mikey, pay close attention to what i said... "i'm done okay" meaning me, I AM DONE. if you want to continue to have a conversation about it go on, but i meant i was done. i was not declaring it over on behalf of both of us, i was declaring it over for me because i feel it rude not to respond to people, yes i have manners (very few and far between but leaving something open ended is one of them).

StarsChildren wrote:
Well you see previously you were saying this
StarsChildren wrote: StarsChildren wrote:
But don't feel you have to respond.

You are done.

Which means you are done trying to suggest that the point I was making was Olympics over life.

When I was not.

But you are done.

With that straw man

An I am glad.

i take care of you girls, dont worry. you will make me look studly, hang off my arms while we strut.

batou wrote:
Bats and his biatchs earlier...

be careful bats, sketti has a habit of biting...

batou wrote:
What does that leave free for me to hang off then?

I don't want whales slaughtered.

While I do appreciate the point raised about hypocrisy, I don't see it as being particularly relevant. What I mean is, there wasn't any petition that I saw previously objecting to England hosting the games, and it never occurred to me to raise one. If there'd been one, I'd have signed it, but there wasn't (so far as I'm aware).

Surely it's not rational to say that we can't sign a petition now on this, because we didn't sign a non-existent petition previously on something else?

That smacks of an excuse to never try to do anything, reasoning that it would be hypocritical if we did, since we didn't take the same stand about something else before (because we never thought of it at the time).

And raising your voice about whales being killed, doesn't mean that you take a frivolous view of all the other wrongs in the world.

Batty, I liked your post #59 because it sums up my opinions exactly. A+

Also, people should consider that Jhado feels strongly about it, and it's normal (to my mind anyway) to throw your arms up in frustration at things that wouldn't normally make you react abruptly, when there's other stuff forcing you to struggle through a rough patch. The last straw & all that.

My point about the petition was, humans the world over are guilty of all kinds of shit, and it's a bit hypocritical to have a petition against a certain nation... look at the shit us Brits used to do with animals, we'd go on "safari" and shoot everything that moved. And where do you draw the line? The Japanese eat Octopus as well, they're a sea creature, and intelligent.
Pigs are supposed to be as intelligent as dogs, but we slap them into bread rolls.
We in England used to chase small orange wild dogs across the countryside on horseback, dressed in a costume, with a pack of hunting dogs, then watch the dogs rip the small dog to shreds...
Humans... dickheads since the dawn of man Hopefully we'll evolve, and become less dickheady as time goes on.

Gilly wrote:
What did I say earlier about the lesson here being about change.org and avaaz and other such petition sites?
Why the petition now on this particular subject and not something that isn't hypocritical and would actually be of some real benefit?

It is absolutely 'relevant' to point out the stupidity of a petition
Its how you spot these things and learn how the world works.

If we sign the petition, we have to put our own arses on the line, and watch our behaviour carefully in the future, it would set a standard. We'd be living in a glass mansion surrounded by other nations holding rocks, eyeing us up

Gilly, you and anyone else is free to sign whatever you like.

Sorry if I offended you jhado. I just wanted to point out that there are other countries that still hunt whales, it's not just the Japanese. Also, that the whaling industry in Japan is on its arse anyway. Most people there don't want to eat whale these days. It was popular after WW2, but it's fallen by the wayside, much the same as braun has in this country.

Don't buy whale or dolphin meat basically....sorted.

Now who's going to start a petition to abandon central banks and fractional reserve banking?

Btw, when I went on holiday to Iceland, the hotel's resaurant menu had whale meat as one of the dishes.

A vegetarian was really pissing me off once - the millitant, pious and really annoying sort. I lied and told them I'd eaten whale meat in Iceland. Wind 'em up and watch 'em go.

andyh wrote:
(This is hard work, 'cause my laptop keeps disconnecting from the internet for some reason! )

Well you said...
andyh wrote:
...but I'm being slow-witted re what you mean exactly (not argumentative, just not sure).

You complain of these petitions never being about anything that would be of real benefit.

So do you think that the signatures on a petition can make a difference then? Because if not, then it's of no consequence.

And if that's the case, is your disliking confined to subject matter - you think more important issues should be being addressed? Or you think it's a spiteful ulterior motive (against the Japanese in this case) that leads ones like this to be set up? Or do you think it's data mining, or what?

Mr Wolf, I've signed countless petitions over the years, and I've never felt the need to look over my shoulder.

I don't see it as a double standard myself really, because if anyone had raised a petition against us hosting the Olympics on the grounds of our government's antics, we'd be cheering them on for raising awareness and taking a stand, wouldn't we? I would.

Lesley, re, "Gilly, you and anyone else is free to sign whatever you like. " - let's be clear that I wasn't suggesting that you have to sign it (or anyone else who doesn't wish to), but rather, arguing a case against the point raised that it perhaps shouldn't be signed on the grounds of hypocrisy specifically.

Gilly wrote:
I'm talking about a whole nation. If someone said "the UK shouldn't host the olympics because the government are bastards" then I would have less of a problem, but if they said "the English" or "the British" shouldn't host the olympics..." Y'know?

I've pretty much quit sport anyway

But why the Olympics?

If you really want to hit Japan you could just boycott all Sony, Nintendo, Hitachi, and Toyota products.

No DS or wii, no PS3, and no Prius.

And then you could give up your Manga and Anime hobby.

That would certainly make them pay attention.

Of course that would require a little more from oneself than signing an online petition.

Much easier to sacrifice somebody else's stuff in the name of saving the whale, eh?

LesleyPumpshaft wrote:
Having lived in Japan for six years, I can confirm that. I ate everything from locusts (inago) to the poisonous blowfish (fugu) and I never once was offered whale. Raw horse meat and bee larvae, yes.. Whale, no.

In the meantime..

newsinfo.inquirer.net/22784/death-by-pla...rbage-killing-whales

Petitions are for cushy western civilisation.

Mr. Wolf wrote:
Certainly hypocrisy is one of our luxuries.

Japanese whaling industry is indeed barbaric, but we have to sort our own shit out before we start pointing fingers or the message will be hollow, empty and ultimately futile.British petoleum fuck the sea up on a catastrophic level and yet we have had 2012 Olymoics just the same..

It is VERY relevant that no petition was made to stop London hosting the Olympics because that will be Japanes answer and the petition would only galvanise public opinion over there: totally counter-productive.

Hmmm...the pollution issue is a bloody nightmare.

Maybe we should be petitioning our own government to address it more effectively.

If it prompted the Japanese public to make a noise about it too, all the better though. The more the merrier.