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SmOakland said:
Ignorance.  The practice of harvesting and eating these whales is very old, and has a negligible effect on the environment when compared to raising livestock.  If you want to think that your culture is in some way superior to theirs because they kill the meat themselves instead of paying others to do it, that is fine with me.

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budnectar said:
Thebooedocksaint, I agree with you 100%. However, if you think Denmark is bad, you don't even want to look into Japan... I watched a documentary on Japanese dolphin slaughter a while ago. Basically, they corral these dolphins by freaking them out hitting these long metal poles in the water, tie em up in a net; then they pick the "best" few to sell to places like Seaworld and kill the rest in a similar manner to the Dutch. However, the point was made in the documentary that dolphins have an extremely high toxic level of mercury. This was all focused on one small fishing village in Japan. And these people fucking knew it! so they lied on the labels of meat they'd sell at stores calling it mackrel or dog or some shit. But in defense of the "tradition" of their local economy, these shady fuckers lied and people got sick- not overtly but like birth defects, sinility. There was even some rule that said it was mandatory that Japanese school children had to eat EVERYTHING in their school lunch. Guesss what? There was fucking dolphin. Oh oh but get this, shit changed because a town council member's child went to that school.

It also mentioned some sort of Japanese treaty to not massacre dolphins and I think that's why this fishing village was dead serious about it's secrecy. And if there's an agreement on paper saying we shouldn't kill dolphins [openly] it's because deep down in our conscience, we know it's wrong, especially in light of the brutality of it.


A. It's toxic to eat.
B. As much as we deny it, everything we do affects the environment for better or worse. Whether they're endangered or not, to say this doesn't have an affect on the environment is such a sign of human arrogance and ignorance. Driving your car affects the environment doesn't it? So killing thousands and thousands of dolphins every year by ambushing them on their annual mating routes just might leave a slightly larger differently shaped footprint.
C. Dolphins are fucking cool.
D. To even argue whether or not they're endangered being the sole pivot of consideration as to if it affects the environment is just 

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SmOakland said:

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Stoneth said:

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DungenessDank said:
The reality of nature is that the world is a brutal place.

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QFT!

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You should consider that a large proportion of the world gets its meat from hunting, often times with primitive weapons.  Those two examples of cetacean hunts were relatively humane.  Saying that the people in the video should somehow be "above" everyone else and every other species in the world is ridiculous and culturally insensitive.  The cows you see being treated well make up a small percentage of cows in the US, and it is likely that even though you see them grazing in a pasture, a large proportion of their life is spent pent up standing in piles of feces.

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SmOakland said:
hawks- the fact that you value the feelings and lives of dolphins more than cows, pigs, chicken, or sheep is due to your biases.  Nobody in the first world NEEDS to kill for survival, but if you eat 99% of mcommercial meat you are paying for carnage of greater scale than what is happening in the vid.

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