Tsunami relief funds used for whaling.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/6101267/Japan-uses-disaster-funds-for-whaling

I'm not sure what to think of whaling itself, but using disaster relief money for it sure as hell crosses the line.

edited 7th Dec '11 11:32:36 AM by HiddenFacedMatt

Really, Japan?

edited 7th Dec '11 11:57:41 AM by RadicalTaoist

Whaling is evil and using charity/disaster fund money for non charity is evil. Combining the two? Art of evil!

Well, I have no problems with whaling, but using the charity money for it is not very good.

But if someone wants to kill a whale and eat it, I have no problems with it. Just do not use charity for that.

I wouldn't say whaling is necessarily evil, or at least not much more so than western society's factory farming of cows and pigs for meat.

The real issue here is the manipulative way they funded it.

edited 7th Dec '11 2:18:27 PM by HiddenFacedMatt

You disapoint me Japan. I used to only hate the whalers, and be annoyed at the government, but your saying that the money I gave to help those people is being spent to kill whales?! That's just Evil! Now me thinks I hate the Government more.*Plans to donate much more to Sea Shepherd.*

edited 7th Dec '11 2:56:09 PM by Joesolo

Well, at least it's not shark finning.

And I think river dolphins need more aid than whales.

Yeah..except..Japan tends to slaughter a lot of dolphins and call them whales at market.

But not river dolphins (which aren't true dolphins, but for some reason still called that), which are being killed by the poachers in the countries they live in, not by japanese whalers.

Well, if they really are using it, as the J-Gov claimed, to help out some traditional whaling communities hit by the wave, then that's one thing. If, as the article claimed, they are using it to subsidize security for the Antarctic whaling fleet, that's entirely another.

And now some law firm that helps animal shelters and donates money to them is handling The whaler's case to stop sea shepherd.

here's their site. They sounded nice too...

edited 14th Dec '11 1:53:16 PM by Joesolo

I get a subtly racist vibe from that...I don't know why.

This was very slimy, its not the whaling that bothers me, but the way the funds were used for it, rather than something proper.

It's kinda the whaling, too. They have to know that literally nobody who donated to them cared about their whaling industry. Other things, maybe you can write them off as trying to stimulate their economy. Not this.

But what else could they put it in?

The tsunami really only destroyed three things... Homes, the fishing industry in the area of the Tsunami, and that nuclear power plant.

... Do people not realize that whaling is included in "the fishing industry" when it comes to Japan?

You...just named three things.

Maybe the other two?

Are you implying that zero dollars(or Yen) went to the other two?

Yes, money went to whaling... Whaling is an important part of the Japanese Fishing Industry...

I fail to see the issue beyond "whaling is wrong, and so this is bad." And if that's the only argument, I really don't think it's enough to be outraged(unless one is equally outraged at all animal killings to feed people)...

Donations to rebuilding didn't mean "rebuilding the industry everyone else hates." It's a dishonest way to use that money.

And I'm sure they could have spent more money rebuilding people's homes. Unless you're suggesting they've rebuilt the city already...

If this was the case, some Katrina money wouldn't have gone to the Oil Industry. And yet that's exactly what happened.

And I disagree that it's dishonest. Mostly because the whaling industry was hurt by the tsunami/earthquake. Saying "Here's donations to rebuild. Wait, we don't want to you rebuild that" is a rather dishonest way of donating... Especially since people knew that the whaling industry got hurt by the disaster to begin with.

edited 14th Dec '11 4:59:49 PM by Swish

Whaling is not important to the industry, and this money went to the one FLEET hunting endangered whales in the Antarctic where commercial activity is banned by international law. Most whale meat ends up in storage or dog food anyway, few Japanese people eat it anymore.

I don't think people were thinking about the whaling industry, no. It hadn't even crossed my mind.

Nobody looked at the disaster and said "Damn, there goes my whale supply."

And no. Not wanting your money to go towards funding an industry you don't like is not dishonest, especially when it's tiny and has little impact on Japan's prosperity as a whole.

It hurts japan if anything. It just causes tensions, however slight, with Australia, and wastes millions of Dollars.

I don't see any quarrel with Japan's whaling, that couldn't be solved by people being reasonable, the IWC being purged of nations irrelevant to whaling, a revision of policy, and some attempt at compromise then being made by all parties. With that issue out of the way, as long as the disaster recovery money went to recovering from the disaster, what's the problem?

I see my donations went to good use.

What's the problem? The problem is that I expected my money to go to people affected by the disaster. Rebuild their homes. Give them "welfare" cheques so to speak. It going to something totally unrelated is just going to make me never donate to Japan again because the government is too corrupt. But, then again, I donated to a third party agency so my dollars are probably fine.

edited 16th Dec '11 7:42:32 AM by breadloaf

Breadloaf, this is going to help rebuild people's homes.