Strafe The Whale

When we did our story about Keiko the killer whale from Free Willy getting hate mail the other day, we made a joke about Norwegian whaling fleets. It seems we weren't far wrong. Steinar Bastesen, former head of the Norweigan whalers' association, and now a member of the Norwegian parliament, went all aggressive on Monday. He attacked environmentalists who spent more than $14 million to return Keiko to freedom in a holding pen off the coast of Iceland, saying it was a complete waste of money. He suggested that it would have been better to slaughter the whale and turn him into meatballs for the starving children in the Sudan. "There are more than enough killer whales around; we don't need to import them," Bastesen said in an interview in yesterday's Independent. "Anyway, the only good killer whale is a dead one." Many people think the same about MP's.