Another fine example of the embarrassing Australian attitude towards whaling. John Tomlinson - you are the opitomy of the ignorant Australian being caught up in the emotional hysteria whipped up by the media.
Firstly, take a look at Japanese scientific data (which incidentally has been ignored outright by anti-whaling Nazis) which clearly shows whales to have recovered to numbers able to sustain commercial harvesting.
Secondly, take a look at who you are to be criticising another nation's cultural cuisine. (you will find yourself to be in no such position)
Thirdly, before voicing such absurd and idiotic opinion - consider that not all Australians oppose whaling. I personally fully support the resumption of [controlled] commercial whaling and hope to one day be able to enjoy this culinary delight in a Sunday barbeque setting, washed down with a refreshing Asahi Super Dry.

John Tomlinson [once again] shows us how double standards operate in Australian national discourse.

If Japanese people want to kill whales with exploding harpoons - so be it.

Bugger the polls, which in 2000 found that only 11 per cent of the Japanese public supported whaling outright. (Commissioned by the International Fund for Animal Welfare and Greenpeace and conducted in March 2000 by the independent Nippon Research Centre and Britain's MORI research company). Who do 89% of Japanese who do not support whaling think they are?

See: http://www.mori.com/polls/1999/whaling.shtml

I would image people like Tomlinson would feel no compulsion in proclaiming coral trout off limits to anyone who did not belong to the Deagon institute. (This institute is a socialist left wing cess pit full of disgruntled and drunken old Marxists).

There’s obviously too much ‘Free Willy’ going on in this institute!

Another Breed of Ignorant.

If the media led you over a cliff face, you'd follow happily.

Do you really think Australia and the Australian Government are heroes in stopping countries like Japan, Iceland and Norway from killing whales? Did you realise those other countries are whaling nations too, but of course they’re whites in those countries.

Read this: http://www.bigvolcano.com.au/human/whaling.htm

The highlight being: “By 1845 twenty six thousand whales had been killed by Australians, and by 1935 there were so few southern right whales remaining that whaling ceased and they became protected internationally.”

The mainstream media, which is by no means a good source of un-biased information, has recently been trying to vilify Japan. The effects I have been the target of myself and I am also seeing the effects in your ridiculous attitude. The news website www.news.com.au and other news agencies reported with much enthusiasm the recent international whaling policy debate. These media agencies made out Australia was such a hero in stopping Japan from commencing whaling. It also made out that Japan was the only country that wanted to hunt whales and that it was a such a horrible and barbaric thing to do. Firstly it wasn't only Japan. Norway and Iceland are also nations that hunt whales and had a bid in this policy (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3903001.stm). Perhaps that was conveniently forgotten because those countries are just like Australia, a white majority, making it hard for the media to present Australia as (racially) superior in comparison (just like you have attempted in your article). Secondly, Australia is far from being a hero in any of this. Also conveniently forgotten is the fact that Australia hunted whales for hundreds of years, and it was seemingly the first primary industry here (http://www.bigvolcano.com.au/human/whaling.htm). So if anyone is guilty of being a threat to these animals it has to include the great Aussie bloke as well, not just Asians.

I can just hear you saying "Oh, but we don't kill whales now"...

Does a German saying he doesn't kill Jews now, make killing Jews in the past ok?

Think for yourself for once.

Saucemaster,

I don't think it is relevant that Australia hunted whales in previous centuries. We did not have at that stage, the scientific knowledge that whales are highly intelligent creatures.

I know that we eat beef, sheep, pigs etc and that they are "aware" ( although one wonders about sheep;) however, they are farmed and killed in a humane process. I suspect that killing whales with explosive devices with the accompanying "death throes" makes most westerners cringe.

We also do NOT kill domestic animals with dependant offspring, however, the nature of whale hunting provides no manner of differentiation.

I am not sure that Japan was ever historically a whaling nation - if not, they can not really lay claim to "whale meat being culturally important"!

The Scandinavian countries can at least point to a historical dependance on whale meat as a primary food supply.

Peter King, are are a baffoon.
Is it with a straight face that you suggest we have discovered whales to be intellegent creatures? If so, does your absurd notion extend to the suggestion that because of their alledged "intellegence" they are exempt from my dinner plate?
What utter, utter idiocy my dear fellow!
Hang your head in shame and do us a favour by not rearing it in public again.
Firstly, no proof of any unique intellegence possessed by whales has been found. All that has been discovered is that whales are able to communicate with series of whines - far more primitive than even an average chicken for instance.
Secondly, any such "intellegence" does not detract from the taste of the animal and thus cannot be used as a reason to stop me from feasting on the barnacled bastards.
Thirdly, if you separate Japan and the Scandinavians based on "historical evidence" then we might as well let tribal folk go back to cannibalism. Hell, we might as well farm humans and export it to them.
Pete, pull your head in mate.

Peter,

Thanks for your input. I would like to reply to your post because there are a few problems that I can see in your argument.

Firstly, I really do think it is important that we mention Australia was a huge factor in causing the downfall of these creatures. It is actually a very important message to these Australian yahoos (such as John Tomlinson) that keep climbing up on their high horses about this issue. It is possible, I suppose, that Tomlinson didn’t know about Australia’s whaling history, as it’s not something that the sickening media or government here brag about. But they should know about it, there are always two sides to one story. Secondly, we know pigs are very intelligent and that they are closer to the human in genetics and makeup than other animals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigs). That doesn’t stop someone putting a bullet between its eyes so that they can make an egg and bacon Mac Muffin. Does intelligence come into it there?

You said that you weren’t sure that Japan has any historical claim. Well let me enlighten you, how does 712AD sound? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_Japan)
“The oldest written mention of whaling in Japanese records is from Kojiki, the oldest known Japanese historical book. It dates back to 712. Since then, whaling has been frequently mentioned in Japanese historical sources. Whales have long been a source of food, oil, and material.”

Now, I don’t exactly support whaling, but I think Japan has a right to try and keep doing it albeit in a more straight talking way. However, I am not happy about whales being killed in an inhumane way, it’s not my idea of a picnic. But what I don’t like is these Australian yahoos going around and talking themselves up when they’re (we are) as much to blame as anyone, that these creatures have been reduced to near extinction.

I am still shocked that that article is supposed to have come from a senior lecturer at QUT. It smacks of a high school kid’s essay, based on no research, that’s been run through a spell checker.

Saucemaster

Living as I do with a dyed-in-the-wool vegetarian, to whom the culling of any living creature for food is anathema, I love these arguments.

We humans have always been ambivalent about murdering innocent creatures (Buddhists fully excepted), but mostly seem to embrace the "fluffy creature" philosophy. If we witness the killing of an aesthetically appealing creature (remember all those pictures of sloe-eyed baby seals in Canada?), we react with horror. Yet there is a vast range of less appealing animals, birds and insects that any of us would top at the slightest provocation. Even my vegetarian mate.

So where do the whales fit into this? Smack in the middle, it seems to me. It appears that we can have perfectly sensible policies on other marine life - fisheries policy is under constant review in almost every jurisdiction - but we get all emotional when it comes to the whales, those fluffy little things. Unless and until we can come to terms with what is (hey, understandable) emotional reaction and what is food supply economics, most of the arguments will be of the hands-over-ears "I can't hear you, I can't hear you" variety.

When more than half the world is starving, one of the G8 nations is arguing for the right to eat what they consider to be a historical and customary cullinary delight.

Thousands of Japense tourists who go whale wathcing in this country every year - just to admire the beauty of these animals. None of them appear to be asking if its hunting expedition or if whale will be on their lunch menus.

Only when whales can be farmed should we be able to harvest and eat them.

Why do we assume because it's edible we have to eat it.

As a species we are incredibly arrogant.Top and bottom of the food chain at the same time. Why not reduce the human load on the planet by more birth control such as by better television programmes at night, legalise gay marriage and making sure more women do university degrees until they have passed child-baring age by the time they start thinking of babies. This will take Japanese and Norwegians' minds off whale sushi and whale fin soup. Without the whale we would not have the Book of Jonah, the Constellation Cetus,Moby Dick, and hour-glass figures. We owe it to the species to give them a fair go.

The Japanese were good at butchering people such as in Nankin and even doing bayonet practice on live prisoners (I have seen the film footage). Let the Iron Chefs practice on live tuna or giant squid. By the way, are there any species of wild animals in Japan or are they all extinct.
Odysseus-san.

There's an important difference between "harvesting" whales, a wild population, and breeding animals in controlled circumstances. Whales are killed in a pretty gruesome way (with little control over the age, sex, or motherhood status of the victim) while domestic animals are killed in a reasonably quick and painless manner.

Saucey, your wiki reference did not really tell us whether the Japanese ate whales on a widespread basis, or whether coastal villages ate the occasional stranded beast just as coastal Japanese deliberately strand dolphins today. I strongly suspect the former. Even today whale isn't a huge item in the diet of the average Japanese (and anyincrease is coming about because of marketing). Primitive people around the world have utilised stranded whales, to many they would be "manna from heaven", but few actively hunted live whales, including, most likely, the Japanese.

The few societies which specialised in hunting whales, like the Inuit of the Bering Strait and elsewhere, did so because there were very few alternatives, and they relied on the sea almost exclusively.

Odysseus, check your facts my friend.
Japan is currently expereincing a severe demographic crisis with a plummetting birth rate which will result in a falling population some time in the next year or so. Growing population is not a problem.
Secondly, your claims regarding the Nanking incident are ill-founded. The claims of a massacre there are not proven and are highly questionable. There is no evidence of any large scale massacre - although civilian casualties were higher than normal, this can easily be attributed to the Chinese military forces engaging in combat dressed [intentionally] as civilians.

When a cow or pig goes through the grinder nearly every part is used as food. The taking of whales is for only a small part of the animal and is served as a delicacy - priced accordingly it is out of the reach of the average Japanese. We no longer need/use whale oil for lighting or heating; a valuable byproduct from earlier whaling times, so that a large proportion of the whale by weight is scrap.

That is akin to taking the dorsal fins from sharks - not as a protein source but simply to "feed" the ego of a rich customer.

It seems to me that destruction of any animal for the sake of "gourmet" tastes is immoral - if the whale was farmed as a total food source and killed quickly it would be a "reasonable" practice.

might i suggest that the japanese whale hunting is esential a nationalistic endevour, (bushido bobs will probably prove me right by attacking any criticism).

>> simply to "feed" the ego of a rich customer. It seems to me that destruction of any animal for the sake of "gourmet" tastes is immoral<<

'Twas ever thus Peter. Think caviare. Think lark's tongue.

Yours is still a heavily relativistic argument, but I expect you meant it to be so. At one end of the "ok" scale is killing pigs and using every single piece as food, and right at the other end, in the "not ok" basket, is killing whales. I personally have no problem with this as a philosophical position, but it doesn't actually make much progress in the whaling debate. After all, I expect the whalers take great care not to over-fish (over-mammal?) the whaling grounds, on the basis that they would have a very short-lived industry. So in their way, they are adopting a relativist position too. Kill some, eat some, leave some.

If morality were the foundation point of this discussion, I would expect it to be far closer to the "do we have the right to kill at all?" position of my partner, the vegetarian, than whether it is more moral to kill for a little food, or a lot of food.

Look Bushido Bob and Samurai Kid, I suggest you do a bit of brushing up on your history lessons and also speak to a a few thousand World War Two Veterans as I have done over the past 30 years. I have also seen the sharp end of a bayonet in Active Service and lots of dead people. The Japanese war atrocies were appalling.

As for their taste in whale sushi, they are a race incapable of loss of face, facing up to their past or to any sensitivy with regards whales or for that matter most animals that are comestible.

The recent protests by the Chinese were about the Japanese history syllabus on 1939-45.

The fact that their birth rate is falling is a blessing. The rest of the planet should follow suit. I have travelled and studied in Japan.

Odysseus. That you have read a few internet articles about WWII does not make you knowledgeable about WWII so do not presume to be.
So now we've taken the inevitable step from Japanese whaling to WWII - remarkable how these two issues are so closely intertwined. That in itself renders the anti-whaling hysteria redundant.
I'm glad you have looked into some of the unfortunate events of WWII. Has it ever entered your feeble mind whilst bleating on about Japanese "atrocities" that greater crimes were committed by Allied Forces? It saddens me that I should need to remind you that the greatest of all war crimes was perpetrated upon two Japanese cities in August 1945 by the Allies, which (remarkably) still enjoys widespread support throughout those Allied nations to this day. These crimes greatly outweigh any allegations of Nanking, Changi and Burma but escapes the imaginations of people like you, Odysseus, due to a lack of television mini-series depicting them.
And to support Chinese rantings about "history" is absurd. The hypocracy of Chinese accusations about not only human rights abuses but even education of history is laughable. They may not have written it in the Daily Telegraph you surely read, but China is an abysmal abuser of humans rights to this day and their education and press systems are comparable to Soviet ones circa 1930.
Do some reading mate - open your eyes.

thank you bushido bob, you have vidicated my proposition that japanese whaling is a nationalistic excersise.

your last post sounds remarkedly simmilar to some of the statements comming from far right groups in germany at the time of the 60th aniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps. in the same way that you attempt to deflect the conversation onto the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki, the neo nazis attempt to place the bombing of dresden on a par with the holocaust. your posts show all the hallmarks of a holocaust denier

the concept of satisfying your petty nationalism by somehow comparing the scale of attrocities is repulsive.

now, back on topic.

i agree with viking that there is a significant difference between the world second largest economy hunting whales and the fishermen of the bering sea, as for many whale meat is the primary or only source of protien. ( i remember watching a documentary on these fishermen some time ago which described the massive amount of protien used by the body just to keep warm in that climate).

it appears to me then that there is absolutely no real or pressing reason for japan to hunt whales, particuarly the highly threatend humpback, (even norway prohibits the hunting of species on the threatend or endangerd lists)

See this comment "Illegal Japanese whaling in the Australian Whale Sanctuary" by Chris McGrath-Barrister

its a pdf file...

http://www.hsi.org.au/news_library_events/images/Whale%20Case/Casenote_HSI_v_Kyodo_%5B2004%5D_FCA_1510.pdf

I have a large military library, Bushido Bob. I publish widely in two languages and am a retired senior officer.

I suggest you read The Knights of Bushido, Bob. Probably at Napoleons' Bookstore or how about The Rape of Nankin. We have waken a sleeping tiger....Admiral Yamamoto.

The Bomb saved many millions of Japanese lives as well as our POW's who were near death. I suggest you brush up about the preparations for the invasion of Japan by the Allies and the projected losses. There were about one million casualties in the Battle of Berlin. The allies counted on about ten million in the invasion of Japan. Iwo Jima was just a warm up. D-Day would have been a picnic. The Japs would have fought to the death. May I recommend an excellent book by a doctor's first hand account of Iwo Jima. I have also seen the fused bricks and paper cranes in Hiroshima.

Our odyssey from the cradle to the grave hopefully should involve a few paradigm shifts. If man does not undergo a few big ones soon we will all end up extinct. We don't need to eat whales any more than we need to eat one another. The Japanese also regard other races as inferior and aliens...even some native people in their north.When one enters a Japanese airport, it says, "Japanese" and "Aliens".

I have a trilobite fossil at home 350 million years old. I somehow doubt whether there will be anyone around to admire your bones in 350 million years at the current way we are stuffing up the planet.
Let us change our narrow pardigms of past stupidity and adopt a few enlightened ones before we are taken over again by the cockroaches.
Now back to your samurai sword for your live whale meat Bushido burger, Bob-san. So whales and WW2 are all in the same basket.

Odysseus, you're one sick puppy if you think dropping bombs saves lives and I know plenty of WW2 vets who did active service who would agree with this. Get some help.

Now Rainer,I like Odysseus'style ,he calls a spade a shovel.The Japs need to pull their heads in on this one.Hump Back whales only still number in the thousands.All creatures need genetic diversity to cope with environmental changes.When numbers get too low,the genetic diversity doesn't allow them to adapt to change.No one knows what the critical number is.

The Blue Whale ,the largest creature ever to existed may well become extinct.So what are we going to say to ourselves ?A job well done!

I'm with John Tomlinson and Odeysseus on this one.If we lose these magnificient creatures, we will lose more than our souls.There must come a time when the survival of the planet is more important than the whims of our diets or even the survival of individuals.

Here here Ajay.

I think there is a great narcissism in man. We are supposed to be the most intelligent being on the planet but we behave like complete nongs with short-term goals, economically driven and behave as if the environment in which we live does not have a balance sheet.

We do not have a clue about the complexity of the ecosystem in which we live in this circum-solar ball of iron and silica we call, Earth. There is nowhere else we can go to once we stuff this place up. This is not a dress rehersal. There is no Hollywood script where the cavalry gallop in and fix it all up. Why any extra-terrestrials would want to make contact with us astounds me. Look at our history.

In my work I see people stuff up their lives by life-style decisions and in six months they are no longer visitors on this planet but dust in the local crematorium.

We are all made of dust, here for a short time and we are not different from the whale people, the horse people or the dog people. Neolithic man had a better appreciation of the world than we do. We are all here on a limited visitor's visa which we hope we can get renewed for the next generation. There is no permanent resident's visa on planet Earth.
Leave the bloody whales alone. They have been here a lot longer than this cursed species we call Homo sapiens, the scourge of the planet.

Unusually, I'm in complete agreement with Arjay on this one :)

Hey garra,I have an ex ACDC base player in the factory next to mine,I'm right and he's left, but we still share a beer and a laugh.
This is what makes our Australian culture so special,we can agree to disagree, yet not take it personally.

Show me a logical argument based on fact,and I'm always ready to admit my faulty logic.While arguments may get heated,I will always acknowledge our common humanity.

odysseus , spot on!
re bushido's plummeting japanese birthrate - no doubt the japanese government reseach has rediscovered ,[from that famous old whalers myth], that 30 gms of whale meat a month will do a lot for the libidos of those stressed office men and women. come to think of it, kangaroo would probably do it for us ozzies .
i have found as one gets a bit older, killing for fun , food or francs loses its strange attraction . perhaps the red meat starved japanese might do a bit better on our old merino wethers - a bit less testosterone ,but cheaper ,and a lot less controversial .

AND those old weathers do up pretty well too- plenty of flavour !

I prefer powdered tiger's penis. There are millions of tigers in our jungles and zoos and what could be more important the the libido of some Asian women who want their lovers to have a tiger in their tanks. Stuff the whales although their penises probably weigh a few tons.
Now back to the bear rug on the floor, my fireplace and a dozen oysters..I have to reply this porno video of whales in the rutting season..

After many years of sailing and fishing, I found one of the most interesting things was to find a reef somewhere, and go underwater and hand feed fish. Much more interesting and exciting than catching them on a line, and also kids love it, so much so, that my own won’t catch fish on a line anymore.

I have also seen many dolphin, and swam amongst a pod once that came up to the side of the boat. I have also seen quite a few whales, and they are always an awe inspiring sight.

I have also eaten Japanese food at restaurants, and for the most part I had no idea what I was eating. They can make bamboo shoots taste like chicken, or pork, or bamboo shots, and I would think that they really do not need whale meat or dolphin meat, and to eat it would be an egotistical type exercise for an egotistical few.

Japanese now flock to the whale watching boats at the Gold Coast, Harvey Bay and the Whitsundays, and I think more money could be made in having Japenese watch whales, than in harpooning them.

For the most part whales and dolphin do no one any harm, and probably have more value for humans to see in the wild, than to eat.

Whales are subject to intense pain as a result of the exploding harpoons (that detonate inside their bodies) and electric lances that are driven deep inside their bodies to electrocute and stop their hearts, sometimes taking upwards of 20 minutes to accomplish.

Think how it would feel (Bushido Bob) to have this done to YOU, the only escape being death and a slow and agonizingly painful one at that.

Any individual/company/nation that engages in whaling is barbaric and cruel.

Any individual who places the importance of culture and his or her taste-buds above the rights of defenseless, intelligent & gentle whales is also cruel and IMHO a practically worthless human being (i.e. Bushido Bob said: "I personally fully support the resumption of [controlled] commercial whaling and hope to one day be able to enjoy this culinary delight in a Sunday barbeque setting, washed down with a refreshing Asahi Super Dry.")

Well done John Tomlinson!

STOP KILLING WHALES JAPAN!

P.S. Bushido Bob wanted me to ask the forum if anyone has seen his wayward conscience. It's a little crusty and dried up but it was all he had and he would like it back...