In what clearly shows the world is ruled by big money corporate interests, hard-line antiwhaling group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has bizarrely been forced to pay the illegal Japanese whaling industry $2.55 million for “damages”.
Despite the whaling industry being illegal and despite Sea Shepherd being the only group in the world to fight the illegal slaughter, a U.S. court has nonetheless ruled that the group must pay the substantial sum.
Facing possible jail time, the group now has no choice and has agreed to pay Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research, a sham front company purporting to do “research whaling” but really just commercially fishing the whales into extinction.
The “research” fishing started in 1987, immediately following an international moratorium on commercial whaling. Japan officially still defends whaling as a cultural tradition and is the world’s number one killer of marine mammals. In addition to its commercial whaling, it also conducts a yearly mass killing of endangered dolphins.
The sham whaling company, along with Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha, the provider of the vessels and crew for the illegal activities, sued Sea Shepherd in U.S. federal court in 2011 and the court issued an injunction against the protests in 2012.
Sea Shepherd uses aggressive tactics like attempting to ram the whalers, throwing smoke bombs and dragging metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders to stop the illegal harvest of whales.
Last December, in a ruling clearly all about money, Sea Shepherd was held in contempt of a U.S. injunction banning the conservation group from attacking the Japanese government-funded whaling fleet and approaching the fleet on the open sea.
“Sea Shepherd does not agree with the Ninth Circuit [Court]’s holding that it was in contempt, but after more than two years of litigation, we are very pleased to be putting the contempt action behind us,” Sea Shepherd said on its website.
Sea Shepherd is widely regarded as one of the most honest and effective environmental groups in the world. It specializes action-oriented tactics to stop activities which hurt the environment. It is supported by many notable donors including Bob Barker, Christian Bale, Pierce Brosnan, Sean Penn and even the Dalai Lama.
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