Minke Calf and Mother

The Japanese government has continued their charade of conducting "scientific" studies in Antarctic waters that involve the indiscriminate culling of whales. The Japanese industrial whaling fleet departed this year in an effort to kill over 1,000 whales while in the Southern Ocean, including 50 endangered fin whales, 50 threatened humpback whales and 935 minke whales. Much of the information on this hunt has come from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza but now the Australian Government has been engaged in both monitoring and reporting on the lawless activities of the Japanese.

The Hunt for Humpback whales is the first since a ban in the 1960's. The Japanese have sent four whaling ships (239 men) from the southern port of Shimonoseki, Japan in November which will hunt until mid April.

With all the shitty environmental news going on in the world -- polar bears drowning, the ice caps melting, Bush thwarting the listing of endangered species -- here is some good news.

Greenpeace has disrupted Japan's whale huntin the Antarctic.

In a public relations coup for the New Australiann Government, Japan has agreed to drop the 50 Humpbacks from their planned 'Research' whaling for 2007-2008. They still plan to kill 950 minke whales and 50 fin whales, though.

In the last week, the Labor Government laid out a series of plans to shadow the Japanese fleet with RAAF recon aircraft and customs vessels to document the slaughter and then use it in evidence in a international court action.

When Edwards and Obama travel through the country, they talk about speaking for those who aren't spoken for. How about they speak for the unspoken whales for a chance? (Continued)

Humpback Swimming Underwater - Image © Greenpeace

I have to say - I was very lucky growing up in that I got to travel to a lot of wonderful places and do things that many people don't do in their lifetimes.

One of the most indelible and wonderful memories I have was a trip my family and I took to Hawaii when I was about 14 or 15 years old.  We went in February, and the highlight of the trip was a charter excursion we took to "swim" with the humpback whales.

Much, much more after the fold.

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• Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said "You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say, ‘Let’s go and bomb Iran’ ...I wake up every morning and see 100 Iraqis, innocent civilians, are dying." ElBaradei told the BBC that one could not "bomb knowledge." When asked who the "new crazies" were, he said: "Those who have extreme views and say the only solution is to impose our will by force."

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The International Whaling Commission has renewed a 5 year whaling contract allowing continued subsistence hunting of bowhead whales.

One nearly universal value we all share here at dailyKos (and on other liberal forums, large and small) is our concern about our fellow creatures, whether human or otherwise.  No matter what our individual environmental interests and "causes" are, the important thing is that we all share a deep concern for the Earth and its future.

I have been a volunteer at Greenpeace International here in Amsterdam for a while now;  currently, I'm part of a blogger team for our current "defend the whales" campaign.

One of our ships, the Esperanza, is currently in the Southern Ocean, off the coast of Antarctica.  We are there to bear witness and take non-violent direct action - putting ourselves between the whales and the harpoons, in order to bring attention to the Japanese government's yearly Antarctic whale hunt, which is commercial whaling under the guise of "research" (you can read more about it here, too).

I'd like to leave the discussion of these issues for another diary.  What I want to talk about today are the recent events in the Southern Oceans.

More on the flip.

But the pro-whaling resolution passed last weekend at the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission and the election of a Japanese delegate as the IWC's vice chairman underscores what has been a subtle and little discussed shift in American policy toward commercial whaling.

The United States is now willing to compromise with Japan, one of three militantly pro-whaling nations -- the others being Norway and Iceland.

The vote approved a non-binding resolution that -- among other things -- declares that whales are responsible for declining fish stocks around the world. Those damn whales just keep eating fish so we have to kill them, I guess.

Now, this vote does not bring back commercial whaling. That requires a 75 percent majority of the IWC. So far, Japan has been able to buy only a slight majority of the IWC voting nations.

It's that time again. Today the International Whaling Commission (IWC) opens its annual session on St. Kitts. Among the close to 70 member states whose delegates fill the halls, only 3 -- Norway, Iceland, and Japan -- have whalers in their ranks. Yet the so-called pro-whaling wing will for the first time in decades match the anti-whaling wing this year; the English-language press has for weeks been fretting about the prospect of a narrow pro-whaling majority. The Washington Post recently intoned under the stirring headline 'Save the Whales':

And now when I thought we had put this issue to bed, today's headlines:

Pro-whaling nations set to take control
Pro-whalers eye whaling commission
Japan buys votes to take control of whaling body
The forces that drive Japanese whaling

Below are snippets from the 4 articles:

He's got a state of the union podcast(!) I think it's short and good and precise. He should have put some good music in the background to make the speech more alive just.

Land the podcast on this link:
 http://www.filsonforcongress.com/...

Some good stuff about Filson on the flight below

THERE IS NO BOW WAVE.  The Greenpeace vessel does not appear to be displacing any water, So go chew that whale meat.

"I know the American people would be appalled to know that the US Government's naval facilities have been dragooned into the service of the Japanese whale killers against Greenpeace" he said.

Senator Brown says he is writing to the US Government to clarify the situation.

Read more here.