Alarm as China eases 25-year ban on rhino and tiger parts
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The whales they research aren't endangered. Also, other nations and people hunt whales.
> Similar loopholes will be found here, for example: if i capture a rhino and send it to a farm for 1 week, is it now a animal that we can do "research" on? What about 1 month?
That's a possibility. But more likely, it'll create more tiger/rhino "farms". Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is debatable just like trophy hunting.
Also, the threat to tigers and rhinos aren't poachers. It's loss of habitat due to human population growth. Where humans live in numbers, it's hard to have tigers and rhinos around because they can easily kill humans. It's why most tigers and rhinos in the world today are in zoos or wildlife enclosures.
Actually that's a big threat, sorry to burst your bubble, they're threatened by multiple different human factors.
Does it really matter? Number of countries agree not to whale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling#International_Whaling_...) and Japan is OK to do that?
> Also, other nations and people hunt whales.
Other people kill people as well. Should I be afraid of you?
A grand total of ...two. And not at the scale of the Japanese. Iceland even exports whale meat to the Japanese because they don't eat enough of it. To top it off, Japan has to subsidize the "industry" (quotes used because Japan claims it's for research) because it's unprofitable.
Sources:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21729043-000-taxpayer...
https://www.ifaw.org/united-states/our-work/whales/which-cou...
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151203-why-do-some-countrie...
It's not about endangerment, it's about recognizing that the earth is a fragile system that we're pushing closer to the edge with every extinction. We have a responsibility to our descendants to take care of their planet for them until they can arrive.
Except this literally doesn't apply to Japan. The whales Japan is hunting are not endangered, and there is no proposed mechanism whereby Japan's whale hunting causes ecological harm. The IWC's own scientists recommended the whale hunting moratorium be removed around 1994.
Ah yes, the "two wrongs make a right" argument.
I would imagine some in the upper echelons of their government know that it's all completely bogus, but if it keeps the people happy, I doubt they care.
My wife showed up from PT with the signs of cupping. If you think that's bad, let me terrify you further: insurance company paid for it
You can google for the images (it's semi-NSFW).
back in USSR it was practiced as a home remedy in case of flu and i had it several times as child. You do feel warmed up similar like if you had a strong massage done upon your back and you nicely drift asleep after that. It is in general direction of supportive actions during flu. It isn't a cure - and there is no cure for [viral] flu - yet it helps getting through it. The same way like a bit of vodka with really hot tea following a really heavy sauna session - the way i been managing flu since high school - there is no medical evidence that it medically helps too, yet it does help you to get through :)
This move from China is definitely going to bring more incentive for illegal poaching. It's just simple economics: by officially bringing a market back, profits to be made are much greater, and people will find any way to get in on the action.
If, however, if we provide more _legal_ means for people to benefit from the tiger and rhino markets, we could provide enough economic incentive for people to be invested in their survival. The big deal here would be the opportunity for private ownership (rhino and tiger 'farms' basically). People will viciously protect what's theirs from poachers and ensure it's continued existence, especially if there is money to be made by doing so.
If people are allowed to privately own, breed, and sell their tigers and rhinos, I think China's move could actually _facilitate recovery_ for both species.
But is that what China's planning to do? I doubt it given their track record and political philosophies, which means this is going to only make the extinction of tigers and rhino's a bigger problem.
Asking as a Chinese myself, can you point to some examples?
edit: improve formatting
You can google up all sorts of things if you like. I've found it's not worth my time to post basic history, particularly with regards to China on hacker news. Too many accounts that amount to "nuh, uh prove it!" and have nothing else to say.
The wikipedia page on Cultural Revolution in both English and Chinese didn't mention any tradition being lost either.
> Too many accounts that amount to "nuh, uh prove it!" and have nothing else to say.
The burden of proving what you said is true should not be on me. You said something bizarre and got challenged.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/world/asia/china-cultural...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Olds
Seems like an unusual question to ask since it's not a sensitive or avoided topic in either organic or mainstream media in China.
"the State Council said powdered forms of rhino horn and bones from dead tigers could be used in "qualified hospitals by qualified doctors"."
Conspiracy aside, this is impossible, since most of TCM is a nonsensical superstition and anyone using tiger or rhino parts as therapy is de facto unqualified as a doctor (or decent human). At least people will die or suffer for harming these animals, since this "treatment" won't impact the course of their diseases at all.
It's very bad for rhinos and tigers, for sure.
To the backdrop of mass die-offs, the rules preventing the extinction of rhinos and tigers are cut by a few power-hungry fools seeking the political support of a few greedy fools who will sell those animals' horns and bones as false cures to a few superstitious fools who believe these worthless tusks and bones have magical powers. It's such dark planetary tragicomedy -- with a focus on "tragic", a kind of satanic genius that even Mikhail Boulgakov couldn't have dreamed up, and it's real.
This is only happening for an extremely loose and almost meaningless definition of fascism.
> strong regimentation of society and of the economy
This is exactly what China is in the process of implementing via their social/sesame credit system. Semantics aside, it's not good.
you can argue PRC is more totalitarianism than just authoritarianism. but IMO, fascism is too vague to be useful without hindsight. for example, how is fascism meaningfully different than social nationalism? so please, don't just condescendingly throw out a cherry picked definition
Some 10 million in fascist Germany[0], some 60 million in Soviet Russia, more than 70 million in communist China, etc.[1] Though, I'm not sure how to treat "just let them starve". Is it murder if you have the means to feed them? Is it murder if you don't even try?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_...
- Abolition of private property
- Abolition of civil liberties
- Abolition of political liberties
- Abolition of Free Press
- Systematic repression, the reign of fear
- Glorification of the Nation
- Quasi-Nationalization of Means of Production (whether private enterprise still exist is irrelevant, as they have to prone allegiance to the State)
- Mass murdering of political opposition and minorities
Same thing happened in France during the French Revolution, and nobody called it Fascism or Communism at the time but the idea of oppressing individuals for an utopian State was already there.
For those who want that, there are many other places on the internet to go; not here please.
Stunning, beautiful creatures. Humanity as a while has decided you're more valuable as soup, or ground up into nostrums and magic potions than you are alive, prowling the wild. You're not the first and you won't be the last.
It's shocking that this is still going on in the modern world.
Surely the absurdity of someone like you telling the world’s poor that they ought to stay poor doesn’t escape you?
Keep the dialogue civil.
It turns out that industrializing a society creates a lot of pollution. That pollution, as we've recently found out, is responsible for "the massive humanitarian crises and greater suffering" we are going to experience as impoverished nations continue to industrialize (ie. get lifted out of poverty).
See: IPCC
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
The solution to pollution is more economic development, not less. This becomes even more true once demographic transition effects (like declining birth rates) start to kick in.
EKC works with pollutants that have short term, acute consequences. Think sulfates, nitrates, carbon monoxide, etc.
EKC has not been proven true with pollutants whose effects are less concentrated and whose effects take longer to realize (CH4, CO2, etc). The catastrophes I'm referring to have little to do with the paper you cited.
Millions of potential Einsteins have lived and died as subsistence farmers or worse throughout human history. If any of us were born fifty thousand years ago we would not be savant geniuses bringing about the agricultural era - if we even lived to adulthood (highly unlikely) we would have spent our days chasing gazelle to exhaustion to survive just like the rest of mankind.
Or put another way, we're not talking about putting dollars in wallets. We're talking about putting food in children's mouths, clothes on their backs, roofs over their heads. Maybe even some education in those heads. Yes, I just used a "think of the children" argument, sorry.
It was American capital and knowledge that lifted these people out of extreme poverty.
Case in point: cumulative greenhouse gas emission
http://www.climatechangenews.com/files/2015/06/Historic-emis...
On a per capita basis, China is doing less harm to the environment than those in the US.
All you guys going around saying Chinese traditional medicine is worthless are like all the diplomats flying in to Israel saying that the conflict with the Palestinians is just a land dispute and has nothing to do with religion. You don't believe in anyone's values but your own.
Yeah, I like Rhinos and Tigers and if I had a button that said make sure I can keep seeing rhinos and tigers when I go to the zoo once a year, I'd push it, but if they disappeared my world and the world of most people would be largely unaffected except for watching t.v documentaries about it happening in countries I will never travel to. That's what majorly weirds me out about some animal rights issues. None of this stuff will ever have an impact on your day to day life ever, yet people care so intensely about it. How did we come to intensely value Tigers and Rhinos even though our only interaction with them throughout our life is a couple of minutes during occasional visits to the zoo?
It's like traditional remedies in the West: The plants used usually really do have medicinal properties.
(I'm not saying that a rhino horn has any useful properties, though...)
Edit: What's wrong, guys?
There is no evidence of any use for tiger penis or rhino horn.
I made it clear that I didn't think there was.
You guys need to calm down and put the pitchforks away.
Lynch away. It's easier than thinking.
(I'm not downmodding you; I can't on replies to my own comments.)
Sorry this is nonsense. Medicine either works or doesn't. TCM is woo writ large. This isn't about value systems, it's about evidence, it's about scams and fraud preying on ignorance.
> if they disappeared my world and the world of most people would be largely unaffected
And as the number of species of wild animal on the planet ticks down to zero, this is the sort of complacency that will say "well it's been fine so far, I still have my Brawndo"
Rhino and Tigers could be raised as livestock for their valuable whatever, but people seem to be even more opposed to that than letting wild animals go extinct. That's the spiritual part of it. The value of wild animal life for its own sake is taken as an absolute value.
Jaysus.