Are you fucking kidding me?!

It was announced recently that Japan was going to take over the leadership of the international whaling council or IWC. Japan pulled this off by essentially buying votes on the 66-member council that monitors whaling. Increased foreign aid packages to countries so desperate for their Yen that they would do anything they said in return. Japan even encouraged nations with no whaling traditions to join the council. Some, such as Mongolia and Mali don't even have a coastline. Because I am sure, that with so few problems of their own all they can think about in Ulaan Baator, and Bamako is how unjust the ban on commercial whaling is.

Normally I am a big supporter of all things Japanese... sushi, anime, moist things hentai, oh yeah I'm down with that. But the Japanese obsession with killing whales is some serious bullshit. Commercial whaling has been banned since 1986, but Japan has been allowed to continue limited whaling for "scientific purposes". However, despite the boon to scientific research that comes from the limited whaling Japan is allowed to do, most of the flesh of said whales winds up on plates in Sushi restaurants.

One could argue here that the Japanese have a cultural connection with whale meat and that means that they should be allowed to continue. Having lived in Japan I can report that is a huge crock. Most people do not eat whale meat, and the government has been forced to take alternative measures to keep the whaling industry happy including putting whale in school lunches, hoping to drum up support. A Japanese burger chain in Hokkaido started selling whale burgers a while back, with government subsidies of course. The weren't even trying to hide the real purpose of the new product saying that their goal was to have the Japanese people re-acquire the taste for whale meat. You know I love bald eagle egg omelets, with spotted owl sausage, and I think that America would love the taste of said dish.

The bottom line is that Japan cannot be trusted to monitor the world's whale population. After all the fisheries minister a few years ago called the minki whale, the most commonly hunted species, "the cockroaches of the sea" This my friends is what will be sitting atop the IWC before very long.

Japanese whaling would be more acceptable if they would only keep to their own waters, however there don't seem to be many whales swimming around in the area...I wonder why? So the Japanese whaling fleets make the trek south to the great southern ocean where in the waters between Antarctica and New Zealand they do most of their "scientific" whaling. This, as you can imagine, gets the Kiwis royally pissed off. And since they are still part of the British Commonwealth, and therefore a monarchy, they really can be royally pissed off.

In taking a page from our own NSA Japan's first order of business will be to change the rules. After all if your behavior does not fit the rules you live under don't change your behavior, change the rules. The first move will be to lift the now 20-year old ban on commercial whaling. And to give all the newly minted IWC countries cover, they will institute a secret ballot.

The limit on Japan's "scientific" whaling is set to go over a thousand this year, most likely the last year such a limit will be in place. There is precious little I or anyone else for that matter can do about it, I just wanted to rant.