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Japan's Illegal Whaling Fleet Has Returned

After skipping a year due to pissing off the neighbours Japan once again sent forth its "research" whaling fleet to study, just how many minke whales can be killed  so that they keep killing minke whales.  How far does one have to stick their head up their ass to understand just how little your bullshit lies are working.  So, where does all this research end up? As school lunches because nobody wants to buy the whale meat.

Japan has confirmed whales were killed on its most recent “scientific” expedition in the Antarctic region.

Four survey ships from Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research were in the Antarctic region over a period of 115 days from 1 December last year.

The institute’s report said 333 minke whales were captured, including pregnant females.

Japan’s actions are in defiance of international criticism and despite a 2014 UN legal decision that ruled so-called scientific whaling activity in the Southern Ocean was a front for commercial hunts.

The Australian government has described Japan’s decision to resume whaling over the southern hemisphere summer as “deeply disappointing” and says it has raised concerns at the highest level of the Japanese government.

The other justification for conducting this assine research is to bolster Japan's whaling fleet and the "long" tradition of whaling in Japan which began a long time ago in a century far, far away. The late 19th century that is.

Japanese PM's website hacked by whaling protesters

Every year the Japanese government sends its scientific research whaling fleet to the Southern Ocean all in an effort they to better understand the world's cetaceans.  Given all the money and time put into this research you'd think there'd be better scientific understanding of this planet's  largest mammals.  About the only thing one can say about these so called scientific expeditions is that it helps sustain an antiquated industry which has no economic value or sustainability.  Japan's government and the industry  itself use contradictory terms to describe what they're true  intentions are.  On the one side is the industry which claims there is a long standing tradition of whaling in Japan which isn't true and that the meat is a popular delicacy in Japan which it's not. They have to give the stuff away to public schools for use in their school lunches.      

Hacktivists claim to have crashed Shinzo Abe’s website in protest at Japan’s Antarctic mission to kill whales for ‘research’

Hackers have claimed to have disabled the website of the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, in protest at his country’s decision to resuming its whaling programme in the Southern ocean, in defiance of international opinion.

A tweet, purportedly from a member of the loose collective of hacktivists,Anonymous, and addressed to Abe’s Twitter account, said: “Whaling is not cultural right! Your website is #TangoDown!”

The tweet was accompanied by a screenshot showing that connections to the site were not working. The website appeared to have returned to normal late on Thursday afternoon.

Japan's Phony Research Whaling Proposal Is Rejected

Using a loophole in the 1986 ban on commercial whaling  the Japanese government has, each year sent research whaling ships to the Southern Ocean in their words to carry out scientific analysis of whale populations in that part of the world.  Yet, no credible research has ever been provided to the scientific community that would justify the continuation of the program.  On Monday excerpts from the International Whaling Commission rejected Japan's latest request to restart the program.   

The reason this program exists at all is to keep a few interested fisheries corporations  and their Liberal Democratic Party backers happy and along with a steady income from an unnecessary research program.

Japan’s hopes of resuming its whale hunts in the Southern Ocean have suffered a setback after International Whaling Committee experts said its latest plan offered no scientific justification for the slaughter.
The IWC panel said Japan’s revised programme, known as Newrep-A, did not contain enough information for experts to determine whether Japan needed to kill whales to fulfil two key objectives: calculating the size of populations necessary for a return to sustainable commercial hunting, and gaining a better understanding of the Antarctic marine ecosystem.
“With the information presented in the proposal, the panel was not able to determine whether lethal sampling is necessary to achieve the two major objectives,” the IWC experts’ report said. “Therefore the current proposal does not demonstrate the need for lethal sampling to achieve those objectives.”