An excellent article by Patrick Ramage. It is important that everyone understands what is going on. Those who, unwisely, were working for a compromise - that was no compromise but really a capitulation to the patience of the whalers - will, I fear, be working hard up to the next IWC meeting - next Northern Summer in England - to put forward a more plausible "deal" one that will nevertheless authorise continuation of commercial whaling by a few countries. We "conservationists really have to stay alert and active. Sidney Holt

What's so great about whales? You can't even eat the @#*$*! things, 'coz it's not PC. They are possibly the most useless creature in the seven seas.

Perhaps we should have a "Save Japanese Sailors from Environmental Terrorists" day ?

For goodness sake, it's just one species.

Imagine if there was an activist movement for every species, what a mess.

There's bigger problems in the world.

Sure it's important, but in a small way, not a big way.

While there's starving kids with dysfunctional parents who can't even get their kids to school in Australia, why should I or anyone else give this more attention?

get some perspective, please.

Saving the whales might prove very important. Just because it appears silly, does not mean that it won’t prove advantageous in time.

Just look at that stupid three mines policy. If it had not been for that, much more of the easily exploited uranium would have been sold. Thankfully, now we can sell it, & throw the money at a broadband network.

It would be nice if those whales would breed quickly, now that I’m no longer out there in a yacht. They can be dangerous to yachties.

Yes, with some wanting to build bigger cities, & others warning we are about to run out of oil, we may need a lot of whale oil, to convert to bio diesel, to fuel the trucks. With out trucks, distributing food, these cities would be effectively impossible.

Much as I love horses, it was only the invention of that greenie hated thing, the internal combustion engine, & the motor vehicles it enabled, that saved the cities of the early 1900s from disappearing under a mountain of manure.

Viva the whale.

Those cities of the early 1900s grew in response to industrialisation - prior to that most of the horses did their doings in the countryside where most of the people were.
I remember going on a school excursion when I was seven and living in Albany (a whaling town in WA up till the late '70's). We were shown a whale being slice and diced on a flensing deck - the water surrounding the facility was red - smoke and stench filled the air...a thoroughly memorable experience for all the wrong reasons.