Japanese Whalers ram Sea Shepherd boats

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The piracy and eco-terrorism of the Sea Shepherds is not justified by their compassionate impulses.

ruveyn

My view of the sea shapard activists is that they have chosen to take the law into their own hands, they are vigilantes who have decided that they can replace the rule of law.

I think most people would not approve of Tony Martin choosing to hunt burglars with his pump action 12 gauge nor would they approve of the IRA (and UDA/UFF) punishment squads or the idots who vandalised a doctors house because they do not know what a paediatrician was (they thought it was some form of sex offender). This is the sort of thing which will start to happen more and more if we allow vigilantes to run unchecked.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/aug/3 ... on.society

Would it be a bad thing to hope a small ice berg hits the whalers ship?

Even though I am a fan of whales, the Sea Shepards are the ones acting like pirates. If you have seen past seasons of Whale Wars on Animal Planet, you see what they do to stop the Japanese ships. By the way, we will get to see all of this on the new season of Whale Wars later this year.

I also don't agree seeing the Japanese killing all of these whales. If the Sea Shepards were not stopping them, could they be extinct?

It really is a shame we don't regard the tuna any higher than the chicken because they are one of the most incredible animals in the world. If nets made hunting as easy as they made fishing we could buy canned lion and processed rhinoceros at wal-mart for $1.50.

If it were up to me, the oly legal way to harvest bluefin Tuna would be scishing. See how well you fare against the mighty tuna when you challenge it in its' own element!

Sure it does. Do you have a better idea on how to stop the slaughtering of protected wildlife? Japanese whalers kill protected whales, the Sea Shepherd have killed no one.

The baleen whales are not in danger of becoming extinct with the current level of illicit whaling. Their populations are still recovering despite these activities, albeit more slowly than some would desire. It is the toothed species (more closely related to dolphins) that are extremely threatened these days, but it's due to pollution, ecosystem destruction, and other unknown causes possibly climate change related.

Gee, I guess the Sea Shepherd's didn't learn from the time that the Norwegians did the same thing. --I'm going to side with Japan on this one, keeping people employed trumps a bunch of hippies who would rather see them unemployed.

And frak the whales!


ruveyn

Whales are intelligent, social mammals.

Some of us think that means killing them is murder. If you do think the Japanese fishermen are committing murder, then you are entirely correct to stop them, even through the use of force.

Some of us think killing whales is not murder. In that case, the Sea Shepherds are destroying property for no good reason.

It's all a matter of perspective. I definitely support sinking Japanese fishing vessels, because I see them as murderers. I totally get how crazy that sounds to someone who doesn't agree with my view of whales.

In the end there is nothing to discuss, since our disagreements are based on assigning different value to the lives of whales. If I thought whales were like tuna I would not give a flying fck what Japanese fishermen do to them. But I see whales as people, and so I have a big problem with whaling.

Personally I would like to split the world between those who support killing whales and those who are opposed. We can each arm ourselves and then fight it out. Let one side win and the other side can die.

Which is entirely illegal. So the whalers are within their right to defend themselves. I recommend that they harpoon the Sea Shepherds, when the Sea Shepherds interfere with the whalers free use of the High Seas. The Sea Shepherds are pirates and eco-terrorists.

The intelligence and personhood of whales is a matter of opinion, not fact. I will believe whales are intelligent when a whale hires a lawyer from the ACLU to sue a whaler.

ruveyn

Not taking sides in this debate, but you should realize that the intelligence and personhood of other human beings is also a matter of opinion, not fact. I could study your brain under a microscope and decide it isn't truly sentient, just a very complex and specialized hive of nerve cells. A far more intelligent race of extra-terrestrial beings might view our species as a blight or infection that may eventually harm it's host (i.e. the rest of earth's biosphere). They might try to unleash the equivalent of an anti-biotic to wipe us humans out, not to save the whales but to preserve some biological resource they could farm here on earth and use to further their own civilization.

But then where it not for the sea shepherd's shenanigans they would presumably be capable of killing more whales.

If they did so, the species may not be recovering at all.

Conservationist impulses do not justify piracy on the High Seas.

It is up to the whales to find a way to survive.

The last one standing or moving its flippers is the winner.

ruveyn

your attitude is quite unimpressive to me. asians eat anything that moves, and because there are so many asians, anything that moves is in peril because of asians who have no compassion for the lives of "lesser" animals.

they are whaling in the southern ocean where they have no territorial claim, and they are within australian waters much of the time, and they harpoon and kill and haul up onto their decks, innocent whales that they carve up and sell as steaks under the guise of "scientific research". a sliver of their skin is all that is necessary to retrieve if they really were researching what ever they research that they claim to need thousands of whales to enable. one whale can provide as many skin samples and tissue samples that would be enough for the whole world to need for whatever they need to research.

what are the japanese researching that requires more than 800 whales per year to accomplish? how wasteful are their techniques? millions of slivers on microscope slides could be obtained from a single whale. i never hear of the results of this supposed "research" that they harvest so many whales to enable.

the australian government promised that they would curtail whaling in our waters, but they did nothing at all. some people decided to try to interfere with the japanese ships on their own with their own money, and they got rammed and assaulted by the japanese ships in our waters who kill our whales to take them back to japan and sell their meat to restaurants, and people like you ruveyn are endorsing their behavior based upon the idea that whales are not as smart as the people who slaughter them.

thank goodness there are no animals smarter than humans or else humans would themselves be stolen off the face of the planet in order to be digested into mere fecal material that is flushed down the toilet 3 days after an unmemorable meal.

tigers are seriously endangered because asians want to eat their dicks. rhinos are endangered because they are shot and killed so that their horns can be ground into powder that asians think will increase their sexual prowess and fertility.

goodness gracious, asians breed like flies anyway and if it was true that they would have better sex and be more fertile after imbibing ground rhino horn dust, then the problem would be exponentially componded.

i saw a show where a lake that was on the chinese and russian border was half claimed by russia and half claimed by china.
there was a small rare turtle that was a chinese delicacy that lived in the lake who's population was exhausted on the chinese side of the lake, and the chinese trespassed on the russian side of the lake and harvested every little turtle outside of their jurisdiction on the other side of the lake as well. that type of turtle is now extinct.

i certainly do not think that because humans are smart that they are blameless in driving other species extinct simply to satisfy their gastronomic appetites (or for any other reason) simply because they "can".

i do not like humans because humans like themselves so much more than they like any other form of life simply because they are smarter.

smartness (no matter how much) can never build a heart.

I was born and raised in Japan but have never eaten or even seen whale meat. I don't know why Japan still insists on whaling.

I hate Sea Shepherd so much that I wish Japan would cease whaling so that they would stop giving Sea Shepherd the satisfaction of playing pirates in the name of love for the animals. They just like to attack the Japanese because they are an easier target than the Norwegians who hunt as many whales as the Japanese. I bet Sea Shepherd would actually be at a loss if Japan stopped whaling.