A Whale of a Door Prize

Greenpeace dumps dead whale at Japanese embassy

Greenpeace, ever masters of artful subtlety, dumped a big ol' dead whale on the doorstep of the Japanese embassy in Berlin yesterday. Here we pause a moment to let you savor the mental image ... ahh. The whale dump was a protest against Japan's ongoing hunt for minke and fin whales in the Southern Ocean, allegedly in the name of research. Two Greenpeace ships have spent the past month there, where they've "dogged, delayed, and disrupted" Japan's whaling fleet, the group says. But today Greenpeace announced that the ships will be ending their mission and that the campaign's focus will turn to encouraging the public to boycott products from companies with ties to whaling. It's not just Greenpeace that objects to Japan's "research." Earlier this week, 17 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Britain, France, and Germany, voiced their opposition to the Willy killin'.