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Obama pushes for renewed commercial whaling. :)

What's frustrating is that I can't find any lock tight information. I don't really trust FOX news on any level, and the only other sites I can find are responses to the news, not the actual news source itself.
 
Sarek of Vulcan said:
What's frustrating is that I can't find any lock tight information. I don't really trust FOX news on any level, and the only other sites I can find are responses to the news, not the actual news source itself.
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I know! Isn't it maddening! :scream:

Next week the IWC will vote on the most profound change in global environmental policy in decades, and nobody in the press is willing to cover it.

Here is an article from Sweden, which is going to vote with Denmark to allow the renewal of commercial whaling.

Another article in the Times concludes:

If the IWC votes to lift it, Japan, together with Iceland and Norway, can kill 1,800 whales a year, including the endangered fin and sei whales. The exposure of these grubby dealings means the IWC must suspend any vote until it has established all the facts. The fate of these remarkable creatures should not be decided by brown envelopes and prostitutes.
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A lack of solid information is usually indicative there is not any but good luck trying to pin this on Obama, still.

I see what you're trying to do "whales didn't vote for Obama," "commerical slaughter of whales for ten years," Obama pushes this," it's all scare-mongering, deflecting and little actual fact or evidence. You found it, ran with it and now refuse to let go despite the lack of any proof it's true.
 
Yes, it's just a big scam to slam Obama.

Yet the Cousteau Society says:

The US delegation was a primary broker of the original movement to declare the IWC dysfunctional and initiate a compromise with whalers, using its clout to pressure conservation-minded European and Latin American countries to go along with this appeasement. The current US Commissioner has been a strong defender of the proposal, despite representing a citizenry that is overwhelmingly opposed to whaling. Environmentalists are dismissed in public statements for “demanding a complete halt to whaling, an impossible goal.”
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The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society says:

WDCS has given the proposal, or 'deal', a fair read and we have concluded that it will establish legal commercial whaling quotas for the next ten years and suspend the moratorium on commercial whaling, one of the hardest won conservation victories of this generation.

As a key element of their propaganda, the 'deal' supporters are suggesting that it will lead to a genuine reduction in commercial take. The 'deal' actually contains no phase-out of whaling, not even a reduction over the ten years. It is a retrograde step back to the block quotas of 30 years ago.

What does the 'deal' contain?

The 'deal' fundamentally fails to bring all whaling operations under full IWC control nor to strengthen further and focus the work of the IWC on conservation issues. Instead the 'deal':

  • creates a platform and timeframe for commercial whaling to reestablish markets and legitimize illegal activities.
  • pretends that the form of the RMP (Revised Management Procedure) to be used is the one accepted by the IWC, when in fact it is a modified version that has been specified by the whalers to deliver the most whales as quickly as possible, sacrificing many of the precautionary measures that the originators of the RMP originally specified.
  • gives political quotas out to the whalers, whilst bypassing the current debate on ASW (Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling) quota requests. In fact it puts into place quotas that no one has agreed to, for example the highly divisive Greenland demand for ten humpback whales.
  • proposes the legally impossible stating that no other IWC member nations will be allowed to establish whaling operations, when it is not permissible under the convention to restrict whaling to any particular country and is patronizing to limit it to only three rich whaling countries.
  • has no sunset clause that brings all quotas to zero if anyone breaks the deal.
  • implausibly suggests the whalers will have to support the conservation work of the IWC in the future. Do the authors of a scheme that will cost member countries millions of dollars a year in fees to pay for the newly sanctioned whaling honestly believe that there will be funds for protecting the North Atlantic Right Whale? Is Iceland going to give all its profits from whaling to conservation efforts for the Amazon River Dolphin?
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The executive director of Greenpeace USA says:

"Look, I love whales," said the President with a smile as he shook my hand.

Yesterday, on Earth Day, I thought I would be calling on the President to push legislation that would actually solve the climate crisis. No such luck. Instead, I found myself on the national mall leading a march on the White House to stop the President from his back room attempts to undo the 35 year moratorium on whaling.

Later that afternoon, I was invited to the White House to meet with the President. I asked my team what I should ask the President. The funniest suggestion was to give him a fist bump and say "drill, baby drill!" As much as I wanted that on film, I decided to ask him about the reversal of his written campaign promise to Greenpease to end commercial whaling.

He walked person to person, saying hello, as advocate after advocate threw him softball questions. I shook the President's hand, and said:

"Mr. President, I am Phil Radford from Greenpeace. We are concerned that your administration is overturning the ban on whaling."

"I know" he replied. "I've seen your ads in the papers."

"Great," I replied. "What is your plan to change your administration's position?

"Look," said the president, sounding like his Saturday Night Live doppelganger, "I love whales. I will do what I can to protect them."

"Will you reverse your administration's position?" I asked.

The President responded "Oh come on, don't lobby me here right now..."
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The IWC votes next week.
 
Rincewiend said:
gturner said:
Yes, it's just a big scam to slam Obama.
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In your case, it pretty much seems to be...
You really have the worst case of Obama Derangement Syndrome on this BBS...
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Oh, I'd expect that coming from the Netherlands, where everyone sits around dreaming about the good old days when they could stuff themselves with all the whale meat they could hold. :shifty:

Whaling drove the economy of the Dutch golden age, and surely a Dutch whaling captain menacingly bellowed "Your blubber will grease the windmills of Dutch industry!" at some leviathan of the deep.
 
The whaling certainly played a factor.

The numbers of whaling ships outfitted in the Netherlands grew rapidly -- more than doubling in a decade to 70 ships in 1654, and more than doubling again to 148 ships in 1670. The ships involved in whaling helped to make the Dutch Republic one of the richest nations of the seventeenth century, but this resource was ruthlessly exploited; and by the mid-17th century the catches decreased as the favoured whales became rare.
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Dutch Whaling wiki.

I'm not sure how the Netherlands will be voting this week, but Sweden, Denmark, and Norway (and of course Iceland, Japan, and the United States) are for renewing commercial whaling.
 
I must also take time to point out that in the original script for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), Spock turned to Kirk and said, "There's an old Vulcan proverb: Only Obama could renew commercial whaling."

I wish they'd have left that scene in so Greenpeace wouldn't have gotten hoodwinked. Back in January of 2009 they said:

We have received worrying rumours of a political deal that could result in increased whaling off the coast of Japan - threatening already endangered whales. We need your your help in ensuring that this deal is killed off - and not the whales.

<snip>

It is clear that there are many, many big issues on President Obama’s plate in his first week in the Oval Office. His words and action on climate change and other environmental issues are very welcome but if the news reports are true, then this issue simply cannot wait.

While on the campaign trail, President Obama’s position was unequivocal - no commercial whaling and stronger international regulations on whaling.

Please forward this email your friends. Help ensure an end to ALL whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary

Faithfully,

Sara, Dave, Lisa and all the whales team
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Once a renewal of commercial whaling became Obama's policy, not only could the issue wait - and wait, and wait - it couldn't even be talked about.
 
The IWC these days is full of shit. Japan and other countries have been buying off the other reps for years, and even helping landlocked countries get representatives appointed so that they can back them. You will never see a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
 
Well, unless enough countries are willing to vote against Japan and the US this week, whales will suffer the biggest setback in a quarter century.

On the other hand, it is the International Whaling Commission, not the International Whale Commission, so I suppose that all the appointed members would be out of a job unless there was some whaling going on somewhere.

It's just sad to see the US hoodwinked or bought with such trivial ease by a bunch of poachers with explosive harpoons.
 
Anyone else notice just how hardcore gturner is about suddenly saving the whales? Suspiciously thin given he adds a smiley face to the thread title, misappropriates Star Trek quotes to target Obama and attempts to discredit anyone who questions Obama holding a harpoon and yelling "Thar be whales!"?

So yeah, I've come to the inescapable conclusion this is a wolf (anti-Obama) in sheep's wool (Obama bashing) thread. Not that it wasn't painfully obvious from the start but the game has gotten boring.

It was never about saving whales. I doubt gturner even gave a second thought about them until it convienently fell into his anti-Obama/Democrat crosshairs.
 
Teelie said:
Anyone else notice just how hardcore gturner is about suddenly saving the whales? Suspiciously thin given he adds a smiley face to the thread title, misappropriates Star Trek quotes to target Obama and attempts to discredit anyone who questions Obama holding a harpoon and yelling "Thar be whales!"?

So yeah, I've come to the inescapable conclusion this is a wolf (anti-Obama) in sheep's wool (Obama bashing) thread. Not that it wasn't painfully obvious from the start but the game has gotten boring.

It was never about saving whales. I doubt gturner even gave a second thought about them until it convienently fell into his anti-Obama/Democrat crosshairs.
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That's what I alluded to earlier when mentioning his thread where the chef was arrested for serving illegal whale meat. He didn't give a damn that the law was broken, that an illegal meat was served under legislation that had been in place for many years - he just wanted to make an anti-Obama rant that bore little resemblance to reality.
 
SPOCKED said:
uh oh, gturner - better look out cuz they're on to your sarcasm :cool:
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Oh noes!1! :rofl:

Teelie said:
Anyone else notice just how hardcore gturner is about suddenly saving the whales? Suspiciously thin given he adds a smiley face to the thread title, misappropriates Star Trek quotes to target Obama and attempts to discredit anyone who questions Obama holding a harpoon and yelling "Thar be whales!"?

So yeah, I've come to the inescapable conclusion this is a wolf (anti-Obama) in sheep's wool (Obama bashing) thread. Not that it wasn't painfully obvious from the start but the game has gotten boring.

It was never about saving whales. I doubt gturner even gave a second thought about them until it convienently fell into his anti-Obama/Democrat crosshairs.
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<voice="Samuel L. Jackson">

What's the matter? Oh, you were through anyway.

Well, let me retort.

Would you describe for me what a pro-Obama,
anti-whaling thread would look like?

</voice>

If Obama were opposing a resumption of commercial whaling such a thread would be easy to describe, as it would consist of the TrekBBSers gushing with praise for Obama for standing by his campaign pledges to the American public and promises to Greenpeace, while I would be littering it with remarks about glutonous monsters that breathe through the top of their heads.

But we don't live in that world.

We live in the alternate universe with the bearded evil Spock and the Obama that sold out the whales to greedy corporate harpooners.

To quote Khan, "Whale is a dish best put on hold."
 
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