Faroes Does It Again

The Faroe Islands again has blood on its hands. Just over a week ago on July 19th.2010, a pod of 236 pilot whales was butchered in the town of Klaksvik.
Anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd had a man undercover, posing as a Swedish film student, in order to capture footage. He saw not only bulls killed, but also pregnant and lactating females, juveniles, and unborn babies still attached to their mothers by the umbilical chord.
While the Faroese government and the participants claim the deaths of these whales are quick and painless, the newly released grisly footage shows otherwise. One whale had five or six brutal chops to her head before her spinal chord was eventually severed: it would have been a slow, extremely painful death. Some whales were hacked repeatedly for up to four minutes before they died.
The Faroes have been whaling since the islands were first settled by the Norse. It is regulated by local authorities but not by the International Whaling Commission. Pilot whales have protection under the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, which was signed by Denmark. However Denmark granted autonomy to the Faroe Islands many years ago, so now has no power to ban the massacres.
The Faroese claim to kill about 950 Long-finned Pilot Whales a year, so this month's slaughter accounted for nearly a quarter of the annual kill. And yet the "grindadráp" is not performed for any valid economic reason - it is simply a perpetuation of an ancient (and, in this modern world, unacceptably brutal) tradition. Its only purpose seems to be for providing free whalemeat treats to the populace - meat that has been proved to be contaminated by toxins.
There is no logic to the islanders' continued stubborn entrenchment, yet sadly they remain arrogantly impervious to the worldwide condemnation of their cruelty.