Episode 21
NZ Pro Whaling, Mcdonalds+Weightwatchers, Temple Grandin
Hello and welcome to episode 21 of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals.
This episode I'd like to talk about New Zealand becoming a Pro Whaling country, Mcdonalds and Weightwatchers entering an unholy relationship, and the HBO Temple Grandin movie.
A recent news story in New Zealand is how we may become a Pro Whaling country. It sickens me to even say that, "New Zealand, my country, a proud, Pro Whaling country".
The basic theory behind the proponents seems to be "We cant beat the evil Japanese whalers who want to go out and murder Whales, so lets join them, and maybe we can politely ask them as friends to spare a whale or two". I find it very upsetting, so New Zealand would be supporting what is called "Commercial Whaling", we'd basically be saying that Whales are animals to be used for Meat. I've long said in online comments that Whales are no different, no more special than Cows or Chickens or Pigs, that they are not mythical beings from Saturn, and now it seems like I'll be proven right, although by the Pro Whaling side. A question is, whats to stop the allowed Commercial quota, the number of whales taken, from rising?
Theres also been a lot of coverage of Pete Bethune, a New Zealander who owned Earth Race before it was rebranded "Ady Gil", now a member of Sea Shepherd, who has been arrested in Japan. I'm quite sick of all this Sea Shepherd news to be honest, but this current story fits in with the general mood in New Zealand about whaling.
I'll play a few clips from the mainstream media.
My next clip is about how we dont need to kill whales for science.
Im personally not a big fan of "tagging" animals, in the clip we see the researchers shooting guns with the satellite tags as projectiles at the whales. Biopsies also involve using a kind of syringe to pierce away part of the whales body, which is then used for science, presumably. I realise that we look after certain animals, birds for example, but I've never liked see the animals with massive radio transmitter backpacks on. Would we like it if aliens "tagged" us that way? Perhaps thats what they do now, when they allegedly invade a certain cavity of ours? I dont think we'd want to be have some transmitter pierced into us.
And the next clip is John Key, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, about why it might be a great thing to be Pro Whaling.
Did that sound familiar? "oh yeah, well it cant be morally right ever, but we share the same objective and the animals are beautiful and we love them very much but we have to make steps towards helping them and the first step is obviously to kill the animals but to try and be a bit more gentle, and by doing that perhaps in a million years we wont kill these animals?"
I understand its very difficult for anyone to stop the Japanese whalers, AND THE WHALERS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES, too often I hear people talking about "evil Japanese" in regards to the small number of Japanese whalers. I realise that little old New Zealand, population four million, half of New York City, a third the population of Tokyo, we need Japanese exports more than they need New Zealands. I know we export Aluminium to Japan, they basically own at least part of the Aluminium Smelter near Invercargill where I live, but we wont export much else to them, maybe Dairy products would be our other largest export. I guess we could refuse to sell them our precious milk, I mean, how could anyone live without dairy products, right? We can cut off their milk supply, and they'll come crawling back to the bargaining table, weakened from not having milk, and they'll do what we tell them to, right?
Then, we have the people who DEMAND that our government do more, that NZ naval ships would be sent out, w...