IWC Is A Eunuch

It's all over, bar the shouting...of which there will be much.
The International Whaling Commission's (IWC) 65th meeting has ended, with an agreement to toughen scrutiny of Japan's Antarctic hunts, but without the balls to do much else.

The 35/20 vote, for a NZ resolution to tighten the review of proposals for research whaling, was hailed by conservationists as a major victory. Patrick Ramage, whale programme director at International Fund for Animal Welfare, called it a great day for NZ's anti-whaling efforts:
"It really tightens the noose on Japan's ongoing scientific whaling in and around Antarctica."
The resolution instructs the IWC's scientific committee to assess whether a research bid is truly science-driven, including by satisfying itself that non-lethal means are not an option. And until such a review is completed, it "requests" that countries do not issue any research whaling permits.
And there's the problem: while the IWC's scientific committee considers proposals for scientific whaling, there's nothing preventing a nation from going ahead without its blessing (as Sara Phillips writes for ABC Environment). So while the majority of nations in this particular vote want to close the "scientific whaling" loophole, they're working with another gap, ie: that the IWC resolution itself is non-binding.
As we already know, Japan cancelled this summer's Antarctic hunt after March's International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling, but says it'll resume in 2015-16, and will file a new "research" plan by the end of this year.
Patrick Ramage: "It's as though Japan is saying: 'Pay no attention to the world court judgment - we are going back to killing in a whale sanctuary around Antarctica.' Ultimately, Japan needs to reconcile itself to the emerging global consensus for whale conservation and the court order of the ICJ."
Let's be BLUNT: Japan is saying "あなたをファック！" to us all!