whale meat market is small and shrinking, and the industry is supported politically as part of rural and nationalist electoral policy. Making it an official allowable quota gets rid of the nationalist elements and enables the Japanese to get on with the task of getting rid of their whaling industry. It would also free up the sea shepherds to spend more time hunting other illegal fishing activities (which the sea shepherds also campaign against).
I saw the footage of the first sea shepherd actions of the season yesterday, from some american news channel, and the implicit racism in the coverage is astounding. If it were an American fishing vessel being targeted by an Asian NGO, there is no way the language used would have been so passive. Before the sea shepherds turned their sights on Japan the US treated them as terrorists – at least one sea shepherd boat has been given the rainbow warrior treatment – and it’s really obvious that this dispute suits US and Australian political interests. Can you imagine if a group of Iranian animal rights activists started raiding live animal shipments from Oz to the Middle East? They’d be presented a tiny bit differently in the media, methinks.
sg@8< I for one would be delighted if Iranian animal activists raided live animal shipments, a stop to that loathsome trade can't come quickly enough for me. As to the duplicity of Labor (say one thing,do another) I am getting to the stage where I no longer believe a word they say. In fact I would welcome another election and seeing Bob Brown as PM. Labor have lost any principals they once had and this is just one more nail in the coffin.
Wouldn’t a deal have resulted in less bad stuff happening.
Change happens in painfully incremental steps, much to many people around here’s chagrin.
The first sentence is a question. Please excuse my lack of a question mark.
Perhaps, Howard. But more likely it would have been the thin edge of the wedge to recommercialize whaling. So, overall, a deal was probably about thing. (apart from re-affirming the essential dishonesty and untrustworthiness of the majority of politicians, which IMHO is a particularly bad thing in a democracy.
Robert, I can remember before the 2007 election hearing Garrett huffing about the Howard govt ‘not doing enough’ on whaling – and feeling distinctly uneasy about raised expectations. Raised expectations turned out to be the story of the Rudd govt generally.
Paul, is there really a lot of unmet demand for whale products out there just waiting for recommercialisation? I don’t think Australia would restart whaling, and most nations have never participated in the industry. What holds back whaling ultimately isn’t treaties but voting publics. Japan needs a domestic anti-whaling movement that can’t be marginalized as foreign agents. So making Japan less isolated will be a crucial step.
“It was also interesting to read in todays Guardian that a wikileak has a cable from a US embassy recommending that those countries refusing GM modified crops, using US seed, be subject to “retaliation”.”
Having this attitude confirmed is quite big news, actually.
ain’t gonna happen, PB. It’s a dinosaur industry that’s unwanted by most Japanese. There’s a reason why there’s 4,000 tonnes of the stuff sitting frozen in a warehouse, and why the Japanese government embarrassingly stuffed some whale meat into school lunches a year or two back — they can’t give the meat away because there’s insufficient demand. I don’t know how this squares with other info that the whale meat is worth big $$$$ — it’s not worth bloody anything if nobody wants to buy it.
I interviewed several Japanese people last year (ages ranged from early 20s to early 60s), in Japanese, on this issue, and managed to glean a few things:
- Very, very few people under aged 40 have eaten whale meat, ever. As in maybe 1-2%.
- About a two-thirds majority of Japanese oppose whaling, but don’t feel all that strongly about it, whereas a noisy minority who do feel strongly about it are bringing the domestic political pressure to bear on successive governments in Japan.
- They prefer (Australia export!) beef, pork or chicken.
- They are shocked and appalled that we hunt kangaroo and think it’s terribly cruel (essentially they express the same kind of emotive statements I often hear from anti-whaling activists). I didn’t raise this issue myself, but every single person I spoke to spontaneously mentioned kangaroo hunting as something they personally found either distressing or bewildering. A great deal of the international ill-feeling on this issue seems to be of the log-in-one’s-own-eye variety.
- They associate the practice of whale meat consumption as something their grandparents did back in the bad old days when land-based animal proteins were scarce to unobtainable in the diet. They regarded it is a bit of a shameful relic of an impoverished past they preferred to forget.
But, like much of agricultural policy in Australia, it’s all being held hostage to a misplaced romantic myth about somthing-or-other to do with national whatsit, or something…
A few LP regulars seem to reside in Japan — maybe they can chime in?
Merc,
Your argument sounds very reasonable and on the whole I agree with it, but, if we reach peak oil etc and energy creation from coal becomes a big no no, as its bound to do, might not the world look at older bygone forms of energy creation, eg whale oil? Just a thought. Not that I support the idea at all, btw.
Doesn’t the leak just reveal a difference between a public negotiating position and a less public real position?
I’m happy to highlight fault with our current government – but this seems like a non-issue to me.
Mercurius at 15, that’s pretty much how all the Japanese people I know see whaling. I think it would disappear as a viable industry if it were legal and commercialized, because it would lose its political power and just become another overly-subsidized relic industry waiting to fade away.
And yes, all my friends are confused as to why we care about whales but eat kangaroos.
Thanks Mercurius.
So the Japanese government has a similar outlook re whaling, to Labor with “development” and privatisation, or the Hansonist, neo con or social conservative laagar mentalities.
Or the British upper classes and fox hunting.
@18, well unconfuse them very smartly. The kangaroos we eat are not endangered or massively reduced in numbers. All species of whale are either endangered of massively reduced in numbers from before the commercial predation by humans.
The numbers of kangaroos which we eat have actually increased due to the installation of bores for watering stock. Not that I like eating roo meat either although I have a couple of times but there is a huge difference between slaughtering an endangered species and an overpopulated species, cuteness aside.
Australian’s get that, what is the problem with the Japanese?
Salient Green, there are two problems with that:
1. the world doesn’t present objection to whaling just in terms of sustainability – it has a moral dimension, and Japanese see kangaroo hunting in the same moral terms. But they don’t feel a need to preach to us about things we do that they think are disgusting but recognize might be our cultural heritage.
2. some whales can probably now be hunted sustainably, or will be able to be soon, and yet the moratorium remains and Australia vociferously opposes quotas. So again, there’s little evidence that our opposition to whaling is entirely environmentally based. In any case, the collapse of whale populations is nothing to do with Japan – it was Europe, the US and Russia who did that before Japan even had a modern navy. So surely in such a case they could argue that Japan and the indigenous peoples of other nations continue hunting responsibly while the people responsible for the problem maintain the moratorium?
Japanese arguments for whaling in the post-moratorium world are all couched in terms of sustainable fishing.
Also worth noting: kangaroos are a pest only because of modern farming practice. So perhaps the problem is not unsustainable kangaroo numbers so much as unsustainable farming practice? Do you think Australians would appreciate an international movement of environmentalists, spearheaded by the Japanese, telling us that?
To add to that (and sorry for that first horribly strangled sentence): the rest of the world needs to explain clearly to Japan that we have special mystical reasons for valuing whales, and be honest about our opposition to quotas. Then the Japanese can say “fuck off” and we can all get back to an honest negotiating position. But right now that isn’t happening, and even though they themselves are the biggest hypocrites on earth, nationalist sentimentalists (the main supporters of whaling in Japan) are going to be very quick to point out this hypocrisy.
And now, there is no “problem with the Japanese.”
@20, it’s true there is both a moral and a sustainability dimension. The sustainability I have dealt with and it’s clear the Japanese have no grounds to compare whaling with roo eating.
On moral grounds, whales are far more intelligent than roos. I don’t see that as mystical. The Japanese should be told to fuck off and stop murdering sentient species.
They need to be pummelled into submission on this issue, not bargained with, as they are pillaging the oceans with their factory ships. Whaling is only the start of pulling rapacious nations like Japan into line for ocean sustainability.
The Japanese should be told to fuck off and stop murdering sentient species.
Should the Inuit be told the same thing?
Salient Green, your first paragraph really just misses a whole bunch of arguments that need to be made. The next two aren’t the kind of framework we need for international cooperation. Have you read Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation? Intelligence is not a good yardstick by which to judge whether or not to eat things, and using that kind of logic can lead you into some very sticky moral quandaries you probably don’t want to argue over.
You may be aware that “pummelling” the Japanese “into submission” hasn’t been historically a painless task. The Sea Shepherds don’t see the issue in those terms, which is why they now translate much of their website into Japanese and actually try to explain their view to the Japanese. Do you think it would help your cause if I told my Japanese friends that you think they should be “pummeled into submission on this issue”?
So, Salient Green, if whales were less intelligent or sentient I take it then you would you be OK with hunting them? Still not OK? Then their intelligence or sentience is not the real basis of your objection, is it…?
And if whales were off the endangered list, then I take it you would you be OK with hunting them? Still not OK? Then their endangered status is not the real basis of your objection, is it…?
And if a humane method of slaughter were found, would you be OK with hunting them? Still not OK? Then in that case the cruelty of the hunting is not the real basis of your objection, is it…?
And if it wasn’t hunting taking place in the southern ocean, would you be OK with hunting them? Still not OK? Then the location of the hunting is not the real basis of your objection, is it…?
The Japanese could be forgiven for thinking that the level of opprobrium and criticism directed their way has a motivation a little less pure and rational than the intelligence of whales, their sustainability, or the cruelty or location of the hunting…since I’ve yet to encounter an Australian who’d be OK with whaling even if it were sustainable and humane and conducted in the northern hemisphere…
Since whaling is also practiced by citizens of Canada, Norway, Iceland, the USA (Alaska) and Indonesia, without attracting anything like the level of opprobrium or outrage, you can understand why the Japanese might think the critique directed their way is not a little suspect and a little short of honest…
Factory ships were perfected by European fishing nations. Japanese fisherman prefer to fish for tuna using single long lines. It’s the challenge, you see.
Sorry Salient, your objections look to me to be long on emotion and prejudice and short on fact. Damaging the oceans is a global sport.
In fact, for every whale killed each year by hunting, there are nine killed by ocean pollution and international shipping. Who should be “pummelled into submission” over that, Salient? Who should be told to “fuck off and stop murdering sentient species”. Oops, it’s all of us.
The rational position regarding threats to cetacean species is to be nine times more outraged and opposed to ocean pollution and international shipping than you are to whaling, because that would be proportional to the respective levels of cetacean death and trauma caused by those issues — to which Australia directly contributes.
But I have yet to encounter an Australian who is rational on this subject.
Maybe I’m over-sensitive, but I must say, as an Asian-Australian (one of the few on what seems, on my reading, to be an awfully white-dominated group blog), Salient Green’s references to telling a particular racial group to “f— off” and be “pummelled into submission” make me rather uncomfortable.
Thats a joke right.
Isn’t the Japanese definition of sustainable fishing sweep the ocean clean and then eat jellyfish? (And they aren’t that much worse than … basically everyone else, if at all.)
Whats the whale watching industry worth in Australia? (Seriously does anyone have any idea cos lots of numbers are bandied about.)
Honestly whether we appreciate it or not it needs to be said. Repeatedly. 350 years ago roo made up a much bigger proportion of our diet, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to up the amount of it today. Cows probably aren’t a great option on alot of the soil in Australia.
BTW sg – your friends that don’t get why we eat roos and not whales cos of cuteness … if they eat beef don’t show any pictures of newborn calves. That would be cruel.
Can I put that on a t shirt?
(BTW I don’t actually consider killing something and eating it murder – it depends how badly you need to eat really. Killing something and not eating it is tho.)
@28 Jules, A+ for effort, but there’s plenty of whale-watching businesses in Japan. They’ve already figured out that they’re worth more alive than dead.
@27 — are you really surprised, G Factor? A lot of Australians use issues like this as a socially-acceptable cipher to hang the usual xenophobic shit on an Other — in a, you know, totally right-on way.
It certainly saves having to examine the issue up close or think about uncomfortable home truths about how cruelly we treat pigs, sheep and cattle. Or Kangaroos. Or how many ‘sentient species’ in the ocean we murder through our dependence on international shipping, and how much shit we pour into the ocean.
Why go there, when we can just engage in impotent rants against the Japanese? It’s not like we ever have to be responsible for what they do, so we get a nice warm feeling of moral outrage without actually having to do anything about it. Kind of like pissing into an adult diaper. Win-win-win, really. Except for all the whales we continue to kill through ocean pollution and international shipping every year, but let’s not go there…
So how do they feel about whaling (by anyone, not just their fellow japanese)?
Personally I don’t have a problem with whaling if its not commercial, and its all “traditional”. Thats actually a fair fight. I know thats completely irrational but I don’t particularly care. If the inuit want to hunt whales in small modern boats with guns and harpoons I don’t care that much tho – I’m still a bit biased against humans dying compared to animals. I know thats completely irrational but I don’t particularly care.
If they start using whaling fleets thats another story.
Most people eat meat without thinking about the life thats gone to keep theirs going, (well eat anything without thinking about it really).
G Factor @27 – you’re surprised by this?
The debate, well everything that takes place in this country is so dominated by being “white” that the entire thing takes place on “white mans terms.” They can’t even see it. Its a fish and water thing. Even the black people that get quoted on this site are white. (IE tamed and civilised by a British Education/cultural background.) Its only cos they can speak the language of Academia (a white invention dominated by white people) that they get taken seriously. See if you don’t see the world in terms that have been defined by rational white people then you’re not worth listening to.
Thats why you never see Phillipine shamans quoted in LP posts/articles.
I do understand your discomfort tho.
But the only reason we don’t hear that sort of language more often is cos white people think they rule the world. They don’t talk like that as much any more cos they believe every one else is finally in their rightful place. So its not polite to say that stuff in public anymore.
(Sorry white people, that was cruel wasn’t it.)
I think you missed G Factors point there a bit Jules. And we’ve been talking about Japanese feelings about whaling here a bit – Mercurius has a big comment on it up above.
It was “traditional” whaling that caused the collapse of whale populations, unless you think of the long western whaling tradition as somehow becoming “non-traditional” once they started using modern methods. The modern Japanese “research” quota is a tiny tiny percentage of what western fleets were taking a hundred years ago with older methods. “Tradition” doesn’t have much part of it. And Paul Watson (Sea Shepherd Captain) argues that most “traditional” whaling (in the sense of peoples like the inuit) is actually a modern invented phenomenon anyway – he’s got zero patience with “traditional” whaling and spent some time in Soviet waters proving his point.
It’s all of these hypocrisies and historical anomalies that give my Japanese friends pause to think “ooo, maybe this anti-whaling thing isn’t actually about the whales at all…” And I think they might be right, in the majority of cases.
Hey my opinion on whaling is completely irrational but I don’t really care that it is.
Yes and no, perhaps it hasn’t been “traditional” for about 850 years…. and perhaps I should have used the term commercial whaling tho. It would have been clearer.
I also missed the bits in the thread that gave the opinion of Japanese “whale watching and other related forms of tourism” industry. Sorry if its in there – I’ll have another look through the thread.
Maybe. Honestly G Factor is being over sensitive. Salient Green’s comments contained no threat. I dunno if you’ve ever experienced racism or not. (I have, in Australia all my life. He or She might get discomforted about that language, I used to get upset about being chased by skinheads.)
Salient Greens comments reflect the inherent racism that is all over Australian culture, and quite frankly this website. The racism thats basically embedded in western culture. That is western culture.
I dunno, maybe you don’t notice it.
Some people have already pointed that out, secure in the knowledge they’re not doing the same thing and never would.
Jules, whaling has always been commercial. The massive destruction of whaling stocks 150 years ago was commercial. Remember it was traditional hunting that rendered the dodo extinct.
If you think “pummelled into submission over this” isn’t at least vaguely threatening you do indeed have a strange idea of what is ominous and what isn’t.
What about eating people? We could eat (1) the dumb ones, (2) people aren’t endangered they are actually a plague, we could kill them (3) humanely (or we could just eat the ones, who kill themselves even?) and we could restrict ourselves to eating (4) foreigners, kind of like a carbon credit scheme.
And what about religions who don’t eat certain animals, what’s with that? For example: Pork is unclean — they don’t chew cud. I mean, that’s a ridiculous argument. People should not eat whales, they have a blow-pipe.
But… what about if not whaling could represent the idea that we need to start being very mindful of humankind’s impact on the natural environment? You know, it’s kind of a bit irrational, but it’s a symbol! Something to believe in. Then we could maybe stop people from fishing in the oceans. Period. I’m for that first, but the whales are a good beginning. Make all those fisherman stay at home and write sea shanties. Get in touch with their inner whos, etc.
The dodo was wiped out by introduced species. Pig and cat probably.
I can tell the difference between people speaking figuratively and people calling for other humans to be actually pummelled into submission physically.
And I understand the difference between calling on a side to pummel a group into submission on a football field and doing it cos you are a brutal thug.
The last one is threatening. This:
is rhetoric, and about as far removed from an actual physical threat as is possible using those exact words.
Thats the full thing.
See to me that implies its not just Japan thats being talked about. And that there’s no actual chance of physical violence.
And no whaling hasn’t always been commercial. If some experts are to be believed commercial whaling and a decline in whaling stocks both began around 400 years ago. Other people say it was 850 years ago that commercial whaling began.
Either way the decline in whale fishey stocks seems to correlate with an increase in the use of whale oil which was clearly a commercial operation.
So basically when you get down to it the hunting of whales for food has never been associated with a massive decline in their numbers but this probably isn’t the thread to mention that on.
While we’re busting myths we can add the Dodo and traditional hunting methods. Where did you get that idea – The Goodies? (You did didn’t you.) The Dodo became extinct for the same reason many species in Australia have in the last 200 years. The consequences of almost modern humans arriving somewhere and bringing their associated environmental catastrophe’s. Introduced species (most likely rats eating the eggs) + land clearing had more effect on the Dodo than humans hunting it.
However if it were due to hunting (tho lets be clear – it wasn’t) it clearly wouldn’t be traditional in the sense of an indigenous traditional hunting system. IE one that maintains a resource over a long enough period for a culture to rely on it as a food.
I don’t think the idea that the DoDo was a palatable food existed before that episode of the Goodies.
I think we’ll be waiting in vain for revelations relating to the Coalition’s period in office.
perhaps you can understand the difference between literal and figurative threats, Jules, but you can’t understand the difference between casually racist language and genuine debate.
Your comment basically reiterates my point – that commercial whaling in the west was the cause of the decline in whale numbers, starting from a long time ago. It seems to me that opponents of modern whaling can’t accept any of the premises from which pro-whaling nations argue: a) that modern sustainable whaling is possible, b) that the nations involved (including Japan) aren’t environmental villains any more than the anti-whaling nations, c) that “traditional” whaling is not just the preserve of indigenous peoples and is in fact the cause of the decimated stocks we see today and that d) a lot of anti-whaling rhetoric is racist or manipulated for racist or nationalist reasons.
The Japanese had very little role in the decimation of whaling stocks, but you characterize their fishing practices entirely negatively. Can you recognize that every nation has its good and bad fishing practices?
The goodies got their information about the dodo from the same place I did – our British school education. More fool me for placing any faith in it!
If you want to persuade someone to change their behaviour, here’s two alternative approaches you could adopt. Which do you reckon is more likely to succeed?
a) “Pummell them into submission”
b) Let them think it was their idea.
Hectoring, lecturing, harrassing and inflammatory rhetoric about “pummelling into submission” create a frame where successive Japanese governments can make political hay among a domestic minority constituency for which this issue is potently symbolic — by being seen to stand up to Western barbarians.
And it creates a frame where successive Australian governments can make political hay among a domestic majority constituency for which this issue is potently symbolic — by being seen to beat back the yellow peril, again.
Hence the WL cables reveal what we knew all along — the respective governments are saying one thing to their domestic audience and another thing on the international stage. Could’ve knocked me down with a feather.
A big part of the reason why those ships are still out in the southern ocean is because some people have made such a goddamn fuss about it. The ships are propelled, in part, by an extremely potent rocket-fuel combination of western arrogance and Japanese indignation. As the saying goes, “it’s not even good kabuki”.
If you want the Japanese government to quietly withdraw their support for the whaling fleet and program, and the “industry” to quietly and inevitably succumb to the utter lack of domestic commercial demand, then you gotta allow the political breathing-room for it to happen.
But the Japanese government will never stop whaling in a context where it is seen as capitulating to the arrogant demands of the cavilling West. Which is what it would be, right now. Now do you get why an approach that starts with “pummelling into submission” is so inappropriate (to say nothing of its vile historical resonances?).
The “this is not news” mantra. I think I’ve heard it before. Not usually with such strength among the LP hive mind, though. Is beating up on Sea Shepherd the new hott thing for 2011 or something?
Jules, thanks for the support while I’ve been peacefully sleeping. You very clearly get where I am coming from but others here very clearly don’t want to get it.
Mercurious, you gave a wonderful list of reasons why the Japanese should cease whaling, and the Norweigans or any other race which indulges in whaling, it’s just a fucking label fella!
While whaling continues it obscures somewhat the other causes of whale deaths you mentioned and I will add to those the use of military sonar. So I am standing by my emotional rhetoric while accepting that you and some others are uncomfortable with it. Many are uncomfortable about Sea Shepherd, I’m not and would love to be a part of it.
This is typical of the sound, fury and noise amid the lack of signals that practically everyone who talks about wikileaks in public takes part in.
It’s a sus meme imo too. The cables show lots of things we didn’t “Know and only need confirmation of” and no one seems to be fussed by them.
WL is probably irrelevent not cos there’s anything wrong with what they do, its just most of the populations that are exposed to the info they (and others) come out with don’t care enough to act. When those pop’ns do act interesting stuff happens.
@42 that’s fine, Salient. Carry on as you were. I’m sorry I interfered with your headlong rush into self-gratifying and counterproductive, self-defeating inflammatory rhetoric. As in, the more the west talks to and about Japan the way you do, the less likely the Japanese government will ever change its policies.
But I should’ve realised that constructive advice and suggestions of how you could achieve your aims is not actually what you’re looking for ATM. My mistake.
I do think Mercurius @ 40 has kind of hit the nail on the head with whats going on here tho. M isn’t as emotionally involved in whats happening and that obviously helps with clarity.
AWe’re arguing at cross purposes tho. This is the comments section of a blog, not an official public discussion of the official final Australian govt position on this.
There should be room for people to vent their emotional rhetoric in the process of coming to some sort of consensus.
This is an emotional issue, on all sides, obviously those emotions are going to come out at some point. Reacting to them like they are abhorrent isn’t healthy.
No worries Salient Green. It seems to me you were being bullied, and I don’t like that.
I am willing to bet if this was about cables and Norway you would have said exactly the same thing and the race issue wouldn’t have come up. I don’t know you, this is an online forum, but still that seemed fairly clear to me.
sg I’ve been on the receiving end of racist violence, not once but repeatedly during my pre-adult years, even today I can walk into shops and feel the racism emanating from some people behind counters. I’m very sensitive to it.
I’ve also heard real casually racist language (From people of a variety of “races” too.) All to often in this day and age actually. And I think there is real merit in this:
I honestly don’t think thats what was happening here with salient tho. My personal reaction to how Salient Green was accused felt to me .. i get the same feeling hearing people use the word “slopehead” or make jokes about Japanese business and their pee fetish.
You know, basically the complete opposite of what I’d feel if Salient Green was actually being racist. I’d feel that way about him or her instead of the people who used her or his emotions against him or her.
BTW Everything you’re agruing with me about … it isn’t actually what I’ve said. Perhaps you see 16th century whaling as “traditional” I don’t.
I’m used to using the word “traditional” in the context of pre contact indigenous culture, especially when pre contact indigenous cultures are relevent to the discussion.
Sorry for the confusion. Its a habit I picked up talking to indigenous people over the years, as its easier in that context to distinguish between modern post contact practices and pre contact ones.
I don’t deny commercial whaling (well for whale oil) was what started the decline in whale populations. I wouldn’t call that traditional tho. So from my POV your comment c) below is wrong. But only cos of the way I use the term “traditional”.
wrt (d) People’s emotions can always be manipulated for racist or nationalistic purposes. That doesn’t mean an emotional reaction is automatically racist.
Once upon a time I found the comments directed to Salient Green quite offensive.
“Thats racist! Piss off! That didn’t give me a black eye and a broken knuckle in the process of avoiding a good kicking.”
I do understand G Factor’s discomfort.
Acutely.
I just didn’t feel it while I was reading this thread till other people started making baseless accusations of racism.
“Once upon a time I WOULD have found the comments directed to …
Sorry abut that.
Isn’t it obvious that what we consider edible, or inedible, is completely culturally driven and often changes over time?
I don’t like whale hunting because it seems a particularly cruel and brutal practice. But then, I’ve never seen the inside of an abattoir. But, why do we think it’s okay to eat gentle, trusting cows, harmless sheep and intelligent and personable pigs, often after their status as livestock means they’ve led rotten lives, and not whales? I don’t think there’s any evidence that they feel less pain and despair when they’re killed. On this basis, though I’d like to see whale hunting end, I don’t quite understand why it has become such a hot button issue. It can only be because of the complications of cultural difference and the fact that they are such charismatic beasts.
In Australia we also have two abattoirs that specialise in slaughtering horses for the European market. This is something which has never gets much publicity and maybe something that many Australians would feel appalled by, because we don’t see horses as eating animals, although they do hold an ambiguous status of being both pet and livestock.
I don’t like eating kangaroo, although I understand and agree with the reasons why it’s a good idea to eat them. At the same time, I fed kangaroo meat to my dog as a healthy, low cost meat. So, I think everyone has these complex, emotion based responses to what they eat and why.
@45 All OK Jules, but I’d like to see the counter-factual analysis I did @26 brought to bear on this issue, again.
Counter-factual analysis can be a helpful way to “peel the onion” to reveal whether a person’s explicit stated (ie. conscious) reasons for their position might in fact not be the real underlying reason.
I mean, if we’re oppossed to whaling because it’s unsustainable, cruel, and ‘in our backyard’ — then the only intellectually honest thing to do would be to give whaling a big tick of approval if a sustainable, humane and ‘not in our backyard’ way could be found to do it. Yet I actually very rarely, (never that I can recall) encounter whaling opponents who would be OK with whaling even under those counter-factual circumstances. When you peel the layers of the onion, it’s very hard to find a coherent argument for their opposition: the stated reasons don’t seem to be the real reason under counter-factual analysis.
So….when you take that little bundle of goodies, and throw in the fact that Australia has some absurd extraterritorial attitudes to what we declare is OK or not OK in “our waters”…(we’ve got people drowning in waters to our north, which we’ve declared to be ‘not Australian waters’ for migration purposes; but we’ll jaw-jut and posture and create international tension about what goes on in waters to our south, which we declare to be ‘Australian waters’ if they happen to have cetaceans swimming in them).
Australia’s claims about a southern whale sanctuary are absolutely basesless in international law — they are literally meaningless from a legal standpoint. We don’t have the authority to declare anything at all about the high seas of the Southern Ocean. When you think about the way we’re trying to un-Australianise waters to our north ‘cos of boat people, and we’re trying to Australianise waters to our south because of whales, surely you’d agree the technical legal term for Australia’s position on this issue is that we’ve got our heads up our collective arse?
Little wonder the Japanese government doesn’t listen…
I can’t speak for other people Mercurius, but my objection to whaling (which I don’t really express publicly, but did here to clarify where I stand) is irrational.
It “feels” wrong. What you said @26 has actually challenged me to think about what I really feel about whaling. (This is any whaling with modern equipment not just Japanese whaling.)
I guess my feeling is this.
Its fundamentally unfair, and sure thats a big part of hunting and life itself but … such a brutal mechanistic process unleashed upon things that I actually feel I could possibly have a meaningful communication with if given access to good translators … thats a big part of my irrational objection.
I can look an animal in the eye, apologise (honestly) shoot it, help butcher it and eat it. Thats a similarly unfair thing, and who is to say a meaningful communication with a pig, cow or roo isn’t possible? I know some communication is, tho its not necessarily meaningful.
(People who can “communicate” with cows can muster them quicker and more efficiently than people who can’t. Its not very complex communication tho, its a simple manipulation of your body language to make a cow feel more at ease and move in the direction you want it to go. Its on the opposite end of the communication spectrum to “meaningful communication” imo.)
There is a big contradiction there in my attitude. (Its easier to shoot a cow than kill it with your bare hands or even a blade, and its easier to hunt a whale from a modern ship than it is to do it even from an 18th century whaling boat. For a start.)
Honestly, I’d probably object less to whaling for food than for scientific purposes too.
This is also tied to my feeling of impotence about whats being done to the oceans, being part of a society and culture that seems hell bent on destroying everything that beautiful natural and more to the point keeps us alive etc etc. But really the only reason it has anything to do with the actions of some Japanese people who make a living fishing or whaling is cos that is what the thread is about. I can’t speak for other people tho.
Sorry for the self indulgent crap but this comment (@26)
deserved some sort of honest response, and an honest attempt to start to examine my own behaviour. Nice one.
Well Mercurious your counterfactual at 26 was nonsense then and is still nonsense. Your argument is a farce, trickery. There are many reasons why people are opposed to whaling, real reasons, unalterable as genuine by you posing faulty logic. Trying to say that cruelty is not a real reason for objection if you still object after finding a humane method of whaling is nonsense. Hypothetical nonsense. There is a great depth of arguments against whaling with all being important. It’s become holistic and trying to reduce it to onion peel is simplistic nonsense.
Jules, it’s all well and good that you admit your objections are irrational but how on earth are you going to convince the Japanese to stop doing something they think is rational just because, well, your argument boils down to “I don’t like it.” When you combine that with a desire to “pummel them into submission on this issue” you end up looking a little like you think rhetorical might is right. And the Japanese aren’t going to respond well to that, are they?
What are your “real” reasons for opposing whaling then, Salient Green, if they aren’t amenable to logic or analysis?
sg, I think that’s because our food choices are underpinned by irrationality and that’s not going to change. As a friend of mine who works in advertising says; “all decision are emotional”. The reasons for the Japanese continuing whale-hunting are irrational as well.
sg I haven’t expressed a desire to actually stop the japanese from whaling, just expressed my dislike of it.
I don’t think I have the right to stop the Japanese hunting whales for food however much I may object to it. If that is happening under the cover of scientific whaling then I wish the political environment was such that they could be honest about it.
BUT
Its been suggested that there isn’t actually a demand for whale meat as food in japan, at least not one thats struggling to be met. IN which case i’d wonder what the rationale for scientific whaling is, if not to cover for hunting for food?
Is it “Well we do like it?”
I didn’t combine my dislike of whaling with any desire to pummel anything either. Just so we’re clear.
The Diplomat ran a piece on the reasons for Japan’s whaling research fleet.
Radio National’s Science Show ran a short piece three Christmastides ago about the amount of published research which Japan’s fleet of science whaling boats have produced over the years.
Thanks for those links Terangeree, they are very instructive.
sg I think you’re coming the raw prawn a bit there. All my reasons for opposing whaling have been mentioned in this thread except for the idiotic suggestions of racism and xenophobia.
I think I made it clear what I thought of Mercurious ‘logic’ and ‘analysis’. It’s crap.
The ‘pummel them into submission’ comment was mine. Please don’t credit anyone else with it.
Why is whale meat unpopular in Japan? Are there no good recipes?
Eating whale seems more ethical in theory than eating chickens, cows or pigs because just one of them could be made into tens of thousands of servings. If the first harpoon could deliver anaesthetic, that would be a big improvement.
The deal being negotiated seemed quite good as a way to protect some of the more endangered and spectacular (for watching) species.
56, whales are at the top of the food chain and as such accumulate various toxins, mercury among them. Eat them at your peril. I also believe that animals at the top of the food chain are highly evolved and should not be eaten by Humans because their nervous systems and intelligence means they suffer muvh more than the prey species.
Salient, do you know what happens to lambs and calves when they are separated from their mothers? The mothers call out for days. The lambs and calves cry for days, if they live that long.
It is your assertions about ‘highly evolved’ animals ‘at the top of the food chain’ that are mysticism and nonsense parading about in pseudo-scientific drag. You are invoking hierarchical categories that don’t exist in nature, but are very much a part of our cultural milieu.
You know what is really ‘at the top’ of the food chain? Worms and scavengers, bottom-feeders…maybe it’s not really ‘a chain’ with a ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ after all…hmm?
If you are opposed to whaling because of its inherent cruelty, you can’t ethically support the consumption of any mammal species, or birds, or probably even fish and reptiles, without engaging in wilful blindness towards the suffering of sentient beings that you consider through a question-begging solipsistic value judgement to be ‘less evolved’. Your hypocrisy may be high-minded, but it’s still hypocrisy.
You think it’s ‘simplistic nonsense’ to posit these counter-factuals. Well today’s ‘simplistic nonsense’ could easily be tomorrow’s reality. Where will you be then? Ethicists deal with this stuff all the time, and wrestling with difficult ethical questions, even hypothetical ones, is often a revealing and fruitful exercise.
If you woke up tomorrow morning to headlines about the invention of a neural disruptor that delivers instant, painless oblivion to cetaceans; would you still oppose whaling? If so, cruelty is not the real issue.
If you woke up tomorrow to articles in the journal Nature that established a sustainable whaling quota; would you still oppose whaling? If so, sustainability is not the real issue.
If you woke up tomorrow to news that Japan had decided to only go whaling in its territorial waters, would you still oppose whaling? If so, territory is not the real issue.
We live in a culture that assigns a significance to cetacean species that other cultures do not. The value is culturally assigned — it’s not ‘out there’ in reality. Therefore we can’t expect people acculturated in other settings to ‘get’ our discomfort about whaling. The problem with whaling is our problem, and we need to own it. Just like Japanese people’s problem with roo shooting is their problem. They are incommensurate cultural judgements about the relative worth of species that have no independent basis in science or reason, however much special pleading you might like to deploy along those lines.
If you can be swayed to killing and eating something that previously was off your menu, Sweeny Todd’s got some pies.
“I also believe that animals at the top of the food chain are highly evolved and should not be eaten by Humans because their nervous systems and intelligence means they suffer muvh more than the prey species.”
You may well believe this SG, but there’s absolutely no evidence to support your belief.
sg, mercurious and fine, why do you support whaling? What is it about killing whales and other cetaceans that you are comfortable with? Do you view the demise of large numbers of cetaceans as beneficial to the human species due to less competition for food?
I’m not crazy about whaling. It’s abhorrent. But so is the way we treat land-based animals. I see no ethically consistent way to say one is acceptable and the other not. I think it’s a worse offence to apply our ‘ethics’ in such a capricious fashion that we pick-and-choose which animals are more equal than others based on what we believe to be the most important features about them. That’s not ethics, that’s just cultural vanity.
Why do you oppose whaling when you’re OK with the farming and slaughter of land-based mammals? Comparatively speaking, whales live a free-range life able to follow their instincts for years and years, followed by a miserable cruel death. Whereas farmed animals have a seriously circumscribed life, unable to indulge most natural instincts, raised and fattened up exclusively for the use of humans, followed by a quick, relatively painless death. They are both ethically abhorrent practices. It’s wilful hypocrisy to loudly oppose one and yet turn a blind eye to the either.
I don’t see any ethical basis why whales are in a special category that isn’t extended to other mammals or indeed all sentient creatures. And you haven’t provided one, beyond assertions of a hierarchy that is merely culturally situated — not a metaphysical ‘out there’ aspect of nature.
I don’t support whaling. If you read my first post, I said I wished it would end because it’s cruel. But, I also pointed out that the way we treat our farm animals is also cruel and that there’s no evidence thy suffer any less than whales do.
I look forward to Salient Green telling the Aboriginal Inuit people to also “f— off” and suggest that we “pummel them into submission”.
Somehow, I suspect that only Asian people are deserving of that treatment at the hands of Salient Green.
I’d also be interested in what Salient Green would think if it was, say, The Australian or the Herald Sun suggesting that we tell Asian people to “f— off” or be “pummeled into submission”. It seems to me that the left-leaning blogosphere can be just as guilty as the right-leaning MSM of extraordinarily poor manners.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/strong-support-for-wikileaks-among-australians-20110105-19g8z.html
Support for prosecuting Assange over the leaks is minimal in Australia (19%).
@65 that’s good news Lefty E!
@63 Fine I think also there’s a psychological defense at work on this issue whereby westerners are seeking to protect ourselves from identifying with animal suffering for which we are culpable. I mean, the gruesome horrible suffering of whales is something we feel able to contemplate and see for what it is, because we know we’re not culpable. But, many of us who might enjoy a nice leg of lamb or shoulder of veal want to distance ourselves from contemplating how the animal was forceably separated from its mother — because we know we’re culpable in the process. So we invent fanciful categories to justify to ourselves these casual cruelties, so we can reinforce our belief that We’re OK, and They are Barbarians (who need a Good Pummelling).
@64 yes G Factor, meanwhile, we also invent fanciful categories to excuse culpable behaviour on the part of favoured social groupings. I mean, Inuit traditionally hunted whales in Zodiac inflatables with outboard motors…so that’s OK…they’re the “noble savage” living in “harmony” with nature…so that’s OK…
At base, it’s all about westernised nationals projecting their value systems and world-view (yet again) onto cultures and civilisations they have little to no interest in understanding, and deciding who needs a Good Pummelling based on whether or not we approve of their behaviour based on arbitrary categories (‘highly evolved’ animals, ‘traditional’ hunters) that we invent in order to discriminate.
Between the casual slaughter we visit on so many other ‘highly evolved’ animals, and the free pass we give to so many ‘traditional’ hunters, and the industrial-scale whale slaughter we conducted in our recent history, it’s not difficult to understand why many people in Japan look at the western-based opposition to whaling, shrug, and think ‘well, that’s bullshit…’
G_Factor and Mercurius,
this is such total absolute rubbish how you two have made this a racism issue?! Honestly, you should feel embarrassed.
One could argue that the resumption of commercial whaling and hunting the whales to extinction would be kinder to the whale populations in the long-term.
ABC Science Show about 11 months ago ran a piece about ocean acidification and its effects on the Southern Ocean.
The following passage has stuck in my mind since I heard it broadcast last January:
For, if the way we all live means the end of the krill and the phytoplankton they feed on, then the whales will just starve to death.
But there’s no dramatic media pictures involved in trying to stop ocean acidification, krill are not charismatic creatures from which you can develop a tourist industry in “krill spotting”, and we all prefer to tell others to change their lifestyle to being told that we must also change our lifestyle.
Good news!
19% of Australians think he should be prosecuted over those leaks even tho he hasn’t actually any broken laws. One in 5 people in Australia think its OK to prosecute someone despite the fact they haven’t committed a crime.
Is that right?
How is that good news?
Like I said to G Factor, you’re surprised by this?
Ha, there are about 3 traditional indigenous cultures (in the sense I used the term) left on the planet (no the inuit probably aren’t one either.) I know people (from different continents) who know and practice traditional hunting methods, but their cultures, like the vast majority of the rest have suffered terribly. What we call traditional can’t happen anymore due to land clearing, land theft etc etc. They have their land stolen their people killed and have no come back. This is happening right now.
In places they get sprayed with round up. In others miners or loggers or the goons they employ routinely kill people without any fear of legal sanction. Free pass my arse. Western culture actually shits on those people from a great height repeatedly. Not just Western culture tho. Chinese mining companies are no better.
Yeah true, I mean the inuit are as economically and politically powerful as the Japanese (and us), have the same access to “power”, and have always been a valued and respected part of the nations they inhabit, and they buy our produce with all that wealth they generate through trade.
….
Hunting whales in big metal ships with explosive harpoons is not the same as hunting them in a little rubber boat with an outboard and a rifle. That requires loads more physical courage and skill for a start. Thats probably a refection of my western biases right. (There couldn’t be any cultural motivation for the inuit who choose to hunt that way that on their terms celebrates that courage and skill.)
Inuit whale hunting involves sharing that whale meat, once upon a time this was done “traditionally” now its done in ways that refect their modern lives, but the underlying principle is still the same. They share the food they get so they can all be alive in a few days, weeks, months and with any luck have a few kuds etc. Putting yourself in danger to provide food for people you care about and have obligations to shows a massive level of commitment to those people. Doesn’t it?
No.
The two situations are obviously exactly the same and me seeing any differences in them is really just a reflection of the fact that I wish I was alive 60 years ago so I could go shoot Japs legally. Thats obvious to anyone with half a brain.
Mercurius @ 66. Undoubtedly, it’s easier to be angrier about whales being killed than pigs being killed, if you choose to eat pig.
The whole area of what we choose to eat, how those animals are treated before death and how they’re killed is an ethical minefield. We all make different decisions about this and I’m always wary of criticising others about this.
Salient Green, I’m largely opposed to whaling, but then I spent most of my adult life a vegetarian and continue to believe vegetarianism is ethically correct, so I would be wouldn’t i? I am always amused when I see meat eaters singling out a particular animal they like for sympathy, especially when they ignore the very real social and intellectual characteristics of the animals they do eat.
Jules, if you read Watson’s biography you’ll find he disputes claims about “traditional” hunting actually being “traditional.” He sees them in the same political context as Japanese whaling, that is a politically convenient practice that gets revived and supported, or ignored/opposed, depending on its domestic uses. For a good example of this witness the way the Canadian government has revived the seal cull for electoral advantage.
If whales are sentient creatures you could “have a conversation with,” surely killing them is wrong always and everywhere? Is your only objection to Japanese whaling genuinely that it’s not a fair fight for the whale? Do you think the whales you can “communicate with” who’re killed by spear-wielding natives would thank you for this distinction?
I think Jules is not defending the notion of the ‘traditional’, but rather suggesting that their are some cultures with less choice about where their protein comes from. Somewhat similar to suggesting to desert Aborigines to ignore kangaroo as a major part of their diet, in favour of canned food.
I think someone upthread extrapolated indigenous people into ‘traditional’ people and evoked the ‘noble savage’ meme, and it’s all downhill from there.
gawd, not ‘their’ but ‘there’. sorry.
Well said Joe. Invoking racism and xenophobia is the coward’s and bully’s way of denying some one a voice. You have to wonder about those who are so quick to accuse others of racism as to why it’s always at the front of their minds.
If they want to shut down debate then that’s what will happen as I’m getting more than a little tired of the dishonesty of those who dredge up the same crap two or three times which has already been dealt with upthread.
It tells me they are geting desperate. Well, I’m getting desperate too, for a rest, as it looks like being another 12 hour day on the apricots harvest.
f_b
That was me but anyone who thinks that was as some “noble savage” bullshit is wearing their bum for a hat.
I thought I pointed out that “traditional” was how every indigenous person I’ve conversed with or corresponded with on the subject refers to the way of life practiced before western society (usually) stopped it (either with useful tech or brutal repression), and that it is actually very rare right now.
If other people choose to interpret my words in a wat that says modern indigenous cultures = “traditional” that says more about them than me.
But yeah, a big part of my point is that inuit whale hunting is important to the inuit. Not just as a cultural “fuck you” in response to some other cultural “fuck you”. But as a source of food.
sg
About Watson, surely he wouldn’t be doing this would he?
I know indigenous people who hunt, not just australians either, i think what they say actually has merit. But I haven’t read Watsons book. Still as much as I respect him for walking his talk I don’t know if I’d trust what he has to say on “indigenous hunting” of any sort.
I wouldn’t confuse what the Canadian govt does with what indigenous Canadians want either. (I had friends who were there during the Mohawk uprising at Oka 20 years ago.)
All creatures are sentient, but I was referring to a meaningful conversation, not just a conversation…
And no that doesn’t mean killing them is wrong always and everywhere. But thats just me. If you want a full description of my morality and worldview, then you’ll have to meet me at the pub or a nice cafe for a chat. And perhaps the dead whales with spears through their lungs wouldn’t thank me, but the ones that got away or survived might understand my point.
WRT to commercial whaling in big boats with explosive harpoons … Japan claims the whaling program is scientific, but this is clearly false. Whatever my objections I wouldn’t be able to voice them in public if the whaling was actually feeding people who needed feeding.
I thought I said all this upthread?
I probably have a different worldview to you, to me all life is sentient, and to a certain extent capable of communication. (Not necessarily a conversation, let alone a meaningful one, but communication all the same.) I still eat meat tho, in the full knowledge that I took somethings life – all it ever had – so I could continue my own existence.
Even if I brought the meat from a supermarket I’m still responsible for that critters death. And how it died.
looking back Jules, in regard to the extrapolation of indigenous [Aboriginal inuit] into traditional and then noble savage meme – what I am referring to was Mercurious @ 66 in response to G Factor @ 64.
I think I misunderstood what you meant by traditional being ‘non-commercial’ earlier, you do go on to explain it further, but I did still have the impression that you viewed the inuit hunting for food in a ‘traditional’ context. To be honest I just think it’s a really unhelpful word, so I was probably projecting my own interpretation. My apologies for that.
furious balancing @77
Its one of those things … language … I guess the difference between … the easiest example is the difference between pre and post contact blackfellas.
The impact of invasion meant that there were changes in the way people lived. Traditional is the pre impact way of life I spose. So in that sense post contact tools could still be considered traditional and used in a traditional way.
But it could also be in a context of the pre impact/contact culture still being pre eminent in terms of sovereignty. The Higanon in the Phillipines still practice many traditional political processes even tho they might live in cities at times or fly around the world.
In some ways those two things are the same cos of the sovereignty issue.
Honestly its problematic cos I use that term with indigenous people, and they know exactly what they mean when they say it, and so do I. I’d never thought that much about it till this particular discussion got going.
If I was gonna define it for clarity … it’d have to mean a culture that still has sovereignty and an ability to control its place in the world. But it also has to maintain a continuity of ancestral teachings, practices and meanings.
So in that sense there’s probably still a strong traditional element in at least some(probably all) of the whale hunting that happens in that part of the world.
Its not dependent the superficial trappings of indigenous tradition the surface stuff. To require that really is to fall for the noble savage garbage.
(Robert M, sorry to have drifted so far from where this topic started, sing out if you want me to shut up.)
Lefty E: Support for prosecuting Assange over the leaks is minimal in Australia (19%).
A percentage that is falling as we find that the leaks, on the whole, are favourable to the US and fellow travellers. I wonder if Assange regrets publishing them yet?
Slightly OT – this was marked down to $20 locally just before Christmas. I nobly resisted the urge to give to a vege. friend of mine.
Hey, I get it, it’s sort of like a high-school nostalgia thread! Awesome!
You know, back when everybody is still dumb as a box of hammers, we get to Rock Against Raaaacism, and we all listen to the hilarious rants of entertaining kool kids like Mercurius. I bet his parents even had like Lenny Bruce records and stuff! Far out, man!
Please do more threads like this, it’s fun. They remind me of the Talking Heads and Devo, they make me think that my collection of skinny leather neckties still might be worth something someday, and they give Mercurius something to do.