[Columbine]

Originally Posted by cranks

I see. And I feel the confusion is rather deliberated. I disagree that porpoise wouldn't incite a protest because they are not threatened though. They don't incite a protest because they are not as cute.

This is probably a good part of it. It's the degree of profile too- plenty of activists will protest about the use of laboratory mice for medical science, but I have yet to hear of a serious protest about the £3 million + spent on killing billions of mice and rats each year in London by the British government. Same species. Even flimsier reason for killing them. But still, conservation status does come into it. You can kill certain deer in the UK year round, because they are numerous and breed well. You can only shoot red deer in certain places, within strict seasons as they are less numerous and a valuable native species.

Originally Posted by cranks

I'm definitely not suggesting they pay up for the cost. Not permanently anyway. But $100,000 is a tiny tiny market, it should be, or should HAVE been, really easy to create an alternative for that.

Exactly, and nor is it on the massive international scale like gorilla poaching is, which has been successfully limited or eradicated in some areas. I think it all ties in with a failure to produce a calm solution.

Originally Posted by cranks

Again, they have families to support. Dolphins may not have means to defend them, but nor do cows, chickens or pigs. They aren't any different from farmers in the US in that sense. I feel something is amiss when people from Hollywood who earn millions come all the way to Japan and bash these poor fishermen who earn 1/100th of what they do.

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I kind of disagree that whales and dolphins aren't different from domestic meat stock, for precisely that; we breed animals specifically for eating, we don't breed and maintain whales for eating, we simply leech from wild stocks. It's exactly why the Bluefin Tuna is in trouble; we can't domesticate it and it's harder to regulate wild populations because they're not under our direct manipulation. Pressure from a severe population slump have finally driven us to find a way, but mammals don't breed as numerously as fish, so we should be careful it doesn't get to that stage. Anyway, what I meant was, yes we should value human lives more, but we should also accept responsibility for the species we take sustenance from. For me it's not about putting animal rights over peoples' right to earn a living and feed their families, it's maintaining ethics and standards for -both- parties.

Hollywood sucks on many levels.

Originally Posted by cranks

Really, you don't find many Japanese people who actually want to eat whale. But it is an important and fundamental Japanese cultural value that all life forms are equal in principle. Many westerners are missing that point. Japanese people take smear campaigns more seriously too.

This. Most people in Japan have about as much real contact with whaling as people in the UK or America; basically none. When whale meat appeared in the supermarket and I mentioned I'd bought some by mistake, several of the japanese students simply laughed and told me I was mistaken because "Japanese people don't eat whale nowadays." Until I showed them the packet. Then they were pretty shocked. A small example, but I reckon to most modern Japanese kids, eating whale seems as weird and antiquated to them as eating a pig's head is to us.