More Facts on Japan and Whaling

I don't know why i the journalist,Blaine Harden didn't check some facts before writing the Washington Post report "Japanese Mission to Kill, Study 950 Whales Decried ".  I guess when you're a mainstream news writer you don't have to do that anymore.  Nor do you want to pretend you actually have a memory or any expertise on the subject you are writing about.

• First the writer does bring up some new information in the portion of the article about the new humpback quota the Japanese fisheries has granted itself.  In fact the number of humpback whale population has only reached 30% of it's pre-whaling numbers and are still considered vulnerable to extinction if whaling is resumed.

• Though Morishita claims that one cannot scratch the skin a find out what they plan to find, wildlife experts say you can find out more by following populations over time rather than killing.  Guess where Morishita's claims are featured --on the first page of the article of course.  Guess where the rebuttal is. That would be on the second page (not in sequence with the original claims as if the words just naturally flowed to the next page either).  Does Japan potentially have big bucks for advertising or loans for news media seeking to jump in the media consolidation game?  Most likely.

•  The writer eagerly passes on  Japanese talking points that the US first encouraged whaling after WW2 in an effort to keep Japanese people from starving, but doesn't appear to be able tot think for him or herself that what is right to keep people from starving is not right when a land is wealthy.  Also 1946 is not 2007 or even 1986 (when commercial whaling was banned except for scientific purposes.)

• Excerpt: "Consumers here have also become wary of whale meat because of dangerous levels of mercury and other toxins."  So the Japanese want the right to eat toxic food?   Sorry to hear that.

• Article does tell us that smaller whales within Japan's territorial waters are not regulated by the IWC and they can use them at will.
  

• Excerpt (quoted and italicized portion): "When scientists here finish their research, whaling commission regulations require that leftover whale meat be sold. Proceeds from the sales defray about 90 percent of the cost of mounting the hunt, according to the Fisheries Agency."  But the reporter does not look around and find information from last year that showed that most of that whale meat was sold to the Japanese government. (What happened to their Lexis Nexis account?) The Japanese government has resorted to feeding school children (Mmm, now with more mercury for your developing brain!) to get rid of the stuff.  A program to put whale meat it into cans of dog food last year caused such an outcry that it was dropped.)

• Reporter accepts more Japanese talking  points Excerpt: "Japanese officials note that their country has the support of about half the 78 nations that are members of the whaling commission, including Russia, China, Norway and Iceland."  Indeed Russia, China, Norway, and Iceland have been against the whaling ban since the beginning, but to get to nearly half of the IWC, Japan bribed small even landlocked third world nations with membership fees and travel money to the IWC as well as with "aid" funds in the past few years, leading to a membership war in which anti-whaling nations have brought in other new nations to keep Japan's influence under control.
  

• A New York Times article "Whaling: A Japanese Obsession With American Roots " (dated March 14, 2007 long before new talk of media consolidation started)  states: 'Japan’s whale consumption peaked in 1962 at 226,000 tons, then declined steadily until it fell to 15,000 tons in 1985, the year before the commercial ban took place. Whaling advocates argue that consumption fell because increasingly strict quotas by the Whaling Commission, followed by the ban, reduced supply.

  “The demand didn’t die,” said Joji Morishita, an official at Japan’s fisheries agency and its negotiator at the Whaling Commission. “The supply was cut off. The Japanese didn’t have a say in the matter.”

  Whaling opponents say that Japanese mostly stopped eating whale as the country became richer and alternatives became widely available.

  “In the midst of Japan’s postwar food shortage, whale meat was used in classroom lunches, but it wasn’t very popular,” said Shuichi Kitoh, professor of environmental studies at the University of Tokyo. “The reaction was, ‘How can you eat that stuff?’.”

• The Times report shows how the cultural tradition of whaling and whale meat eating was pushed on the majority of Japan by the U.S. twice. (And yes, guys we are sorry that we had Admiral Perry open up Japan, but that was in 1854-- the nineteenth century.  If you want to go back to your Shoguns, Geishas and slave like underclass, be our guest.)  (Whaling was always a coastal tradition, but not a national one until the US forced it on the nation.  Funny argument for a "cultural tradition".)

• More ominously is a repeated call for Japan's right to 'secure natural resources'.  Not Japan's resources, but the world's resources .  It's the same call they used in the WW2 era when invading the mainland Asia and the Pacific Islands.  The Zmag article linked here may not be mainstream but I found the same "securing natural resources argument" in many mainstream articles lately on Japanese whaling.  If you notice this is similar to the Bush administration approved Alan Greenspan reasoning that going into Iraq was good because we were "securing an important natural resource", you would be correct.  However, a majority of Americans disapprove of the actions of the Bush administration in Iraq, now that they know there were no WMDs.  When the whales start building chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, then we'll help Japan go get'em.  All right?

tags: japan  japanese whaling fleet  whale killing  whales  whaling  whale meat  children  children at risk  childrens health  

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