Two years ago, the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled that the United States law barring shrimp imported from nations whose shrimp fleets lacked Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) on their nets. Malaysia, Pakistan, India and Thailand brought the petition that resulted in WTO ruling the U.S. law illegal. Rather than change its law by the WTO-imposed December 1999, the U.S. offered assistance for TED installation and lifted the embargo against Pakistan, allegedly because of that country’s domestic measures to safeguard sea turtles. Malaysia protested that the U.S. is in non-compliance and should rescind its TED law immediately. A decision is due from WTO by late January 2001. If Malaysia wins, sanctions against U.S. imports could be imposed.� 

  The World Council of Whalers’ (WCW) Conference held in Nelson, New Zealand, experienced the cultural intolerance of that nation’s ruling government even before the meeting’s opening date. Officials at New Zealand’s Department of Conservation banned a key speaker, a move deliberately designed to chill debate and discussion by other government employees attending the conference. In addition, government financial support for a workshop on the cultural heritage of whale bone use by the Maori/iwi people of New Zealand was cancelled.

  Barney Thomas, chairman of the Ngati Rarua Iwi Trust and a cultural advisor to the Department of Conservation was forbidden by DOC from "taking an active role" at the conference because such behavior was "not in line" with the government’s staunch bias against Japan, whaling, and the WCW. Thomas was to have addressed the convention on the jointly developed iwi and DOC protocols to allow iwi to salvage bone and other body parts from stranded whales. The New Zealand Maori Development Ministry, the Te Puni Kokiri was also ordered to cancel the whale bone heritage workshop. New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, an outspoken anti-whaling zealot, and previously described by the IWMC President, as a cheerleader for Greenpeace, accused WCW of being a front group for "commercial whaling interests" (read Japan), an allegation refuted by WCW. She further displayed her profound racism, during the Conference, by calling the Japanese "barbarians" while one of her Member of Parliaments, Rick Smith, even compared the cultural whalers to members of the "Klu Klux Klan".�