Sleekit swines!

For almost 20 years now commercial whaling has been banned after some Whale populations such as the blue whale were hunted close to extinction. However there is now a very real threat that this ban could be overturned after underhand dealings by the Japanese. Whaling has a regulatory body, the International Whaling Commision(IWC) which this week is holding it's annual meeting. At this meeting are 14 new member states with no real whaling heritage, but over the past 6 six years have been essentialy bribed by the Japanese to earn their support in overturning the ban. Mali and Mongolia the standouts being landlocked nations. While presumably being perfectly legal it is at the same time utterly corrupt.

If they can get 51% of the vote this time around although not enough to overturn the ban it will be enough to introduce secret ballot at future votes and let countries away with voting for it without having to justify their actions. For all that getting the ban overturned would be bad news for Whales and those against the hunting of them they are far from safe as it is. As well as facing the threat of commerical whaling returning there seems to be absolutely nothing done to prevent Norway from openly flouting the ban. 670 whales were hunted by Norway last year and their whaling fleet has been given permission to kill 797 minke whales this year. Japan meanwhilw has been paying lipservice to the ban by conducting 'scientific' whaling, and are ready to double the amount of whales killed for 'scientific' purposes this year to 800.

edit: update on this here. Only had a quick scan, bit seems good news in that pro whaling types defeated so far.