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Living National Treasure
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estebanana
Posts: 9352
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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 RE: Living National Treasure (in reply to edguerin)
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The old tradition at Tsukiji fish market is to bid up the price of the very first tuna sold in auction in the new year. The first one sold tells which buyers are players in the big game. It's also considered auspicious good luck for the new year to enter the auction season with a bang. Most tuna don't go that high.
Japan now has the technology to breed bluefin tuna from eggs, to raise non wild captured tuna on sea farms. This will in the future make up %10 of domestic tuna supply. Japan fisheries scientists are the the only group to breed tuna in captivity.
As far as Taiji and dolphin killing for food, this repels most Japanese today, very few people eat that toxic flesh. What most people misunderstand about Taijiand the horrible practice that goes on there is that it is not a food producing industry, it is a live capture dolphin staging ground. The animals are caught to sell to aquariums around the world and the price pf a live dolphin is about $125,000 to $150,000. An orca will fetch as much as $250,000. The animals that get injured or are sub par for the aquarium trade are slaughtered and butchered like cattle. They meat is sold mostly locally, as I said modern Japanese folks don't think eat dolphn is very cool.
As far as I'm concerned what is fueling the slaughter and sale of dolphin is not Japan, but the aquarium business worldwide that will pay hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars to acquire dolphins. If Japan were not supplying the animals to this market some other country would make this animal a trade commodity. There is a lot of hypocracy in blaming the Japanese while at the same time not holding aquariums accountable for driving the industry. Remove the need for supply and the killing will end in one day. Taiji is a small town caught in economically adverse times and this hunt was an ancient right of the towns people. It morphed into an evil industry and honestly the only is way for them to get out of is for the government to subsidize the town and that leaves the millions of dollars from the aquarium supply industry going to whomsoever, China?
Whaling continues to be a stain on Japan, and is pushed by a small group of political conservatives. The bigger picture looks good in my view, the international legal pressures brought to bear in 2013 on the whaling industry successfully prevented the 2014/2015 summer season of whaling. it was a big victory. After which the Tokyo government drafted a new plan to whale and lowered the quotas they will allow. In a long term sence this signals a phase out of whaling. The government Australia has mounted another legal battle against whaling in the Southern Ocean, and there is a major court case against the Japanese whaling association taking place in Seattle District Court. The court cases center around the fraudulent claims that the whaling is permitted under the International disclose Whaling Commission loophole that whaling is permissible for scientific purposes. The Japan government will have to sensitive industry information and make a case that the whaling is scientific research. Fat chance that will happen, as everyone knows it is a sham.
Eventually enough governments will band together to legally engage the whaling industry on as many shores as possible, and pressure on the IWC to change dissolve the research loophole thus making and whaling illegal. Meanwhile the 2015/2016 hunt is underway, but Japan has pledged to only hunt one species, the Minke whale and not Finback whales. This is cold comfort for those like me who wish to see whaling abolished, but in some way it is progress. And the Sea Shepards are out there blocking whaling by direct action, so as long as no humans get killed or deeply injured I hope they fight the good fight.
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https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Jan. 13 2016 9:14:00
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Living National Treasure (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
Whaling continues to be a stain on Japan, and is pushed by a small group of political conservatives.
The worst violators of wildlife conservation are the Chinese, in my opinion. The Chinese market for ivory, Rhino horn, and tiger body parts is the driving force that leads to the decimation of these magnificent animals. And the Chinese desire for Shark's fin soup has the cruelest consequences for the sharks that are caught, their fins cut off, and then the sharks are thrown back into the sea alive without their fins, leading them to suffocate for lack of oxygen (as they must constantly move forward). The Chinese don't give a damn about any of the magnificent animals they are responsible for killing as long as their perverted cultural tendencies are satisfied.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jan. 14 2016 0:30:25
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estebanana
Posts: 9352
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Living National Treasure (in reply to edguerin)
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I have to agree to an extent about Chinese abuse of the environment. A joking thought came to me as I read your comments Bill; When I was in China I never saw any wildlife, I don't remember seeing any animals other than those in cages waiting to be eaten.
To be fair, and to really look at the whole picture, China is supplied by other countries' private industry. Right now Costa Rica has a fleet of ships that are "finning" sharks, finning is the term for the practice of removing the dorsal fin and throwing the shark alive overboard. The Costa Rican fleet has been conducting devastating forms of fishing, and several other countries as well, in the interest of supplying China.
The deep Southern Ocean is very difficult to patrol and many fleets go there to poach, many SE Asian countries included. Shark is known in the temperate oceans, but deep cold water fish are being taken illegally in the SO.
It's also easy to blame, and be angry, but you can change the way you buy fish and more people who begin to buy smaller more sustainable species, the less there be will be a drive for larger apex species to be caught. Mc Donalds company and other large corporate fish packers which supply frozen fish fillets are getting Toothfish stock from Patagonian waters, really this as degraded that regions breeding stocks of fish. This is part of the way that fish is consumed worldwide that needs to change. Consumers all around the world eat fish that is from another part of the globe that has been prepared to be boneless and convenient, this frozen prcessed mode of eating is a major reason why there is such pressure on certain fishing grounds.
Yes the Chinese cultural practices don't belong in a modern world in which globally we need to think about how to manage fishery resources, but until we curb the legitimate looking practice of Filet O' Fish sandwich eating we don't have a great deal of social traction to take an ethical high ground on environmental issues. However, I must say the Chinese practices of shark finning has been especially nauseating for me to think about as I have been interested in this particular form of environmental abuse since the 1980's. The shark has been much and unfairly maligned in popular culture, Jaws hollywood and ignorant tabloid articles, but in actual biological fact the sharks are a very essential part of natural systems in the pelagic zones of the oceans. The sharks' among other natural duties they perform, clean the seas.
Anyway, I hesitate to write a lot about this kind of stuff simply because when one begins to call out certain countries for bad environmental behavior, including my home country the US, it often puts people off. I have a conflict between being critical of nations environmental practice and being a cool guy who never speaks ill of anything. Usually the critic in me gets the focus of my output of words and thoughts, and I've been told this does not make one a popular figure as a craftsman. There seems to be an unwritten code of conduct for those who make guitars, that is something like what used to be prescribed to children; you should be seen and not heard from. I feel better about the opposite action of being heard and not seen. Recently I was told by a nervy participant in a guitar makers forum that they prefer their guitar makers to be a kind of silent monk who devotes 24 hours a day thinking about a making guitars with a religious fervor.
Well, one could argue the reason a person can make an instrument today is because you make yourself aware of the pressures on the environment, on wood supplies, and a myriad of other concerns which are salient to the safe stewardship of this muddy planet. I've seen a wide gamut of guitar makers from bad to good and fancy to elemental, but I seldom see one that is insensitive to the environment. It is part of the job to become aware of how natural systems work. In the process of learning about where ones wood come from, one might learn things about how the supply line works that are unsavory both environmentally and socially.
Apologies for the typos, I am now working on a small keyboard tablet with a massive 10" screen as my lovely first world 15" MacBook Pro died a sordid and gasping death.
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https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Jan. 14 2016 2:56:21
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: Living National Treasure (in reply to edguerin)
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In our upside-down world Stephen is certainly right with that under professional aspect a luthier to better not discuss misery too much.
Instead of appreciating how a personality who is making one´s guitar is being an informed and aware individual in the same time, describing actual global conditions would be considered "being negative" (thanks to culture-making Hollywood´s tradition of merry envogueness ... -in contrast to say Goethe´s "The Sorrows of Young Werther" follow up trend of it´s time. Just to mention opposite / any examples of medially rooted custom).
For contemporary public´s appraisal you got to either mute or be cheerful notwithstanding inferno.
In view of havoc on nature I think one´s got to differentiate a bit between industrial recklessness and general mentality.
There should be no doubt between people´s vast custom of cruelty in Asia / Africa and today´s standards of Western common sense.
There was an article years ago that stated that the Chinese would be thinking over their habits and traditional "medicine" if they only knew of the vandalism that it means to global wildlife.
I doubt it.
In cultures of daily scenes as with the cages mentioned by Stephen, or with others in Korea where restaurant customers order limbs of living animals in cages right next to their dining tables, and even just regarding the daily agony in these countries Joe average´s back yard ... there is to notice that in these mentalities association and empathy is simply being on another level (including in respect of fellow men).
And in view of nature preservation, the idea is even new to us.
The times when wilderness was considered something disordered that needed some tear out and grading weren´t too long ago.
Same with devastating agitation against single species whether in history like of black cats, snakes, or goats through the catholic church, later against wolves in the aftermath of Grimm´s fairytales, or against sharks through Jaques Cousteau´s pseudo documenting or horror from the "Jaws" movie ..., is still being with us.
The difference between the cultural spheres being in how much trendy education / sophistication, hence informing oneself is.
In this regard you may consider that the European Middle Age wasn´t really as dark as people tend to think. In fact many discoveries and bright pathmakings were of that time.
However, what stood against intellect and renewal was the common understanding of a priority with tradition and antique world view. The preservation of the latter was considered noble and wise, the appearance of new perspectives on the other hand perceived as distraction and spoiling of purity.
Such kind of esteem appears to be prevailing in the eastern world still, and to be a background for the voluntary ignorance that I´m rather certain to be observing there.
As much as I wished the Chinese gorvenment to launch some educating promotion, I doubt it to yield much effect.
A much stronger lever should be beared over image.
The underdeveloped world´s focus on industrialized ins- and outs should be the way. Public pointers to backwardedness present the most promissing option.
And pointing to Chinese sick consumption of wildlife should have been Westerner´s nobrainer with representatives in UNO, EU and USA anyway.
It needs to be public matter in the west. Finding repulsive reflection in official, medial, educational and artistic product. No false considerations there.
Ruphus
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Date Jan. 14 2016 11:41:10
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Living National Treasure (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
To be fair, and to really look at the whole picture, China is supplied by other countries' private industry. Right now Costa Rica has a fleet of ships that are "finning" sharks, finning is the term for the practice of removing the dorsal fin and throwing the shark alive overboard. The Costa Rican fleet has been conducting devastating forms of fishing, and several other countries as well, in the interest of supplying China.
Anyway, I hesitate to write a lot about this kind of stuff simply because when one begins to call out certain countries for bad environmental behavior, including my home country the US, it often puts people off. I have a conflict between being critical of nations environmental practice and being a cool guy who never speaks ill of anything. Usually the critic in me gets the focus of my output of words and thoughts, and I've been told this does not make one a popular figure as a craftsman.
Two points, Stephen. While other countries' fleets, such as that of Costa Rica, engage in horrible practices like "finning" sharks (just as Chinese fleets do) to supply the Chinese market, it is still Chinese demand that drives the market. Were it not for Chinese demand, there would be no market, and therefore no killing of sharks, rhinos, elephants, tigers, and other magnificent forms of life to supply that market. I am a strong advocate of "cultural relativity" as an anthropological concept...but only up to a point. There are some cultural practices that are so vile they demand to be condemned--including the subject under consideration, female genital mutilation, and other practices that are cruel and have no place in the modern world.
Regarding your reluctance to sometimes speak out about such practices because it is viewed by some as violating the code of a craftsman, I say speak out, and speak out strongly. I don't need to tell you because you usually do. It is good when people like you and others from diverse backgrounds and professions speak out. We can't leave condemnation of such practices solely to the environmental/conservation crowd. They are expected to speak out. Your voice, and others like you, make the case that concern for such issues cuts across different backgrounds and professions. Keep on speaking out!
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jan. 14 2016 13:04:25
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estebanana
Posts: 9352
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Living National Treasure (in reply to edguerin)
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One should also remember Ruphus that there are likely millions of good Chinese citizens that feel the same way you do,but due to the politics and the tendency for Chinese and other Asian cultures to hammer down the nail that sticks up, you will have a difficult time hearing those voices. I'm careful when think deeply about China to distinguish between the Beijing government and Chinese people who are not especially interested iin government. They are stuck with what they have, what's more when I was in China as a student in the early 1990's one of the conditions or cautions our American teacher/ group leader admonished us with was not to become soft about trying to meet with Chinese students after we got back home. He reminded us that we will make friends and connections with other young people our own age, but he said please don't lose your head and invite them to visit you in the US as they are stuck in China and can't get travel visas to go outside China. Things have changed somewhat since then, but still something I think about.
The academics at the school were allowed to travel on research trips to other countries, but the government kept a tight hold on them by making them travel abroad while they families stayed at home in China. This gace the school admin leverage over the teacher off on his or her research trips.
One funny occurrence, well funny to a few of us American kids, was an instructor who was an expert in ancient Chinese language, he was a specialist among a small group of elite academics in all of China who could read and interpret some of the most complex of the ancient language styles and dialects. Modern Chinese uses about 5000 to 7000 kanji characters and highly literate person can manage that with much effort, and the ancient forms of the language could use 30,000 characters! There are specialists needed to read and understand this part of Chinese heritage. So this guy who was the hot shot historian linguistics expert in ancient Chinese was given the task of being our teacher tour guide for a few days or a week and he was supposed to lecture to us about old forms of the language and how he does research. He was also entrusted with also mundane walkabout tours of dumpling factories and a few other pedestrian things clearly beneath his station as a scholar. It was as if the dept.head of linguistics at Yale or Harvard were assigned to show a group of second and third year college students the location of the Denny\s restaurant and make sure the understood the menu to help them order lunch.
His lectures were astute as one would expect and he did get into it and he tried his best to make in interesting and to engage us and speak at a level that would push us up...he did not speak down to us. It was evident that something was amiss and eventually one of the leaders in the Wai Ban, the Foreign Office, leaked gossip that he had been in Japan on a scholarly visit recently and was reported to have engaged in some shennanigans the Commie Party did not like. As punishment, really a slap on the wrists, he was forced to take the dumb dumb American students on these culturally enriching picnics and play nice by telling us what good Commies they are.
It is from these memories and others like it that I remember that average Chinese folks may not want to think the way the government wants them to think and you have to speculate that there are literally millions of Chinese people that may not represent how you or I or any of us think about what is typically 'Chinese'. There are a lot of individuals in China, and maybe many of them are terrified of the degradation of the earth.
As long a as I'm up late being philosophical and confessional, I have a disclosure to make. I have been reading Jules Verne novels and I fear I have taken on the expansive and geeky airs of the likes of some of his floridly explicated characters. I am pretty much a beach bum and a beer swilling cad who does not ordinarily use grammatical constructions such as 'one must do this or that' or 'One tries whilst adverse times to do one's best'. Clearly this is very haughty language and out of character for a bumpkin of my inglorious social standing and raw fish eating persuasion, but I blame Verne. I blame Jules Verne for this sudden outburst of carefully filtered spleen and pretension.
Good day Sir, and may your travels take you to mysterious Islands and unknown Antipodes in good health. See to it my good man that Barkell's travel larders are fully stocked and his brandy supplies are overflowing. I magnanimously request you put the invoice in my name and have the provisioner paid from my accounts.
Indeed, cheers to all!
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Jan. 14 2016 13:16:54
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estebanana
Posts: 9352
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Living National Treasure (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
Two points, Stephen. While other countries' fleets, such as that of Costa Rica, engage in horrible practices like "finning" sharks (just as Chinese fleets do) to supply the Chinese market, it is still Chinese demand that drives the market. Were it not for Chinese demand, there would be no market, and therefore no killing of sharks, rhinos, elephants, tigers, and other magnificent forms of life to supply that market. I am a strong advocate of "cultural relativity" as an anthropological concept...but only up to a point. There are some cultural practices that are so vile they demand to be condemned--including the subject under consideration, female genital mutilation, and other practices that are cruel and have no place in the modern world.
Oh you do have a point, and I get it clearly. Supplies follow demand. I made the same point about aquariums driving the dolphin capture industry. My reason for pointing out the Cost Rica aspect is because I wanted to go at it from both supply side and end of the supply chain demand.
As far as cultural practice goes I also agree, I find some cultural practice absolute horrid behavior and out right mistreatment of animals and humans. I have not problem with condemnation political correctness be damned.
The only problem I try to work on is when engaging someone or some group that is that practices cultural habit that we all have a moral imperative to confront. I say we must look at a bigger picture not because I wish to excuse the behavior,but because I wish to reason out how to state a case against the behavior that is not hypocracy. In other words when you talk to a Chinese person about shark finsoup, for example, and they become defensive typically they will hit back with a counter example of a Western or group cultural behavior that repels them. Then you enter into a difficult argument about the relative evils in two cultures.
I've found these type of scenarios are very difficult. Any wise diplomatic words of advise you can impart on how to field these kinds arguments would be well taken here.
Well nigh gentlemen, it's been a fine evening. There are cannibals about in these far regions and I implore you to keep your flintlocks
loaded and at bedside in case the mad hordes invade camp!
Best and good night!
Jules
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Date Jan. 14 2016 13:41:56
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Living National Treasure (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
Well nigh gentlemen, it's been a fine evening. There are cannibals about in these far regions and I implore you to keep your flintlocks loaded and at bedside in case the mad hordes invade camp!
Best and good night!
I say, sir, you would not be that accomplished gentleman Phileas Fogg currently circumnavigating the globe by rail, sail, trail, and balloon with your indefatigable valet Passepartout, would you? The latest London papers noted that you were last heard from in the Cannibal Isles but that your goal was to sail further south in an attempt to reach the Antipodes, and further still to the pole and the legendary opening to the inner earth. It is a pleasure to have made your acquaintance, sir, even if only by post, should this missive reach you.
Your most faithful servant,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jan. 14 2016 14:01:04
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: Living National Treasure (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
In other words when you talk to a Chinese person about shark finsoup, for example, and they become defensive typically they will hit back with a counter example of a Western or group cultural behavior that repels them.
Seeing the gross conditions discussed they should rather be able to "counter" with inconsistant rhetorics.
With aspects, backgrounds and quantities kept in focus there would be little for them to use for equal argument.
Similar besides with the Japanese apparent dolphin sloughtering argument. Show basins shop in for living animals, not sloughtered herds. And I am not aware of a practical background as to why catching of dolphins ought to come with killing, let alone exterminating whole dolphin schools. Makes no sense.
At the detrimental state that things are, scientific dismanteling of Chinese superstition should be displayed wherever their delegates show up as well as on western mainstream platforms that receive international attention.
It would quickly yield results, and that is what matters.
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It is known since years that with the rising living standard and cultural influence there has come up awareness in China. And that progressive groups there do for instance enter cattle markets do demonstrate and act against cruelty.
However, they are only very small minorities, with their union falling far behind the exploding dimensions on the berserk supplying side.
The progressive minds there need prestige and image effecting support from the western world. A potential far exceeding any progress solely dependent on domestic advance, both in terms of dimension as well as pace.
To say it with Thatcher for an exception:
"There is no alternatiive."
Ruphus
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Date Jan. 14 2016 17:04:43
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