Barrington comments

Many Australians must feel their government are nothing more than lapdogs when incidents like this occur. Most would probably concur that boarding a foreign vessel without permission is illegal and akin to piracy, and thus not support the actions of Sea Shepherd et al despite their noble cause. But why was the Japanese ship so close to the Australian coast and protest vessels? Was the Japanese ship trying to incite or avoid anti-whaling protest activity? Also, where is K. Rudd, the rather evangelical and media-savvy Australian foreign minister? Perhaps, if the protesters were carrying illegal drugs, the Australian government, spearheaded by none other than Mr Rudd, would spare no expense in negotiating the most favourable outcome for the protesters. It has been reported in the media many times that the Japanese pelagic whaling fleet is actually financially bankrupt, but kept afloat by Japanese government bailouts. This must be giving impetus to the Sea Shepherd's cause of putting the Japanese whalers out of business.

What is it with Japanese whaling? Other countries do it, so why not Japan? Or is it the lying hypocrisy of the J-Gov - Japanese consulates worldwide must love writing replies to the volumes of anti-whaling letters they receive. What would the concerned citizens of the world write about? SCIENTIFIC WHALING Even Japanese people sometimes have difficulty trying not to gloat over this one. My Japanese professor once said '... for science...' with a smile as he shovelled down a piece of whale (...or was it dolphin). CULTURE & HISTORY A logical argument when you consider many indigenous populations in the world carry out same or similar practices. But has the link between COASTAL whaling, with a recorded history, and PELAGIC whaling, imported from Norway and further augmented by industrialists, become a little thin, and laboured to say the least. I consider myself fairly ambivalent toward the issue, I have never seriously voiced or written a complaint although I have helped others. What I have found a little unpalatable is the use of disaster relief money, collected worldwide and donated to Japan, toward whaling expeditions. It seems the J-Gov has lost its backbone again, or are trying to invent a new way to define "disgraceful".