More On Whaling

Whaling, Racism, It's One Big Cauldron Of Hate

Crikey. You'd think they were called goat-fuckers.

A JAPANESE pro-whaling video condemning Australia as a racist nation using
images of the infamous Cronulla riots has been launched on YouTube.
The 10-minute video, with English and Japanese subtitles, accuses Australia of white
supremacy, exclusionist nationalism, a racist ideology and of prejudice towards the Japanese.

It shows graphic images of slain dingoes, a wallaby being killed by a child bashing it against a ute, and one horrific scene in which an Australian-looking man takes a baby kangaroo from its mother's pouch and stomps on it in the dirt.

It also reproduces famous photographs of angry, young men lashing out violently during the Cronulla riots.

Awesome. The video is here. It's created a firestorm of responses on news.com and YouTube.
I won't post the video here because I actually don't want to add fuel to the fire. It's a pretty irritating and provocative video. You sort of wonder what the editors of News.com were thinking when they hoisted it up on their site. I guess "more hits!"
You'd think they were iCompers and MySpace sluts. :)

Anyway. It's hardly productive to accuse one another of racism - even if it true - so let's stick to the main point. Dingos and Kangaroos get culled in Australia. There are over 100,000 Minke whales, that the Japanese want to hunt. Both of these cases are argued on the grounds of being sustainable, and both are opposed on the grounds of cruelty ot animals. The facts are, if one is willing to countenance one, the other should be fine. If not to one, then the other should be opposed. That's about the long and short of it, and everything the Australian government has argued in the IWC meetings past is immensely bad faith.

Then there's this:

ENVIRONMENTALIST and 2007 Australian of the Year Tim Flannery has declared his support for the hugely unpopular Japanese whaling program.

As Australia prepares to monitor the whaling fleet in Antarctica amid rising diplomatic tensions with Japan, Professor Flannery says there is nothing unsustainable about its annual cull of up to 1000 whales - particularly the common minke whale.

"In terms of sustainability, you can't be sure that the Japanese whaling is entirely unsustainable," Professor Flannery said. "It's hard to imagine that the whaling would lead to a new decline in population."

But the staunch environmentalist, influential scientist, author and climate change crusader said he was pleased Japan had decided to ditch plans to kill up to 50 threatened humpbacks this summer.

"I'm very relieved to see the humpback whale quota dumped," he said.
But the 935 minke whales that Japan aims to kill each year under its so-called scientific whaling program should not threaten the survival of that species.

Professor Flannery said there were much bigger threats to marine biodiversity and sustainability, including to the future of krill, small crustaceans essential in the sea food chain - and the main sustenance for whales in the Southern Ocean.

Krill populations are declining as a result of over-fishing and because rising sea temperatures are killing off their food sources. Professor Flannery said he was more
concerned about those issues "where our future is most under threat, which is
not the minkes".

In other words, the conservation argument for 'Zero Tolerance' doesn't work.

Yet, on top of all that, just to muddy the waters, there's been the cultural argument that's been mounted by the Japanese, but it's not a very good one. The notion that somehow whaling is an ancient Japanese custom has been (rightly) disputed greatly. Besides, how good is that argument really in justifying whaling? After all, as a Samoan guy once pointed out to me, "Mate, killing and eating people is our cultural way, but it's just wrong, y'know? At some point we can't just do that."

If the cultural argument - "We've been doing it a long time, it's our way" - is lent any weight, we might have to accept things like anti-semitism as the 'traditional culture' and therefore the natural right of Europeans - they'll be wanting to bring back pogroms and ghettos and NAZI-sm and Auschwitz and... Somehow I just don't think that's going to fly.

What's really irksome about this video is that the taunts and abuses being hurled has descended down from activists to ordinary people. One wonders if this is the kind of thing the respective governments want. I noticed that as soon a sthe hits started to mount, News.com buried this page deep in their site. Well, I would too if I were them, lest we see another load of Cronulla style riots - and this is what really hurts. The erosion of trust is going to be harmful to both Canberra and Tokyo.

If anything, the Australia has been very un-diplomatic in its refusal to countenance a recommencement of commercial whaling at the IWC every year. It might have to reconsider just what it is that it's hanging so much political capital and prestige upon. It may be the case that 935 Minke whales just aren't worth it when there are much bigger projects to save. The 'Zero Tolerance' approach has not yielded the results sought.