Tag Archives: Obama

PEW meeting + IWC scandal

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Last Friday I met with Alex Garcia, an associate of the Varda Group that is organizing the PEW meeting in Lisbon, and I’ve passed from an invited observer to a local coordinator. Nice! The PEW meeting comes in a time where much discussion is abide related to the IWC and I belive it will be interesting, they will also try to congregate the Portuguese NGOs in a room and hopefully engage them into the IWC affairs!

Scandal within the IWC in again on top of the table…
“Apparently” (IFAW and I have been saying this since the IWC meeting in Chile on last July) the Bush Administration is trying to reach a deal with the Japanese to solve all the whaling issue. (We also start the meeting saying other things that turned almost everyone against us but in the end of the meeting many press releases came out saying what we badgering all along!)

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Washington Post story about the attempts to craft a deal
IFAW’s press release on the secret Bush’s administration plan to legitimise Japanese whaling

NGOs are now asking President Obama to cancel all negotiations regarding this “coup d’état”.
Read Greenpeace pledge to President Obama to assert authority and replace officials

I keep saying that this year things will get very interesting, the only down side seems to be me stuffed down on a suit and tie … funny!

And if the crisis would solve the whaling issue?

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The other day I was talking to my dear friend and Guru, Sidney Holt, about this world economical crisis and if it would have any impact on the whaling scene as we know it. It is almost certain that good faith, politics, conservation policies, and lobbying alone will not turn the tide; the economical aspect of it all will be the decisive feature. As of now we cannot really forecast what will happen, but wondering about it, the fuel prices will fell dramatically, the Japanese whaling industry and hardware is getting old and they been having repeated misfortunes lately. The Oriental Bluebird, the refueling vessel that would go down to the Antarctic lost its registration and Panamá flag and is now registered in Japan requiring more staff and funds etc.

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What would be the decisions of the Japanese to the future, go forward and build the new factory ship, which will drown us on a few more years of negotiations and political battles on the stalemate state that the IWC is at the moment… we don’t know.
What do the Japanese really want of this entire circus, do we even know? It is obvious that most of the reasons they present are total bogus … so what now?

But the question I’m maybe more interested in finding out is what will the Obama Administration do? Will they uphold all the negotiations done by Hogarth? Will they change all of it upside down? It will be interesting to see!