SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A recent law promoting whaling allows Japan to take a key step towards resuming commercial hunting of the giant mammals that are "a great source of food," officials said on Thursday.
Japan defies international protests to carry out what it calls scientific research whaling, having repeatedly said its ultimate goal is to whale commercially again. In the 2016-2017 season, its fleet took 333 minke whales in the Antarctic.
The new law, passed in June, will help enshrine as a "national responsibility" an activity that was previously just a tacit policy, said Shigeki Takaya, director of the Whaling Affairs Office at Japan's Fisheries Agency.
"While the government has given its support to the implementation of scientific research into whales, it is heartening to see that the law clarifies its position even further," Takaya told a news conference.
In 2014, the International Court of Justice ruled that Japan should halt Antarctic whaling.
Per the Huff, Japan's government thumbs its nose at international law at the behest of their commercial fishing industries, and gives permission to "deal with" protesters.
In a 2012 poll conducted for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), 88.8% of the Japanese public said they had not bought any whale meat in the past 12 months. While 26.6% said they supported Japan's scientific whaling, 18.5% opposed the hunts and the rest of the population were undecided, hardly a ringing endorsement of Japan's bloody whaling policy.
Much of the whale meat brought in from the scientific whaling scheme is being held in warehouses, frozen because it does not sell well on the Japan market. Sales of dolphin meat have also plummeted. Because sales of whale meat are so poor, the Japan government has subsidized the scientific whaling scheme at 5 billion yen ($44.7 million US) annually.
Furthermore, the new legislation allows Japan to send vessels to Antarctica with the fleet specifically to deal with harassment from such organizations as the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which seeks to interfere with whaling activities they contend violate international law. [...] The legislation also gives new authority to Japan immigration enforcement to deal with people who may be "likely" to sabotage or harass whaling vessels in Japan. This is an obvious effort to legalize the blocking of people, such as members of Sea Shepherd, who come to Japan to legally and peacefully protest the dolphin hunts in Taiji.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:57AM (10 children)
Let me have a crack at it.
Ethics only apply to fellow humans as the frame work of our social contracts. We give some exceptions to domesticated animals since we're hardwired to recuperate productive interaction and they find a fitting place in our society in a sense. But when it comes to wild life, it's an all you can eat buffet.
If you want to axiom "all life is sacred" and "killing is bad" to extend some\all ethics to other forms of life, then herbivores are also facing moral problems as they prey on plant life. If you're setting intelligence as the criteria, you're no less a hypocrite than the strong saying "power is justice" or the aristocrat saying "status and blood is justice" as intelligence is just as self-serving as any other trait animals have with the exception of humans possessing the most of it.
Eventually, you're left with the benefit of humanity as the only criteria. It's self-serving, but it's honest and gives foundation to our social contracts and ethics. Moreover, luckily for the tree-huggers and lovers of all things cute & cuddly, we share our habitat in a relatively symbiotic relationship with many species so we can establish laws that prevent their senseless exploitation. However, it's a case-by-case decision where each species is evaluated per their usefulness to the habitat. In the case of whales, it depends on the species: Some clear up plankton and should protected. But most are no better than sharks. So, why not hunt them?
Good enough?
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @08:04AM (1 child)
You fucking bastard! What gives you the right to limit ethics like this? You are not the only sentient species on the planet, and not the only sapient species! You have just declared war against all else in the universe, you have exiled yourself from the community of ethical beings, and the rest of us will regard you as outlaws, excommunicates, to be killed on sight. Your one compensation is that we will not eat you. Well, most of us will not eat you. Pray hard and fast, petty human.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @10:34AM
Social contract theory. Otherwise, it's just random unstructured morals. Text book definition really...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @09:06AM (1 child)
Let me give you a crack at it. If social contract breaks down, and if I see you, and I'm hungry, I will eat you.
And most people, like yourself, are complete idiots that jeopardize the future of our species.. Why not hunt them?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @11:04AM
> jeopardize the future of our species...
Speaking as a marine biologist, hunting whales doesn't jeopardize the human species. There's issues of bio-diversity and monoculture that necessitate monitoring the pods population which is what my colleagues are paid to do... But just like deer hunting, there's no real danger of anyone going extinct so long as quotas are in place.
> If social contract breaks down...
If my memory serves from a decades past ethics course, social contracts are how philosophers frame any form of rules agreed between people. This includes what most people would call "common courtesy" and the family unit. So, in effect, you're saying that if humans become a completely different species, you'd hunt humans. Which, is a given... No?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 22 2017, @01:04PM (2 children)
Those social contracts also clearly include pets, work animals, and livestock. Try again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:00PM (1 child)
A contract must have two-party consent. Not only animal can't consent, they'd run away given the chance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @08:44PM
Just not true. Give chickens all the chances you want, and they will not run away from any humane operation, because scrounging your own food is hard, and they know you've got a whole bin of it. They'll keep popping out eggs as long as you keep handing out feed. Chickens -- the welfare queens of the farm.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 22 2017, @02:18PM (2 children)
Hypocrisy is defined as:
Thus, none of the examples you cited are hypocritical since there is no non-conformance of personal behavior, the strong believes in justice through power and since they are powerful, their beliefs are consistent with their actions.
What would hypocrisy for the latter two is that if the party which was strong or of aristocratic lineage, had those attributes taken away, they would likely suddenly switch to a different opinion (power is not justice and status and blood wasn't as important as formerly alleged). But if someone who is intelligent suddenly lost that intelligence altogether, they would be incapable of having a contrary opinion or behaving in a way contrary to their former opinion. Thus, the use of intelligence as a criteria (say for being eaten) has a moral consistency to it that your other examples do not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:22PM (1 child)
Power, status and blood are transitory states. Power is acquired and lost over time. Similarly blood and status mix and change as society changes and the generations pass and mutations form. Justice, however, is absolute. So, claiming something that's always changing can fulfill the criteria for something that always stays the same just because you advantageously happen to posses it presently is hypocritical.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 23 2017, @03:00AM
But that doesn't necessarily matter to the person with the opinion. If those transitions don't happen, then the holder of the belief remains irritatingly consistent.
Not even remotely true. Justice is notoriously subjective. There are plenty of examples where people think that some activity is wrong and should be punished, while others do not. And it changes as we develop technologies that create new ways to be just and unjust.
There can be no justice without an intelligence to implement it. You can take power or status away and still conceive of patterns of justice. If you take intelligence away, there is nothing to conceive.