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.