"So-called 'Like-minded' nations - world powers opposed to cultures and nations that consider whale an important part of their traditional diets - will quietly but firmly attempt to offer an ultimatum to the vestiges of these ancient people," said Eugene Lapointe, president of the IWMC-World Conservation Trust.  "That message - assimilate into modern society or perish - is an affront to these proud people, to the sovereignty of independent nations, and to the very planet itself." 

The IWC, originally conceived in 1946 as an international body to conform commercial whaling with sound environmental principles, has become a controversial forum for the institutionalization of the anti-whaling, animal rights ideology. 

Ironically, the same powers intent on halting whaling by cultures and nations who regard cetaceans as a traditional food source, are the very nations whose whaling fleets over the centuries devastated the great whales for their oil and wasted their meat.  They've managed to keep IWC's 1982 whaling moratorium in effect nearly a decade after it was supposed to be lifted, and, they continue to block adoption of a science-based management plan for whales and whaling. 
 
"The real agenda of the Grenada meetings is how, procedurally, the world's most powerful nations will tell its most threatened cultures they must not pursue the activity that has given nourishment to their people and identity to their cultures for centuries," said Lapointe.  "They hope to execute this horrible cultural drama with little or no public or press attention.  The ruse of 'saving threatened whales' will not work." 

"Today whales thrive, while whaling cultures such as the Inuit, America's Pacific Coast First People, and the Island people of the Caribbean and Polynesia struggle to survive.  Grenada's history is a perfect example.  In 1650, Grenada's indigenous whaling people, the Caribs, were slaughtered every man, woman and child of them by the French because they would not conform to European ways.  Now, the French are among the 'like-minded' IWC delegates intent imposing cultural extinction through assimilation on whaling people across the globe," said Lapointe. 

Preserving the planet's wildlife, including its whales, and wild places requires careful attention to preserving biodiversity.  Cultural diversity is part of that bio-balance.  "That is precisely why the IWC's anti-whaling culture posture is so dangerous," said Lapointe.�