WHALE SUSHI OR SOYLENT GREEN?

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - The chained Farley Mowat floats under police guard in Cape Town harbor, out of reach of the whaling ships its captain seeks to destroy.

For seven weeks, the crew of the tiny activist ship harassed Japanese whalers in Antarctic waters, chasing the hunters through icy seas.

Now, the Canadian-registered ship has been forced to rest.

Last month, it was detained on arrival in South Africa by marine officials who say it does not meet safety requirements.

The crew talk of a diplomatic conspiracy to shut their campaign down -- and as they wait, they muse on their latest high-seas battle.

The 657-ton Farley Mowat -- flying the skull-and-crossbones like a modern pirate ship -- stalked Japanese ships hunting minke whales through the huge waves of the Southern Ocean and eventually sideswiped the fleet's cargo ship.

"Every time we approached them, they ran. We kept them running for 4,000 miles and 15 days," captain and activist Paul Watson told Reuters from the deck of his black steel ship.

"We couldn't catch them, so it was constantly a hit-and-ambush type of thing," he says, proudly recounting tales of the whalers he has helped to sink and the damage caused to those that escaped.

A founding member of Greenpeace, Watson now heads the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which broke away from Greenpeace and believes in action rather than protests.

The Farley Mowat, named after a Canadian author known as an environmental champion, is Sea Shepherd's standard-bearer.

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The Japanese are still hunting whales. For food. Whale sushi. In my book whales are sentient beings, and killing them is murder. Killing them for food is the same as killing a chimp or gorilla for food (as poor Africans are still doing) and is morally equivalent to cannibalism. Hell, it is cannibalism. It would be far healthier for the planet if there were a lot more good old fashioned mano a mano Homo Sock Puppet cannibalism. There's more humans on the hoof by weight than any other animal but ants and termites. Ants and termites are high protein but in most people's minds they do not qualify as the other white meat.

Excuse me for a moment.

“SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!”

I feel better now.

Benighted creatures such as chickens and cattle only exist because we, the human race, created them, by selective breeding from wild ancestors over generations, and by genetic manipulation since yesterday. Their degenerated races continue only because we find them tasty and expeditious with biggie fries and a 42 oz pop, at the drivethru--and because the Agricultural-Industrial Complex makes billions of dollars selling the flesh of their carcasses to us. Also, they've got to do something with all that corn. The Green Giant can only sell so much creamed corn. If we as a race stopped eating domesticated animals, Tysons, The American Beef Council, et al., would stop raising them. Their populations would crash, leaving only remnant populations in zoos, and farm museums, and possibly some feral pigs and chickens. So remember, if you give up the nuggets and the Big Mac, you're on the road to genocide--genocide most fowl.

I've never raised an animal for food, but I have killed, cleaned, cooked, and eaten fish, birds, and small mammals. It is strange to make a living animal dead, have it die at one's hands in one's hands, and to divide a whole body into pieces of meat and waste. But the Bible lies; the mark of Cain is on the heart, not the forehead.