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Originally Posted by Wicked Felina
The Japanese are not fishing, they are poaching in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, in violation of international treaty. the IWC had long ago deemed the Anarctic as being closed to commercial whaling. Has this changed?
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Whaling under the research permits is allowed in the Southern Ocean. The regs clearly state that. The permits are quite legal.
Japan lodged a protest as did Norway, etc., over the moratorium. Unlike Norway and Iceland, the U.S. threatened them with sanctions over it. Reagan essentially worked out the deal where Japan withdrew its protest and would whale under the research permits instead. Smoke and mirrors but the moratorium was never an absolute ban on whaling and there was lots of politics behind the scenes. That "loophole" was created quite intentionally.
Not well known is countries incl. the U.S. have used those permits to take whales for non-whale research purposes (the U.S. has taken then endangered sperm whales to provide sperm whale oil for use by NASA and with nuclear weapons).
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BTW, everybody who disagrees strongly with the FBI is a terrorist (including anyone who attends anti-war rallies, Catholic anti-war groups - even pacifist Quakers for god's sake). Let us not forget Randy Weaver. You can't go around citing the FBI's terror list as proof that SS is a terrorist organization unless you accept the whole list.
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Okay but that report came later under different circumstances...if you look at the facts, sea shepherd does meet the commonly accepted definition of terrorist.
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And there is a profound difference between the Taliban and Sea Shepherd. How could you possible equate the two? And do you know that Watson was a co-founder of Greenpeace, and had a serious falling out over policy with those who are now in control? Do you think they'd support him?
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The only difference is the number of victims and level of violence. Both are violent and engage in terrorism to push their agendas. It's only a miracle SS hasn't killed anyone yet. They have injured people and come very close to killing (the ice incident in Canada among others). And it's constantly escalating, the tactics are increasingly aggressive.
There was a falling out because Watson was violent and objected to non-violence.
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You don't think the Japanese whalers are violent? Maybe we should start another thread for that one.
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Violent against who?