Germany Delivers an Ultimatum to Iceland on Whaling 16JUN10 from Sea Shepherd

It has been a very bad news week for the whalers. First, the Japanese were caught red-handed by the Sunday Times of the U.K. in a bribery scandal and vote-buying scheme with the International Whaling Commission (IWC). Then a former whaler spilt the beans on his colleagues by blowing the whistle on illegal activity onboard the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru. Palau announced it would no longer vote for Japan, and Germany has openly declared that if Iceland wants in the European Community, it will have to abolish the killing of the whales.
The German parliament today declared to Iceland that in order to be granted EU membership, Iceland must stop whaling.
The German congress had passed a decree on April 22^nd, 2010 to declare full support for formal negotiations with Iceland with the aim of bringing Iceland in as a full member of the European Union. But the decree carried the stipulation that Iceland must make amends with regards to whale preservation in accordance with international and EU law.
This stipulation was in a memo officially presented by a representative of the German Ambassador to Iceland at a meeting with Icelandic officials today.
According to the Icelandic Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture, Jón Bjarnason, the Icelandic government is willing to participate in a group working towards reaching a compromise regarding whaling.
The writing is on the wall for the Icelandic whaling industry. In the wake of the crash of the Icelandic economy, Iceland must join the European Union to maintain it’s economy at the standard it has until recently enjoyed. The price for joining will be to end their barbaric whaling practices.
So it appears that the Axis of Whalers will soon be down from three to two, leaving only Norway and Japan as the last two stubborn hold-outs in a world that views whaling as unnecessary, barbaric, cruel, and ecologically destructive.