404
Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson could face up to 15 years’ prison in Japan if convicted
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
404 points (98.8% liked)
World News
39184 readers
2301 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Let me guess yet another vegan.
The Faroer don't have enough arable land for everyone to switch to a vegan diet. They could import the rest of what they need, yes, but their only notable export product is fish so that wouldn't make much sense would it.
And with "only notable export product" I mean "stamps are on place number two". You know, the kind you glue onto envelopes.
Just to be clear, you're no longer saying it's ok to kill whales because it's cultural and they've been doing it a long time? You're now saying that it's ok because they would be economically ruined if they didn't kill whales?
I'm not trying to be combative, just trying to clarify.
Both are things that make killing whales ok. It's just that when arguing with vegans "they'd literally starve" is a way more productive argument.
Got it, thanks for clarifying. I think both lines of reasoning have problems though:
I can think of many things to fill in for X and Y that satisfy the necessary conditions, but still aren't ok. I do, however, think this line of reasoning is valid:
I don't think any vegan would take issue with #3, since in that case Z is necessary, and vegans are only concerned with unnecessary harm.
I mean I could have gone deeper into it but then I didn't particularly feel like arguing with a vegan. Yes, I'm speciesist, we can leave it at that.
The Faroer certainly needed whaling in the past to survive, and that necessity has engrained itself in their solidarity culture -- everything about how the hunt is done and distributed is communal, closest comparison I can come up when looking at Germany would be the status of the fire department in a village: Not the inn, not the church, not even the football club, but the fire department is the core and beating heart of the community and its solidarity. They had a brief stint with commercial whaling but they stopped that before commercial whaling got outlawed, couldn't compete with the Norwegians and their giant ships.
Faroese being as green and nature-conscious as they are they would indeed stop if the whales were endangered... but they aren't. Dolphins are controversial, I guess they're going to stop hunting them within the next decade or two. That, or the rest of us are going to poison the seas even more so that the meat becomes completely inedible. It's dire.
So from what you're saying, it seems like not only is killing whales unnecessary for the Faroer anymore, but the document you linked seems to imply that it's actively detrimental to their health.
Also this response doesn't really engage with what I said before about the lines of reasoning being flawed. You're painting a picture of how whaling has been an integral part of their cultural history, and that's interesting information, but it doesn't really relate to whether it's the right thing to do.
So again, it's an argument of the form "X is ok because it's cultural and we've been doing X for a long time," which I don't think is very persuasive.
And one more thing: you're now saying that they don't kill whales commercially? So "Y is ok because we would be economically ruined if we didn't do Y" doesn't even apply, right? Or am I reading what you said incorrectly?
You have yet to establish, or even argue, that eating whale meat is a wrong in the first place. Approaching your life from an "if it's not proven to be ok, then it's bad" kind of perspective may be jerkoff fuel for the dedicated moralist, but is ultimately not anyone's principle of acting. It's not how our minds work. It is a convenient way to acquire a crippling load of shame if one so wishes.
Life is dangerous to health.
Yes. You're mixing up different things.
Sure we can do that, I just didn't want to hijack a conversation about what makes killing whales ok with a bunch of other separate considerations.
Separately, there's the environmental impact. No matter how sustainable the whaling is, it's not like they're overpopulating and need to be culled or something. Whales are important in the ocean ecosystem, and they're good at sequestering carbon on the sea floor for a very very long time when they die. It seems pretty obvious to me that killing whales is done out of self interest (we like eating them, it's our tradition, etc.) rather than out of some altruistic sense of duty to preserve the ecosystem, and not killing them at all would be the most sustainable solution.
And finally, I don't know a ton about it but evidently there are some pretty serious health concerns with eating whales, that makes it seem like you could argue for not eating them (and therefore not killing them) purely out of self-interest to maintain your own personal health.
Is everything you do altruistic? If no, then why should we be altruistic specifically there, if yes, then how do you manage to lie to yourself on such a fundamental level?
No of course not. I was mostly just trying to make the case that killing whales isn't good for the environment, or is at least strictly worse than not killing them. The sustainability of whaling mostly refers to killing just few enough that we can continue killing them indefinitely, rather than any sort of positive effect on the environment. Clearly if we were actually interested in environmental sustainability we just wouldn't be killing whales at all.
Did you have any thoughts about the other two points I made? I'm also curious why you're so passionate about defending people who kill whales, since this seems like a pretty uncommon opinion.
If we were actually, without-compromise, interested in the sustainment of the environment we'd end the human race right here and now, because we'll always have an oversized impact. Or we could realise that we're not separate from our environment, nature in general, for some reason alienation from nature is rampant even among environmentalists, many they see it as this pristine, alien, innocent thing on a pedestal that they need to stay away from, never interfere, to protect it and the distance created there helps them (and those not identifying as environmentalists) to ignore the mercury they're pumping into the oceans.
As such the question "what is good for the environment' doesn't really make sense -- ecology 101 teaches us that you can't see the environment separate from the creature, the creature separate from its environment. You can ask "what is good ecology" and that's, as a first approximation, when things are thriving and interconnected so that mutual adaption occurs. The Faroese are connected to their whales, that's all that matters to me here. They're very much not seal clubbers, looking at their bank statements instead of the animals they're hunting (and Greelanders aren't, either. I could write another rant about the damage that knee-jerk moralistic seal fur embargo did but I'll leave it at this, as well as a brief update. dig into it at your own leisure).
As to unnecessary pain: The Faroese actually agree with you. That's why they switched to spinal lancing in favour of old, much less sure, methods. That's why you bonk fish on the head before gutting them, why you don't let them asphyxiate, that's why you pet rabbits while aligning the bolt gun. It's why stress hormones taste bad. Curious adaptation from our side, isn't it? Heck, in a sense that's even why you cut basil directly above a node, not mindlessly ripping off leaves. That's a kind of consideration you'll never see in a goat.