Sea Shepherd force Japanese out of Australian Waters

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's ship Steve Irwin has driven the Japanese whaling fleet out of the Australian Economic Exclusion Zone.

"We have chased the whalers for over 800 miles since last Saturday through bad weather and heavy ice conditions," said Captain Paul Watson. "They have fled eastward and they are continuing eastward and we are on their tail and we will keep on their tail."

Since finding the Japanese whaling fleet on December 20th, the Steve Irwin has had close encounters with the harpoon vessel Yushin Maru #2 and the spotting vessel Kaiko Maru and has observed and tracked the Nisshin Maru from the air.

The Steve Irwin has not been able to close with the main body of the fleet because they keep moving eastward. They have not been whaling since Sea Shepherd located them and they are not whaling now. They continue to flee.

The good news is that they are no longer whaling in Australian waters and they only managed to hunt in the waters of the Australian Antarctic Territory for about a week before being forced to flee the Australian EEZ.

They are now in the waters of the Ross Dependency and the Steve Irwin is in pursuit.

"What is now good news for the whales in Australian waters is now bad news for the whales in the waters south of New Zealand," said Captain Watson. "They are still targeting endangered and protected whales in the waters of an established international whale sanctuary and thus they are still in violation of international conservation law and acting under the principles of the United Nations World Charter for Nature, we will continue to pursue, harass and intervene against their blatantly illegal lethal assaults on the whales."
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's ship Steve Irwin has fuel and provisions to chase the whalers well into the middle of January before having to return to New Zealand to refuel. If forced to return to refuel, the Steve Irwin will do so and then will immediately return to the whaling area to continue to pursue, harass and intervene against illegal Japanese whaling activities."

The Steve Irwin has a crew of 40 international volunteers plus an Animal Planet film crew onboard producing the 2nd year of the series Whale Wars.

Last year the Sea Shepherd crew pursued the Japanese whaling fleet from early December until mid-March. That intervention cost the whalers over $70 million in lost profits and saved almost 500 whales.

Christmas message from the Captain

Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Christmas Message from the Captain of the Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin

My friends,

It is Christmas Eve down here off the coast of Antarctica and I can absolutely assure you that we are all having a very white Christmas. And it is a happy Christmas because there is no place else we would choose to be.


Not only is it a white Christmas with towering massive alabaster icebergs and heaving floes of cobalt blue ice, it is a magical Christmas as orcas, humpbacks, fins, blues and piked whales escort us through these seas, as albatross, petrels, and skua gulls fly along beside us. And on the floes, the penguins, primarily Adelie and kings comically "salute" us as we pass by.


Being in these waters is like being on another planet or in another dimension of time and reality where humans are a scarce species and the oceans teem with the diversity of life. The air is pure and smells alive and the waters even purer and moving with life.


I have spent five Christmas days since 2002 in this wondrous place and I love it here, love it perhaps more than any other place on Earth despite, or perhaps because of its isolation, its wildness, and its unpredictability.


To love something is to defend it - to be willing to fight and to die for it. And such is the love that I feel for the magnificent citizens of this vast frozen region that I have no hesitation in acting in their defence, whatever the consequences might be.


Ahead of us at this moment is a fleet of killers. Led by the ship I call the Cetacean Death Star, (formally known as the Nisshin Maru), and accompanied by three vicious harpoon vessels, they have only one purpose in these waters and that is to deliver an agonizingly cruel death to the intelligent and gentle giants that grace these waters.


We are here to save life and they are here to kill. Our purposes are clearly defined.


I do not hate these whalers. I do pity them that they can take life away so thoughtlessly and so casually without pause for remorse or reflection.


As Marc Anthony said in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, "Pardon me, thou bleeding piece of Earth that I am so gentle and mild with these butchers.
"

For gentle and mild we are indeed. Every fibre of my being wants to sink that obscene floating death factory, yet I must by necessity employ gentler tactics and a more complex strategy.


But every whale that dies pains me to the core of my being. I feel every harpoon and hear every scream. I smell the blood and the fear and I see the smirks of chauvinistic humanity as they pull the triggers of their harpoon cannons and mutilate the corpses with their lances.


Restrained by our own compassion and ideals of the sacredness of life, we intercept, harass, block and pursue, driven by the guilt we must endure as whales suffer and die because of our decision of practical restraint. We seek year after year to silence the harpoons and to silence the haunting screams of the whales through tactics that although somewhat effective require time to be truly effective and time is a commodity that the whales are running short of.


And as we willingly choose to abhor a violent solution we must suffer accusations that we are violent by these same mad killers who answer our non-harmful tactics with bullets and grenades. They accuse us of being violent as they spill thousands of steaming gallons of the hottest blood on Earth into the frigid waters of Antarctica and fill the polar air with the pitiful screams of whales dying in horrific agony.


Nothing is simple in this world where commerce is absolved for passing death sentences on intelligent socially complex gentle sentient beings and where diplomacy is used as an excuse to ignore the consequences of the slaughter of the gentle and the innocent.


On this day, the eve of Christmas, the day of love and respect, we find ourselves in the most welcome position of pursuing killers with the purpose of defending their intended victims. We have them on the run and once they stop and attempt to whale we will be on them and we will stop them, as we have stopped them before and we will continue to stop them, halving their quota and costing them their bloody profits.


What better way to spend Christmas Day than saving the lives of such beautiful and uniquely marvellous beings as the whales.


And to add joy to this Christmas for all forty of us on this ship is in knowing that we have the support of so many people around the world who have made it possible for us to be here to be doing what we are doing.


Every whale we save is a whale that you save. Every blow we strike against the illegal profits of the whalers is a strike that you also have struck. In this great venture we are a team and it is a partnership that can change the way things are done on this planet - where we can challenge the arrogance and the ignorance of those who reap life and sow death for profit and culture.


If we can save just one whale from the harpoons it would be victory. However, like we did for the last two years, we intend to defend, protect, and save hundreds of these endangered and threatened giants.


As we enter a new year, we do so knowing that we are not down here alone. You are with us and for that we are deeply grateful. You give us the strength to be strong and the passion to be compassionate and the encouragement to be courageous.


Thank-you sincerely from my crew and I.


Happy Holidays and Happy New Year from the forty of us at the bottom of the world to all of you around this most beautiful blue and white sphere of life and diversity.


Sincerely,

Captain Paul Watson

Master - The Steve Irwin
Master - The Farley Mowat
Founder and President of the
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Japanese Defenses on Whaling Are Cracking

Behind Japan's outspoken and irrational defense of whaling there is an undercurrent of dissent within the Japanese establishment.

This week the Sydeny Morning Herald reported that Tomohiko Taniguchi, the official voice of Japan for the last three years has expressed his views on Japan's controversial whaling activities.

Taniguchi was the voice for the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo. His role was to speak to the international media every day. And he reports that of the hundreds of matters he had to deal with, that the one he dreaded most was defending Japanese whaling programs. It was part of his job to defend official policy.

"I was being summoned by CNN, BBC and ABC on this issue far more than any other issue," Taniguchi says. "I hated this issue because there's no point in Japan sticking to its position,"

Today Taniguchi is an adviser to Japan's Minister Foreign Affairs. But, since July, he is no longer an employed official, so he is free to speak his mind. And he does.

At the same time this may be official Japan's feeling the waters using Taniguchi big toe.

"The Japanese whaling industry generates revenues of 7.5 billion yen a year, which is $120 million at the current exchange rate. It's tiny."

Japan's economy, the world' second biggest, has an annual output of 515 trillion yen or $8.2 trillion. So whaling accounts for 0.0014 per cent of the national economy. Or less than one-tenth the value of the country's annual market for toothbrushes.

And the total number of people who derive a living from whaling, including dependents, is between one and several thousands in a country of 130 million.

"Japan has nil national interest in the whaling industry," Taniguchi

continues. "The stake for Japan is near zero. If Australians criticise

the Japanese auto industry, Japan must do everything possible to protect the auto industry. This is not the auto industry."

Taniguchi is writing a long piece for the Japanese magazine, Wedge, to ask Japanese citizens to consider the balance sheet of national interests. On the other side of the ledger, he contends, "this issue is doing substantial damage to Japan's image in Australia, the US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand", the entire English-speaking world.

The Japanese whaling fleet set sail this week for the annual slaughter in the Southern Ocean. According to the report in the Herald, the bad publicity has already started.

And the dissent is beginning to burst out of other seams in the Japanese establishment. In May, 2008 Taro Aso, then secretary-general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said if Australia's feelings towards Japan were hurt unnecessarily "only in order to sustain such a small industry", then Japan should "address this issue as quickly as possible", according to an official record of his remarks. Aso made fun of the whaling industry's pretensions to scientific legitimacy.

"Has anyone heard of any scientific results coming from Japan's whaling program?" he posed rhetorically.

When Aso became Prime Minister, it raised hopes that he would dispense

with the 500 million yen government subsidy that sustains the industry. But the whaling fleet is again on the high seas, and Aso's prime ministership is in difficulty.

Taniguchi hopes the whaling industry will fade away. Whale meat is not

a big seller, an uneconomic activity. About 80 Japanese parliamentarians support whaling, but it is a core issue for only six

to eight. With the Government's deficit worsening, the annual subsidy

becomes harder to defend. But Taniguchi advises Australia, and others,

not to press too hard, lest this only entrench Japanese political support for whaling.

This may explain why the Rudd Government is heeding this advice, and both countries are seeking to cool the issue. Japan is not sending Customs officials with this year's fleet, and Australia is not sending a Customs vessel in pursuit.

According to the Herald, many countries have an ugly blemish that mars the total image and makes other peoples recoil in distaste. China has Tibet, the US has Guantanamo Bay, Turkey has Armenian genocide, and Japan has whaling.

Uneconomic and increasingly costly to Japan's image, Taniguchi expects it will disappear in a few years.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society believes we need to keep the pressure on the Japanese fleet now that Australia has retreated from Greenpeace has surrendered to Japanese whaling interests.

"Economics is the key," said Captain Paul Watson. "We need to keep costing the whaling fleet their profits. We need to keep them spending more money and making less. We will end whaling and when we do Greenpeace will claim victory and the Australian government will claim they did it on their own. It does not matter. What matters is that we silence the harpoons in the Southern Ocean and that we save as many whales as we can this season with the resources available to us.



The Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin will depart from Brisbane on November 30th for the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

Scary times!

Excuse me while I rant! I had the worst experience trying to get gas today I barley believed it was happening. I had a doctors appointment and while I was on the way home I saw that I was dangerously low on gas. OK, I went to the station I usually go to, they also happen to be the cheapest. I waited in line for 35 minutes until I found out they ran out of gas. I stopped at 4 more stations only to find out the same thing. By this time I am near panic. If you guys know me you know I have had 3 hip surgeries in the past 18 months! I was in no mood to walk home!! The final station I arrived at was pretty close to home but it was also my last chance. I got in line. I actually got a good spot and was right at the pump. They had run out just as I got out to pump the gas. I had no idea what I was going to do. My spirit guide must have been looking over me. There was a gas truck pulling up to fill their tanks just as I was about to give up hope. I waited 45 minutes for them to finish. Of course, everyone that was there waiting tried to pump gas at the very same moment, bad idea! The tanks had to much air and needed to build up pressure before they started to work, all of them except mine of course. That turned out to be bittersweet. My pump just happened to be the only one working. I was getting some nasty comments from the woman in a Cadillac, none the less. The poor station attendant was running around like a mental case. He said he had to shut everything down and restart it so the rest of the pumps would work. I was almost done filling up and Mrs. Ugly started pointing at me and saying her pump is running. It's her fault, yadda yadda yadda. Man it got really ugly. Thankfully the guy running the station let me finish before he shut everything down. Looks like we are really in for some tough times. Bush can't seem to go away fast enough for me!!

I want to go back to believing in everything and knowing nothing at all.

Daily Zen

Talking about food won't make you full,
Babbling about clothes won't keep out the cold.
A bowl of rice is what fills the belly;
It takes a suit of clothing to make you warm.
And yet, without stopping to consider this,
You complain the Buddha is hard to find.
Turn your mind within! There he is!
Why look for him abroad?

- Han shan

Sad Goobye to Collette

Statement from Captain Paul Watson....



We view the life of every Humpback whale
as valuable and if anything can be done to save the life of this young baby
Humpback than we encourage and support every effort to ensure that he survives.....


I would propose finding a small cove,
inlet or bay to keep Colin safe and then attempting to feed Colin with a
mixture of krill and small fish. Finding whale milk is difficult if not
impossible. If Colin is old enough to be weaned then this could work.....


It is of course an awesome task to care
for and provide life saving care to a whale. It truly is a whale of a task but
we can’t be faulted for trying, just for refusing to try.....


Australians have an opportunity
demonstrate that they do not just talk about saving whales but that they are
prepared to do whatever it takes to protect them, including this little orphan.....


The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
wishes to work with the governments both Federal and State, the media, other
groups and concerned Australian citizens to mobilize an effort to save Colin.....


We can do this!....

Captain Paul Watson....


Sea Shepherd ..Australia..
Director Jeff Hansen began to mobilize a coordinated rescue effort with the
Australia Zoo and the government of ....New
South Wales.... as soon as he heard about the unfortunate
whale.....

Unfortunately the bureaucrats could not be bothered. They refused to
allow us to help Colin and they refused to attempt to feed him. They took the
easy way out and killed him.....


Killing is usually the first response of government bureaucrats when a
wild species is in trouble. They dismissed our help, they dismissed our
suggestions and they dismissed our pleas to spare the life of this baby
Humpback whale.

As I said before Colin was killed, we could not be faulted for trying
to save his life but the bureaucrats can be faulted for not even trying. ....


This tragedy underlies the political reality that the Rudd government
has abandoned their efforts to defend the whales from the lethal harpoons of
the illegal Japanese whaling fleet. The appeasement of the Japanese government
in the name of not upsetting trade will condemn hundreds of whales to an
agonizing death once again at the end of the year.....

We wish that we still had ..Senator..
Ian Campbell championing the whales as the Minister of Environment instead of a
man who did more as a rock star than he has done as a politician.....

Memo to Peter
Garrett....

Peter, did you check you balls at the door when you were elected? Why
not do one or two of the things you promised to? Now you’re
murdering kangaroos, kissing the ass of the Japanese whalers, backing pulp
mills, logging and dredging operations. What the hell happened man? Spitting on
the burning bed ain’t gonna put out the fire! When you played on the logging
road at Clayoquot I loved you man. When you spoke out in song and music for the
Earth, we adored you. But now, well now, you’re just another lying politician with
a self serving agenda. Redeem yourself while you still can – speak out like you
used to – hell all they can do is fire you but better to be a hero to the
people than a pawn to special interests. ....

Down

I remember the day when you couldn't stop me. I took ballet and wasn't half bad. I owned and road horses. In the past few years I rescued everything from turtles to horses. I long for those days and am deeply saddened they are gone. Hell, I would ride my horses with a broken wrist. My husband divorced me this past November. I guess he was cheating with someone he could make into what he wanted. I am told I had to much personality for him. I thought I would be with him forever but but that was not to be. I know there is a plan for your life but I am getting worm down with mine. Having three hip surgeries would were anyone down. I am recovering quickly and trying very hard. I started taking Ti Chi. I have to take it at home because no studio would take(not sure what they are really referred to) They are worried about liability due to the hip replacements and need a doctors release. My doctor isn't going to that for a good long time. The movements make my joints feel better but I know I will never be the same. I was told I won't be fully healed for 6 to 8 months ~ DAMN. I spend so much time alone. My saving graces are my dogs and my best friend Stephanie. She doesn't live in Georgia anymore but we talk to each other several times a day. She is coming to help me get the house straightened out and junk thrown away. My daughter was so awful when she was here she put a bunch of her stuff in my room and it is impossible for me to move it so I sleep on the couch. I can't wait to see her. this is her daughter Ester. That is it for now. I just made myself feel kinda sad.

RIP George Carlin

Back to Story - Help
George Carlin mourned as a counterculture hero By KEITH ST. CLAIR, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 10 minutes ago



George Carlin, the frenzied performer whose routine "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television" led to a key Supreme Court ruling on obscenity, has died.

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas. He was 71.

"He was a genius and I will miss him dearly," Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press.

Carlin's jokes constantly breached the accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the "Seven Words" — all of which are taboo on broadcast TV and radio to this day.

When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.

When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government's authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," he told The Associated Press earlier this year.

Despite his reputation as unapologetically irreverent, Carlin was a television staple through the decades, serving as host of the "Saturday Night Live" debut in 1975 — noting on his Web site that he was "loaded on cocaine all week long" — and appearing some 130 times on "The Tonight Show."

He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a couple of TV shows and appeared in several movies, from his own comedy specials to "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" in 1989 — a testament to his range from cerebral satire and cultural commentary to downright silliness (and sometimes hitting all points in one stroke).

"Why do they lock gas station bathrooms?" he once mused. "Are they afraid someone will clean them?"

He won four Grammy Awards, each for best spoken comedy album, and was nominated for five Emmy awards. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will be presented Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.

Carlin started his career on the traditional nightclub circuit in a coat and tie, pairing with Burns to spoof TV game shows, news and movies. Perhaps in spite of the outlaw soul, "George was fairly conservative when I met him," said Burns, describing himself as the more left-leaning of the two. It was a degree of separation that would reverse when they came upon Lenny Bruce, the original shock comic, in the early '60s.

"We were working in Chicago, and we went to see Lenny, and we were both blown away," Burns said, recalling the moment as the beginning of the end for their collaboration if not their close friendship. "It was an epiphany for George. The comedy we were doing at the time wasn't exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction."

That direction would make Carlin as much a social commentator and philosopher as comedian, a position he would relish through the years.

"The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things — bad language and whatever — it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition," Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview. "There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have."

Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, and grew up in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, raised by a single mother. After dropping out of high school in the ninth grade, he joined the Air Force in 1954. He received three court-martials and numerous disciplinary punishments, according to his official Web site.

While in the Air Force he started working as an off-base disc jockey at a radio station in Shreveport, La., and after receiving a general discharge in 1957, took an announcing job at WEZE in Boston.

"Fired after three months for driving mobile news van to New York to buy pot," his Web site says.

From there he went on to a job on the night shift as a deejay at a radio station in Fort Worth, Texas. Carlin also worked variety of temporary jobs including a carnival organist and a marketing director for a peanut brittle.

In 1960, he left with Burns, a Texas radio buddy, for Hollywood to pursue a nightclub career as comedy team Burns & Carlin. He left with $300, but his first break came just months later when the duo appeared on Jack Paar's "Tonight Show."

Carlin said he hoped to emulate his childhood hero, Danny Kaye, the kindly, rubber-faced comedian who ruled over the decade Carlin grew up in — the 1950s — with a clever but gentle humor reflective of the times.

It didn't work for him, and the pair broke up by 1962.

"I was doing superficial comedy entertaining people who didn't really care: Businessmen, people in nightclubs, conservative people. And I had been doing that for the better part of 10 years when it finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place doing the wrong things for the wrong people," Carlin reflected recently as he prepared for his 14th HBO special, "It's Bad For Ya."

Eventually Carlin lost the buttoned-up look, favoring the beard, ponytail and all-black attire for which he came to be known.

But even with his decidedly adult-comedy bent, Carlin never lost his childlike sense of mischief, even voicing kid-friendly projects like episodes of the TV show "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends" and the spacey Volkswagen bus Fillmore in the 2006 Pixar hit "Cars."

Carlin's first wife, Brenda, died in 1997. He is survived by wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin.

___

Associated Press writer Christopher Weber contributed to this report.

Words of wisdom

In life, the difficult periods are the best periods to gain experience and shore up determination. As a result, my mental status is much improved because of them.

--The Dalai Lama

Long days

My hip just seems to have a will of it's own. The damn thing is healing so slowly I could jst scream. Dr. Harvey told me it could be 6 to 8 months. YIKES! I just haven't felt like doing anything. To top it off I have a cold. How the hell did I get that? Most likely when I go shopping.

My Zen for the day:

You ask why I live in the mountain forest,
I smile, and am silent,
and even deep within remain quiet:
the peach trees blossom,
the water flows.

- Li T’ai-po (701-?)

Yet another hip surgery

Feeling kind of down today. My third and final (hopefully) hip surgery is scheduled for Monday, April 21. I am so tired of the pain. I have such a bad time with IV's that I am already getting scared of the whole ordeal! I think I will ask for sub clavian line. One that they put in a major vein in your neck during surgery. It sounds a lot less painful that being stuck over and over again.

For today:

My Daily Zen

The capacity of Mind is vast and great:
It is like the emptiness of space;
It has neither breadth nor bounds;
It is neither square nor round; neither large nor small;
It is neither blue nor yellow nor red nor white;
It has neither upper nor lower, long nor short;
It knows of neither anger nor pleasure;
Neither right nor wrong;
Neither good nor evil;
It is without beginning and without end.

- Sixth Patriarch

Daily Zen

The entire universe is one bright pearl.
When the right time comes,
The essence of the bright pearl can be grasped;
It is suspended in emptiness,
Hidden in the lining of clothes,
Found under the chin of dragons
And in the headdresses of kings.
This pearl is always inside our clothing,
That is, inside us, our real nature.
Do not think about putting it on the surface;
Is should be kept in headdresses and under jaws.
Never attempt to wear it on the surface.


- Dogen (1200-1253)

Daily Zen

I repaired a damaged friendship on Easter Sunday. What a great gift to receive. I love you Sissy.

Every day priests minutely
examine the Dharma
and endlessly chant
complicated sutras.
They should learn
how to read the love letters
sent by the wind and rain,
the snow and moon.

- Ikkyu (1394-1491)

Sea Shepherd News

Sea Shepherd News
News Releases


03/12/2008


Sea Shepherd To Tackle The New Improved “Bash And Slash” Baby Killers Of Canada

From the icebergs off the coast of Antarctica to the ice floes off the coast of Eastern Canada - there is little rest for the Shepherds of the Sea.

The Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin is scheduled to return from chasing and harassing the Japanese whaling fleet on March 15th after three and a half months of successful interventions against the Japanese whale poachers.

But there is no time for rest or sitting on our laurels. We have to get to the other side of the planet to board our ship the Farley Mowat in Bermuda. On March 24th we are scheduled to depart northward into the ice packs of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to once again act as shepherds to the greatest herd of sea lambs on Earth - the harp seal pups.

Canada, as if to slap the Europeans in the face for threatening to ban seal products, has set this year’s kill quota at 325,000 seals.

It’s hard to believe that this is the 21st Century, when a government of a wealthy nation like Canada continues to promote and encourage the largest and most sadistic marine wildlife massacre on the planet.

Canadian Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn set the high quota without any scientific justification and without any market justification. The Canadian taxpayers will continue to foot the bill to send uneducated sadistic killers onto the ice with spiked clubs to bash in the skulls of seal pups. It is nothing more than a glorified welfare scheme to give East coast fishermen enough work to justify their unemployment insurance payments.

In announcing the new quota Hearn said that the seal slaughter has been improved with new rules to make the hunt more “humane”.

The new rules call for the sealers to sever the arteries of seals under their flippers after they have been shot or clubbed.

It’s “bash and slash” now instead of just “bash” and that is considered to be an improvement.

To say that this makes the seal slaughter more humane is to say that a psychopath is a better person if he slashes the throat of his victim after bashing in his or her skull.

The new rules are being imposed in an attempt to convince the European Parliament to not ban seal products into Europe. Canada is spending a small fortune in sending delegations to Europe to plea for the right to continue to massacre seal pups.

As a Canadian I am hopeful that the European Parliament will act soon to ban all seal products. All of my life I have been sickened and disgusted by this annual ritual of death where grown men kick seal pups in the face, bash in their skulls, skin them alive and stain the ice floes red with the blood of hundreds of thousands of seal pups, turning the nursery floes of these gentle creatures into a living hell of spewing blood and gore amidst the pitiful screams of dying and injured young animals.

There is no other place on Earth where the arrogance of humankind can be seen in all of its primitive and ignorant glory than on the ice floes under assault by blood-stained men with hearts as hard and merciless as iron.

We have no choice but to challenge them and to do whatever we can to disrupt their vicious rape of the seal nurseries.

As always it will be difficult. The sealers are protected by the Seal Protection Regulations that make it a Federal offense to witness or document a seal pup being killed. In Canada if you see a sealer club a seal pup and you don’t have a permit to witness the slaughter you can be arrested, jailed and fined up to $100,000 or sent to jail for a year.

It’s hard to believe, but Canada is a nation where killing is a subsidized recreational activity and compassion is severely punished.

We need to demonstrate to the European Parliament just how brutal the Canadian seal hunt is by again going into the ice packs ourselves and placing our lives on the line in defense of the seals.

It is important that we make this issue as hot as possible before the Europeans vote by demonstrating that people of compassion are willing to risks their lives and freedom to abolish this atrocity.

So it’s out of the Southern deep freeze and into the Northern freezer, from saving whales to saving seals - the work of a shepherd of the sea is never done.







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.O. Box 2616, Friday Harbor, WA 98250 (USA) Tel: 360-370-5650 Fax: 360-370-5651
Copyright © 2008 Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. All rights reserved.

Sea Shepherd Chases Japanese Fleet Out of Australian Waters

The Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin has successfully chased the Japanese whaling fleet out of the waters of the Australian Antarctic Territory.

For the last 10 days the Japanese fleet was killing whales not far off the coast of the Australian Antarctic Territory. On the morning of February 23rd, Sea Shepherd intercepted the fleet about 80 miles north of the Shackleton Glacier.

Over the last 24 hours the fleet has fled north and they are now above the 200 miles territorial lines that defines the Australian Antarctic Economic Exclusion Zone and the Australian Whale Sanctuary.

No whales have been killed during the last 30 hours.

"It is incredibly satisfying to be moving through these waters seeing Fin whales, Piked whales and Humpback whales spouting and breaching and knowing they are safe from the harpoons as long as we are here," said Canadian crewmember Shannon Mann, 35 from Calgary, Alberta.

The Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin continues to pursue the Japanese fleet with the objective of doing so for the next three weeks.

Sea Shepherd Announces Seal Defense Campaign 2008!

Sea Shepherd Crew to Shift from the Southern Ice to the Northern Ice

Captain Paul Watson and some of his crew will not rest after defending whales when they return to Australia after three and a half months of chasing and harassing Japanese whaling ships, and will instead continue on to defend baby seals.

Within days of returning to Australia in late March, they will be flying halfway around the world to Bermuda where Sea Shepherd's other ship the Farley Mowat is docked. From there they will head North into the ice packs off Eastern Canada to defend baby harp seals from the ruthless clubs of Canadian sealers.

"There is no rest on planetary duty," said Captain Paul Watson from onboard the Steve Irwin off the coast of Antarctica. "Half our year is spent amongst icebergs and on ice floes. Our job is to hunt the hunters to defend their victims and that takes us from the bottom of the world to the top and many places in between."

Captain Watson has been fighting the Canadian seal slaughter all his life. It was shut down in 1984 and resurrected in 1994.

"All our victories are usually temporary," he said. "Unfortunately our defeats are usually permanent."

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is confident that years of risk and effort will soon pay off. The European nations are banning seal products and seal products have been banned in the United States since 1972. Sea Shepherd has been slowly lobbying to remove the markets at the same time as we have been mounting dramatic confrontations on the ice to physically save the seals from the cruel clubs of the sealers.

Patience and persistence is paying off. The seal hunt survives only because of subsidies doled out to the sealing industry by the government of Canada. It has become a glorified welfare scheme where in return for killing seals for a few weeks the sealers can qualify for unemployment insurance for the rest of the year.

"They say it's part of their culture," said Captain Watson who himself grew up in an Eastern fishing village in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. "It's a culture based on the cruel clubbing of baby seals for a few weeks each year and drinking Canadian Club and beer the rest of the year. It's a culture that any Maritimer with half a brain abandoned generations ago."

In addition to the hazards of thick ice and nasty weather, the Sea Shepherd crew face the threat of violence from the sealers and the threat of arrest under the Canadian "Seal Protection regulations" that make it a criminal offense to "witness or document the killing of a seal without the permission of the government of Canada."

"As a kid I remember these baby killers bragging how they would slice open the beating heart of the first baby seal they kill each spring," said Captain Watson. "They drank the hot blood and smeared it cross upon their foreheads and dabbed blood on their cheeks. They called it the "Rites of Spring." I called them barbarians then, and I call them barbarians still, and as a Canadian and a Maritimer, I have been ashamed of this bloody evil tradition all my life and I've dedicated my life to shutting this monstrous obscenity down forever, and I believe that soon we will see that day when the killing is ended."

In 2005 twelve Sea Shepherd crew were arrested after being attacked and assaulted by sealers on the ice. Despite being struck by sealing clubs, punched and kicked, not one sealer was arrested for assault. The attack was video-taped and the sealers identified yet the Royal Canadian Mounted Police stated there was "insufficient evidence" to charge the sealers. The Sea Shepherd crew were jailed and fined for approaching within a half a nautical mile of a seal being killed.

Daily Zen

As long as you are subject
To a life bound by force of habit,
You are not free from the
Burden of the body.

- Kuei-Shan (771-854)

Man

"Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife- birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes, and dingoes- by the million in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative- and fatal- health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kill so easily and so violently, and yet once a year sends out cards praying for "Peace on Earth."

~C. David Coats, author of Old MacDonald's Factory Farm

The Rocky Whaling Fleet Horror Show

The Rocky Whaling Fleet Horror Show

Commentary by Captain Paul Watson



First they took a step to the West then a jump to the North then a leap to the East and now a hop to the West.


The Japanese whaling fleet is all over the charts down here in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.


The good news is that they have not killed a single whale for at least 16 days and it does not look like whaling will resume for the next few days as they continue to run, burning up fuel without profit.


The Japanese whalers are reporting that they are "terrified" of the Sea Shepherd "vegan eco-terrorist pirates"


It's amazing what a few well placed stink bombs can do. The big brave whale killing samurai cetacean serial killers run like little Japanese school girls at the approach of the black hulled Steve Irwin.


This year the Japanese whalers are finding that the vast Southern Ocean is not as vast as they have been used to. Whale defenders have become as seasoned in these remote waters as the whale killers and with the Greenpeace ship Esperanza's teeth sunk firmly into the hind quarters of the Nishiin Maru and Sea Shepherd's ship Steve Irwin constantly biting the heels of the catcher boats, the dogs of protest are screaming havoc and the pursuit has transformed the normally efficient Japanese whale killing machines into a chaotic bunch of keystone whalers scampering over the swells and stumbling around icebergs in a scattered and senseless panic.


The Japanese Prime Minister is crying woe in the Diet. New Zealand's Prime Minister is crying foul as the whalers scurried briefly towards the Ross Sea. The Prime Minister of Australia is somewhat rudderless in his directions on the issue but at least the government ship Oceanic Viking is taking pictures of ---- fleeing whalers. Hundreds of people turned out to protest a Japanese government ship docking in Bermuda, there have been protests in New York, in Budapest, in Rome and all over the planet. Toyota sales are down, Japanese Embassies are being besieged by petitions and protests, the Australian courts have slapped the Japanese on the wrists and barred them from killing whales off the coast of the Australian Antarctic Territory. And in London a 14 year old girl and her father were arrested by the Japanese for refusing to leave the Japanese Embassy and are facing 6 months in prison.


How far is this going to go before the Japanese government sees the writing on the wall and does the right thing? I don't know what Japan is paying out in public relations. I understand it is a great deal of money but they have to be asking themselves just what are they getting for their investment? Japan's international reputation is sinking fast in a sea of whale and dolphin blood.


Conservationists are succeeding in bringing this controversy into the international spotlight. It is no longer out of sight and out of mind. Killing endangered whales in a whale sanctuary is no different then walking onto the plains of the Serengeti and gunning down 50 rhinos or marching into Kruger National Park to blow away a thousand elephants. Why do we condemn poor Africans for killing Mountain Gorillas for bush meat yet allow the wealthy Japanese to slaughter the aquatic equivalent of bush meat without the same level of outrage and indignation?


We are succeeding in mobilizing that righteous indignation and moral outrage and we are seeing a growing passionate movement rising in defense of not just the whales but of all species that are being plundered from the oceans.


The whaling industry has no place in the 21st Century and certainly not in a sophisticated nation like Japan. Whaling is a primitive, cruel, economically senseless and barbaric practice. What is a major industrialized super power doing killing whales anyway? The only other people involved in this anachronistic bit of sadistic maritime madness are a few frustrated inbred Vikings in Northern Norway and the Danish Faeroe Islands. Even the Icelanders have seen fit to pack the harpoons away.


But pride being pride and nationalistic pride being the most perverse pride of all, Japan is planning on building an even bigger, better and more efficient factory ship that can process three times the number of whales than the Nishiin Maru. Blind, stubborn jingoistic nationalism is what is driving the Japanese government to defend an industry that represents an insignificant contribution to the Japanese economy at the cost of tarnishing the reputation of all otherwise decent Japanese citizens.


Meanwhile the spectacle down here at the bottom of the world is a tragic comedy set on a massive stage with a dozen ships zig-zagging across thousands of miles of ocean chasing each other in a bizarre battle of stinkocidal bombers, bush whacking inflatable boats, helicopter acrobatics, dueling headlines, and ridiculous charges of terrorism and piracy.


What is amazing is that no human has been killed in this dramatic frenzy of hysteria. No one has even been injured and despite all the pontificating about terrorism, no property has been damaged.


There is violence of course. The agonizing slow death of the whales is violence at it's most extreme as these highly intelligent, socially complex, endangered and sophisticated animals drown in their own blood and vomit after their internal organs have been shredded by explosive harpoons driven deep into their defenseless bodies by powerful harpoon cannons. The thousands of gallons of blood spewed into the ocean is testament to the intensity of real violence being carried out in these water - this so-called whale sanctuary!


The Japanese whalers will not get their quota this year and it will have cost them a great deal more money for their operations than any year before.


And they still have next year to deal with. If we can get the support, I intend to bring two ships back here for the 2008/2009 season with a longer range helicopter and a crew of committed and dedicated volunteers willing to take the required risks to keep these cowardly whale poachers on the run.