[Candor7]

Of course the facts you point out distinguish elk hunting from whaling. I meant for the analogy to deal with the social aspects of the problem in comparinng the two, not the differences between land based , non-sovereignty based issues of domestic hunting and whaling.

The social issues for the culture of both raise the same traditional cultural issues in Japan, get it?

[GovernmentShrinker]

Yes, I “get it”. I also “get it” that a large chunk of the Muslim world is culturally attached to the idea that they will go right on committing “honor” killings, even when they are in countries where the culture views this as plain and simple first-degree murder.

There’s a limit to how much we ought to respect cultural values which differ from our own. When a culture insists it has a right to diminish a global resource, through activities conducted outside its borders and recognized ocean waters perimeter, it is stepping over the line, and can’t reasonably expect other cultures to sit by and do nothing. Air and oceans are the two major areas in which the system of respecting sovereign borders just doesn’t work as the catch-all paradigm for handling conflicting cultures.