14 DAY TRIAL // The Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has recently announced that he will be trying to reason with the Japanese, and negotiate a way of bringing down the number of whales fisherman in the Asian nation kill each year to zero. The official says that the country has no reason to continue its practices, given the fact that its so-called research program, which has been proven to be bogus, and a deceit, several times over, has yet to produce viable science. About 6,800 whales have been killed by the ships of the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), the Japanese organization that deals with whaling issues, the BBC News reports.
With all the “efforts” that went into this line of research, Japanese researchers have thus far only been able to produce about 55 peer-review journals, of which only 14 were deemed to actually be relevant to the goal of the JARPA program. In addition, only four of these investigations required lethal sampling, while the others could have easily been conducted without killing the whales. But trying to find a justification for Japan does not work, analysts say. The country exploits a loophole that exists in the 1986 UN moratorium on whaling, which allows countries to cull the animals for study.
The ICR was set up one year after the agreement was signed, but, since then, various activists, reporters and investigations have revealed that the meat this phony organization collects is actually sold in supermarkets, while very little of it is actually directed to research. One of the main reasons why this happens is the fact that Japan considered whaling to be a tradition it cannot renounce. Hopefully, it will be forced to. Rudd says that he will try next week to discuss these matters with Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, and see if an agreement can be reached.
Australia will “work with the Japanese to reduce, through negotiation, their current catch to zero. If that fails – and I'm saying this very bluntly... – if that fails, then we will initiate that court action before the commencement of the whaling season in November 2010,” he told Channel 7 TV. This is not the first time officials in Australia make such statements, but this time authorities may actually stick to their word for two reasons. First, the announcement was made just one or two days before the arrival of the Japanese official, and secondly, Rudd is being criticized for renouncing his campaign pledges, in which he promised international legal action against Japan.
“Now, that is a direct honoring of the commitment I gave to the Australian people. And that is the right [way] to handle it with a friend and partner, Japan, which is also a very significant, long-standing economic partner as well. That's the bottom line and we're very clear to the Japanese that's what we intend to do. Specifically, what we're putting to the Japanese is to take where they are now, which is the slaughter of some hundreds of whales each year and reduce that to zero. If we don't get that as a diplomatic agreement, let me tell you, we'll be going to the International Court of Justice,” Rudd added.