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Whaling activist Paul Watson celebrates release from jail after Denmark refuses extradition to Japan
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2024
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...you mean the guy who got kicked out of Greenpeace to found Sea Shepherd as Greenpeace was insufficiently violent to his tastes. The guy who, after sinking two ships, surrendered himself to Iceland to be brought to justice, upon which the Icelanders said "Nope we won't give you the media ruckus you want" and only expelled him from the country.
He's been in and out of prison and hiding his whole life. Much of his activism has a honourable goal, the reason he landed in prison this time is due to him protesting against internationally recognised legal, non-commercial whaling, a whole slander campaign. In short the Faroese tracked him and then tipped the Greenlanders off who don't like him either, leaving Denmark proper (because responsible for the foreign relations of both) to deal with the extradition procedure.
Wait, do you want to say because it's internationally recognized legal and it's not business makes it morally okay to kill whales?
Yes. What's especially despicable is that among all the people who are allowed to continue their (sustainable!) practices, which are ultimately no different than hunting deer in the forest, the Faroese are singled out by activists because they "look insufficiently primitive". It's an important part of their culture, the catch is divided up according to age-old rules so that everyone gets to eat, it's the cornerstone of solidarity on the islands. They're probably going to stop sooner or later anyway as other signifiers and methods (such as the social state) take over the role, but they should not be forced to rush that just because some capitalists exploited the seas while the whales they hunt are nowhere even close to endangered. They're still getting forced to accelerate that process -- not by Sea Shepherd, but by the rest of us dumping mercury into the ocean.
These kinds of animal rights activists do have a penchant for being over-zealous. Random other example: Lumping Greenland Inuit in with Canadian seal clubbers.
Oh btw have some Faroese metal about Watson.
Nah, man. Killing whales is just wrong as is killing deer in the forest. Or any other animal. Just let them live, ffs.
While I don't condone most whale hunting, regulating the deer population is kinda a mandatory thing in the US.
Since humans made their way into the western continents they've radically changed the ecosystem, especially when it comes to Forest management.
Humans have become the main predators of deer the populations and if we don't hunt the population can explode one season to the next, causing a cascading effect on their environment.
Deer can basically eat just about anything, and once they strip the forest of their natural foods they tend to move on to anything else they can reach. This can lead to large swaths of other animals they compete with to die off, while simultaneously causing health epidemics among the deer population leading to things like chronic wasting disease.
Yeah, I know that angle. And again, veganism and vegeterianism is about necessity.
Regarding population control of animals that wouks otherwise eat up the ecosystem because humans hunted down all other predators before, it's a necessity right now.
However, there is a thing of returning wolves in Europe at the moment. So there is an alternative to hunting and human intervention, resulting in less necessity (granted, human society would need to allow the wolf to make its return and unfortunately, it doesn't really seem to be the case, but I think you're getting where I am going with this).
My point is, as much as necessary, as little as possible (which is something one of my maths teachers taught me, so there's what you can learn from maths for everyday life).
For some areas this would be possible if as you said humans allowed it to happen. However, that's not really an option for the majority of the country, as the area where wolves would be effective has been reduced via climate change.
Unfortunately it's hard to undo 40k years of humans reshaping the ecosystem to work for them. There is no such thing as pristine untouched land, native Americans have been curtailing the environment for millennia.
My point was that the deer population is already way way overpopulated, and we actually need more people to hunt if we want to properly manage what remains of our forest.
The arctic isn't really known for farming.
Seriously, there are so few wild animals. Leave them alone, you are hunting for fun, take up another hobby.
I don't hunt, but there are literally too many deer. Humans have been shaping the ecology of North America for tens of thousands of years. In that process we basically killed off most major predators to the deer population. Mainly because deer are basically an endless supply of food if the land is managed properly.
Since we no longer really rely on deer for a main food source, the deer population has exploded and disease and starvation has become the main moderating forces on their population. Such large populations of deer are also a big part of environmental decline in forest, as they strip the ground of any young sapling or ground cover.
It's a huge problem in forest management.
We get it you're vegan.
Do my habits matter to the argument that killing animals is wrong because causing harm.is wrong?
Yes, because you're biased. Killing and eating what you kill is not wrong, it's natural and historical. Although many would wish we humans were superior species placed above the natural order, we're clearly not. You can choose to believe it's wrong to kill and eat animals, but that's your own personal opinion formed in modern, likely western, society. What is actually wrong are industrial practices of scale that brutalize food production, an indigenous population or small culture following the practices of their ancestors and doing some hunting is not evil, or morally wrong, or damaging to the environment. It's just the way the natural world was always supposed to work.
..¿por qué no los tres?..
Maybe, but we all are. But it seems you got it the wrong way round. I don't think killing animals is wrong because I'm vegan. I'm vegan because the exploitation of animals and causing harm is wrong. Btw, regarding the killing of animals as wrong consequently leads to vegetarianism, not necessarily veganism.
Well, we developed a lot of things outside the natural order (note I'm not saying above, but outside). Like cars and clothes and computers and stuff. Naturalism is not an argument for killing animals.
That is true.
Killing animals for food once might have been a necessity and normalized out of said necessity. But that necessity is gone. By the way, there are countless non-western cultures with vegetarian diets.
There were traditions of human sacrifice in history. Would you consider those traditions also not morally wrong if descendants of those cultures practiced these traditions today? What about bullfighting in spain?
There is no „way the world is supposed to work”. There's no plan, no nothing.
Killing animals is biased in favour of human supremacy, violence towards others is extremism.
We get it you're super vegan.
Yeah, the deer population is the same as the whale population.... Samesies...
I think you might be conflating the reason he was arrested and how he was found. The reason he was arrested was because Japan had a man interpol red notice put out on him.
"The police were acting on an Interpol red notice issued by Japan. Tokyo was seeking his extradition on charges relating to the alleged boarding of the Japanese whaling ship Shōnan Maru 2 in the Southern Ocean in February 2010. The charges, including one of assault, carried a sentence of up to 15 years in jail."
Legality doesn't dictate morality, especially in international law.
Yep there's no charges against him on the Faroer, mostly because they don't let him into their waters so he can't really do any damage, but they're still pissed because of that slander campaign. He wasn't in hiding as such as many many countries didn't care about the red notice, much less actively hunting him down, but then the Faroer got wind that he was heading to Nuuk and arranged a SWAT surprise for him.
I do wonder whether there were some diplomatic shenanigans going on behind the scenes. Why wouldn't Japan give assurances that time served in Greenland would be subtracted from whatever he has to serve in Japan? Silly thing to blow an extradition over.