<story><title>Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-46682976</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>avar</author><text>The article really doesn&amp;#x27;t do a good job of explaining what&amp;#x27;s going on, in particular:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; It means Japan will be able to freely hunt species currently protected by the IWC, like minke whales.&lt;p&gt;Japan has already been hunting Minke whale, in 2016 they killed more than 300[1].&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s changing here is not the facts on the ground, but a maneuver in international diplomacy. Japan, Iceland and Norway have opposed the IWC&amp;#x27;s total ban on whaling. Japan has, until now, decided to work around this by claiming the whaling is &amp;quot;scientific&amp;quot;, an obvious farce. It&amp;#x27;s been commercial whaling in all but name. Iceland and Norway have made no such claim, but issued commercial quotas in defiance of the moratorium.&lt;p&gt;Now Japan is going to withdraw from the IWC entirely, which e.g. Canada did a long time ago[2] citing similar arguments.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re also going to restrict their whaling to their &amp;quot;territorial waters and economic zones&amp;quot;, i.e. stop hunting in the Arctic. This was arguably the most controversial part of what they were doing before, e.g. Iceland and Norway don&amp;#x27;t hunt whales outside of their EEC.&lt;p&gt;1. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Whaling_in_Japan#Antarctica&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Whaling_in_Japan#Antarctica&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;International_Whaling_Commission#Allegation_of_politicising_science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;International_Whaling_Commissi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-46682976</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>temeritatis</author><text>People often defend these kind of acts with the rationale that it is a culture heritage. If so, shouldn&amp;#x27;t they be sailing the ocean with traditional wooden sailboats and relying only on wind and currents to take them where they should go?</text></comment>