TOKYO (11 Dec 2006) -- Japan is warning conservation activists to back off as Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace ships head for Antarctica to protect whales from heavily armed Japanese eco terrorists funded by right-wing ultranationalists and 'yakuza' organized crime gangs. Japan's Institute for Cetacean Research (ICR), a radical right-wing government agency set up to promote illegal commercial whaling as "scientific research", has threatened to ram and sink Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace vessels sent to Antarctica to patrol the Southern Ocean Sanctuary and protect whales from Japan's illegal pirate whaling fleet. On Christmas day, 2005, the Nisshin Maru attempted to ram the Farley Mowat, a patrol vessel operated by Sea Shepherd. "Sushi science" Japanese ultranationalists have announced they will defy international law and kill over 1,000 whales this year for "scientific research". The whales are brutally killed with explosives and "researched" on the Nisshin Maru--Japan's largest factory whaling vessel--for sale and distribution in Japan for human and animal (pet food) consumption. Commercial whaling by Japan, Norway, Iceland and other nations has placed the blue, fin, humpback, bowhead, sperm, and right whales on the Endangered Species List. Japan is continuing to kill both fin whales and humpback whales, which attract millions of whale-watching tourists in Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti and throughout the world. Japanese say no to whaling Despite recent attempts by ultranationlist political groups to force young Japanese school children to eat toxic whale meat with mercury levels 233 times above the maximum set for safe human consumption, opinion polls confirm that an overwhelming majority of Japan's citizens do not support the coalition of radical right-wing LDP politicans and small but powerful fishing industry groups that are lobbying for the resumption of commercial whaling. | | "The West is trying to impose its unilateral standards on us. I regard this as cultural imperialism," said Masayuki Komatsu whose strident ultranationalist rhetoric echoes the anti-western slogans of Japanese fascists convicted of war crimes and executed after World War II. Komatsu describes whales as the "cockroaches of the sea" and argues that "whales must be killed to protect fish." But he declines comment on why fish and whales thrived for millions of years before commercial whaling and fishing industries severely depleted edible fish stocks and nearly wiped out whale species around the world. Most modern, educated Japanese do not eat whale and reject government propaganda that whaling is synonymous with being Japanese. (graphic by Aki Ueno, caption by Hiroyuki Watanabe) A Gallup affiliate opinion poll conducted in June 2006 by the Nippon Research Centre showed that 95% of Japanese never or rarely eat whale meat and more than 70 percent of Japanese do NOT support whaling in the Southern Ocean. © CDNN - CYBER DIVER NEWS NETWORKSCUBA FORUMDISCUSS THIS TOPIC - Dive in and have your say at Scuba Forum |
