JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- Corporate Business English Trainers
- ACT Systems, Inc.（株式会社アクト・システムズ）, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥269,500 ~ ¥280,000 / Month
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- English Instructor (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe)
- Berlitz Japan, Inc. (ベルリッツ・ジャパン株式会社), Kansai
- Salary: ¥125,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month
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- FT English Teachers for Kids - Osaka
- Kohgakusha Co., Ltd. （株式会社興学社）, Osaka
- Salary: ¥255,000 ~ ¥275,000 / Month Travel Expenses, Encouragement of Japanese learning*
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davidattokyo
Funny...
Is this why there aren't any anti-whaling voices in the comments on this story?
Posted in: Sea Shepherd defends decision to expel activist
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davidattokyo
Zenny11,
This doesn't seem strange for nothing, something has been going on behind the scenes that SS doesn't want anyone to know about, but for one reason or another they decided to put the big boot into Bethune.
SS activists are expendable to Watson, who never puts his own huge posterior on the line.
Posted in: Sea Shepherd defends decision to expel activist
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davidattokyo
Watson has some amusing propaganda for his drones here as well: http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/editorial-100602-1.html
Says Watson:
He forgot to mention South Park's criticisms, newspaper editorial criticisms, etc. Funny that.
In the same article, Watson says:
OK then, so let's expect that Watson and his cult club members will no longer be responding to any criticisms of them and their violence. They will just ignore the criticism and keep their focus.
More: http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/editorial-100609-1.html
Says Watson,
How what Bethune did violated any "rules" SS might have, considering the violence demonstrated by Watson himself on various occasions, is hard to fathom.
When he says "we", he means "my crew of volunteers, but not me [Watson himself]".
And unless SS eco-terrorists go illegally boarding foreign vessels on the high seas there's no reason to expect any to be "taken prisoner". And they get themselves injured all of the time through their own incompetence at sea.
Posted in: Sea Shepherd defends decision to expel activist
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davidattokyo
gogogo,
If there was no research there would still be whale on sale in Japan. There is by-catch as well as product from overseas.
As we know that by-product whale does on sale is secondary to the research and is required by the convention. There would be no point in researching whales for the benefit of optimum utilisation of whales (as noted in the convention) and then wasting all the whales that were caught for research. That would be a big contradictory loophole in convention which anyone serious would laugh at.
The problem of course from the perspective of people who think that the moratorium came before the convention is that they think the convention is a loophole stopping the moratorium... even though it is within the context of the convention that the moratorium was imposed (and illegally has not been lifted since).
KeikoTokyo,
The UN is not CITES. But CITES is a bunch of politicians, and politicians, as everyone knows, aren't always objective and often ignore science when making politically important decisions. If a bunch of CITES politicians make a bad decision to put a certain species on one of the CITES appendices without the proper basis to do so, then YES it is OK for other nations to "ignore" that. It's in the CITES rules. Japan is but one of the nations who has done this for certain politically delicate species, as I said if you take a look at the full list you'll see that a great number of other such reservations have been lodged for other species by other nations.
The CITES convention does.
Posted in: Australia to take Japan to int'l court over whaling
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davidattokyo
gogogo,
That's Australia's argument, but in court an argument is assessed based on evidence both for and against it. Australia has it's work cut out proving all that it claims, because the onus is on them to establish that there is no "research"... despite the IWC Scientific Committee reports being full of information about it, and the data provided by Japan being used in that context.
What is Australia going to argue? That the information isn't needed? If that's Australia's argument then the court will have to look at the whaling convention, and decide what "management" of whale stocks means and then whether Japan's research is contributing to it.
If Australia is really unlucky Japan will bring up a few issues of it's own such as the IWC's arguably illegal imposition of the Southern Ocean Sanctuary as well as the failure to lift the moratorium. Both go against the object and purpose of the whaling convention.
krisallenation,
Conservation starts right now. Just because there are many many minke whales does not mean we should have "open slather" on them. What we should have is sustainable catch limits. That way we ensure that they are conserved. We use some now, leave lots in the ocean to reproduce and replenish their numbers, and then take more later.
That is conservation.
KeikoTokyo,
Not endangered whales, but whales that CITES politicians decided to list on it's Appendices. Yes, Japan chooses to ignore these politically motivated decisions.
No. Every CITES party has the right to ignore listings that they regard as inappropriate. Many nations do this, not just Japan. If you look at the list of such reservations you'll find that it is very long.
You're still wrong. It was not Fin whale meat that was brought into South Korea and the USA.
Posted in: Australia to take Japan to int'l court over whaling
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davidattokyo
The other trick they may employ is to pick through the judge's findings, and harp on about the three lines that they like and ignore the other 60 pages that they don't as well as the fact that overall they lost.
Posted in: Do you support Australia's plan to launch legal action against Japan over its whaling program in Antarctic waters?
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davidattokyo
Australia has the right to bring a court case.
But it doesn't have the right to expect it can actually win when the grounds for it's case are baseless.
Bring it on. The Australian court case will bring clarity to much of the world regarding the legitimacy of what Japan has been doing. Except of course, to the anti-whaling movement and it's followers, who will dismiss the lost court case for some peculiar reason and skip along to some other area of anti-whaling propaganda.
Meanwhile the precedent will have been set and Japan will wield much leverage on this issue in future because of it.
Posted in: Australia to take Japan to int'l court over whaling
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davidattokyo
KeikoTokyo
No it hasn't. Go check your facts.
Besides, whether Americans and Koreans want to eat Japanese research whaling by-products has nothing to do with determining whether Japanese government backed research whaling is indeed research.
Japan has legal CITES reservations with respect to the species of whale involved. If you understood CITES properly you would recognise this. As for the Korean and US sides of the trade, yes it probably broke CITES regulations since those two states chose to be bound by the silly whale meat trade restrictions.
Good luck, they'll need that or to bribe the judges.
Australia obviously does when the Labor government is worried about elections later in the year.
Posted in: Australia to take Japan to int'l court over whaling
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davidattokyo
I read a paper yesterday that was recently published in a law journal that ultimately dismissed legal advice (commissioned by IFAW) as being IFAW propaganda.
I'm not sure, but I think the Australian case may be based on the IFAW commissioned legal advice.
Posted in: Australia to take Japan to int'l court over whaling
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davidattokyo
I think Australians will only realise the embarrassment after they drop the court case or lose it. Knowing Australian national pride, my guess is they will choose to lose it and then blame someone else (probably Japan!) for it.
Posted in: Do you support Australia's plan to launch legal action against Japan over its whaling program in Antarctic waters?
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davidattokyo
Garthgoyle,
My understanding is that it means Japan is gathering biological data on whales for use in scientific studies, such as those being conducted by Japanese researchers as well as international researchers who are members of the IWC's Scientific Committee, which can contribute to our ability to utilise whales optimally in accordance with the ordinary meaning and spirit of the whaling convention.
Posted in: Do you support Australia's plan to launch legal action against Japan over its whaling program in Antarctic waters?
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davidattokyo
KeikoTokyo:
"The Government will consider joining Australia's international legal action against Japanese whaling, Foreign Minister Murray McCully says."
Consider / Will?
Which article do you want to believe.
Posted in: Australia to take Japan to int'l court over whaling
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davidattokyo
I would like to see Japan counter-sue Australia for bad faith participation at the IWC.
The Vienna convention on treaties requires parties to them to act in good faith and in accordance with the spirit of these conventions.
Australia clearly has failed to act in accordance with the spirit of the IWC's convention in recent years.
Posted in: Australia to take Japan to int'l court over whaling
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davidattokyo
Geeeeee! The ICR sure is powerful if it can get the US IWC commissioner to say whatever they want...
Hmmmmm, but isn't it possible Medina just thinks Australia are blowing out of their backsides for domestic political purposes, like everyone else?
As for New Zealand - I don't know if it is my blind faith in the good sense of my fellow countrymen (besides Bethune and the two huge guys who came to Japan to loiter outside the court), but given that Sir Geoffrey Palmer has previously spoken firmly against legal avenues to stop whaling, I don't think New Zealand's government will be signing up with Australia to share in their embarassment.
After all, there are no elections in New Zealand this year, unlike Australia.
Posted in: Australia to take Japan to int'l court over whaling
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davidattokyo
sarcasm123 at 10:38 AM JST - 31st May
You only just confirmed you could read Japanese.
Why the impatience? Are you worked up or something? Keep it cool man, or the moderators will have to come down on you again.
Moderator: davidattokyo and sarcasm123, please do not bring your ongoing battle to this thread. You've both posted enough on this topic.
Posted in: Do you support Australia's plan to launch legal action against Japan over its whaling program in Antarctic waters?
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davidattokyo
Been there, done that. IWC Scientific Committee has twice acknowledged the scientific value of Japan's contribution to it's work and indeed the work of other fora.
The onus is on Australia to prove that all of the evidence (from the IWC Scientific Committee etc) that Japan's science is indeed science is actually somehow wrong.
Essentially Australia has to discredit the IWC Scientific Committee and much of the work of many of it's members in order to do that. It's far more likely that the court will recognise that the IWC Scientific Committee's statements on the matter discredit Australia's politically motivated assertions that Japan's contribution is not science.
Posted in: Do you support Australia's plan to launch legal action against Japan over its whaling program in Antarctic waters?
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davidattokyo
sarcasm123
Do you read Japanese? I don't have an English reference for you, I'm afraid.
Posted in: Do you support Australia's plan to launch legal action against Japan over its whaling program in Antarctic waters?
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davidattokyo
sarcasm123,
OK, so please prove that there is no research coming from Japan's research programmes. E.g., prove that all of the data provided to the IWC Scientific Committee is not actually scientific data, and prove that the scientists using the data are not actually scientists.
That is what Australia will need to do in court.
Good luck. You'll need whale loads of it.
Your idea of what is and isn't "culture" is bizarre.
Posted in: Do you support Australia's plan to launch legal action against Japan over its whaling program in Antarctic waters?
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davidattokyo
sarcasm123,
The court isn't going to investigate how long Japan's whale culture has existed for. That has no relevance to the court case.
Funny you think whaling was no big deal when in fact whalers were near the top of Japan's Edo era "Rich List". Gee, they sure must have been clever to get so rich through whaling, which, according to you did not exist in any scale until 60 years ago.
ICR releases the tonnage that is allocated for acquisition by education boards for school lunches. Yet another example of you asking for information without checking for it first yourself. I guess you don't actually care, you are just pushing out your propaganda no matter what the facts are.
That's all public information too...
That's all public too...
I don't know how one could quantify that. You are nuts if you think that Japan's ODA programmes exist for the purpose of influence votes at the IWC.
Posted in: Do you support Australia's plan to launch legal action against Japan over its whaling program in Antarctic waters?
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davidattokyo
Interesting piece in the SMH.
"The US has warned that Australia's decision to take Japan to court over whaling is an uncertain gamble on whales' lives."
"This is a 'bet the whales' case", said the US's representative to the IWC.
LOL! When your biggest anti-whaling ally comes out and tells you to knock it off that's not a good sign, is it!
It's funny that Australians care so much about whales that they are happy for their politicians to gamble for votes with whales as the chips.
Posted in: Australia to take Japan to int'l court over whaling