Well I guess I'll have to see this afternoon if its an April Fool's hoax, pretty elaborate if it is but this caught me eye. This from the latest news...
"The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled Japan must immediately stop its whaling program in the Antarctic"
Source - http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-31/ijc-japan-whaling-southern-ocean-scientific-research/5357416
Peter Garrett the former Labor government's Minister for Shopping Bags will no doubt be happy and indeed can take a good deal credit but he cannot win a trick. Poor fellow as lead singer of Midnight Oil joined the Labor party and in doing so caused a buzz of excitement amongst many people thinking his staunch stance on a wide range of social issues from Nuclear to mining to you just about name it would be the foundation of a vanguard of action against inequality or wrongful stalling of proper issues by the Labor party.
Instead he did the orderly conversion to full party drone and more than a few folk felt majorly let down.
At any rate the International Court of Justice has put a ruling out and Japan is expected to comply with the ruling and cease with whaling in the southern ocean. I do hope this doesn't mean whaling will now begin in other waters. The ruling should I expect confirm what most reasonable and unbiased people would have considered, the whaling was less to do with scientific research and more to do with commercial fishing with the level of whaling well outweighing any supposed scientific research.
It will, if its not an April Fool's joke to remember, and if Japan actually ceases be a great day for Sea Shepherd as well and see them refocusing their resources and efforts away from whaling onto other issues. They may well be in the southern ocean pursuing other ships over fishing the area.
I'm not a card carrying member of AA or PETA but despite that I have always opposed whaling and would not support it unless it, like other fisheries, could be adequately shown to be a sustainable fishery. Whaling is indeed a fishery, but shouldn't be opposed because they're mammals, it should be opposed because stocks are in dangerous low levels. Compounding Japan's problem is its continued line of defence that it was important research where left over catch was sold after research was carried out to help fund research...that's one line that was presented but irrespective of how accurate that is/was it wasn't research it was a commercial fishing venture that was trying to find some research to maintain the cover. I think if all whale meat and product were required to be disposed of at sea and not used for human consumption we probably would have seen whaling cease long before now.
Of course there is a cove in Japan where the secret dolphin slaughter happens, but of course its not so secret. I can understand indigenous folk maintaining tradition and hunting food sources, however I'm not sure how it can be excused either. Sea Shepherd may have some offshore anchorage time off Japan.
Now I'm just waiting for some "out to lunch" fundamentalist to link the whaling decision to the Live Export Trade of sheep and cattle from Australia. Goodness know we've seen a number of unrelated, in fact completely unconnected inhumane acts used via tenuous link to support the cessation of the Live Trade.
Intellectual Bankruptcy is still rampant and we need more Receiver/Administrator/Liquidator type folk to embark of some sort of Forensic Audit of many of the bogus truth claims.
Stop the Whaling, no argument there from me.
Live Trade...well an end to cruelty in the trade, and continue the Fair Trade of a sustainable food source.
