Japanses Tsunami Donations used for Whaling, not People

If you donated money to the Japanese Tsunami relief and love whales, you are a sucker. At least I feel like one.

30 million dollars was diverted from the tsunami donations to strengthen their whaling fleet – which has a quota of 1000 whales a year – including 50 humpbacks.

Humpback Whale Credit: NOAA

ABC Australia: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-07/japan-whaling-fleet-embarks/3716546

Japan Today: http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/japan-using-quake-disaster-budget-for-whaling-aid

Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/08/japan-whale-hunt-disaster-funding_n_1135980.html

Learned of this while watching Whale Wars, most recent season. Not the most reliable source so i included above for reference.

I find it curious that when it comes to animals, some we love & some we eat. Personally I am a vegan at heart but would serve whale meat at a family get together just to get people to question their own choices and how that directly causes suffering.

And here is a verbatim quote from my high school teacher. I forget why but a Japanese foreign exchange student (a good friend of mine, FWIW) made him mad and the old male (we think he was KKK) teacher got 12 inches from his face and said it so loud the whole class could hear. This was in 12th grade BTW, we were all like 17 years old. I never forgot it. I was so upset to hear of the diverted donations it makes me want to say what he did – “we should have dropped the third one”

doing it with pure people power – now THAT would be a sport!

Of course, we shouldn’t have dropped the first one and the take away is you can’t judge other people’s culture from the perspective of your own. I mean, I am not going to quit drinking Jameson’s whiskey just because one of the heirs (James S Jameson) bought a little girl and offered her to cannibals just so he could witness the process and make sketches of the process. That would be ridiculous, I don’t live in that century and I’m only 1/8th Irish!

Shoutout to all my Japanese homies back on the motherland – i hope they let me back in!