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17th May 2012, 03:11 AM | #321 |
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17th May 2012, 03:52 AM | #322 |
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That's probably more in line with what they are capale of doing in reverse.
Of course you can't just jam a boat into reverse and hit the gas and expect to start moving backwards. There this thing called inertia. Add to that the fact the boat was what, 70 feet long? They were playing a game of chicken all season long. It's not surprising that someone finally got hit. I'm pretty sure that's what the maritime court was saying in their ruling. You play with the bull you get the horns. |
17th May 2012, 05:59 AM | #323 |
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17th May 2012, 06:06 AM | #324 |
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17th May 2012, 06:09 AM | #325 |
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17th May 2012, 06:45 AM | #326 |
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I place a very low value on some human lives, yes. Those who are deliberately endangering others for going about their lawful business fall into that category.
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17th May 2012, 07:22 AM | #327 |
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The LAW doesn't matter to these scumbags. |
17th May 2012, 07:29 AM | #328 | |||
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The length doesn't matter; what matters is the displacement.
Here's a video that I consider supports my overall argument:
That's a 40' cruising catamaran, which vessels average between 9 and 10 tons of displacement. It is already moving forward, but notice how quickly it is able to gain significant speed within just a couple of seconds of the throttle being opened up. And consider that sailboats aren't generally designed for that kind of speed, forward or reverse; the boat's two 115-horsepower engines aren't particularly concerned about that. The Ady Gil, conversely, displaces 13 tons and carries two 540-horsepower engines. That's 30% more displacement, but with 400% more power to move it! It cannot take that vessel more than a couple of seconds to establish a positive speed, forwards or backwards. Yes, the vessel is not as streamlined facing reverse as it is forward; and yes, there are propellers that are more somewhat more efficient driving forward than they are in reverse; but I feel safe saying that it's impossible that a motorboat that size designed to move forward in the water at 32 knots can present such a poor reverse-hull shape and have such a forward-biased propeller that its more than 1,000 ponies are suddenly going to be as responsive as an oil tanker when thrown in reverse from a standstill. |
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17th May 2012, 07:39 AM | #329 |
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It's not questionable. That's pretty obvious. Humans have actually died from the types of mistakes and actions that SS has engaged in, even though the specific acts of SS haven't happened to result in any human deaths yet. Swerving around on the highway, driving while drunk, or putting people who have no idea how to operate a motor vehicle can and have resulted in deaths so it wouldn't be questionable to point that out even if in a specific case it did not for example. This is the same with the SS people. By objective measure of safety at sea, their actions are dangerous and potentially deadly. Calling it 'annoying' is using a weasel word.
More on the whales below.
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To the SS people, saving some whales in a violent manner is more important than the wishes of the whalers. To me, saving humans from the sex trade or murder by their dictators is worth that tactic.
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Poisoning the well is more childish than what you accuse me of.
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Declaring your view to be the skeptical one in order to cast it as the 'correct' narrative is wrong. So is asserting motivations to those who disagree with your assessment. Calling the SS people 'hippies' is an abuse of the word.
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There is an actual discussion here on if the whales in question are moral agents worth killing humans to protect. Now I would at this point disagree with that on the whales that are being hunted. While I think they should not be hunted, I don't see them as worth human life. One can't cite how one type of whale might be morally complex and expect that to be valid for all whales any more than one can cite humans and claim that all primates are self-aware. On a slight tangent, I'm for responsible medical testing on animals for the same basic reason the SS people justify their violence. It isn't that I don't see the animals, monkeys specifically, as worth protecting but that I see the saving of human lives as worth the sacrifice. Protecting the whales from an ecological standpoint is a lot less defensible than their protecting the tuna as the whales in many (not all) cases are being sustainably harvested. At some level we all find things worth fighting, dieing, and killing for. For abortion clinic bombers, it's their believe in the fetus being a human life with a soul. For the SS people, it's protecting whales. For the Founding Fathers, it was representative government. No one has convinced me yet that those first two means are justified by their ends, and that's not coming from a comic book but an assessment of both the means and the ends. |
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17th May 2012, 07:53 AM | #330 | |||
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Nonsense, as proven by their own video:
You'll notice that immediately after the collision (which, despite the whaler "turning so hard it was almost horizontal" managed to end up more of a side-swiping than a head-on ramming), at 22 seconds the Ady begins to reverse and picks up significant momentum without delay. Considering that the two vessels were on convergent courses rather than perpendicular courses, reversing would've taken the Ady not only away from the whaler laterally but astern of it in a way that the whaler couldn't steer to compensate for and keep a collision course. |
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17th May 2012, 08:50 AM | #331 |
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My phone won't play the video so forgive me I'm going from memory. I believe they were low on fuel but making sweeping passes in front of the Japanese vessel, several times in fact without incident. It's only the last time where anything changed, and that was the Japanese boat suddenly veering and hitting the other boat.
Maybe I'm mistaken but I recall it being very clear. I'm surprised anyone is arguing otherwise. But I am going from memory. |
17th May 2012, 09:01 AM | #332 |
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sauce for the goose and sauce for the gander
It seems to me that this notion cuts both ways. The Ady Gil had a right to be where it was, and the Japanese vessel cut its bow off. It would have been nice if the Japanese authorities had cooperated with the investigation, and then we might be able to make more definitive statements about fault. However, it is difficult for me to see that the Japanese ship is not at least partly at fault, and someone might have been killed.
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17th May 2012, 09:02 AM | #333 |
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They had just taken on fuel from the Bob Barker, and were waving goodbye. The Shonan Maru, tailing them, watched the whole thing. Because the Ady Gil stopped in the water, no doubt to simply relax, that's when the Shonan Maru decided to take action, because the smaller, faster, more maneuverable ship was idling. It was their only shot to attempt murder, so they took it.
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17th May 2012, 09:31 AM | #334 | |||
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The video taken from the Ady Gil...
...shows the crew being aware of and indeed watching the approaching whaler from a significant distance as it closed, and at no time taking any action to evade the obviously on-coming ship. FWIW, it seems to show that the Ady was also slowly motoring forward on a steady course the entire time. The crew seems to have something of a "it's not like they're actually going to hit us" demeanor as they and the whaler continued to close. Looking at other videos of the "Sea Shepherds" in action, it seems to me that one of their harassment tactics is attempting to force the whalers to change course by repeatedly getting in their way and threatening collisions. I believe this was such a case. The Ady didn't intend to collide with the whaler; it was supposed to pose a hazard and the whaler was supposed to have to turn to avoid it. This time it just didn't work out that way. Frankly it was only a matter of time, IMO. |
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17th May 2012, 11:54 AM | #335 |
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17th May 2012, 01:27 PM | #336 |
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They are doing it in a protected sanctuary under the guise of "this is a tradition of ours to kill whales". The sanctuary in question is the Indian Ocean Whale Sanctuary, the best map of which I can find is here. The islands in question are Solor and Lembata, both of which are more or less directly below Sulawesi (the island shaped like a funny looking 'K' on the map), well within the sanctuary.
Yes, because as the Japanese themselves admit they sell the meat afterwards.
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But then this pretty much goes back to something I said earlier. The difference between what these Indonesians are doing and what the Japanese are doing is simply a matter of scale. How this scale relates to it being a "commercial" activity probably depends more on local conditions compared to global ones.
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The problem is that as long as Japan is actually releasing research based on the whaling, such as the ones they claim here and here they haven't violated the permits. By the way, just going through the titles I'm going to say you don't need to kill whales to do DNA studies. I'm guessing they came about because of the hunting and not the other way around.
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If that was correct then they wouldn't bother with the pretence of issuing research permits. As far as I'm aware research whaling is still permitted in the sanctuaries, as is apparently "traditional" whaling. |
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17th May 2012, 01:48 PM | #337 |
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17th May 2012, 02:25 PM | #338 |
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Humans worship power. Seismosaurus skirts the morality of the issue by emphasizing what people are legally doing. Well, sometimes the law ain't right.
People are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their actions, we agree. The current U.S. president has authorized numerous drone attacks known to take innocent human life. Yet, for these actions, Barack Obama's not generally referred to as human "scum" (policies broadening health coverage are more likely to trigger the label, but that only shows how upside down the world is). In fact, he's a Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Watson and crew pursue identifiable ships, not people hiding in bumble-**** Pakistan. The Sea Shepard has successfully disrupted attacks without a single loss of human life (while presumably saving many whales). It's funny how frequently critics say "that by some miracle" liberationists have not yet killed anyone. The very same people will hem and haw when it comes to defending mass-killing by their governments. Anyway, these liberationists are not "scum". They're heroes. The problem is humans are awed by power, not morality. |
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17th May 2012, 02:49 PM | #339 |
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Sea Shepherds invokes the law. They explicitly claim they are justified in using the tactics they use because under their interpretation of international law, what Japanese whalers and Costa Rican tuna fishermen are doing is "illegal". Yet the tactics Sea Shepherds uses, such as colliding with other vessels and structures and deliberately impeding free navigation of other vessels, are objectively illegal.
The high seas are not the US; there's no such thing as "citizen's arrest" if you see a crime being committed. International maritime law is rather emphatic that only warships and other vessels appropriately marked as representative of national governments are legally allowed to pursue, attempt to detain, or otherwise act upon vessels that are allegedly violating the law. Breaking the law as a response to lawbreaking is generally considered bad form even when governments do it, let alone private citizens. Terms like "lynch mob" are commonly invoked in such situations. |
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17th May 2012, 04:16 PM | #340 |
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@wildy- it seems my post didn't make it, must be my phone. anyhoo...
Commercialism is a matter or scale. It's pretty obvious when you see the other traditional hunts around the World what the Japanese are doing is commercial. I don't think you'd let a kid convince you a bazooka and a bottle rocket were the same thing despite a small matter of scale. Unfortunately that's the same logic I see being applied here when people say "Well I don't see the difference". |
17th May 2012, 04:25 PM | #341 |
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http://www.insidecostarica.com/daily...ca12051701.htm
Been checking the news...it looks like Watson's extradition hearing will be Friday. Anyone want to take bets on whether Germany will allow his extradition? |
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17th May 2012, 05:04 PM | #342 |
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Following their own logic, vigilante hanging of Watson is the way to go.
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17th May 2012, 05:08 PM | #343 |
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17th May 2012, 05:38 PM | #344 |
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17th May 2012, 05:47 PM | #345 |
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17th May 2012, 06:14 PM | #346 |
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It was a neat-looking thing; but I confess I've always been more partial to sail than motorboats.
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17th May 2012, 06:29 PM | #347 |
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Love this weaselly passive-aggressive language. People use that term, but YOU'RE not using that term, right? Sea Shepard functions like a lynch mob, except without the lynching. Fair enough.
I'm rather confident the Sea Shepard people do not really care about international law. They care more about the welfare of whales. Before we get into misguided categorical imperatives, a little bit of vigilantism can be a good thing. It's too bad all the great moral issues have already been decided. I'm sure that fifty years ago, everyone here would have said "What's the big deal with gay marriage??" Going back further each and everyone would have illegally harbored Jews, plotted against Hitler, worked to stop the slave trade. It's just such a shame how all these brave, far-sighted people are wasted in the year 2012. Well, at least we can rage against the moron vigilantes. We know they're not serious thinkers. If they were serious thinkers they'd be hunched over keyboards. |
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17th May 2012, 06:31 PM | #348 |
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17th May 2012, 07:04 PM | #349 |
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Since they are obeying the letter of the law, I suspect it matters quite a bit to them. If the law were irrelevant to them then they wouldn't bother to talk about research - they'd just say screw it and hunt whales.
But they do it the way they do it because it exploits a legal loophole, which is a legal thing to do. And the correct response to a legal loophole is to modify the law to close the hole - not to run around acting as a vigilante. Seriously, if businesses employ tax loopholes would you endorse simply stealing money off them? If a criminal gets off on a technicality would you endorse simply lynching him out back of the courthouse instead? What the Japanese are doing is within the law. Change the law if you don't like that. |
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17th May 2012, 07:30 PM | #350 |
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Exactly. Which is why you need to feign skepticism about them having saved any whales, ever, in order to have anything resembling a sensible argument. No humans dead, lots of whales probably saved, sounds like a good deal even if the lives of some humans were risked.
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Since I already explained to you why rational people should see abortion clinic bombers differently to Sea Shepherd, this argument of yours is nonsensical.
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Until then it looks like they are achieving morally valuable ends using risks that are proportional to and acceptable given the cause. Whereas the whalers put human lives at risk in a far more immediate and direct manner so that they could go on whaling, which puts them on a far, far lower moral level than Sea Shepherd. |
17th May 2012, 08:18 PM | #351 |
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A wonderfully naive sentiment, but sometimes the laws don't change just because we don't like them, sometimes you've got to smash up an offshore or two. If you're lucky, sometimes it takes an all out civil war.
Of course I hesitate to encourage this Watson fellow. He's on a mission to save whales. If some primitives want to hunt whales in a traditionally sustainable manner I don't have a problem with it. |
17th May 2012, 08:22 PM | #352 |
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Asserting arguments. I'm not skeptical that they haven't saved any whales ever, put down the straw. One need not believe that to have a sensible argument regarding the cost/benefit of SS actions especially in comparing them to other actions that may have saved more whales.
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17th May 2012, 08:40 PM | #353 |
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Yeah I'm using it. I posted it, didn't I?
But they claim to care about international law even as they violate it, which makes them hypocrites. I'm happy that you have a special Seeing Stone that tells you what they really think; but I'm afraid I have to suffer with going by what they say publicly. If you think so. Wow that's really interesting. I wonder if those true heroic brave people who hid Jews from Hitler would've entertained an exception of a certain number of Jew-burnings by native Germans, or those Underground Railroad conductors of the Civil War area would have approved of a certain small amount of slave owning and trading as long as it was done in a "sustainable and responsible manner". |
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17th May 2012, 08:45 PM | #354 |
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17th May 2012, 09:07 PM | #355 |
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So the Allies were hypocrites for killing people to stop people from killing people? I don't want to be a skeptic if it means allowing genocide for fear of being called a hypocrite.
Human slavery done responsibly is called "minimum wage" |
17th May 2012, 09:17 PM | #356 |
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17th May 2012, 10:03 PM | #357 |
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It is my understanding that the Allies were killing people to stop them from taking control of land; so no hypocrisy.
It is my understanding that the existence and extent of the Holocaust (if that's what you're referring to) was not generally known until close to the end of the war. |
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17th May 2012, 11:12 PM | #358 |
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17th May 2012, 11:31 PM | #359 |
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17th May 2012, 11:46 PM | #360 |
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You did, albeit in weaselly language.
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