A popular Internet video accusing Australians of opposing Japanese whaling because of racism while brutally killing animals such as kangaroos and dingoes drew sharp government criticism yesterday.
Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith condemned the video as he announced that Australia would this week deploy a ship to the Southern Ocean to gather evidence for possible legal action against Japan over its whaling program.
The 10-minute video, which has recorded more than 100,000 hits since being posted anonymously on the YouTube Web site, shows graphic images of Australians killing animals and of infamous racial riots at Cronulla beach in 2005.
It says Australians are opposed to Japanese whaling because of a racist ideology, and claims in English, with Japanese subtitles, that Australia holds the world record for mammal extinction.
"It is untasteworthy in the extreme, that's the kindest thing I can think to say about it," Smith told reporters. "Its general overtone, its general content, I absolutely condemn. It's anonymous, so that tells you something before we even start."
The video would not change Australia's opposition to Japanese whaling, but neither would it "in any way disturb or affect the very good relationship with Japan," he said.
Smith announced that the Oceanic Viking customs ship would leave Australia this week on a 20-day mission to monitor the Japanese whaling fleet in the icy waters of the Antarctic.
The ship's mission would be coordinated with aerial surveillance and aimed to gather video and photographic evidence for a potential international court case against Japan, he said.
Japan exploits a loophole in a 1986 international moratorium on commercial whaling to kill whales for what it calls scientific research, while admitting that the meat from the hunt ends up on dinner plates.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
RSS