Source: The International Harpoon, Nr. 1, June 24, 1996. IWC 48 Aberdeen

The IWC Saboteurs (Editorial)

• Have you heard the tale of the nasty vegetarian who didn’t want his friend to eat meat stew? If he could not persuade him to eat something else, he resolved to become a cook and make sure that the stew tasted like hell. Well, we just invented this story, but there are some nations at the IWC who act just like that.
• Britain has now joined three other countries — the US, New Zealand and Australia — in expressing unreserved opposition to Norway, Iceland and Japan ever eating whale stew again. In the seemingly unlikely event that enough votes can be found in the IWC to lift the moratorium and serve the meal, with such nasty cooks in the kitchen, it is sure to taste foul. nn The four should now pack up their utensils and stop work on developing a management scheme for sustainable whaling, as the successful development of such a scheme is surely against their interests.
• But, oh no! “We will participate fully in dialogue about the Revised Management Scheme because it is essential to have the best possible rules for whaling, whether or not they are required in practice,” says New Zealand (opening statement to the IWC, 1994). nn What they are saying, of course, is that they want to stay in the kitchen to make the RMS inedible.
• And with the help of the Netherlands (another nasty cook yet to come out of the closet), they have come up with the most vile concoctions. Take, for example, the proposal that the number of whales lost because of all human impacts — such as whales not born because of the ozone hole and global warming — must be subtracted from hunting quotas. How on Earth can we ever know how many whales would be around if humans weren't? nn If this is their recipe for making "the best possible rules for whaling", it is not enough to demand that they leave the kitchen before poisoning us all. They must either leave the IWCaltogether, or call for a renegotiation of the Convention.

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