Jump to content

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 223
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

i'm not so sure. Now that the world is watching, they are sure to be more careful. They may get fed up with having to police the site from media and protesters to the point that its easier to just try more humane methods.

 

Besides, the one way its sure NOT TO CHANGE would be not to make and release a documentary, or protest. Its been pretty much the same for any type of animal rights.

 

Or human rights, for that matter

Link to post
Share on other sites

True.

Until people question, object and/or protest people keep doing things the same way as always - unless it becomes unprofitable.

 

If people stop buying it as meat (and that means education and proper labeling).

And people keep questioning, objecting and protesting.

 

There should be change.

Might come slowly....but slow change is better than no change.

 

If we did not evolve and change we would still be living in caves.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I guess it is something like this:

 

Government of Japan (GOJ) is aware that mislabelling of dolphin meat as whale* is Wrong due to mercury levels, but they allow it. Why? Because if they stopped it then the dolphin hunters would also not be able to catch Flipper and sell her for $150,000 a pop, and backhanders to GOJ would stop.

 

I would imagine the over fishing of tuna, and doing media blackout of high mercury levels, is also due to backhanders.

 

This is a country where something as despicable as Tobacco (thread hijack alert!) is still owned and run as a monopoly by the Government: Japan Tobacco.

 

* actually it is part of same family so they can kind of get aware with this, like calling a blackbird or raven a Crow.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Some activism does get results.

 

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/japan-catches-only-60-of-targeted-whales-in-fy-2009

 

And speaking of over-the-top animal rights activist tactics, i can't bring up the name of PETA without a deluge of snide comments on how wacky they are.

 

And until recently, i'd be a somewhat likely to agree, until reading Jonathen Safran Foer's book. In it he quotes factory farm specialists who have been hired by the meat companies to look as if they care, but ignore any advice the specialists give for improving conditions. One specialist was saying that the companies hate PETA, because they DO get results. After PETA targeted his company, he say more change in 3 months that he had in 3 years of working there.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

Something on BBC today

 

The Japanese town of Taiji received unwelcome attention when The Cove, a film following its annual dolphin hunt, won an Oscar. Sayuri (not her real name), who worked as a dolphin trainer in Taiji in the 1990s, gives her reaction to the film.

 

When I saw the film I was deeply shocked. What the movie shows is very similar to my own experience of working as a dolphin trainer in Taiji. Only it went further and showed things that even I hadn't seen.

 

Before I ever became a dolphin trainer, I had read many books that made me think that keeping dolphins in captivity was bad.

 

I wondered whether or not I should choose this profession and I decided to temporarily leave the aquarium that I was working at. I set out for Japan's Ogasawara Islands to meet some wild dolphins.

 

I was literally blown away when I first saw wild dolphins. Those dolphins were smiling, they were happy. They had an agility that the dolphins in aquariums just didn't have.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8599723.stm

Link to post
Share on other sites

Finally watched the Cove, I liked it. Its cringeworthy to see the Japanese fishery guys lie through their teeth. lol When he says that they use special knives and spear the dolphin in the spine so that it dies instantly then they show him the footage they got and all he can say is....."when and where did you get this?"

TUBE

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 1 month later...

Here it is in the news

 

Quote:
Cinemas in Japan have cancelled plans to show an Oscar-winning film about the country's annual slaughter of thousands of dolphins after far-right campaigners threatened to disrupt the screenings.

 

Unplugged, the Japanese distributor of The Cove, said three cinemas had cancelled screenings amid fears they would be disrupted by ultra-nationalists, who have denounced the film as "anti-Japanese".

 

Named best documentary feature at this year's Oscars, The Cove struggled to find a distributor in Japan following protests by Taiji fishermen, who complained that it contained inaccuracies and that they had been filmed without permission.

 

In an attempt to placate opponents, Unplugged blurred the faces of dolphin hunters in the Japanese version, which is due for domestic release on 26 June.

 

But threats of noisy street protests and unspecified "acts of sabotage" prompted two cinemas in Tokyo and one in Osaka to cancel the screenings. The cinemas had received a flood of angry phone calls from ultra-rightwing activists, who also demonstrated outside Unplugged's Tokyo office.

 

"The work intentionally distorts Japanese people's food culture, and showing this will hurt many people's feelings," one of the protest groups, the Society to Seek the Restoration of Sovereignty, said.

 

The move could force 23 other cinemas around the country to reconsider plans to show the film this summer.

 

Apparently, showing it will hurt many people's feelings.

Ahhhhhh.

 

lol

Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote:
....protests by Taiji fishermen, who complained that it contained inaccuracies and that they had been filmed without permission.

Two separate issues or were the 'inaccuracies' simply filmed without permission.

slap Not sure too many places doing 'dodgy' stuff would be willingly filmed doing it!!
Link to post
Share on other sites

Surely no!?

 

Quote:
A Sunday Times investigation has exposed Japan for bribing small nations with cash and prostitutes to gain their support for the mass slaughter of whales.

 

The undercover investigation found officials from six countries were willing to consider selling their votes on the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

 

The revelations come as Japan seeks to break the 24-year moratorium on commercial whaling. An IWC meeting that will decide the fate of thousands of whales, including endangered species, begins this month in Morocco.

 

Japan denies buying the votes of IWC members. However, The Sunday Times filmed officials from pro-whaling governments admitting:

 

- They voted with the whalers because of the large amounts of aid from Japan. One said he was not sure if his country had any whales in its territorial waters. Others are landlocked.

- They receive cash payments in envelopes at IWC meetings from Japanese officials who pay their travel and hotel bills.

- One disclosed that call girls were offered when fisheries ministers and civil servants visited Japan for meetings.

 

Barry Gardiner, an MP and former Labour biodiversity minister, said the investigation revealed “disgraceful, shady practiceâ€, which is “effectively buying votesâ€.

 

The reporters, posing as representatives of a billionaire conservationist, approached officials from pro-whaling countries and offered them an aid package to change their vote.

 

The governments of St Kitts and Nevis, the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Grenada, Republic of Guinea and Ivory Coast all entered negotiations to sell their votes in return for aid.

 

The top fisheries official for Guinea said Japan usually gave his minister a “minimum†of $1,000 a day spending money in cash during IWC and other fisheries meetings.

 

He said three Japanese organisations were used to channel the payments to his country: the fisheries agency, the aid agency and the Overseas Fisheries Co-operation Foundation.

 

Japan has recruited some of the world’s smallest countries on to the IWC to bolster its support. A senior fisheries official for the Marshall Islands said: “We support Japan because of what they give us.â€

 

A Kiribati fisheries official said his country’s vote was determined by the “benefit†it received in aid. He, too, said Japan gave delegates expenses and spending money.

 

The IWC commissioner for Tanzania said “good girls†were made available at the hotels for ministers and senior fisheries civil servants during all- expenses paid trips to Japan.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote:
The IWC commissioner for Tanzania said “good girls†were made available at the hotels for ministers and senior fisheries civil servants during all- expenses paid trips to Japan.


but Japan doesn't have prostitution wink

why would countries that are ladnlocked be allowed to join the IWC?? that is bizzare
Link to post
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...