More On Obama's Cop Out on whales

The following comes from Sue Arnold, Australians for Animals, a decades long campaigner against whaling. She well expresses my own feeling about Obama's decision not to sanction Iceland and my bewilderment at how save-the-whales groups could think his actions useful.

By Sue Arnold
Barack Obama has taken the easy way out. A report to Congress which
in effect sets a precedent for diminishing not only the IWC but all
multilateral environmental agreements which rely on trade sanctions
for enforcement.

The failure to issue trade sanctions against Iceland has profound
ramifications and ensures that the IWC is now a very toothless tiger.
The WTO rules supreme.

This is very serious. As for the groups who believe the instruction
relative to the Arctic and Iceland are useful, please explain exactly how?

Sue Arnold
Australians for Animals Int.

Whale Experts Says Obama Deal on Iceland a Cop-out

The quotation below is from Dr. Sidney Holt, a man who knows more about saving whales than any other living person. He is now in his mid-80s and knows IWC history personally going back fifty years.

Many enviro groups have hailed Obama's statement as a great step in whale preservation. I believe they are terribly mistaken and that is backed up by Dr. Holt's assessment which I publish below.

"It is the usual cop-out. Iceland has already responded, naturally, with threats to block the US bowhead catch/strike limit (at next IWC) in Panama. The rot started three years ago with the US Chairman trying to throw away 40 years of effort, much of it led by the US - Obama is simply continuing that in his own way. But he seems to be continuing the Bush administration's position on practically everything, often subtly worse. We should all be worried, but you in the US specially so. Sidney

Hurricane Hits Taiji as Dolphin Hunt Opens

The Dolphin killers were pinned into port as Typhoon Talas slammed into Taiji as well as other parts of Japan bringing torrential rain and winds to 75 mph. Dolphin hunting is suspended. Leilani Munter, car racer and dolphin activist reports rain dripping into her hotel. About a dozen previously captured dolphins are trapped in sea pens in a nearby inlet and are imminent danger of drowning as the nets entangle them.

USA and France Protect Humpbacks

NOAA and France’s Protected Areas Agency have signed a “sister sanctuary” agreement to support the protection of endangered humpback whales that migrate annually more than 3,000 miles between NOAA’s Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary off the Massachusetts coast and Agoa Marine Mammal Sanctuary in the Caribbean’s French Antilles.

Italy Protests Japan's Slaughter of Dolphins

Italy has submitted a formal protest today against Japan and expressed "feelings of dismay and great concern and sadness of Italian public
opinion" for the hunting of dolphins, a practice followed annually for
centuries in the bay of Taiji, a village south of Tokyo, in Wakayama
prefecture.

In this regard, on the recommendation of the Minister for Foreign Affairs Franco
Frattini, the Charge d'Affaires Embassy of Italy in Tokyo Alfredo Durante Mangoni, immediately went to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (Gaimusho) where he met the Director General for Europe
to whom he handed a letter of protest upon the imminent start of hunting
season.