Killing for scientific purposes... the new and improved Japanese BS

Japan's whaling fleet heads to Antarctica in November each year to kill as many as 1,000 minke and fin whales for what it says is ``scientific research'', relates Bloomberg news agency. I'm just curious... please... take a look at this picture and tell me what is scientific about killing a whale and its offspring.

What would you say if I told you that after the "scientists" are done with the whales, they end up on the Japanese meat market?

Also... did you know that 65% of Japanese people support whale killing and 54% enjoy eating whale meat?

Are you aware that there is an international convention preventing whale killing but for scientific purposes and that Japan all the way up to the Government supports whale killing and uses the "scientific" excuse every time?

http://www.iwcoffice.org/conservation/estimate.htm#table

The link above show an estimate of the entire whale population around the world.

Doing a simple calculus one can see that the total number of whales is around 1 895 851, more or less.

There are 193 countries in the world, 192 members of UN and Vatican. What if all these countries would hunt around 1000 whales every year? the total would be 193 000 dead whales, ONLY FROM KILLING. This is a bit over 10%. The growth rate for some species is at most 7%, while for others barely reaches 2%. If we were to take into consideration other death causes such as natural death, intoxication from polution, death caused by getting stranded on the beaches because of human interference in sonar communication used by whales, etc... the situation would not look so good for whales.

So... do you think the scientific argument of Japan is only a cover-up of their real intentions? Or are they really entitled to do that?

Is it ok for them to be hunting in international waters without providing transparency about their research system?

Oil spot on the international record...

Year 2007 has seen countless new records in oil prices, as international economy suffers from what is, presumably, a lack of output from oil suppliers.

But, while the international attention was drawn by the OPEC members, one of the few official international cartels that none of the "great powers" of the world can touch, two of the worlds largest oil companies, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell, started 2008 announcing record all-time profits for the previous year.

Now, I come to ask you, is it safe to say that we, the public, have been played for fools by international oil companies that blamed OPEC and the lack of oil output for the record oil prices?

Would it be safe to say that consumers had to support, besides the increase in oil production cost, a greed surplus from such giant companies?

Is it not suspicios that Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell announced record profits, in spite of them beeing evacuated from huge oil fields in Venezuela and Russia in the previous year?