I think there’s the possibility that the hormones in meat and other animal products could be dangerous or unhealthy, but I don’t concern myself with that. Most scientists don’t admit it to be such a big problem. I’m not a vegetarian or vegan or anything.

I don’t care if you are after those who slaughter pigs, cows, Kangaroo, camels, whales, dolphin etc.as long as you are playing it fair.

Scientists acknowledge that dolphin meat is contaminated with mercury, but deny it’s dangerous unless consumed in huge quantities.
Have you ever heard of people who were damaged by eating dolphin meat?

Are you the same kind of activists who allege hormone residues in beef and milk might be harmful to human health and the environment?

Some people are

Think of a heart. In the cleavage of the heart is the middle-ground, moderate. The left hump composes of liberals. The right hump composes of conservatives. On the left bottom grove inwards you can see the liberals become radicals. On the right bottom groove inwards you see conservatives become reactionaries. But they both meet at the bottom point, in which their radical behavior is almost inseparable.

LB, you’re an ahole. Tone it down.

First of all I’m not absolutist. When it comes to politics, I believe tradition shouldn’t be used as an excuse because tradition does not equate to logic or rationality.

And a hell of a lot of Americans talk about the “beef issue” for your information. All Americans are aware of it, but some have a stronger interest in the issue than others. But no one is ignorant about it, which doesn’t seem to be the case in Japan.

I see what you’re saying, but how the hell can you even compare slavery to eating salad? When you eat salad during a meal is a matter of preference and there is nothing just or injust about it. Slavery, on the other hand, is a human rights abuse. There is NOTHING just or acceptable about it, whether it was a tradition or not.

SORRY MY USE OF CAPS PISSES YOU OFF SO MUCH :p

and the few who know about it “don’t want to talk about it” because they don’t like the foreign hype or they think foreigners don’t get their “tradition”.
It is not a “few” who know about it for one thing. And even if those who know about it aren’t talking about it, it is not for the reasons you give it is because the issue is not seen as an “issue”. How many Americans sit around and talk about the beef slaughterhouses? Not many. Why? because it is a non-issue to all but a few.

But it’s worrisome when Japan thinks there is no problem.
There is no problem with killing dolphins per se. The dolphins being hunted are not endangered, threatened, or anything else. They are every bit a marine resource as sardines or mackerel.

And tradition should NEVER be used as an excuse for something.
Never say “never”, especially not in all caps. It just shows that you are an absolutist who cannot be talked to, nothing more, nothing less.

Slavery was tradition for so long in America.
Aaaaaaaand we’re off! Topic, that is. And conflating ideas that don’t even belong on the same page. Here:

“Many people traditionally eat the salad before the main course. That is wrong! Salad should be eaten last! This tradition of eating it first must be abolished. Slavery was a tradition, and it was abolished! So there!”

See how stupid that is (rhetorical question, I already know you probably won’t get it…)?

Knowing how evils to slaughter them, are they still slaughtering?

” And the animals are killed specifically for meat and are not endangered – they’re raised.”"

Dolphins are not endangered and they are not raised in inhumane ways while many cows and pigs are raised in inhumane conditions.

Sure tradition should not be used as excuse for something.

It is just that some people sense the smell of racism when one nation’s practice appear to be exclusively targeted .

I have no objection to the way the film like Earthlings chronicles the day-to-day practices of the largest industries in the world, all of which rely entirely on animals, including cows, pigs and whale, for profit.

Taiji people visit Australia and sneak into the slaughterhouse and shoot the film by a hidden camera and show how brutally aussie cows are butchered and make the film, “Love letter to Australia”

In Japan, the killing of dolphins is widely UNKNOWN, and the few who know about it “don’t want to talk about it” because they don’t like the foreign hype or they think foreigners don’t get their “tradition”. Choosing to avoid public eye only admits that the issue is real and doesn’t help to resolve it. This shouldn’t be Japan vs. the rest of the world. This is a real problem, and countries should be working together to resolve it. But it’s worrisome when Japan thinks there is no problem. And tradition should NEVER be used as an excuse for something. Slavery was tradition for so long in America. Was it wrong for it to have been abolished?

Hint: we won’t. All this tedious prose makes us want to do is laugh at you, or roll our eyes, or yawn.

Or all three.

This is more about living ‘with’ earth rather than ‘on’ earth. think about this, there is a big difference when it comes to killing cows and killing dolphins. Killing cows give humans food to eat. Killing dolphins give humans food that could kill them. There is no basic reason to kill dolphins. It won’t help us survive nor provide food on our table. Its basically just murdering animals than have nothing to do with us.

If the Japanese are just out there to kill dolphins because of traditions based on human reasoning rather than instinctual then, by god, we humans have gotten so low! If we let them kill the dolphins for a human urge, will this even help us survive in the end? Answer is: it does not.

GIVE ME A GOOD REASON WHY WE SHOULD KILL DOLPHINS BECAUSE I JUST DON’T GET IT.

For real, though, let us look at the driving force behind this uproar. The man who started it all worked on a show where he built up a rapport with the dolphin(s). His POV is from his social location as one from within the entertainment industry. The Japanese fishermen are engaging in a cultural practice that is acceptable from their social location and are from a TOWN in Japan and are not representative of Japan as a whole. And shouldn’t the real issue be that bad people are selling poisoned meat to their own countrymen??? Just a thought…

If only we can be humble, take the best of each other’s culture and learn from it, and not be so self-righteous about everything.

Such thinking might be idealistic though..but i think cultures need to evolve for the better and keep the good, improve on the not so good, and get rid of the downright unnecessary.

For Japanese, those crazy, eco-extremists stand out because they are targeting Japan and the Japanese in irrational ways, and when some animal right activists make it look as if they were targeting Japan and the Japanese, there will be unnecessary reactions from Japanese.
They can attack the brutal ways the animals in general are killed for food, but if they make film such as “save Japan dolphin”, “save Alaska whale “save Australia cows”, it is inevitable some kind of antagonism will follow.

Expanding circle is not a bad idea but when they expand it unfairly and unequally, it smacks of old racism.

The activists should educate people and the western journalists should report it without sounding hypocritical.

As the Chaser, maybe I shouldn’t take it seriously but the question remains why they targeted Japan and Japanese only.

However, I do think they are a lot more marginal than it would seem, it’s just the amount of commotion that the extremists cause that makes them seem so numerous/intimidating.

I wouldn’t take any offense to the Chaser though. They’re a fake-news, comedy group that parodies the media/world issues in general by using bad-taste/offensiveness to shock audiences. There are no limits to what they make fun of and I don’t think that video was made out of any real contempt for Japan. It’s similar to what you would expect from The Onion or South Park.

They are not fueling hatred against Japanese people, just the hunters in Taiji. If you’re against extremists in the middle east, it doesn’t mean you’re against all people in that region. Some people seem to have trouble separating the parts from the whole about any ethnic group

When many people have trouble separating the animal hunters in the world from the Japanese and the hatred has been fueled against Japanese as a result of the activism, despite the activist’s intention, there is something seriously wrong with the the animal right activists and the way journalists report them.

Furthermore, saying “it is misguided to protest Black people’s eating chicken.” is far more racist and offensive than anything these protesters have done or said. The ‘Black People eat Fried Chicken’ stereotype is tired and ignorant.

The ‘Black People eat Fried Chicken’ is not stereotype in Japan, and I don’t think it is in any other Asian countries.
It is a local stereotype and it is perhaps a result of evil propaganda in your local culture. And it seems the activism about the whale/dolphin are perpetuating the new evil stereotype about the particular ethnic group and the activists don’t give a shit.

They are not fueling hatred against Japanese people, just the hunters in Taiji. If you’re against extremists in the middle east, it doesn’t mean you’re against all people in that region. Some people seem to have trouble separating the parts from the whole about any ethnic group.

Groups like Sea Shepherd and the makers of The Cove target Japan itself for not outlawing whaling and dolphin hunts. Even if the focus is on whalers and Taiji fishermen, the country as a whole is blamed for not doing enough to stop what is going on.

It is easy for anger over “Why Japan isn’t stopping the Dolphin genocide” to become anger at anything or anyone Japanese. This is especially so for the kind of people easily swept up by the emotional arguments activists focus on.

Also, Chickens are some of the dumbest creatures alive, which are usually bred purely to provide food in some form.

Some animal rights activists make the same kind of arguments about chicken intelligence that you make about dolphin intelligence.

http://www.chickenindustry.com/cfi/intelligence/

Somebody else brought up the “mirror test” on one of these threads as proof of dolphin intelligence. Just checking Wikipedia, I notice that tiny-brained birds like Magpies have also passed the same test.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test#Animals_that_pass_the_mirror_test

Dolphins and Whales have higher reasoning and intelligence than some(apparently most) humans.

There we have it. Rob A breaks out the ideology that Sea Shepherd and its hardcore followers really believe: whales and dolphins are superior to humans.

Humans are trash that infect this earth. Self-loathing over the caused by humans translates into the deification of whales and dolphins. Followers of this “eco” religion project their own ideals about harmony into the heads of dolphins and whales. Surely these creatures are flopping around in the water all day because they are more intelligent and enlightened than vile humans!

They are not fueling hatred against Japanese people, just the hunters in Taiji. If you’re against extremists in the middle east, it doesn’t mean you’re against all people in that region. Some people seem to have trouble separating the parts from the whole about any ethnic group.

Also, Chickens are some of the dumbest creatures alive, which are usually bred purely to provide food in some form. Dolphins and Whales have higher reasoning and intelligence than some(apparently most) humans.

Furthermore, saying “it is misguided to protest Black people’s eating chicken.” is far more racist and offensive than anything these protesters have done or said. The ‘Black People eat Fried Chicken’ stereotype is tired and ignorant.

One last thing: punctuation. Look it up.

Funny video though. I think the “Sumo” meat was over the top, but it was also suprising how many people tried the meats.

The Chasers War On Everything – Whaling
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBTnim2H450
国営放送：オージー捕鯨問題で在豪日本国大使をコケにする
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI5E3lpP0Kg

These are especially targeting the Japanese, not any people who eat animal meat.
I wonder why.

I know the video you’re talking about, and just for the record it was circulated on the internet only by one of the various anti-whaling eco-extremeist groups.

The video was never aired on Australian television for obvious reasons. The back-story that the far right propaganda machine has been circulating on Youtube with the video is false.

We need to be removing planks from our own eyes before going after specks, etc.

Which law?

And why should all of Japan hand their head in shame? This is only a small portion of Japanese that kill dolphins. Worry about the problems in your own country first my friend.

On Japanese TV every tiny detail of Japanese life is shown… but not this kind of documentary. Why not?

It’s very clear that this activity is CRIMINAL, trafficking and killing dolphins for WATER PARK.

That’s MAFIA, the same MAFIA that kills whales for “scientific” purposes in the Antartic Sanctuary, “scientific” or SUPERMARKET ?

Dolphins & whales are being killed at rates faster than they can reproduce & slaughtered in illegal ways that. The nature takes 10 years to produce a dolphin, the Japanese government is ignoring International Law.

Japan – hang your head in shame!

Hypocrisy knows no racial, ethnic, or national bounds.

Yes. Adrenalin makes the meat tougher, so you don’t want to panic the animal or make it feel fear.