>long but interesting
>I always wondered what happened to the Makah whaling after 1999
>
>
> /The Irrational Wacky Comedy Meeting/
>
>
> The Anchorage Whale Killing Bureaucrats Summit
>
>By PAUL WATSON
>
>I have not attended a meeting of the International Whaling
>Commission since 1997. I only did so then as a special invited guest
>of His Highness Prince Albert of Monaco because the 50th meeting was
>hosted in that great little nation exactly a decade ago.
>
>The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has in fact been officially
>prohibited from attending the IWC meetings since 1987 after Iceland
>protested against Sea Shepherd's enforcement of the global
>moratorium on commercial whaling in November 1986 when we sank half
>the Icelandic whaling fleet at dockside in Reykjavik harbour, an
>action for which we have absolutely no apologies.
>
>And it appears that our actions from two decades ago are still very
>much clearly remembered.
>
>So it was just mildly surprising that after strolling into the lobby
>of the Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage that the management ordered
>me to leave the premises or face immediate arrest for criminal
>trespass. Their reasoning was my "history of disrupting IWC
>meetings."
>
>I admit we have disrupted whaling operations on the high seas but
>this was a new twist.
>
>Since I had only attended one prior meeting in the last two decades
>and I had never disrupted a single meeting, I was of course
>surprised at this revelation.
>
>But they were not taking any chances and the order was backed up by
>a 24 man police SWAT team complete with rooftop snipers. I was
>flattered to say the least.
>
>The police were friendly however and my fellow comrade-in-expulsion
>Ric O'Berry and I held court on the sidewalk under the watchful eyes
>of the Anchorage police officers and snipers and we all drank
>designer coffee and exchanged pleasantries between media interviews.
>I promised to send all the officers Sea Shepherd pirate hats and we
>did.
>
>Protests were somewhat low-key this year, certainly a far cry from
>the early Eighties when Japanese whaling delegates were routinely
>showered in blood and giant whale balloons were paraded in the
>streets.
>
>However Australia demonstrated their concerns in the personage of
>three little girls, a world class surfer, a whale artist and a
>genuine professional mermaid.
>
>The young ladies with Teens Against Whaling were Skye Bortoli,
>Caitlyn Frerk and Alyesha Future. They raised their own funds to
>travel to Alaska to deliver 40,000 petition names with an appeal to
>the Japanese to spare Australia's Humpback whales.
>
>World class surfing champion Dave Rastovich arrived with his wife
>Hannah Fraser, a professional mermaid model from Australia to
>include the IWC in a film they are making about the whales and
>dolphins. And Byron Bay, Australia artist Howie Crooke erected his
>Tipi and displayed his painted banners supporting the world's
>whales.
>
>American artist Peggy Oki was also in Anchorage and she hung 30,000
>origami whales to represent the 30,000 whales slaughtered since the
>moratorium on whaling was imposed in 1986. It was an impressive
>display.
>
>Greenpeace had set up a tent with the strange name of Whale
>Broadcasting Corporation and a banner that said Stop Commercial
>Whaling. This was to show they had nothing against aboriginal or
>coastal whaling by Japanese whaling villages. When I visited their
>tent I found the atmosphere was so decidedly chilly that Sea
>Shepherd crewmember Shannon Mann and I left quite quickly--hey we
>know when we're not welcome.
>
>Meanwhile inside the hotel, Ric and I were not missing much in the
>way of substantial progress and witty dialogue. The sidewalk outside
>was more interesting as we conversed with the insiders as they came
>and went.
>
>On the first day of the meeting the pro-whaling and anti-whaling
>factions pretended to be the best of friends. This soon turned sour
>when it became apparent that Japan was attempting to use their
>intent to slaughter fifty endangered Humpbacks as an extortionist
>ploy to open up commercial Japanese coastal whaling operations.
>
>The Japanese said they were quite willing to take their quota of
>fifty Antarctic Humpbacks off the table in return for permission to
>have Japanese coastal villages kill whales. They said that since
>Alaskan natives were allowed to kill whales, they should be also.
>The difference of course was between subsistence hunting by the
>Inuit and Yupik and commercial hunting by the Japanese, a very
>notable distinction that would open up commercial whaling activities
>in breach of the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling.
>
>The pro-whaling nations were having none of it and voted the
>Japanese request down.
>
>But then they gave a quota of 20 Humpbacks to St. Vincent and the
>Grenadines and applauded when the announcement of this quota was
>awarded.
>
>Now I can see the Japanese getting a little upset about this. There
>is nothing aboriginal about the slaughter of whales by the whale
>killing thugs of St. Vincent. The whalers are not natives but rather
>the descendents of plantation slaves. They are also known to use
>exceptionally cruel methods to kill their innocent victims. They
>also sell the whale meat in public restaurants and stalls so it is
>in fact also commercial.
>
>It was great news however when Japanese "research" whaling was
>condemned once again by a vote of forty to two.
>
>Brazil then proposed the creation of a South Atlantic Whale
>Sanctuary but it was also voted down by vote of 39 for and 29
>against with two abstentions but since it required a 75% majority,
>it did not pass.
>
>The only thing the delegates could agree on unanimously was
>condemning the efforts of Sea Shepherd to protect the whales in the
>Antarctic Whale Sanctuary.
>
>Japan and New Zealand co-sponsored the resolution to condemn Sea
>Shepherd and Greenpeace actions in the Southern Oceans. It was a
>one-sided debate. The Japanese presented their "evidence" that Sea
>Shepherd had rammed their vessels and Sea Shepherd was not allowed
>to present our side of the affair despite the fact that an
>Australian Federal Police forensic team has investigated the
>incident and the results of the investigation backed the Sea
>Shepherd position that it was the Japanese vessel that rammed the
>Sea Shepherd vessel. Hell if we had rammed them we would have
>proudly said so.
>
>The Caribbean Japanese controlled puppet nations rose one after
>another to energetically condemn Sea Shepherd and went so far as to
>blame Sea Shepherd interventions for the death of the Japanese
>whaler who died in the February fire that swept through the bowels
>of the Japanese factory ship*/ .r{}
>.r{}ld render the
>Japanese whaling fleet as clearly renegade and distinctly outlawed
>which would make our efforts to intervene against their illegal
>activities more acceptable.
>
>At the non-governmental organization reception, both Ric O'Berry and
>I were allowed to attend. The Greenpeacers ignored us and pretended
>we did not exist and other NGO's approached us to request that we
>not take our ship to Iceland because it would make the Icelanders
>angry. We had to gently remind them that our clients are the whales
>and Icelanders killing them makes us angry.
>
>All in all I found that I had not missed much by not attending the
>IWC meetings over the last ten years. It was the same old, same old.
>Mucho talk and little action.
>
>All I know is that the moratorium against Antarctic whaling stands
>and so-called research whaling by Japan in the Antarctic Whaling
>Sanctuary was condemned and therefore we have once again been given
>a clear mandate by the IWC to return to the remote waters of the
>Antarctic Whale Sanctuary to once again hunt down, intervene, harass
>and oppose the continued illegal whaling activities by the Japanese
>whaling fleet.
>
>The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society will be tackling the Japanese
>whalers again beginning in December 2007 and the Sea Shepherd ship*/
>Farley Mowat.r{}*Captain Paul Watson* leads the Sea Shepherd Society
>.