Japan Resumes Whaling

After a temporary setback last year in the International Court of Justice that declared its alleged research whaling program unscientific, Japan has resumed commercial whaling in the Southern Ocean under a new rubric. Whale advocates thought the decision represented the end of commercial whaling by Japan--not. Instead of the illegal JARPA II program, Japan cynically created another acronym NEWREP-A to describe a research program that is commercial whaling by any other name. Experts from the international Whaling Commission have already said their is not enough information in the documents to determine if the program is acceptable under international standards. Japan countered by unilaterally declaring the proposal sufficient to proceed with whaling. Japan's defiant response has been declared "a slap in the face of the International Commission." Nevertheless, sale of whale meat that is harvested under lethal scientific research programs is legal under IWC rules. Japan is exploiting this loophole to the maximum extent. In October Japan said it would no longer accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice on maritime resources to avoid more embarrassing litigation over its whaling activities. Opposition is bound to heat up over the Japan's controversial hunting.

Australian courts have been somewhat sympathetic to whaling opponents. The Australian Federal Court fined Japan $1 million for breaching an earlier injunction covering Australia's declared whale sanctuary. Japan, however, does not recognize Australian jurisdiction over part of the Southern Ocean within its declared exclusive economic zone. Australian greens have called for Australia's navy to shadow the whaling fleet and collect evidence of any illegal activities. The Australian government is unlikely to comply with this demand for direct intervention, choosing instead to engage Japan on this issue at the diplomatic level.

Without a legal platform Japan is willing to accept, there is little except direct action that can bring Japan's whale hunting to an end. The conservation group Sea Shepard has mounted harassment campaigns in the past that have reduced the size of the catch substantially. Recently computer hackers told the press that they crashed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's official website to protest the resumption of whaling. Japan's fleet left port on December 2nd bound for the Southern Ocean. The whaling fleet plans to take 333 minke whales--a lower quota than in previous years. No public word yet on what Sea Shepard's response will be this season.

New Wolf Pack in Washington State

 curious member of the Lookout Pack, credit: High Country News

Washington state now has its seventeenth wolf pack that moved into the state from Idaho and Montana.  Once again nature proves that if given half a chance, it will restore balance to the land. The new pack has taken up residence near the towns of Twisp and Omak in Okanogan County. Federal and state wildlife officials confirmed the pack's location after a flurry of wolf sightings from the public. They will attempt to collar a pack member this summer in order to follow their travels. A least six wolves are estimated to be traveling together. The state recently counted a minimum of 68 wolves, up from 27 just four years ago. Recovery obviously depends on human reaction to their presence; gray wolves are protected by the state east of Highway 97 and federally protected in the western two-thirds. Nevertheless, at least a half dozen wolves have been poached since 2012.

It is encouraging to note that some ranchers are taken a proactive approach to potential conflicts.  Range riders are helping to track wolves and livestock to get  more reality-based data on clashes between wolves and livestock. Undeniably the natural return of the wolf after decades of persecution has opened up a deep political divide in Washington. A survey conducted by the Washington wildlife department found that almost two-thirds of respondents favored wolf recovery, but the same survey showed those supporters are from the liberal corridor along the Interstate 5 corridor.

The rural, conservative east side of the state are where the wolves now live and people are more ambivalent about their presence. Washington's wolves had to cross hundreds of miles of agricultural land to reach the dense forests of the south central Cascades where elk still roam. In order to help the wolves reach undeveloped areas where they are at least tolerated, state wildlife officials have placed emphasis on non-letha control methods such as subsidizing the ranger rider activity, guard dogs and and other methods. But only 14 ranchers have signed on to the program. Wolves are still killed by Washington state if they are confirmed to be cow killers. It takes at lot less for private citizens to resort to killing wolves. As one cattleman from Stevens County put it, " I don't like them [wolves] and I think the state has too many of them." State biologist think there will not be enough wolves--15 breeding pairs for at least three consecutive years--in the state until 2021 to remove them from the endangered species list. Meanwhile, trigger fingers are getting very itchy.

Beijing Issues Red Alert for Air Pollution

credit: Getty Images

The city of Beijing issued its first "red alert" for air quality on Tuesday lasting until noon, December 10th. It is the first such red alert issued by the government for a city with notoriously bad air quality. Some industrial activity will be curtailed and school cancelled. Citizens are advised to curtail outdoor activity. The pollution is less intense than last week when government officials kept the warning level at orange despite the level of particulates reaching 666 micrograms of PM 2.5 in Tiananmen Square [photo]. That is twenty-five times the World Health Organization's recommended levels. The smog is expected to peak Wednesday. Vehicular traffic is Beijing's main smog source because emissions levels are exceeded by about 10 or more of the city's traffic.

'Toontime: Disarraied States of America

credit: Bob Englehart, Hartford Courant

The radicalized Muslim couple in San Bernardino who slaughtered fourteen colleagues were able to amass an arsenal of weapons in their home with only their co-conspirators knowing about it. Such a situation in only possible in 'Merica where its citizens are willing to put up with regular mayhem in their schools, workplaces and homes. 'Mericans are paying in blood for an 18th century ideal that is no longer fits in a 21st century world.  Our politicians are simply reduced to on-lookers who spend their time searching for scapegoats.

credit: Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News
Wackydoodle axes: Wanna hold my machine gun, boy?

Update: The Current Occupant has decided he can no longer safely ignore the slaughter that is occuring in 'Merican cities practically eveyday (the statistic: over 365 shooting incidents since last January). He has an uphill battle against the entrenched gun lobby in an election year in his attempt to convince his fellow citizens that the right to amass private arsenals is not constitutionally protected, at least not in an age of mult-trilion dollar standing armies. The Second Amendment was written to insure that nacent nation would have a source of armed men available for national defense because the Continental Army was only a temporary organization that always had difficulty raising men and munitions from the states. The Supreme Court, in deciding that the amendment represents a personal right and not a artifice of national soverignty made an ideologically driven misinterpretation of history that is costing us blood. It can only get worse as the "Long War" drags on into its fifteenth year.

To end this post on a positive note, US Person encourages his readers to sign this petition supporting Bernie Sanders' proposal to reinstate postal banks. US has written before about the benefits of a source of low-cost, convenient credit not under the direct control of Wall Street available at your local post office. {23.02.15} It appears Bernie agrees.

Climate Deniers Winning Battle?

A recent government funded study by Michigan State University of 1600 persons shown conflicting news articles about global warming reveal skeptics are swayed more by stories also skeptical of the existence of the man-made phenomenon. The study confirms anecdotal evidence. A Fox News poll only 3 percent of voters listed global warming as their top concern.  It is no surprise that terrorism tops the list. Conservatives have successfull framed the issue as a conspiracy of the left against business interests.  But there is no denying that 14 of the last 15 years have been the hottest in recorded history; nevertheless right wing politicians like Ted Cruz were able to cherry-pick available data in the 2013 IPCC assessment report to declare a warming hiatus after 1998. The discrepancy most climate scientist think  can be put down to an underestimate of the warming that has already occurred and gaps in data. In fact an updated analysis of global surface temperatures in Science shows actual warming trends are higher than estimated by the IPCC, possible double the previous assessment.  Since the late 19th century temperatures have risen about 1.6F and could rise another 10 degrees by the end of the century.  According to large multinational study,Explaining Extreme Events of 2014 from a Climate Perspective, of twenty-eight large climate events that occurred in 2014, fully half are attributable to man-made climate change.

For decades social psychologists have emphasized the effect of "motivated reasoning" If people are motivated--in this case profit--to not believe something, they will work hard to find a way not to believe it. Conservatives who consider the bottom line sacred, are doing just that and taking the rest of us lemmings with them over the climate cliff.

Arizona Border Recon Upholds Vigilante Tradition

credit: J. Milano

America's west has a long history of vigilante action. It was once a lawless frontier and peaceful citizens  needed substitute for the lack of official law enforcement. Hardly the case nowadays, but Arizona's Border Recon, an armed
group of ex-servicemen and law enforcers is keeping the tradition alive. These men perceive a need to patrol the desert wastes along the Mexican border that is often marked by nothing more than a waist-high metal fence backed with barbed wire--hardly enough to keep out a determined jihadist bent on bringing terrorism to US soil once again.

The group of about 200 men was started by Tim "Nailer" Foley, who "got off the couch" to do something about what he sees as a serious problem-- an insecure southern border. Foley lives about 400 yards from the border.  He dismisses the usual criticisms of being a "gun-nut" and a nativist extremist, by referring to the recent terror attacks in Paris. His group patrols a six to eight mile perimeter 24/7 armed and equipped with night vision equipment. Foley claims they have video of non-Mexicans crossing illegally into the US.  He identifies them as "Pakistanis and Afghanis". Of course the official Border Patrol does not endorse the private action of armed civilians, and "strongly encourages" private citizens to contact official law enforcement agencies. Official records list three Afghans and twenty-six Pakistanis attempting to cross illegal in the period FY2013-2015 (July). Recently the FBI confirmed that five men from Pakistan and one from Afghanistan were captured trying to cross the border, but found no derogatory information on their records. So the amateurs consider themselves to be rendering more service to their country in a time of war. Foley points out that people who want to participate in their patrols must pass a background check and abide by strict rules of engagement. Foley was checked out by FBI when someone tipped the bureau in 2011 that Foley had been accused of leaving pie bombs on heavily trafficked trails. The sheriff of Santa Cruz County told Al Jazeera America Foley is a troublemaker and too gung-ho. His organization attracts a "lot of crackpots" according to that sheriff, and Foley is, "going to get us into a lot of trouble".

Foley, who lost his comfortable life as a construction foreman earning $40/hr in Phoenix after the crash, formed Arizona Border Recon in 2011 as a response to corruption. Since then the group has run five missions a year in which it has detained hundreds of people at the border. They concentrate on trails under less official surveillance, often used by drug mules. When asked if he would ever return to a more routine life in Phoenix, he replied "I've taken the red pill" in a reference to the popular science fiction flim, "The Matrix". "You know why they call it the American Dream, Foley asked his interviewer, "Because you have got to be asleep to believe it."

Tru'merica: The "Monster Fraud"

Just one of the reasons other countries find it difficult to cooperate with the United States on issues of global concern such as climate change and global jhad is its self-righteous attitude about its purported democratic form of government. Other countries see themselves as democratic or at least as democratic as the United States, but face a profound disdain from our leaders when asked to cooperate in areas of mutual concern. Is this "American exceptionalism" justified by our historical record? US Person thinks not.

One only has to return to the disputed election of 2000 to see the triumph of plutocratic diktat when George W. Bush was installed by a conservative, unelected Supreme Court despite Al Gore's popular vote victory both nationwide and in the disputed state of Florida. Essentially, the case of Bush v. Gore was a coup d'état. But the ability of political elites' ability to manipulate the American election process was even more flagrantly displayed in the contested election of 1876, when a single disputed Electoral College vote allowed a Republican Congress voting along party lines to award disputed electoral votes from Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana (still not under home rule) to Rutherford B. Hayes as president. The popular election of Democrat Samuel J. Tilden by more than 50% of the vote was voided by the nation's elite. In the so-called "Compromise of 1877" Tilden conceded in a hotel-room deal in return for the removal of federal troops from the South which sealed the failure of Reconstruction to dismantle its agrarian, white plutocracy. The lecture at the Flagler Museum below discusses the most disputed election in American history in its historical context. Skip the first four and half minutes to avoid  introductions and credits.



There is a modern lesson from the centennial deal that compromised American democracy irrevocably. Given our current federal election system, it can happen again in a close election where the results are contested. This election cycle is shaping into such a potentially indecisive and disruptive contest between a Wall Street hack and a dangerous, racist demagogue who seems to have concluded the road to more personal fame and fortune is through agitation of nativist reaction similar to the bloody shirt tactics employed by Republicans in 1876.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, such irresponsible rhetoric by so-called political leaders indirectly contributes to the goal of ISIS to provoke the west into a cataclysmic  crusade against the world's 1.6billion Muslims.  For arrogant America finds it much easier to drop bombs than wage peace.