(I got sick of typing this halfway through so just posted what I’d done – if half-baked crap annoys you like it does me, skip it!)
The farcical battle between two equally despicable sides in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary is getting more interesting, with the japanese hunter ship Yushin Maru taking into “custody” two Sea Shepard members who boarded their ship illegally to deliver a “letter of condemnation”.
The fact that one of the detainees is Australian is interesting, as it forces open a line of communication between the Australian and Japanese governments – Australia demanded his release last night, and the Japanese govt apparently agreed, although it’s yet to occur. This is interesting because the new AU govt, headed by Kevin Rudd, had made all sorts of anti-whaling promises during its election campaign, only to now determinedly sit on its hands and avoid a diplomatic incident with Japan, a very important trading partner and partner in two critical recent agreements – a Free Trade agreement and, more recently, a formal security alliance. The Rudd government is understandably pretty eager to not start its term in office by inciting a huge diplomatic spat over a thousand whales, which even manic hyper-environmentalist Tim Flannery called a sustainable level of fishing.
Both sides in this high-seas drama are equally dislikable. Firstly, the Japanese whalers, who dogmatically insist on their “traditional” right to catch and eat whales, despite the fact that consumers in Japan won’t eat it – they have over 4,000 tons of whale meat in cold storage in Tokyo which will most likely never be sold. I have personally never met a Japanese person who likes, or even approves of, whale meat. They exacerbate the already hostile situation by insisting the whaling is for “research” – an obvious, blatant lie which just pisses everyone off.
But these Sea Shepard guys are just as bad. Like any cult, its members found themselves lacking purpose or meaning in their lives and happen to have arbitrarily picked “Saving the Whales” as their big mission. They picked whales but it could have been anything – you can see the same obsessed “I am trying to distract myself from my meaningless life by dedicating myself to a ridiculous degree to a basically arbitrary cause” in many situations. They’re the kind of eager-to-join-an-army guys who probably should have just joined the actual army, which thrives on such personality types.
As much as I hate the whalers, I think I like them more than Sea Shepard. At least the whalers just remind me of stubborn old guys who are going to act out their tradition no matter what. And I can imagine the international pressure to stop just makes them more determined to not give in. Japan’s lost a lot of pride since WWII, it’s easy to imagine the mindset of not wanting to give up any more, no matter how misguided. But the Sea Shepard types, young men looking for something, desperate to prove themselves even if they have to die to do it, is far more scary. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it’s the same basic driving force behind a lot of heartache in the world. People willing to sacrifice themselves to prove some arbitrary moral point? Reminds me of someone who’d bomb an abortion clinic, or murder a homosexual, or maybe blow themselves up in Iraq.
Check out this quote from their ship’s captain, Paul Watson:
“The Nisshin Maru is the cetacean death star and the most evil ship sailing the high seas today,” he wrote in a weblog. “It must be destroyed if the whales are to live.”
“At the risk of sounding dramatic, my crew and I are prepared to die for these whales if need be,” he said.
Anyway, two of them are hostage and staying in what sounds like hotel-like conditions:
“They are treated very, very humanely and they are provided with a warm, delicious hot meal,” Mr Moronuki said.
“They have [a] warm, nice bath and they are provided [with a] nice bed with clean white sheets so they are in very good condition.”
http://www.smh.com.au/specials/whalewatch/index.html
