The article itself is really quite good, but for those who come to the comments to find out what this is all about, here is an attempt at a dispassionate summar

The article itself is really quite good, but for those who come to the comments to find out what this is all about, here is an attempt at a dispassionate summary on an emotionally charged subject: It's been a fight between those who were seeking to create a sustainable whaling industry, and those who wanted to end the practice completely. As written in the article, the IWC was founded in order to be the former, and brought (largely by global consensus) to become the latter. After the disaster that was the historical whaling industry, Japan tried to move back to commercial whaling within a framework of scientific consensus based on population levels and a sustainable catch limit, but was blocked by the wider international community. It has been obvious for years that it would come to this. The two groups are at loggerheads. It's the natural outcome of two different opinions on the ethical standing of whaling as a practice. In one way, we are lucky that it is Japan that is resuming whaling (joining Norway and Iceland), since they will probably do a decent job of policing their domestic whaling industry, but of course it is unfortunate that a global consensus could not be reached over either acceptable limits or a permanent end to the practice