The End of Whaling Season for Japan?

With my previous blog about Japan and the whaling commission, stated that Japan takes advantage of its whaling rights.  Also, Japan hunts numerous of whales during one season, and shouldn’t be allowed to hunt that much whales anymore.  They claim it is for research, but many knows that they use whales as food.  In this recent article, it mentioned that Japanese whalers are heading home after a whaling crusade in Antarctica.  After a fire that led to the death of one of its sail-mate and the crippling of its ship, Nisshin Moronuki, Japanese whalers are finally heading back to their nation.  With the Nisshin Moronuki damaged it could lead to a possible endangerment of the Antarctic environment.  The ship has the capabilties to carry 1.3 million liters of fuel oil, making the ship vulnerable to spilling fuel oil into the ocean.  For now, none of the oil had spill. Since it is posing a high risk of endangering the environment, New Zealand and many conservationists offered to tow the ship back, but Japan refuses, claiming that the ship could move with its own steam.  Japan is making a huge mistake with whaling and denying the offer from New Zealand and many others.  Their reputation is on the line, because many nations want Japan to stop the whaling for their own benefits.  Now with more environmental problems caused by Japan, its not making a very strong impression for the rest of the world to see. 

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/02/25/whaling.fleet.ap/index.html

Spy Satellite Network

On February 26, 2007, Japan introduced their successful spy satellite out of space.  Japan has been trying to enter the space race for about a decade now, unfortunately for them they haven’t been successful.  Japan created the spy satellite system nine years ago, but most of their experiments didn’t work out they way they planned.  They were having some technical difficulties.  Most of their spy satellite would explode in space, therefore, they needed to fix their approach to the network system.  Since they didn’t have any network that would provide them any spy satellite information, the Japanese has been depending on their allies for information, but now that their network is working well that wouldn’t be necessarily anymore.  With many Asian nations in the space race, Japan needs the improvement of their spy satellite, to keep them in the race.  Although Japan launched their spy satellite network, many critics was criticizing the quality of Japan’s spy satellite.  They disapproved the pictures, because it doesn’t come out as clearly as many other nations.  Even though the quality of their system isn’t as well as other nations, its a beginning of their comeback.  They are showing the world that they want to be and are capable of being involved. 

http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2007/02/26/587812-japan-establishes-spy-satellite-network

North Korea insulting Japan…

During the 1970’s and 1980’s, North Korea was accused of kidnapping thirteen of Japanese citizens.  After about a year, the North Koreans finally let the victims go, but only five was able to return safely back to Japan.  The rest was presumably dead.  Therefore, Japan cannot let go of that grudge.  On February 9, 2007, there was a conference regarding the international nuclear program.  Throughout the conference, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe couldn’t let go of the kidnapping issue.  North Korea accused Japan of trying to threaten the development of the international nuclear talks.  North Korea also stated that Japan should forget about the whole kidnapping situation.  North Korea than attacked Japan with many ugly words such as “it is ridiculous and disgusting that Japan, which is not even qualified to attend the talks, keeps saying that the abduction issue is a basic agenda.”  Japan does not want to build any relationships with North Korea after the kidnapping ordeal.  “Pledging not to establish diplomatic relations with North Korea until it ’shows sincerity’ on the matter.”  Since Japan would not budge on the issue until North Korea shows some sort of compassion, it might disrupt the disarmament talks.  The disarmament talks has been an ongoing matter since August 2003. 

 With many nations still at odds end with each other, it is hard to compromise on any important subject matter.  We shouldn’t let those types of disagreement disrupt any solutions to any problems that might be problematic in the future.  North Korea, obviously, do not want to promote peace with Japan, which would be hard for any disarmament talks or any type of talks for that matter. 

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/02/09/nkorea.japan.ap/index.html

Japan and the International Whaling Commission

The International Whaling Commission held a meeting regarding the hunting of whales.  Many nations are anti-whaling, such as the United States, Britain, and Australia but they attended the meeting in order to change the policy of whaling.  Japan, on the other hand, doesn’t want to prohibit commercial whaling, but to administer it.  Japan kills hundred of whales every year, due to what they call “research”.  They declare that they use the whales to study the whale feeding habits and breeding.  They claim to use whales as scientific experiments, but many environmental groups feel that its just an excuse for whale hunting.  After the experiments, the Japanese would use the whale meat as food.  The Japanese explains that whale is an essential part of their food traditions.  As a result to the Japanese killing many whales, the anti-whaling nations did not show up to the conference on Tuesday, and they are planning to boycott the Wednesday’s session. 

The Japanese has their own goals in mind, before coming to the conference.  They didn’t want the IWC to ban whaling, because that’s a big part of their economy.   Their goal is to reform some of the regulations that IWC has.  They are using it for their advantage.  “Opponents also accused Japan of buying support from other nations in the IWC with aid.”  Japan is trying to stay ahead of the game by getting more nations on their side rather than going against them.  If they do maintain support from other nations, their political power would grow.  Japan shouldn’t be allowed to kill that many whales. 

Pakistan and Turkey Collaborating?

In a recent article, it stated that Pakistan and Turkey are willing to work together to promote peace throughout the Middle East. The Pakistan’s President General Pervez Musharraf and Turkish Ahmet Necdet held a news conference on Monday February 5, 2006, announcing their collaboration with each other in promoting peace within the Middle East. General Pervez Musharraf stated at the news conference that ” We are aiming to contribute to efforts to bring peace to our region, to the world and the Muslim world.” With this peace effort between the two states, it would probably help resolve some of the religion problems that has been ongoing in the Middle East for a number of years.

The two nations might make this work, if each one of the nation would keep their words in keeping peace. It’s hard to work well with one another, especially when there isn’t any trust in the relationship. Most nation would act on their own self-interest, making cooperation very difficult to achieve. With many problems within the Middle East, the Muslim nations need more states willing to help with the peace effort.