Showing posts with label Greenpeace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greenpeace. Show all posts

Friday, December 21, 2007

Monday, November 19, 2007

Japan's Scientific Whaling Hoax

Apparently rumours are that Japan might consider abandoning their hunt of the endangered Humpbacks. However that is a classic red herring.

More: Rumours from Tokyo: Humpbacks to be spared the harpoon?

This is pretty incredible, and will be wonderful if it happens. Of course, saving the 50 humpbacks may be a red herring by the whalers; with everyone excited about the humpbacks - which are threatened and very iconic - it's easy to forget about the 50 less recognisable endangered fin whales and the 935 minke whales that the whaling fleet plans to kill over the next few months.



The bottom line is that Japan's Whaling operations are not for science but sushi.


Catching whales for science is a hoax

The Fisheries Agency of Japan (FAJ) and the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) make more frequent defences of their research than usual - probably feeling the pressure. Here is an analysis of the failed research by our whales specialist John Frizell.

By John Frizell

In 1987, the ban on commercial whaling came into force for Japan. Yet despite the ban the whaling fleet which had previously conducted the commercial hunt sailed at its usual time to the same whaling grounds in the Antarctic to take the same species of whale they had caught the year before and return them to Japan boxed in 15 kg cardboard cartons, ready for sale. This was made possible by ‘scientific’ whaling.

When the last remaining high seas commercial whaling company in Japan was dissolved in 1987, it gave its factory ship and catchers to a new company whose shareholders were all companies formerly involved in whaling. In the same year a non profit organisation called the Institute for Cetacean Research (ICR) was founded. The new company that now owned the whaling fleet donated nine million US dollars to the ICR. The ICR promptly chartered the whaling fleet from the new company and set off for the Antarctic using the factory ship, catchers and crew from the commercial hunt to catch whales in the name of science.
See my Facebook campaign to oppose Japanese Whaling. I have also posted a link in the sidebar to the left.

Here are some posts from fellow progressive bloggers on the outrage of Japans Whale Hunt.

Japan Whaling Again

Primitive Japanese Whaling Practice Resumes



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Sunday, November 18, 2007

Japan's Whaling Outrage


Clearly the sushi market sets the 'scientific research' agenda in Japan.

Japan hunts 50 humpback whales for research

As if the stupidity of their phony 'scientific research' expeditions for whales, whale hunting by any other name, was not bad enough now Japan intends to hunt the endangered Humpback Whale.

In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville describes the Humpback Whale as "the most gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales, making more gay foam and white water than any other of them".

Guess Star Trek IV is not as popular in Japan as it is here. Or perhaps it lost something in the translation.

The Esperanza, Greenpeace's anti-whaling ship, could use the Enterprise's help now.

Because they won't get any help from the Canadian Government.


Send letters of protest to the Embassy of Japan in Canada
255 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario
K1N 9E6
Tel: (613) 241-8541
Fax: (613) 241-7415
infocul@embjapan.ca

And copy your protest letter to your MP and the Party Leaders.

I am so outraged over this I have started a Facebook cause.


BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS: A Japanese whaling ship harpoons a whale off Antarctica, in this file picture.

A defiant Japan embarked on its largest whaling expedition in decades Sunday, targeting protected humpbacks for the first time since the 1960s despite international opposition. An anti-whaling protest boat awaited the fleet offshore.

The whalers plan to kill up to 50 humpbacks in what is believed to be the first large-scale hunt for the once nearly extinct species since a 1963 moratorium in the Southern Pacific put the giant marine mammals under international protection.

The mission also aims to take as many as 935 minke whales and up to 50 fin whales in what Japan's Fisheries Agency says is its largest-ever scientific whale hunt. The expedition lasts through April.

Japan says it needs to kill the animals in order to conduct research on their reproductive and feeding patterns.

While scientific whale hunts are allowed by the International Whaling Commission, or IWC, critics say Japan is simply using science as a cover for commercial whaling.

The Japanese hunt, which puts meat from the whales on the commercial market, is growing rapidly despite an increasingly vocal anti-whaling movement. This winter season's target of up to 1,035 whales is more than double the number the country hunted a decade ago.

The head of Japan's Fisheries Agency said Sunday the fruits of Tokyo's research would help prove that sustainable whaling is possible.

"The scientific research we carry out will pave the way to overturning the moratorium on commercial whaling, which will better help us to utilize whale resources," Shuji Yamada told the ceremony.

The focus on this year's hunt is the humpback, which was in serious danger of extinction just a few decades ago. They are now a favorite of whale-watchers for their playful antics at sea, where the beasts — which grow as large as 40 tons — throw themselves out of the water.

Humpbacks feed, mate and give birth near shore, making them easy prey for whalers, who by some estimates depleted the global population to just 1,200 before the 1963 moratorium. The southern moratorium was followed by a worldwide ban in 1966.

Since then, only Greenland and the Caribbean nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines have been allowed to catch humpbacks under an IWC aboriginal subsistence program. Each caught one humpback last year, according to the commission.

The American Cetacean Society estimates the humpback population has recovered to about 30,000-40,000 — about a third of the number before modern whaling. The species is listed as "vulnerable" by the World Conservation Union.

Japanese fisheries officials insist the population has returned to a sustainable level and that taking 50 of them will have no impact


The image “http://www.edgefx.com/_borders/humpbac.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
"George and Gracie," the humpback whales in Star Trek IV,
were Walt Conti's first animatronic creations back in 1986.

GreenPeace Follow the Great Whale Trail!

Today we launched the Great Whale Trail, following the migration of humpback whales from the warm tropical waters of the South Pacific, where they breed, to the icy Southern Ocean around Antarctica, where they feed. And we're doing it via satellite tracking and Google Maps. Nifty.

It's a collaboration between Greenpeace and scientists studying humpback whales in the South Pacific. We provided the financial support, while the humpbacks have been tagged by the Cook Islands Whale Research, and Opération Cétacés (New Caledonia). Why are we doing this? Well, it's simple, really: whales must not be allowed to die in the thousands for needless, discredited "research," - like that carried out by the Japanese whaling fleet. We're satellite tracking whales in the Southern Ocean to prove that non-lethal means can be used to do some real research!

The Great Whale Trail follows the migration of humpback whales from the warm tropical waters of the South Pacific, where they breed, to the icy Southern Ocean around Antarctica, where they feed. Click on the whale icon to see more information about the individual whales.

The whales are heading to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, which should be a safe haven for them. Unfortunately, whaling still continues there.

Why the Japanese Fleet can't use this map to find and kill the humpbacks.

Greenpeace has a long history of defending the whales of the Southern Ocean by activists putting themselves between the whale and the harpoon. We would never let a whale be put in danger. The posting of the location of the whales on this website has been delayed to ensure the whaling fleet cannot locate them through the Great Whale Trail.

In addition, to justify their whaling as "science", the Fisheries Agency of Japan (FAJ) fleet is obliged to follow strict pre-determined search patterns or 'transects', when they hunt the whales. They claim this is to show that they are doing random population sampling. Any deviation for a single whale or large groups would automatically negate their so-called "scientific" programme.

The image “http://oceans.greenpeace.org/raw/image_full/en/photo-audio-video/photos/humpback-whale-and-calf.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Real live Humpback Whale and her calf courtesy Greenpeace.



SEE:

Your Sunday Bible Reading: Moby Dick

Belugas

Our Whales Are Missing

High Crimes On The High Sea's

Dolphins Say Scientist A Dim Wit

Whales Were Not Always Vegans

General Jackson Slaughters Luna

Canadian Anti-Whalers Attacked

Confrontation on the High Seas

Piracy on the High Seas


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Monday, October 15, 2007

Eat Roo Not Seal

Bloggers Unite - Blog Action Day

Some folks would like us to go vegan, while saving seals from being culled. And then again some of these same folks say this.

Greenpeace: Eat more kangaroos
More kangaroos should be slaughtered and eaten to help save the world from global warming, environmental activists say. The controversial call to cut down on beef and serve more of the national symbol on our dinner plates follows a report on curbing greenhouse gas emissions damaging the planet. Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham urged Aussies to substitute some red meat for roo to help reduce land clearing and the release of methane gas from flatulent cattle and sheep. "It is one of the lifestyle changes we can make," Mr Wakeham said. "Changing our meat consumption habits is a small way to make an impact."
I think Canadian fishers should remind them of this when the annual Green NGO anti-sealing campaign begins.


SEE:

Vegan Myth Busting

PETA Kills Cats & Dogs


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Green Blogging

Bloggers Unite - Blog Action Day

Today is Green Blogging Day. And so in celebration I am linking to my critique of the myth of sustainable capitalism, which is what the dialectical dance of environmentalism and its opposite is all about.

I will be posting some more today on nature and the environment with that little bug up in the left hand corner, which links to the bloggers publishing today.

The right wing attack on Rachel Carson this past summer is a good example of this dialectic. Carson wrote the earliest popular work on ecology and the environment; The Silent Spring. 2007 is the 100th anniversary of her birth. The result of her work led to much needed public education about the dangers of chemicals; especially pesticides. Her work would inspire the ultimate capitalist reformer; Ralph Nader.


The dance of the dialectic is that both those who promote environmentalism and those who oppose environmentalism are both trying to protect capitalism as it is. One group is promoting sustainable capitalism, by restricting and ameliorating its worst aspects, while the other groups opposes any restrictions that would impeded capitalisms unbridled expansion.

Why Brown is the New Green



Brownfield sites are the gaps in urban areas where factories once stood. They cover a significant, if scattered, amount of land in the old industrial areas of East and South East London, stretching far into Essex and Kent along the Thames estuary. Bordered by housing estates and industrial parks, these sites have in some cases been neglected and unused since as far back as the Second World War.

To the disinterested eye they are spare ground, home to nothing but weeds, rubble, burnt-out cars and dumped appliances, and an obvious place to build new homes in a region where housing is so scarce essential workers cannot afford to buy a home.

This policy has long been seen as an environmentally sound way of dealing with the housing crisis. Green belts, areas of countryside surrounding the UK's major cities, were created in the 1950s to stop the spread of urban sprawl, and the government is reluctant to build on them. Filling in the gaps left by defunct industry in urban areas seems like the obvious answer to the problem.

However, naturalists have increasingly noted that brownfield sites not only provide a haven for wildlife, but are amongst the most important ecological sites in England. Furthermore, hard against built-up areas and open for public access, these sites are a valuable resource for England's majority urban population.

In the green belt around London industrial crop farming has created a monoculture more barren for wildlife than the city itself. Made up largely of private land closed to the public, and saturated in pesticides, these EU-subsidised farms cover a disproportionate area of a crowded region.




This was dialectical contradiction was best shown this summer with the Live Earth Concert organized by Al Gore and his capitalist friends.


Out came the forces of the ultimate in consumer capitalist culture; the rock bands last weekend to save the earth.

After saving the starving in Bangladesh, then Ethiopia, and ultimately the African Continent, now the fearless Rock and Roll Inc. (tm) (c) types are out to save the the earth from Climate Change.


Sorry but coming one week after the mud fest that was Glastonbury, the Concert for Princess Di's Trust Fund and the Canada Day concert in Ottawa, and on the same day as Oxfam Canada and End Global poverty were doing a cross Canada gig, well I must be getting jaded.

All I could garner was a ho hum and switched the channel to see the Canadian U20 team lose to the Congo in the FIFA World Cup.


I would take this whole Rock Concert To Save the World a lot more seriously if all that 'energy' output had been created by solar and wind power rather than using power generated by nuclear, coal, hydro, gas and diesel, as living examples of what could and can be done. I would have been a lot more impressed.

Forty years after the first DIY love ins and be ins I expect more than another attempt to recreate Woodstock for a good cause.

And considering how important this issue is in Canada the lack of a venue, or any critical comment from the MSM and pundits,about that over sight, shows how irrelevant Live Earth was.

Like Kyoto, carbon markets, biofuels, and Harpers 'Made in Canada' green plan, Live Earth was another dud.

In fact what is often overlooked by both sides is the fact that Harpers Made in Canada Green Plan is already in effect in Alberta.

Don Braid, Calgary Herald

Published: Friday, March 09, 2007

Well, some things you thought you'd never live to see. And one of them is an Alberta carbon tax, imposed by an Alberta government on Alberta energy companies, with the companies quietly nodding acceptance.

That's what the government introduced Thursday -- a surprisingly tough bill that will force companies to reduce their CO2 emissions per barrel by 12 per cent starting July 1, or pay $15 per tonne into a technology fund.

Call it a user fee. Or call it a technology incentive. Please go right ahead.

But what it is, actually, is a tax on carbon users and producers that will fall most heavily on oilsands companies and coal-fired electricity plants.

So it's a carbon tax, the very spectre that made Alberta shudder when the federal Liberals mentioned it.

But this carbon tax has an environmental goal. It will give companies a real incentive to lower emissions, while fostering technology that makes the job easier. And the money stays inside Alberta.

Companies can't escape by lowering production. What counts is emissions per unit, not total emissions. So the tax can be skimmed without bringing the industry to a halt.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was on hand to announce his own green initiatives when the Alberta bill came out.

He professed not to know what was in it. That may be, but he's sure aware of the politics behind it.

The goal is to paint Harper and Alberta green
Environmentalism is not anti-capitalism it is just another market giving consumers choice.

North America's biggest solar farm set for Ontario

Homeowners look to go off electrical grid- Environmental self-sufficiency driving market

Green process makes brown coal the new black

One of the problems with the environmental lobby that gives its opponents on the right ammunition to use against them is their uses of prohibition as the basis of regulation. For instance the issue of public health. Rather than deal with the toxic emissions that result from capitalist production they ban smoking in public.

Another example of this dialectical dance is Green NGO campaigns against GMO's and the Seal Hunt.

What do Genetically Modified Organisms, genetically modified grains, soya and corn have in common with the seal hunt?

Why the likelihood of them being banned in Canada is zero, nada, zip, not bloody likely.

The same Green NGO's lobby Europe and other countries to ban seal pelts and GMO's.

Except the fact is that both the anti-seal hunt and the anti-GMO campaigns impact on producers, fishers in the case of seals and farmers in the case of GMO's. The majority of canola crops in Canada are GMO.

The reality is that the call for bans on the seal hunt or GMO crops are counterproductive, they harm producers not the State or multinational corporations.


Ban GMO food crops

US Humane Society Asks Americans to Boycott Canadian Seafood on Eve of Seal Hunt

Don't hold your breath for Quebec to act on GMO labelling


The Supreme Capitalist Court in Canada ruled on GMO crops versus farmers rights in the Schmeiser case. It was a significant attack on property rights versus patent rights/intellectual property rights. Something that not only upsets farmers, and anti-GMO activists but should also upset any right thinking libertarian.

Regarding the question of patent rights and the farmer's right to use seed taken from his fields, Monsanto said that because they hold a patent on the gene, and on canola cells containing the gene, they have a legal right to control its use, including the replanting of seed collected from plants with the gene which grew accidentally in someone else's field. Schmeiser insisted his right to save and replant seed from plants that have accidentally grown on his field overrides Monsanto's legal patent rights.

Canadian law does not mention any such "farmer's rights"; the court held that the farmer's right to save and replant seeds are simply the rights of a property owner over his or her property to use it as he or she wishes, and hence the right to use the seeds are subject to the same legal restrictions on use rights that apply in any case of ownership of property, including restrictions arising from patents in particular. That is to say, patent rights take priority of the right of the owner of physical property to use his property, and the entire point of a patent is to limit what the owner of physical property may do with that property, by forbidding him or her from using it to duplicate, produce or use a patented invention without permission of the patent owner. Overriding the rights of the physical property owner for the protection of the intellectual property owner is the explicit purpose of the Patent Act. As property rights are not constitutional rights they do not override statutes such as the Patent Act.



In the U.S. on the other hand they have had some success with challenging Monsanto.

Monsanto, its seed distributors and growers stand to lose up to $250 million if the alfalfa, which was designed to survive the company's Roundup herbicide, is taken off the market for the two years it takes to complete the study, the company said in court papers filed late on Friday.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer halted the sale of the modified alfalfa at the request of farmers, environmentalists and consumer advocates who say that it could harm the U.S. economy and the environment.

The judge voided the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2005 approval of Roundup Ready Alfalfa, finding the agency had not conducted a full environmental impact statement. Breyer banned seed sales and gave farmers until March 30 to plant seeds they had already purchased.

Alfalfa, a fodder crop pollinated by bees and wind, is among the most widely grown crops in the United States, along with corn, soybeans and wheat.

The Center for Food Safety, which is among the groups that sought the injunction, said Breyer's order marks the first time a federal court has overturned a USDA approval of a biotech seed and halted planting.

The Center and other plaintiffs have argued that the biotech alfalfa could create super weeds resistant to herbicides, cause farmers to lose export business and contaminate natural and organic alfalfa.

They also alleged that Monsanto could try to force farmers whose crops were contaminated with Roundup Ready Alfalfa to pay for the company's patented gene technology whether they wanted it or not.

But unfortunately many of these campaigns are another form of capitalism, that of fund raising for Green NGO's.

Like Greenpeace's recent anti-Tar Sands campaign, they have no possibility of realistically closing the tar sands but they gain funding for their endeavours. Nor does the campaign effectively challenge capitalism, it merely appears to workers and citizens as being an outrageous publicity campaign. And one that limits its educational value by being deliberately provocative.
In doing so it discredits any alternatives to capitalism or discussion of them it makes any such alternative appear unrealistic.

Finally one only has to look at the Canadian Green Party to see that environmentalism is not anti-capitalism. Their recent increase in popular support in the Ontario election showed that it came from disgruntled Progressive Conservatives. In fact Green politics have been embraced by conservatives and the extreme right.

For a truly sustainable environment one must oppose capitalism and offer an alternative; self managed socialist democracy.

The Ecology of Work

Environmentalism can't succeed until it confronts the destructive nature of modern work—and supplants it

by Curtis White

For instance, as a matter of conscience we should be willing to say that the so-called greening of corporate America is not as much about the desire to protect nature as it is about the desire to protect capitalism itself. Environmentalists are, on the whole, educated and successful people, many of whom have prospered within corporate capitalism. They’re not against it. They simply seek to establish a balance between the needs of the economy (as they blandly put it) and the needs of the natural world. For both capitalism and environmentalism, there is a hard division between land set aside for nature and land devoted to production.



SEE:

Junque Journalism

Blogging Green Day


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Thursday, June 07, 2007

State Sponsored Terrorism

Looks like one of those States that sponsors terrorism and gives succor to terrorists is none other than the good old U.S. of A.

Another case of do as I say not as I do.

Rainbow Warrior ringleader heads firm selling arms to US

The French intelligence officer who led the 1985 bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace ship protesting against nuclear tests in the Pacific, now lives in America where he heads an arms firm selling weapons to the FBI, Pentagon, and the department of homeland security, the Guardian has learned.

The presence in America of Louis-Pierre Dillais and the sensitive nature of his dealings with the US government has led to calls from Greenpeace for his deportation.


But the Bush administration's record in enforcing its own regulations is inconsistent. Washington has consistently resisted demands from Venezuela for the extradition of Luis Posada, a Cuban exile who is accused of blowing up an airliner with 73 people on board. He denies the charge.
Documents show Luis Posada link to terrorism
A Venezuelan employee of Cuban exile and indicted terrorist Luis Posada Carriles conducted surveillance on targets "with a link to Cuba" for potential terrorist attacks throughout the Caribbean region in 1976, including Cubana Aviación flights in and out of Barbados, according to documents posted today by the National Security Archive.

Miami Herald Publishes Evidence Incriminating Terrorist Luis Posada Carriles

The Miami Herald published an article, just last Sunday, which commented on declassified FBI and CIA documents revealing the participation of the notorious terrorist in the plane sabotage.


Prison sentence cut for Cuban-American in illegal weapons case

A U.S. judge reduced the prison sentence Wednesday for a prominent Cuban-American businessman with connections to anti-Fidel Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles after an arsenal of weapons and high explosives was turned over to the U.S. government.

A U.S. District judge cut 16 months off the sentence of Santiago Alvarez, who pleaded guilty in September to a conspiracy charge after the FBI seized a cache of military arms, including a grenade launcher and machine guns. The judge also reduced by 13 months the sentence of Osvaldo Mitat, an Alvarez employee.

India: Lawmakers Urge Washington to Extradite Luis Posada Carriles

The lawmakers reminded Condoleezza Rice and Nancy Pelosi that Posada Carriles is a confessed criminal that masterminded plans which resulted in the murder of nationals of different countries. They recalled that he is being accused in Venezuela for several terrorist crimes, including the 1976 bombing in mid air of a Cubana jetliner off the coasts of Barbados, which killed 73 innocent lives.

The Indian parliamentarians expressed their deep concern for the release of Posada Carriles and they expressed their full support of the resolution signed by Non-Aligned member nations, which denounces the double standard of the George W. Bush administration in its proclaimed "war on terror."
See:

Venezuelan Contras

'El Comandante' Fidel Spoils Party

State Security Is A Secure State

Paranoia and the Security State


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