Indigenous whaling bids granted after 'racism' claim

[Eugene]

Source: BBC

3 July 2012 Last updated at 18:26 GMT

Indigenous whaling bids granted after 'racism' claim

Whaling quotas for indigenous groups in Alaska, Russia and the Caribbean were renewed at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) annual meeting.

The vote came despite questions over whether the bid from St Vincent and the Grenadines qualified under IWC rules.

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But others said that the bid should not qualify under ASW rules because the Bequians, the group that maintains the hunt, are not truly indigenous.

Whaling "started by a settler's family as recently as a 1875 does not qualify as 'aboriginal'," argued Monaco's Frederic Briand.

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Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18693753

[Nihil]

1. Monaco forgot the golden rule ...

> Whaling "started by a settler's family as recently as a 1875 does not
> qualify as 'aboriginal'," argued Monaco's Frederic Briand.

He who has the gold bribes the people who make the rules ...

Count that as another win for Japan, Norway & Iceland.


(FWIW, I'm actually happy with "indigenous whaling" if they can only use
their traditional indigenous methods - none of this modern crap like harpoon
guns, diesel engines, RIBs, GPS, sonar, sat-phones or neoprene clothing.
I bet the "traditions" would die out pretty quickly too.)

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. One of the issues is "time to die"

Some of those modern improvements make it a quick kill and not a lingering death.

[Nihil]

3. A bigger one is "not time to die".

All of those "modern improvements" maximise the kill rate and minimise the
risk to the "indigenous hunter" (pah!).

The difference isn't between a "quick kill" and "a lingering death" but between
a "kill" and a "survival" - there were countless whales that survived the puny
attempts to kill them and simply carried on their lives with an artificial barnacle
attached to their hide.

The time that the "lingering death" appeared was when the whalers introduced
their "improvements" to harpoons in the first place instead of having the
"traditional" hand-thrown pointed stick.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. Time to Die was indeed an issue at the IWC Meeting

That you would endorse a return to Nantucket style whaling is surprising.

[Nihil]

5. You misunderstand me

> That you would endorse a return to Nantucket style whaling is surprising.

Nantucket-style whaling is no more "indigenous" or "traditional" than that of
the Icelandic, Nordic or Japanese fleet, just a slightly less efficient version
of the industrialised slaughter that should be banned outright.

The *only* exception that I would allow would be to keep the culture
of old tribes alive whereby they hunt in the traditional rowboat + pointy stick
method and use every last bit of the kill in their village. That scale of whaling
may still be immoral to eyes of different cultures but it isn't going to have
any significant effect on the species.

(Note that this excludes the crap that the IWC just gave into with regard to
"traditions" that were established by 1890's settlers and the like. That was
just another piece of bullshit bought as a fig-leaf by the subsidised factory
ship corporations.)