Boycott JAPAN, ICELAND, NORWAY

going2die_rich

Hereward wrote:

If you are going to boycott Iceland for the resumption of whaling then you really should target their fishing industry, as this is the sector that will benefit most from whaling. I, therefore, suggest that you write to all organisations operating in the UK that import fish and ask them to stop sourcing fish from Icelandic waters. This would have a dramatic effect on the Icelandic fishing fleet and support industries because it would remove a large proportion of their income. You might want to suggest in your correspondence that they should be supporting the UK fishing fleet in the North Sea…. :rolleyes:

LOL! While we are writing in why don't we send some letters to god and ask him to give the African nations some rain too so that they can overcome the drought giving them such a poor harvest so that they can feed themselves and not starve this winter.

Honestly, if I recieved a letter saying please stop using fish from Icelandic waters I'd scrupple it up and throw it out of the window as it wouldn't even be worthy of being put in my bin, as it was that rubbish.

As for supporting the UK, I suppose all of your goods that you buy are always only bought if produced in the UK and not what the cheapest or best brand names are. i.e. those from the far east!

going2die_rich

maow425 wrote:

Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about waste-to-energy plants? I know they emit co2, but it would also reduce, if not eliminate, waste put in landfill - but still recycling that which can be recycled.

If it doesn't cost the person at home anymore, they can dump as much waste as they like and burn away.

I am not against Green options, but I am opposed in it's enforcement.

Forcing others to go down the green route when it's more expensive isn't fair! Thats what green laws are/will be.

It's fine for those that can afford it but why should tree huggers push for law changes that make it more expensive for those with little money anyway?

If you are well off you can afford the hybrid cars, solar panels, energy effiecent electrical equipement, but if you aren't well off you have to go for whats the cheapest and these are almost always the most pollution items. So why punish people that have no or little choice while the rich sit happy?

Take cars for example, those that can't afford a new car have to buy a second hand one which obviously will pollute more than a new car, so the tree huggers solution is to force taxes on these old cars forcing the poorer families depper into the poverty hole. Yet the new car took plenty of resources from the planet to be built in the first place, where as the second hand one was resusing whats there.

Personally I can't stand people who are environmentalists, they are simply a negative aspect of society which slow down the progress of the economy they are in.

maow425

Whoa! Easy there! I was just asking a simple question. But I quite agree with you on the car issue. Dh and I can't afford to buy a brand new car, but we try our best to use as little fossil fuel as we can. We use veg oil instead. Personally I'd like to see a waste to energy plant instead of the gas powered one we're getting.

I just asked the question out of genuine curiosity, despite going off on a tangent (and probably angering the OP very much indeed).

meher

jmarko wrote:

:mad:

Rant on.

I am sure I'll get flamed into the ground for this but I don't care, here goes...

I won't be boycotting any of these countries. We have such a two faced attitude to things like this, it's unbelievable. Just because they do something that offends my middle-class, western hang-ups doesn't mean that I can impose my will on them. We kill all sorts of animals in this country (and others) and do naff all about them. We bow and scrape to the nastiest of regimes and thank them when they dump on us. We even had people arrested for holding up Tibetan flags during a visit from the Chinese premier not that long ago. So what's so great about us that we know best?

By boycotting any country, you achieve only two things. You pay lip service to your own guilt for not doing more in your own realm and, secondly, you hurt the very people at the bottom of the chain who earn their living by providing you with the bits and pieces that you have stopped buying. It is them that lose their jobs.

America is absolutely ruining this planet but I bet that most of the people on this thread are happy to be sitting in front of their US owned, far east slave labour produced PCs. Well, to you, you're hypocrites.

Boring, ill-thought out, middle class guilt.

Rant over.

:mad:

jmarko

jmarko wrote:

I feel quite the same. I *know* that I am one of the people complained about but I have had my legitimate point that I raised right at the beginning of this completely ignored. All I got was LizEstelle's snide racist post aimed at my 'foreign' sounding name.

I am against whaling but I tell you this for free, having had my serious contribution rubbished due to my 'foreign-ness', I am much less inclined to do anything than I was before.

The idea that you can lump everyone in together, be they everyone in a particular country, as you first suggested, or all of us dimwitted foreigners is abhorrent to everything that I stand for. Either of those two things is exactly the same. It says that all people of a certain nationality or race should be vilified and treated worse. If one cannot see that people are individuals and treat them with the respect that is due to them, as individuals, then you will fall into something of a classic trap.

We foreigners, we Icelandic, we Norwegians, we Danes, we French, we Swedes, we British, we are individuals and we deserve to be treated like it. I do not want to be associated with some of the filth that are resident in the UK. I want to be judged by who I am and what I do and what I think. Not as a foreigner. Not as a national of some country. But for what I do, for who I am. And there are millions of people in all of the countries that we have mentioned in this thread who deserve the same. If you find a company that whales, owns whaling ships, profits from whaling, then tell us. Those people can be judged by what they do. Those of us that don't like the idea of whaling can boycott them.

Not every Brit is Ian Huntley, not every Austrian is Hitler, not every American goes on a rampage in a school, not every Belgian is a paedophile, not every Georgian is Stalin. Judge people as people. Even the ones with foreign sounding names. Actually, especially the ones with foreign sounding names because, in this country, we don't. We make the assumption that foreigners are up to something - so maybe it should be especially the ones with foreign sounding names.

jmarko

powerful posts

It's a shame that the responses to your insightful posts are met with unintelligent ones and at it's best just feeble defense of their own obvious prejudice.

maow425

meher wrote:

powerful posts

It's a shame that the responses to your insightful posts are met with unintelligent ones and at it's best just feeble defense of their own obvious prejudice.

My thoughts exactly.:T

LizEstelle

There is NOTHING 'powerful' or 'insightful' about illogic. None of my concerns were addressed by his 'intelligence'.

If you are going to make an actual point on the issue then DO so, instead of giving unjustified support to somebody who believes that two wrongs make a right.

LizEstelle

maow425 wrote:

Just in case anyone hadn't guessed it by now, I'm Norwegian, born and raised. Apparently that now makes me a bad person, and my opinions are devalued. There LizEstelle, I've pointed it out.

However, just because I'm Norwegian, do I go out and harpoon whales? No. Just because I'm Norwegian does not necessarily mean that I eat lutefisk and brew my own 96%, nor does it qualify me as a 6ft blue eyed blonde. May I point out that this comment that you have just made is actually racist? Saying that someone's opinions are devalued because they happen to come from a country about which you are complaining?

I could say something really fitting here, but I will not stoop to the OP's level, which I consider well below the one the OP has accused me of lowering myself to.

I shall not even dignify this appalling accusation of 'racism' with any comment. I am myself not British in origin. At no point did I make ANY racist comment and I defy you NOW to produce evidence of it.

Yes, it was detectable all along that a hidden agenda was driving your comments - and it has taken you how many days to admit to it publicly? This is a UK-based website and the inherent assumption is that posters are Uk-based citzens unless they openly declare an interest to the contrary - which you have SIGNALLY FAILED TO DO.

I have NEVER AT ANY TIME accused all Norwegians of supporting whaling. Kindly NOW produce evidence that I have done so.

Your statements, time and time again, have been in support of the argument that 'not all Norwegians support whaling... and that therefore we must of course rule completely out the possibility of applying sanctions against the country as a whole.'

Sorry, FOR THE FINAL TIME, this argument is spurious, does not merit consideration now, never has, and never will do. Not all white South Africans supported the apaartheid system - and yet I note that the Norwegian government was happy to participate in economic sanctions against that country, along with many of its citizens refusing to buy South African produce.

Your shrill, irrelevant and, we now have the admission, biased comments have now earned any further contributions from you a complete disregard on my part.

I hope that the 36 people (to date) who have sent me messages of support will have taken note of the last postings on this thread.

maow425

LizEstelle wrote:

If you are going to make an actual point on the issue then DO so, instead of giving unjustified support to somebody who believes that two wrongs make a right.

I believe both were trying to make a point. One was trying to 'make a point' of pointing out the flaws in your statement, the other 'making a point' about your sometimes racist attacks on others who have posted in this thread.

And why do you say meher giving jmarko unjustified support? Because he agrees with the statements posted and you don't agree with this? So a person agrees with someone else's view (not yours) and that makes that person wrong - giving unjustified support?

meher

LizEstelle wrote:

There is NOTHING 'powerful' about illogic. None of my concerns were addressed by his 'intelligence'.

If you are going to make an actual point on the issue then DO so, instead of giving unjustified support to somebody who believes that two wrongs make a right.

I appreciate since you're entitled to your opinion, Liz but you've failed to address several valid points based on facts in response and which brought some perspective to this discussion - so what's the point in me bringing up further points if you haven't been receptive, nor been able to challenge the existing ones fairly.

Placing sanctions and restricting trade has been/continues to be one of the evil trade policies - inadvertently you seem to be advocating that here .

LizEstelle

So, are there any further comments on the situation which do not rely on:

1. Two wrongs make a right.

2. You're not permitted to take action against a country as a whole because not ALL of its people are doing bad things...or because people in other countries also do various bad things.

3. Oh dear, those arguments don't really work, do they? Ok, I'll deliberately cloud the issue by talking about how difficult it's going to be to avoid burning gas this winter.

4. Oh heavens, that argument doesn't really work, so I'll throw in slurs about 'racism'.

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