A captured whale is butchered in Japan in 2001.
We all know that shady deals go down in politics - whether it's local, national or international. We knew that Japan struck a deal with the U.S. for support in overturning the current whaling ban at the International Whaling Commission meeting, but there's now information that Japan has crossed the line from deal-making into bribery.
While Japan offered to support the US proposal on whaling by indigenous peoples, their offer to other countries was much more salacious. According to an undercover investigation by the The Sunday Times of London, Japan offered promises of financial aid, cash bribes and call girls to St Kitts and Nevis, the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Grenada, Republic of Guinea and Ivory Coast and their representatives. These six nations have no interest in whaling, but joined the IWC as Japan's behest, and their votes count just as much as those by the other 82 IWC member nations. The Sunday Times reports:
The top fisheries official for Guinea said Japan usually gave his minister a "minimum" of $1,000 a day spending money in cash during IWC and other fisheries meetings . . . The IWC commissioner for Tanzania said "good girls" were made available at the hotels for ministers and senior fisheries civil servants during all-expenses paid trips to Japan.
But even if Japan's wrongdoing is fully exposed and proven, I have little faith that they will be stopped from whaling. If the whaling ban is not lifted, Japan could continue whaling under the guise of scientific research, but instead they have threatened to withdraw from the IWC, whose membership is voluntary.
And it appears that the ban may not be lifted, since the members are at an impasse at their meeting in Morocco. (Update: It appears that the proposal and any attempts at a compromise have failed. No word yet on whether Japan is carrying out their threat to withdraw from the IWC. Thanks to Gary Smith of Evolotus PR for this link.) After two days, Australia and New Zealand are refusing to compromise their anti-whaling stance, while Japan and other pro-whaling nations demand that they be met in the middle. The Norwegian IWC Commissioner has stated, "The main stumbling block is that those who are against whaling seem to be willing to accept nothing but nil, and we cannot accept that. A compromise is a compromise. It cannot be nil."
Why does the result have to be a compromise? The word compromise implies that both sides are equally morally defensible. When they are not equally morally defensible, the right result is not a compromise. Should a store compromise with a thief and give him $5,000 instead of letting him steal $10,000?
Furthermore, the whaling nations do not deserve any credit for compromising. It's easy for them to "compromise" by killing fewer whales than they initially asked to kill, and any legalization of commercial whaling would be a huge victory for them.
Koichi Kamoshida / Getty Images
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