The Art Neuro Weblog

Russian Cargo Vessel Docks With The ISS
It's not like it's an amazing event, but it's news.

The unmanned Progress M-53 spacecraft, which took off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, was delivering supplies and equipment for its U.S. and Russian crew.

Russian Soyuz crew capsules and Progress cargo ships have been the only link to the space station since the U.S. shuttle fleet was grounded after the Columbia shuttle burned up as it returned to Earth in February 2003, killing all seven astronauts aboard. NASA has said it plans to resume shuttle flights as early as next month.

Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who is on the station with U.S. crewmate John Phillips, manually steered the cargo ship into a smooth embrace with the station after the autopilot system failed minutes before the docking, Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said.

"Shortly before the docking, the autopilot switched off because of communications problems," Lyndin said by telephone from Mission Control in Korolyov, just outside Moscow. "Communications were quickly restored, but Mission Control decided to play it safe and asked the crew to conduct a manual docking."

At least the Soyuz program still works.

IWC Stoush
Nothing brings out the bitterness amongst so-called friendly nations than the International Whaling Commission meetings. This year's meeting is proiving to be a lovely bit of name-calling and abuse hurling:

Speaking at the opening of the International Whaling Commission' name International Whaling Commission meeting in Ulsan,
South Korea, Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell said Japan's research whaling programme was an "outrage".

Voting at the meeting, he said, "will come down to a clash between those who want to continue to whale and to expand whaling in this millennium and those of us who want to see whaling relegated to an historic fact from the last millennium." Japan on Monday informed the meeting it intended to double its catch of minke whales to some 880 and enlarge the cull to include endangered fin and humpback species

The scientific programme is allowed under a special clause in a 19-year moratorium on whaling that critics say allows commercial hunting by the back door but which Japan, Norway and Iceland want to be scrapped.

New Zealand's Conservation Minister Chris Carter launched an outspoken attack on Japan's plan: "New Zealand totally rejects Japan's proposals to double the number of whales slaughtered in the Southern Ocean," he told journalists.
"Where is the science from 18 years of scientific whaling? Where is the science? It doesn't exist."

He said New Zealand's whale watching tourist sector, which earns tens of millions of dollars a year, would likely suffer as a result of the extension in the cull to humpbacks.

"We have a very healthy whale-watch operation in New Zealand... These are our whales, they're Fiji's whales, they're Tonga's whales... What right does Japan have to go into the Southern Ocean and slaughter these rare marine mammals? "I say to Japan it's an outrage. I say shame that you are preparing to slaughter a species that is already in danger."

Responding to Japan's contention that whaling is part of its cultural heritage, he said tradition had never extended to the antarctic waters where Japan now caught most of its whales.

"Is Japan a poor nation? Does it need the protein...? No it does not. Japan says it is a cultural tradition... Japan has no cultural tradition of hunting whales in the Southern Ocean. We say shame!"

Ben Bradshaw, the British minister responsible for fisheries said the kind of suffering that many whales were subjected to, was "totally unacceptable in 2005."

"We don't think there's a humane way to kill a whale," he said, adding: "This is an absolutely vital IWC meeting... Future generations will not forgive this meeting if we go backwards in our conservation of whales."

Them's fightin' words. However, I don't think the anglophone nations understand who they are up against in this issue. The ruling LDP of Japan is sort of held hostage by the fisheries industry. They need those rural votes and the rural votes are tied implicitly with the whaling issue. The LDP can't back off because of the potential voter backlash. That doesn't make it morally right, but you'll have to sit there and imagine a lot of people with the jobs on the line pressing the government as hard as possible. Not only tyhat, if the whaling ban goes ahead, they think it's the thin end of the wedge before tuna and other fish then become 'protected' by a similar body. So you can see that Japan's not going to budge because somebody brings up moral outrage on the basis of animal rights. As such, Japan might pull out of the IWC as suggested in the article, and then you can be sure all bets will be off; and it might spell the end of the IWC if countries that want to go back to whaling don't get their way and quit.

On the other hand, the Japanese Fisheries Department have been keeping very close tabs on whale numbers; their numbers have been more accurate than those presented by Greenpeace because they've spent more money on it and they want to be persuasive. So the claim that there's 'no science' is probably misleading rhetoric. Besides, the anglophone nations always counter the 'sustainable whaling' argument with a moral objection backed by animal rights; which always devolves into:
"Well, you shoot kanagroos and eat cows; they're mammals. How do you explain that?"
"They're not endangered!"
"Well whales wouldn't be endangered if you hadn't gone hunting them for musk the way you did in the 19th century. Who wrote 'Moby Dick' and celebrated it as great literature instead of treat that tome as a moral outrage anyway?!"
"That's a long time ago and this is now."
"So now, we're saying we can do this sustainably instead of driving them to extinction. Here' re the numbers. What's wrong with that?"
"It's cruel to kill such beautiful creatures!"
"I think cows are cute but you still eat them."
"Cows aren't endangered!"
"Yes, but the steak you ate last night didn't know that when it got slaughtered brutally in the abattoir! Or did you read it its rights as it went in to get whacked?"
"It's an animal. It doesn't need to have its rights read or have last rites administered."
"So how is that any different with whales?"
"Whales are intelligent."
"So if you're intelligent, you can't be eaten?. All right, why do you eat pigs? Pigs are intelligent. We saw that in 'Babe'. Pigs are clearly intelligent, but you still eat them."
"Look, it'd be on our conscience if you kept hunting whales. Do you understand?"
"Right. So if we objected to you killing cows for steak, we're allowed to start our own International Beef Council and ban beef? You know, I think we might get some support there from the Hindus..."

Meanwhile, there's this other article that says the pro-whaling lobby might get the numbers to resume whaling.

The International Whaling Commission ended the hunting of the mammals in 1986, handing environmentalists a major victory in protecting several species that were near extinction after centuries of whaling. But on the eve of its annual meeting Monday, the 66 member nations are divided over ending the ban.

Norway holds the world's only commercial whaling season in defiance of the ban, while Japan kills whales for what it describes as scientific research, selling the meat. Japan, Norway and other nations this year are expected to take more than 1,550 whales.

Japan annually kills about 440 minke whales in the Antarctic Ocean and another 210 in coastal waters in the northwestern Pacific. Iceland also conducts research hunts, which it resumed in 2003 after 14 years. In both countries, eating whale meat is considered a tradition.

A complete end to the moratorium is considered unlikely at the five-day meeting of the Cambridge, England-based commission, since it would require the approval of 75 percent of members who vote. But pro-whaling countries say they are close to getting a majority, which would let them vote in changes they favor. With a majority, they could pass resolutions supporting Japan's research program, or even the
resumption of limited kills.

"We remain very optimistic ... that the scales are tipping in our favor," said Joanne M. Massiah, minister of food production and marine resources for Caribbean nation Antigua & Barbuda, which supports the resumption of commercial whaling.

Norway and Iceland have traditional claims to whaling in a way that the Inuit do. Just because they're white folks doesn't mean they don't have whaling traditions, so you can imagine that they're not feeling too great to be blocked at every turn, every year. Iceland in particular thought they were cheated by the IWC and walked out of the 2002 meeting. I've never figured out what Russia's claim to continuing whaling is, but they're pretty interested and have been for years. At the end of the day, there are a lot of motivated people who will go to great lengths to hunt whales.

I'll just post up one more remark, and it is this: there's a Japanese saying: "The grudges over food are frightening."
Stay tuned. This is going to get very interesting.

- Art Neuro