Something for PB

whowherewhy wrote:

Repetition did not teach this.

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I am arguing that there is no adequate mechanism for enforcement and that there is a moral imperative to intervene.

Au contraire: I have a 3 year old Maltese. When we first got him, he would go lie down in his bed when we left the house. As he begin to get accustomed to his new surroundings, he would follow us to the door and that is where he would lay until we returned home. This is nothing more than a case of a dog missing his owner. We had to also do some repetition in order to get him to eat. We would reward him for eatin g his food and withhold the reward if he refused to eat.

BTW read this article about the SSCS.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4452644.html

This issue will be self correcting when the last whale is harpooned and "researched". Anyone can see that the Japanese are skirting the law just like here in Florida with Spice, where Pam Bondi outlaws a concoction and they change the ingredients and go right back to the shelves. Nobody needs that many freakin whales to do research on for crying out loud.

GR

i am not sure "missing" someome does not count as an emotion. Is it learned? Perhaps much like we " learn" to miss a loved one.

At the end of the article the comments are quite interesting. In the end japan is going to lose in the court of public opinion and as one writer says our best shot is to get the majority of japanese people outraged at their own government as well as the rest of theu world.

In the meantime i applaud the sea sheppard for their moral commitment to do the right thing even at risk of prison.

Paul said until there was KNOWLEDGE of sin there was no sin......but now there is knowledge

Vis a vis the sea sheppard.......

whowherewhy wrote:

GR

i am not sure "missing" someome does not count as an emotion. Is it learned? Perhaps much like we " learn" to miss a loved one.

At the end of the article the comments are quite interesting. In the end japan is going to lose in the court of public opinion and as one writer says our best shot is to get the majority of japanese people outraged at their own government as well as the rest of theu world.

In the meantime i applaud the sea sheppard for their moral commitment to do the right thing even at risk of prison.

Paul said until there was KNOWLEDGE of sin there was no sin......but now there is knowledge

Vis a vis the sea sheppard.......

But WWW, my whole point in this discussion is and has been to take the legal route and not vigilantism. I abhor the killing of whales under the umbrella of "research" as much as anyone here, but there is a right way and a wrong way to go about putting an end to it and vigilantism is not the right way. Australia IMHO has come up with the best way and that is file with the ICJ. Granted the ICJ takes 2 to 3 years to hear a case, but hear it they will. In the meantime, someone could possibly be killed because of the vigilantism of Paul Watson.

Well what we do know is that there would be more whales slaughtered without the sea sheppard and green peace.

And of course i place no higher value on the japanese fisherman 's lives than i do the whales.

I think the dividing lines are clear. If one views the slaughter of another intelligent being we share the planet with as murder then there is an
ABSOLUTE moral obligation to act laws or no laws protecting the murderes.

It is that simple.

whowherewhy wrote:

Well what we do know is that there would be more whales slaughtered without the sea sheppard and green peace.

And of course i place no higher value on the japanese fisherman 's lives than i do the whales.

I think the dividing lines are clear. If one views the slaughter of another intelligent being we share the planet with as murder then there is an
ABSOLUTE moral obligation to act laws or no laws protecting the murderes.

It is that simple.

Well IMO that is absurd and I mean absolutely no disrespect toward you or anyone else that shares your viewpoint.

Wild animals has and still does put a lot of food on my table and what I can't eat because of an abundance of it I donate to charity.

whowherewhy wrote:

Well what we do know is that there would be more whales slaughtered without the sea sheppard and green peace.

And of course i place no higher value on the japanese fisherman 's lives than i do the whales.

I think the dividing lines are clear. If one views the slaughter of another intelligent being we share the planet with as murder then there is an
ABSOLUTE moral obligation to act laws or no laws protecting the murderers.

It is that simple.

It really is that simple to me, too. I don't want to imagine the toll of whales slaughtered by the Japanese for meat if SSCS and Greenpeace were not active.

Why is it our country has the time and the will to file a restraining order against the Sea Shepherd, but our country has no will to try and stop the Japanese whaling operation? Why has our country not become involved in an attempt to stop the true outlaws - the Japanese commercial whalers?

All the time spent formulating a restraining order against Sea Shepherd, yet the order isn't even valid in international waters. How stupid that was on the part of government.

What's that quote - "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?"

For Ghost Rider: an article about the intelligence of whales.

Whales Boast the Brain Cells that Make Us Human
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10661-whales-boast-the-brain-cells-that-make-us-human.html

From the article:
"Now it turns out that these spindle cells also exist in the same brain areas in humpback whales, fin whales, killer whales and sperm whales.

What is more, whales appear to have had these cells for at least twice as long as humans, and early estimates suggest they could have three times as many spindle cells as us, even accounting for the fact that whale brains are larger than ours.

"It's absolutely clear to me that these are extremely intelligent animals," says Patrick Hof of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and co-discoverer of the whale spindle cells with Estel van der Gucht of the New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology, both in the US.

"We must be careful about anthropomorphic interpretation of intelligence in whales," says Hof. "But their potential for high-level brain function, clearly demonstrated already at the behavioural level, is confirmed by the existence of neuronal types once thought unique to humans and our closest relatives."

"They communicate through huge song repertoires, recognise their own songs and make up new ones. They also form coalitions to plan hunting strategies, teach these to younger individuals, and have evolved social networks similar to those of apes and humans," Hof says.
Express trains

As with humans, the spindle cells were found in whales in the anterior cingulate cortex and frontoinsular cortex - two brain regions vital for "visceral" reactions. Such reactions require fast but emotionally-sensitive judgments, such as deciding whether another animal is suffering pain, and the general feel of whether an experience is pleasant or unpleasant.

In addition, unlike in humans, the researchers also found spindle cells in the frontopolar cortex at the back of the brain, and they were sparsely dispersed elsewhere. Hof says he does not yet know the significance of spindles found in areas other than those that contain the cells in humans and great apes.

Exactly how spindle cells function in whales is still under investigation, but Hof believes the long, high-speed connections may fast-track information to and from other parts of the cortex. "The velocity of the signal is faster, and they miss out junctions on the way," says Hof. "They are like the ‘express trains' of the nervous system" that bypass unnecessary connections, enabling us to instantly process and act on emotional cues during complex social interactions.

Hof and van der Gucht suggest that whales probably evolved the spindle cells completely independently of humans and apes - a process called convergent evolution. Moreover, they probably evolved them as long as 30 million years ago, twice as long ago as humans and apes.

Spindle cells are most likely to emerge in unusually large brains which need extra circuitry to handle increasingly complex social interactions, Hof says.
Cognitive parallels

"The discovery of spindle neurons in cetaceans is a stunning example of neuro-anatomical convergence between cetaceans and primates," says Lori Marino of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, US. "The common ancestor of cetaceans and primates lived over 95 million years ago, and such a highly specific morphological similarity as the finding of spindle cells is clearly due to evolutionary convergence, not shared ancestry," she says. "

Any mammal that can communicate with its own language stands alongside in Absolute Equality with primates including homo sapien, the fact that THEY not US have learned to live in universal peace with one another actually places them above our own invasive self serving species whis is driving not only our own but our entire planet into


Extinction. No court or executive order can change the spiritual desolation that has defined our sprcies.

PBulldog2 wrote:

It really is that simple to me, too. I don't want to imagine the toll of whales slaughtered by the Japanese for meat if SSCS and Greenpeace were not active.

Why is it our country has the time and the will to file a restraining order against the Sea Shepherd, but our country has no will to try and stop the Japanese whaling operation? Why has our country not become involved in an attempt to stop the true outlaws - the Japanese commercial whalers?

All the time spent formulating a restraining order against Sea Shepherd, yet the order isn't even valid in international waters. How stupid that was on the part of government.

What's that quote - "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?"

It is really simple PB. The US has no jurisdiction over Japan and the only reason they filed against the Sea Shepard is because at one time it was a US registered vehicle and Watson is a US citizen. One the 3rd Circuit Court upheld the injunction, SSCS changed the Sea Shepard registration to Australia. According to the article posted, there is a chance that Watson will be arrested if he returns to the US if he interferes with the Japanese. He must maintain a 500 ft barrier between his ship and the Japanese.

To all involved in this discussion, if at any time I offend or show any disrespect toward any of you please call me on it. So far I think this discussion has been quite civil and would like nothing more than to keep it that way.

I can assure you that at PDF this would have been a real pissing contest already with vulgarities and name calling abounding.

Thats true GR. It's nice being able to have a civil discussion here

Agreed a passionate subject for sure those on both sides of course GR. your side is wrong but hey

whowherewhy wrote:

Agreed a passionate subject for sure those on both sides of course GR. your side is wrong but hey

Surely ain't the first time and I can assure you that it won't be the last.

That's just what I was thinking, Ghost....it's so good to have a civil discussion. I'm tickled that we could do it!

And no, you haven't offended me at all. My skin and heart are pretty tough where this subject is concerned.

What did you think about the excerpt from the article I posted? The one about the intelligence of whales? I was fascinated. I didn't know whales have some of the same brain cells humans do (only they have more!)

Oh....and Paul Watson holds dual citizenship in Canada and the US. He has been awarded "honorary citizenship" in other countries, cities and areas, including the Florida Keys.