Come on Japan. You can definitely do better than this.

Japan quietly announced it was going to resume commercial whaling. But like a song from one of the great creatures, it travelled around the World quick enough. My overall feeling is one of sadness. Not just for the whales but for all of us, for humanity, for Japan, for everyone. Have we gone nowhere? Since the civilised World banned commercial whaling back in the 80s it was assumed we had moved forward. That it wasn’t a temporary situation until the whale populations recovered sufficiently to recommence slaughter. I understood it to be a moral understanding, a progression. Like banning slavery, or the use of chemical weapons, or the end of apartheid, a collective move to an ever increasing level of civilisation. But no. Japan disgraces itself as a nation with this retrograde action. It demonstrates a total lack of humanity and international voices raise ever higher in criticism. Whaling is barbaric, the creatures are huge, ancient, intelligent, sentient, they are people of a different species. To kill them demonstrates a lack of all things good and the dominant presence of ignorance and barbarism. Shame on Japan for this. Shame and disgrace.