I see your point, and I had considered that possibility too, but minke whales, about 80% of what Japan hunts, feed more on fish than krill, shrimps and squids.

Belated, and I really should be quoting Misa here, but this is exactly what they've done in Africa and parts of S. America, turning poachers into game-keepers and trackers.

As for Minke, that's very true, but there still could be big differences between where they hunt and what kind of fish they consume. As I said before, Dolphins are more likely to hunt in shallower coastal water, whereas whales go out to sea to hunt where there's less contamination. Also it could just be the type and location of the dolphins being consumed. Minke meat was recently reported with an average of 0.10ppm mercury level, whereas the dolphin meat supplied from the particular hunt that's causing this controversy has something like 0.50ppm. It's still not enough to give you minamata though. You need to be around 1.0ppm or higher to start getting symptoms i think. But it accumulates in the body over time, so even if you eat a lot of low-mercury fish it'll still build up over time. You can't just metabolize it out naturally.

That's good. I wonder why they can't do the same in Japan. To the fishermen's credit though, they are not poachers. It is not illegal to hunt dolphins.

OK. This seems to be more of the case than anything else. Mercury concentration varies depending largely on the species.
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/topics/bukyoku...50812-1-05.pdf

Some "whale" like マッコウクジラ has more concentration of mercury(ave. 0.7μg/g) than some "dolphin" like イシイルカ(ave.0.370μg/g). It is very high in バンドウイルカ (6.622μg/g. This is THE dolphin we usually think of), but Taichi isn't killing this species for meat.
http://sankei.jp.msn.com/life/trend/...2108010-n1.htm

Anyway, my point was it is not true that dolphin meat is labeled as whale so people think it has less mercury.

Japanese expected life is long.
The resident in Taijicho has a long life.

Aborigine's expected life is terrible and short.

Mmm, I guess in the poaching areas, the charities and so forth that made the career switches possible all had the backing of whichever government was in charge. Without backing from the Japanese government, it wouldn't happen.

Ooh, perfect! It'll take me a little while to work through all the Japanese so out of interest, which species IS Taichi targeting, because I'm getting a little muddled with the article news speak. Just the Japanese name is fine.

I think after Minamata, and the controversy that is STILL ongoing, the last thing they are going to allow is mis-labelling of meat for consumption. Can you imagine? It'd be like them selling beef labelled as venison during a BSE scare.

True. So pissing off Japanese people and their government is the worst strategy I believe.

This particular article says it was マゴンドウ so it's probably コビレゴンドウ（Short-finned pilot whale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). They caught 100 bottle nose dolphins in this turn of hunting, kept 10 of them to sell them to aquariums and released the rest.

Yeah, plus, I heard Dolphin meat smells very strong. If I ordered beef and got hare meat instead, I'd be mad.

The "different culture, different logic" argument works against people who hold the double standard on meat. (National governments for example)

But not against the environmentalist position.

Newsflash-

Most environmentalists are ALSO against factory farming in the West so when you accuse people of holding double standards and being unfair about Japan, just be aware that you are doing the same with the anti whaling argument.

There are MANY arguments in there. Its not a two sided thing (West vs Japan/Whalers versus Anti whalers)... though it is presented as such by the media which is where you guys fail.

I side with the environmentalists for the following reasons.

-Dolphin hunting is cruel (I also think factory farming is cruel and support organisations who want it outlawed)

-Dolphin meat is poisonous as is shown by the cove.

Finally I just want to say that it is NOT a Japan vs the West thing. This is perpetuated by the Japanese whale lobby and far right nationalists but is an idea also held by people who dont know all too much about the various arguments being made and see this as a dichotomous discussion.

Also MOST Japanese I know are against dolphin eating/hunting etc and think Taiji is a disgrace of a town (admittedly, most of my Japanese friends are liberal-minded students). Furthermore... most Japanese dont even know its happening and the movie "The Cove" makes you aware of that.

Yeah, If change is going to happen, it needs to come internally. I must say, I support animal welfare dearly, but I do think Greenpeace and PETA often cause more uproar than actual good.

Ah, so in fact, it has been a misnomer all along. They aren't hunting dolphins for meat consumption at all, but it's back to the Japan does Whaling issue again. I can't say I support it, nor the sale of wild dolphins into aquariums, but it's a slightly different issue to a sudden shift onto dolphin hunting for the mass market.

I wouldn't be mad, rabbit is delicious!

Ronin,
I take back my words on the dolphin part. Maybe not many know about the dolphin hunting. However, they are a bit ignorant if they don't know about whaling. Nobody will openly support whaling in front of a westerner who is clearly not happy with it, especially when there is a language barrier. That's not to say all of your friends support it, I'm just saying it's hard to know.

As I said, for many Japanese people, whaling isn't their tradition or culture. I guestimate maybe 1% of Japanese people are from the areas where they eat whales. Still, if you google it, you'll see anti-whaling is very unpopular in Japan.

捕鯨　世論 - Google Search

Greenpeace only has 5500 members in Japan which is very few considering it has 260 million members worldwide. Many Japanese people, including myself, take a stance "I don't eat whale, but I don't hold with the activists. Who do they think they are to think their moral standard is higher than Japanese's?". It's interesting you assumed it was "liberal" to be anti-whaling because a lot of people are taking it as racism in Japan. You, Ronin, are talking to a scuba diver who has never had whale before, and grew up in an area where whaling is not a tradition or a part of the local culture. I have no reason to support whaling except that anti-whaling activists are often egoistic and their activities are inciting racism on both sides.

Anyway, both of your reasonings are flawed so you should stop supporting anti-whaling activists.

- So called "dolphin" meat is not poisonous. I already showed you the data. The mercury level is about the same as other fish. This is not to say there wasn't any contaminated meat, but there is no reason to assume dolphin meat is more poisonous than other fish.

- The fact you don't support factory farming doesn't have anything to do with this argument. The US consumes 10 times more meat than Japan do. Why do the activists go all the way to the end of the world to protest against whaling that produce only 0.03% of meat, i.e. kill less than 0.03% of lives, the US do? Why don't they sabotage their local slaughterhouse? Why don't Discovery channel air "Cow War" or "Chicken War" or "Pig War", and attack their local farmers? Come on, we are talking about more than 30,000 times the lives here. That's only logical right? The reason is that it is "culturally" more acceptable to kill cows or chickens or pigs than whales in the West, well, more specifically, in the English speaking countries. It IS about whalers versus anti-whalers, and it IS about some western culture versus Japanese culture. It's a crusade against whaling. And crusade is a synonym for racism and massacre in some parts of the world.

The question is, what makes you, or anybody, be the judge on what human race can kill and eat? It's not just about whales. Some people think animals can not be killed, but fish is OK. Some think killing anything that moves is cruel. There are some who think only taking windfalls is appropriate. And there is the extreme. Some think killing bacteria is a sin and refuse to drink water in order to avoid taking the lives of them, and subsequently die. It's all arbitrary. Sure, dolphins are cute and I don't want them to be killed. But you, not Ronin specifically but you in general, don't need to be on a high horse preaching about how your morals is better than others.

I can't agree more.

It's yes and no. ゴンドウ(Pilot whale) is whale in English, but often called dolphin(イルカ) in Japanese. The difference between dolphin and whale is biologically non existent. We just call smaller toothed whales dolphins. If you scrutinize my previous link, you'll see what's actually going on.

http://kokushi.job.affrc.go.jp/H20/H20_45.html

The hunting method that was shown in The Cove is called 追込 and done exclusively in Taichi today. As I said, Taichi is a small town and they only hunt a bit more than 1000 a year. In 2007, they got 300 ハンドウイルカ (bottle nose dolphin, THE dolphin) and sold 77 to aquariums. I believe 223 were slaughtered and sold as meat. They probably stopped this because of the protest. I'm not sure what happened to スジイルカ (striped dolphin) this year. 384 were killed in 2007.

The majority of "Dolphin hunting" is done in 岩手 where almost 10,000 "イルカ" are hunted annually. The method they use (突棒) is basically a scaled down whaling, which uses harpoons. The species hunted there are イシイルカ and リクゼンイルカ which are called porpoise in English (Dall's porpoise - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). I don't think this is affected by the protest in any way.

Even if you limit it to ハンドウイルカ, several hundred had been killed every year prier to 2007, and probably sold as meat. And the activists seem to have stopped this. But that's by employing this much racism.

dolphin fucking "japs" - Google Search

Several hundred dead dolphins cost only $100,000 or so… A tiny fraction of the budget of the activists. I don't think inciting this much hatred and racism is justified when there are so many much easier alternatives. It's scary that some people love dolphins and whales more than fellow humankind.

Nah, I'll pass that one. Rabbits are cute :P

Yes, I'm aware, I was just pointing out how the media in ~english~ is deliberately using the word "dolphin" when we would normally use "whale". This is probably what's particularly inflaming the protests from a lot of foreigners.

Again, I think there's been some confusion. The hunts in 岩手 were highlighted a year or two ago, so a number of people I've mentioned Taichi to have automatically assumed it was of the kind and scale of Iwate, or indeed, actually Iwate. Dall's Porpoise probably wouldn't incite a protest as much as other species as they aren't threatened and don't have any real conservation status yet. I think I need to steel myself and actually watch The Cove...

I think I'm pretty conflicted really, I do love whales and dolphins, and I do think we should find a way to phase out the majority of whaling, with leeway for sustenance whalers, but I find these kinds of methods activists use rather abhorrent. I'm not getting into loving Whales Vs loving Humans, because to be honest, the people of Taichi have the ability to make a decision not to hunt whales or explore other ways to generate meat and revenue, whereas whales can't really choose not to be hunted. It's not about loving one species more than another, it's about finding a viable compromise that will ensure the welfare of both.

I don't think simply paying up for the cost of the meat year-in year-out is a solution though, even if it is a tiny part of the budget. Rather, some kind of diplomatic solution should be found and the advertising money spent slating the hunters should be put into helping areas develop away from economic dependance on hunting, if that is the case. Or even simply developing more humane ways to slaughter. It's like veal; for many years people refused to eat it, and it had bad press because rearing methods were cruel. Now a more humane way has been developed and it's now a cruelty free source of food.
It might still be seen as foreigners muscling in on tradition, but it would be an entirely more diplomatic way to handle it than simple aggression tactics and smear campaigns. It's also a way that movements within Japan could more easily work with, or ideally, spearhead.

I should have known better. But thanks for giving me the chance to elaborate :)

I see. And I feel the confusion is rather deliberated if it was caused by The Cove. I disagree that porpoise wouldn't incite a protest because they are not threatened though. They don't incite a protest because they are not as cute. 6000 porpoises are killed in the US annually by fishing net, some are species that is endangered. Yet you don't see nearly as many protests against it as there are to the Japanese. There are only 8000 bowhead whales worldwide, and the US is hunting about 25-40 of them annually. Again. Not so many protests. Bottlenose dolphin on the other hand, is not endangered at all, but killing of this species caused people to rise hell as we witnessed with The Cove.

I'm definitely not suggesting they pay up for the cost. Not permanently anyway. But $100,000 is a tiny tiny market, it should be, or should HAVE been, really easy to create an alternative for that.

I don't think these guys care about exactly how they hunt whales. They would rather hunt minkes than dolphins anyway. They adopted a newer method that is supposed to kill dolphins quickly in 2000 too. Again, they have families to support. Dolphins may not have means to defend themselves, but nor do cows, chickens or pigs. They aren't any different from farmers in the US in that sense. I feel something is amiss when people from Hollywood who earn millions come all the way to Japan and bash these poor fishermen who earn 1/100th of what they do.

Very true. If people try to understand each other a bit more…

Really, you don't find many Japanese people who actually want to eat whale. But it is an important and fundamental Japanese cultural value that all life forms are equal in principle. Many westerners are missing that point. Japanese people take smear campaigns more seriously too.

This is probably a good part of it. It's the degree of profile too- plenty of activists will protest about the use of laboratory mice for medical science, but I have yet to hear of a serious protest about the £3 million + spent on killing billions of mice and rats each year in London by the British government. Same species. Even flimsier reason for killing them. But still, conservation status does come into it. You can kill certain deer in the UK year round, because they are numerous and breed well. You can only shoot red deer in certain places, within strict seasons as they are less numerous and a valuable native species.


Exactly, and nor is it on the massive international scale like gorilla poaching is, which has been successfully limited or eradicated in some areas. I think it all ties in with a failure to produce a calm solution.


.
I kind of disagree that whales and dolphins aren't different from domestic meat stock, for precisely that; we breed animals specifically for eating, we don't breed and maintain whales for eating, we simply leech from wild stocks. It's exactly why the Bluefin Tuna is in trouble; we can't domesticate it and it's harder to regulate wild populations because they're not under our direct manipulation. Pressure from a severe population slump have finally driven us to find a way, but mammals don't breed as numerously as fish, so we should be careful it doesn't get to that stage. Anyway, what I meant was, yes we should value human lives more, but we should also accept responsibility for the species we take sustenance from. For me it's not about putting animal rights over peoples' right to earn a living and feed their families, it's maintaining ethics and standards for -both- parties.

Hollywood sucks on many levels.

This. Most people in Japan have about as much real contact with whaling as people in the UK or America; basically none. When whale meat appeared in the supermarket and I mentioned I'd bought some by mistake, several of the japanese students simply laughed and told me I was mistaken because "Japanese people don't eat whale nowadays." Until I showed them the packet. Then they were pretty shocked. A small example, but I reckon to most modern Japanese kids, eating whale seems as weird and antiquated to them as eating a pig's head is to us.

I don't want to get too involved in this conversation, but I have seen whale meat quite frequently in the stores near my place. In fact, there was a whole lot of whale sashimi two days ago at the market I go to the most. I've seen it at other stores as well, and I'm not even sure it's a seasonal thing to be honest (although I feel like I've seen more than ever before in the last year... particularly since the spring. It could just be me becoming more aware of it though). People around here don't seem to really be offended or even all that embarassed by whale meat. However, when I went to a certain festival in Ishikawa-ken in Februrary (of 2009), I bought what was basically a sashimi-don (a whole lot of sashimi piled on some rice). They gave me some extra meat for free and threw in some whale meat with the "shhh" gesture.

I'm not gonna try to elaborate on the "shhh" gesture or it being widely available in stores around here... I just wanted to pass that information on to give another account on the whale-awareness in Japan. Unlike your situation, Columbine, I don't think people would be surprised in finding whale meat at the store at all (edit: in my area).

^same i won't try to get too into the convo...
but after watching the cove,i definitely think the dolphin slaughter should stop...is it more for the money? because i think there is enough food supply :x

From wildlife conservation stand point of view, you are totally right. But then with that stand point, killing bottlenose dolphins would be totally OK, which I don't think many want it to happen.

And yes, Hollywood sucks on many levels.

There are some regions in Japan that have the tradition of whaling. Japan is a country which has diverse cultures. Overall though, I don't think there are many places where people eat whale regularly. Definitely not Tokyo. Eating whale is very common in one region, and totally weird in others. You probably know this but just to clarify.

You just completely ignore what I have been saying and just casually fire away "I watched The Cove and I think they should stop killing dolphins!!".

I swear. I'll eat dolphin meat just to bug you if you don't re-read the thread right now. :mtongue:

Its no one elses business. As long as its in Japanese water or land, then Japan can do what it wants. If it's purchased from another nation then it's a legal transaction as far as Japan is concerned.

Man, this is called Japan Forum, Isn't there any Japanese here?

There's one here if you haven't noticed.

And I don't think it's nobody's business. Japan is a free country and everybody is entitled to express their opinion.

Im not on the side of the US. Im on the side of the environmentalists. Thats where you fail to see the variety of arguments on the anti whaling side. Instead of seperating the governments from the environmentalists you lump all the arguments together. The only thing that links the environmentalists and governments that are opposed to whaling is that they want the same thing.

Its more than just about meat.

As I said before. Opening up commercial whaling would make whales extinct. This could have bad consequences on the environment. It almost happened once already.

Furthermore, Whaling occurs in INTERNATIONAL waters. The INTERNATIONAL community has decided that whaling is illegal.

The culture argument is bullshit. And lets not just say its a Western thing. Countries like Indonesia and Malaysia are against Japan for whaling too... because they recognise the ENVIRONMENTAL impact that commercial whaling would bring.

You want to know why the Discovery Channel made Whale wars? Money...

I can preach that my morals are better than Taiji peoples morals because I can logically argue against it.

The fact is that Dolphins are intelligent animals that have self-awareness. This makes killing them cruel.

Culture is not a defense for barbaric behaviour against logical reasoning.

what a load of s**t. :cool:
so. again - ones life depends on cutnes or the inteligence level not on the fact that its simply something a live?
EVERYBODY! get your tourches, lets go over the the retarded children home! killing dumb creatures is ok!!! EI! i know a nice place were homless people hang around - they are as dumb as they come! wow - let me get my axe and well be off, being morally normal, because we are killing stupid, living things, and not itellingent living things.

you are so full of it, dude.

Its been proven that Dolphins, along with monkeys, dogs and whales are self aware animals.

You comparing homeless people to animals with no self awareness... now THAT is a load of shit.

ronin..when it comes to being ok to kill dumb things, you should be carefull...

everyone is "self aware" ! cut of anybodys legs off - i think they will notice!

and who cares if they are or are not? does that change the fact how they taste or what we make of them? does self aware means that they are able to provide as with information or other usefull things? no.
only thing that animal selfawarnes changes is that nut-jobs like you have something to drive on when makeing usless arguments.

Useless arguments? Just because you say they are useless doesnt make it so.

Dolphin Self-Recognition Mirrors Our Own: Scientific American

Whale of an issue - Europe - Al Jazeera English

By self aware, I mean it has a sense of existence. It knows its alive, can manipulate the world around itself to a certain degree and knows that one day it is going to die.

Most animals dont know this except the ones I mentioned earlier. Instead they survive on pure instinct.

ou NO...How those other living things dare to live on their instinct?! those monsters :cool: thank god, we humans have evolved and are beyond that and now we can do great things like torture each other, have sex with the dead or eat our own kind! damn animals have no idea how great it is and they wont even in their sickest dreams come up with this stuff that we do - those lesser beings! pha!:rolleyes:
maybe dolphins will grow up to be like us..wouldnt that be great?
and really? what does it change? what good does dolphins "manipulation" does to the world? and what is it? and how you know its good? maybe he is fucking stuff up like homer simpson at the nuke station.

I see you have nothing rational to add to this discussion...

You are an idiot. :cool:

check out your picture, then call someone an idiot.
and now then enlighten me. tell me why is it something special if they are self-aware? does the nature dramataclly change if we eat them? swap dolphins with pigs - now what would you do? would you still cry over each dolphine tho now there would be millions of them? and would you continiue eating pigs, because they would still be dumb and would have no special rights?

the fact remains that intelligent or not, that does not effect the world! they still do what all the "lesser" animals do - they migrate, they live in packs and live by the rules eat or be eaten. their self awarnes brings nothing to the table except something to eat :)

P.S rational my ass. im presenting rational thinking. you are presenting "emontional" based facts. know the difference!!!

It poses a moral question I think. And on that premise I can tell the people of Taiji, the whalers of Japan, Norway and Iceland, that they are barbarians.

Do I need to spell out the moral implications of killing something that is self aware?

I have no idea as to whether pigs are self aware or not. If it turns out that they are then I will be against eating pigs too.

Im already against FACTORY farming. Where animals are put through terrible conditions.

I have no idea the point you are trying to make here. They do all those things so they deserve to die? Is that what you are trying to say? Its not much of a counter argument against mine... in fact it has nothing to do with my argument.

emotional based facts? Facts are facts. I dont know what you mean by "emotional" based facts. Perhaps its an English problem on your part.

Anyway... Check my links above... they seem to be scientific findings.

you are wrong here. you dont even present facts. you are presenting opinions. the same thing as por-life and similar movments.
facts do not depend on how we feel about them - gravity wont change if you dont like it.
you are saying it is wrong because they are higher beings than others, you are saying its wrong because you feel like they are closer to us. thats it - you are not saying that it is wrong to eat them because sun will explode as if that was a fact.
and im saying the facts - everything is on equal ground. the most equal thing in this world is death - everyone and everything gets it, so there is no reason to sort out these things - who is aware and shouldnt be eaten and who isnt and should be eaten. actually you are saying that its ok to eat some life forms just because they wont see it coming and wont feel sorry for theire asses.

So things like human rights dont concern you then?

If I can be compelled to feel compassion for my fellow human being then I dont think it is such a stretch to feel compassion for self aware animals.

In fact, my opposition to factory farming means that I feel compassion for animals that dont exhibit signs of self awareness.

(I have nothing against farming practices in which animals are raised in an ethically and humanely.)

The Cove is a fiction movie.
The clarification cannot be done in my English.

撮影当初は「美しい自然と住民の生活を撮る」と騙し住 民に協力させる。
撮影半ばに反捕鯨団体を名乗り、その後は終始住民を挑 発。「チxコが小さい」等罵った後に怒ったシーン撮影� �撮影妨害に見せかける）。
大量に血が流れてるシーンは築地のマグロ解体を撮影し て繋ぎ合わせてる。
銛を使う漁法は何年も前からやっていない。古い映像を 繋ぎ合わせて利用。
警察に捕まったのは漁師の道具を壊しまくって逮捕。彼 らは保釈金を募ったが保釈金は発生しないゼロ円で保釈 。

反捕鯨活動するのは良いと思うけど遣り口汚いよ（ ´∀｀）

My Japanese is not that good.

cranks? Can you please translate?

Yeah, perhaps I should clarify that the people who were particularly surprised were all about 18-22yo. I did mention it to some of the old people I knew, and most of them were pretty much "Meh, it's there. I don't buy it personally 'cause I don't like the taste and it reminds me of the war." But I didn't talk about it too much, in case it stirred up a row!


Thought it worth mentioning, but ~some~ pigs have been shown to be self-aware. Or at least, they can understand a reflection; they may fail the dot test, but they can rationalize the image of a food bucket in a mirror and realize they need to go around a wall or something, rather than look behind the mirror. But it's only really been tested in a few breeds in a few non-representative locations under informal conditions, so we have no idea how universal this is, or even if it's simply that those pigs were particularly smart. Certainly unlike other self-aware animals, pigs haven't really been shown to exhibit mourning.

Very very rough translation:

撮影当初は「美しい自然と住民の生活を撮る」と騙し住 民に協力させる。
To start with the producers had the co-operation of the townspeople by saying they were into filming "beautiful nature and the lives of the townspeople"

撮影半ばに反捕鯨団体を名乗り、その後は終始住民を挑 発。「チxコが小さい」等罵った後に怒ったシーン撮影� �撮影妨害に見せかける）。
Half-way through, the film people announced they were with (?) an anti-whaling corporation and after that until the end stirred the townspeople up. (unreadable sentence) In the angry scene after "chikko is small", something something, they pretended filming was disrupted?

大量に血が流れてるシーンは築地のマグロ解体を撮影し て繋ぎ合わせてる。
In the scene with large quantities of flowing blood, they used stock-footage from Tsukiji's tuna processing unit.

銛を使う漁法は何年も前からやっていない。古い映像を 繋ぎ合わせて利用。
Harpoons/gaffs haven't been used for many years. They used old footage as a stop-gap.
警察に捕まったのは漁師の道具を壊しまくって逮捕。
A fisherman caught (using gaffs?) by the police is arrested, and his equipment broken.
彼らは保釈金を募ったが保釈金は発生しないゼロ円で保 釈 。
He is invited to pay bail, but if he can't produce it, then the bail fee is zero.

反捕鯨活動するのは良いと思うけど遣り口汚いよ
I think anti-whaling movements are good, but they are foul-mouthed.

You didn't present any argument except dolphins are poisonous and activists are also against factory farming. How can I fail to see arguments that do not exist?

"You" said because they are against factory farming, it gives them the right to attack whaling. By "logic", they need to attack factory farming with 30,000 times the resources. In reality, it's the other way around. Why? you said it. There's more than that. It's not just cruelty. As I said, it had nothing to do with the discussion.

Also, you seem to concede that dolphin meat is not considerably more poisonous than other fish. You presented 2 reasons for supporting activists, and now you have none. So again, as I said, you should stop supporting them. If you think logically.

Last I checked, Taichi was a Japanese city. And last I checked, Japan is whaling according to the IWC's decisions. The INTERNATIONAL community decided Japan can hunt such and such amount and she does so. The INTERNATIONAL community banned Sea Shepherd from the IWC. And the INTERNATIONAL community is against pirating.

It is the anti-whaling activists that do not follow international conventions and laws. You should attack them instead. Again, if you think logically.

I don't see many Indonesian or Malaysian among anti-whaling activists. You are purposely mixing up environmental concerns and the issue with anti-whaling activists. I take it as a dishonest argument tactic. I, and many Japanese people, have never opposed to environmental conservation.


Exactly. And for money, they do anything. That's why many Japanese people don't trust these activists. Because they lie. It's not like Japanese government is as white as an angel, but these activists are really dirty.

OK. By your "logical reasoning", it is OK to eat human baby because their IQ is lower than a dog's. It is also OK to eat mentally retarded. Further more, It is OK to eat people in vegetable state. And THAT'S not barbaric. VERY Interesting to say the least.

By the way, by what "logical reasoning" do you say it is OK to eat something with "self-awareness"? I don't see any logic there.

That's not whats really happening. This is about foreigners trying to impose their cultural values on us.

These same foreigners have a closet full of ghosts concerning their own meat industries. Just because they think whales are cute, they have moral ground to tell us what we should do on our own land and coastal waters? That's not free speech.

PS: glad your a native too. I was at AsiaFinest.com were there are no Japanese anymore but a ridicules amount of anti-Japan trolling going on. Came here hoping to find a large Japanese community here.

WHAT A LIE!!
You should know better.
Just google!

Some corrections on the translation.

撮影半ばに反捕鯨団体を名乗り、その後は終始住民を挑 発。「チxコが小さい」等罵った後に怒ったシーン撮影� � �撮影妨害に見せかける）。
Half-way through, the film people announced they were anti whaling activists and after that until the end purposely provoked the townspeople.
They cussed people with words like "Small dick", and filmed them get angry, and (in the movie) presented that scene as if townspeople were trying to block the filming.

警察に捕まったのは漁師の道具を壊しまくって逮捕。
The activists got arrested (not because they filmed the dolphin hunting but) they broke a lot of fishing gears.

反捕鯨活動するのは良いと思うけど遣り口汚いよ
Anti-whaling movements are fine, but the way they do it is filthy.

Thanks Cranks. I did that in a rush, so I knew there would be a few big mistakes!

I was referring to you thinking that a few Western governments and the environmentalists are saying the same thing. It seems you see the anti whaling side as a collection of people with the same arguments and agendas where in fact it is a collection of arguments from various people with different agendas. I support ONE of the MANY various anti-whaling positions out there. You and the majority of Japanese make this mistake because the Japanese government and media portrays the whaling issue in this way.

You are just paranoid. I see an environmentalist movement who is picking its battles wisely. Furthermore, different organizations have different purposes.

I didnt concede anything. I based my facts on the movie the cove and other websites and articles Ive read. You said it isnt so without giving me any sort of link... I cant prove you wrong... you cant prove me wrong... and it wasnt my main argument.

Now you are just getting confused because we were talking about 2 issues at once. I am not defending the activists completely. But I am on their side as I dont want to see legalization of commercial whaling.

CDNN :: Indonesia Expels Japanese Whaling Ship

Well the Discovery Channel did it for the money. I am pretty sure that Sea Shepherd did it for awareness purposes first and foremost.

I am really starting to question your intelligence. Self-awareness is not the ONLY parameter to be considered in the question as to whether or not something should or shouldnt be eaten obviously.

I see a moral dilemma here. If something is self aware then we

If you dont see a moral dilemma here then why not?

Under the freedom of speech, you can express whatever opinion you want as long as it is not illegal. They can say whatever they want. I'm free to think and say some people are bigoted racists too.

I'm not trying to "win" an argument here. Rather, I am trying to promote understandings. I don't want to sound arrogant but I see how Ronin thinks and where his "logic" is coming from. What I'm trying to do is not to convert him to a whale eater, but to help bring about an understanding that there are cultures that are fundamentally different from your own. To be honest, I don't care that much about dolphins and whales themselves. There is an episode of Southpark called Whale Whore, which pretty much sums up how I feel about the issue.