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200 Dolphins Await Slaughter In Japan's Taiji Cove
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "CNN reports that more than 200 bottlenose dolphins remain penned in a cove by Japanese fishermen, many of them stressed and bloodied from their attempts to escape before fishermen start to slaughter them for meat. Until now, the fishermen have focused on selecting dolphins to be sold into captivity at marine parks and aquariums in Japan and overseas as twenty-five dolphins, including a rare albino calf, were taken on Saturday 'to a lifetime of imprisonment,' and another 12 on Sunday. 'Many of the 200+ Bottlenose dolphins who are in still the cove are visibly bloody & injured from their attempts to escape the killers,' one update says. Although the hunting of dolphins is widely condemned in the west, Japanese defend the practice as a local custom — and say it is no different to the slaughter of other animals for meat. The Wakayama Prefecture, where Taiji is located condemns the criticism as biased and unfair to the fishermen. 'Taiji dolphin fishermen are just conducting a legal fishing activity in their traditional way in full accordance with regulations and rules under the supervision of both the national and the prefectural governments. Therefore, we believe there are no reasons to criticize the Taiji dolphin fishery.' Meanwhile the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society describes how about 40 to 60 local fishermen work with nets to divide up the pod, whose initial numbers were estimated by the group at more than 250. 'They tighten up the nets to bring each sub-group together then the skiffs push them toward the tarps. Under the tarps in the shallows is where the trainers work with the killers to select the "prettiest" dolphins which will sell and make the best pay day for the hunters,' the group says. The fishermen will 'kill the "undesirable" dolphins (those with nicks and scars) under the tarps to hide from our cameras when that time comes.'"
Dolphins are intelligent, they'll figure a way out of this.
Yes, dolphins are cuter than cows and pigs ... is harvesting one worse than the other?
How many million cows are slaughtered every year? How many pigs? How many chickens?
This sounds like one set of animals has better PR than another.
Really, this isn't the news I would expect for this site.
They're mammals, not fish.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Cows and especially pigs are highly intelligent animals. And they are totally delicious. Let's change our minds about those before we beat up the Japanese too badly, shall we?
This just sounds like one big emotional summary about fishing. Heavily one-sided as well, which doesn't surprise me considering it's Sea Shepard.
Cry me a river.
Not a biased piece at all. Never would have thought so with ''slaughter'' in the headline /s
I don't see evidence of bias in the word choice. "Slaughter" is the normal English word to describe the killing of animals for food. Pigs and cows are "slaughtered" routinely, in buildings clearly labelled as "slaughterhouses."
What other word would you have them use?
...will they be able to certify it as tuna-safe ?
No, this is not clickbait.
Normal, mentally-healthy humans have a lot of empathy - otherwise we're psychopaths. Sure, the amount of empathy varies - mainly as a function of whether the animal in question tends to act human-like. We should embrace this, not cynically write it off - empathy *IS* humanity.
Yes, that also means that anyone who is intelligent and reflective will be uncomfortable with eating meat, concerned how the animal died, and of course what kind of animal it was. This is basically orthogonal to issues of environmental or ecological impact.
How does this matter to a nerd? Will it affect the release of a stable btrfs?
"200 yummy dolphins await being turned into delicious food"
Not a biased piece at all. Never would have thought so with ''slaughter'' in the headline /s
Without commenting on the bias, what word should they use? (I'm assuming that's /sarcasm at the end there)
The dolphins will be killed for meat. The word for killing animals for food is "slaughter". In fact, using that word makes it very clear that they are just animals: the reason it's a strong word when used about human violence is that its meaning then becomes "killed like mere animals".
Dolphins aren’t as special as you think
Their intelligence, like all intelligence, is a complex matter, but basically, they are not as smart as their reputation suggests; although, stating that they are as smart (dumb) as chickens also overstates things.
This is NOT tech news.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Japanese scientists still trying to assess whether every sea creature can be turned into sashimi.
Vegetarianism is about the minimization of cruelty and suffering.
Plant life does not factor into it because they can not suffer. They can’t suffer because they have no nervous system with which to think. They also have no physical mechanisms with which to feel pain. And even if they did, they have no thoughts, so the pain would mean nothing. They have no fear, panic, or sadness. They live, but they live without consciousness. So you can not torture a plant or make it suffer.
On the animal spectrum, not all animals are the same since some animals have small brains and simple thoughts and other animals have complex brains and complex thoughts. At the top of the animal spectrum you have humans with the most complex brains and abstract thoughts and intense sensations of fear. Humans have a high capacity to suffer. On the other end of the spectrum you have animals like spiders with comparatively simple nervous systems and simple thoughts. They have a much smaller capacity to suffer. That’s why it would feel more painful to watch someone rip the legs off a spider than watch someone rip the legs off a cat or horse or chimpanzee. So there’s a spectrum of animals ordered by how self-aware they are and how complex their thinking is: spiders, fish, chickens, ravens, octopus, cats, dogs, pigs, cows, horses, dolphins, gorillas, chimpanzees, humans... roughly something like that. Everyone draws a line on the spectrum, whether consciously or unconsciously, what they are comfortable with. Some people are fine eating fish and chicken, but not pigs and cows. Other people are fine eating pigs and cows, but not chimpanzees, who are almost human. Some people are even fine eating chimpanzees and feel no empathy when they shout and panic. Almost everyone at least agrees that it’s not ok to eat humans. But some people even do that. A vegetarian draws the line at it being not ok to eat any animal.
Some people argue that oysters, despite being animals, are vegetarian. They aren’t, by definition of the word vegetarian, but it is true that the argument for plants applies to oysters. Oysters do not have a central nervous system, no consciousness, and no thoughts. So they can not suffer.
Not all vegetarians are vegetarian for the same reasons. Some people have a spiritual belief that all life is sacred and equal, but that’s not my belief and not something that’s supported by any facts I’ve seen. What I outlined above, though, is simple fact and simple reasoning.
Three things:
1. All of your examples included humans, this story isn't about humans. It's about dolphins. (Also, how is this Tech news at all?)
2. Even if our morals do change to include all animals in the category of "no eating", that time is not now. If people look back in horror at this, so what? I'm not them, they're not me.
3. Kind of related to #2: Animals will continue eating other animals (and I would like to point out that none of your examples occur to the general animal populace either, strange disconnect). That's not suddenly going to change even if human's morals do. So does that mean that the other animals are less moral than humans?
Also, meat is just so damn tasty. Who would want to give that up?
What other word would you have them use?
I agree, "slaughter" should not have been used in the headline. Considering the intelligence of dolphins compared to cows, pigs, chickens, or fish, "murder" or "massacre" would have been more appropriate terms.
You can't spell Slaughter without Laughter.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Speaking of WWII and Japan, we encouraged them to eat more dolphin and whale when we were rebuilding them. Custom? Please. It's a dying generation remembering what they ate in grade school because that was the cheapest meat available, and an industry which doesn't want to admit to it's shareholders that it's time to fold.
Slaughter implies butchering and the headline makes it sound as if the animals were to be butchered in the cove.... Slaughtering in the cove sounds unsanitary.
I suppose I don't know how sanitary it is, but they really do perform the slaughter right there in the cove.
eg:
http://digitaljournal.com/image/102641
http://unleashed.org.au/images/blogs/The-cove.jpg
That sort of escalated rather quickly.
Why is it that some people seem to care more about the death of 200 dolphins than the death of 200,000 Syrians?
I suggest you read into the work of Dr Cleve Backster
He's a scientist who started out as a CIA polygraph expert, and he decided one day, "what would happen if I took my polygraph and hooked it up to the leaf of this plant?". Well, he was very surprised, because, unlike smooth, unchanging wavelengths, which he thought he would see from the plant, instead he ended up with a shifting dynamic wave, which was more indicative of what you would expect a human being to be like, with the exception that skin, kind of acts as a dampening agent to the electrical current. But the plant has a very active dynamic electrical current.
Well, then he said, "This plant is acting so much like a human being, what if I ran the plant through stress, similar to how you do a human on the lie detector?" The whole purpose of the lie detection is, you want to get this person into the moment, when you say, "Did you fire the shot who killed so and so?" And the person has a shock, and they're not happy, they're not enthusiastic about your question. So, so they end up saying, "no of course I didn't kill him", and then the graph goes crazy!
So he says, "How do I shock a plant"? He tried dipping one of the leaves in his coffee. That didn't work. He tried a variety of little things like that, when he got the idea in his mind, without actually even doing it, but he just got the idea, of going and taking a match, lighting the match, striking it, then holding it to one of the leaves and burning the leaf.
The plant had an enormous reaction, and in fact did not stop until after he had actually gone and done it, burnt the leaf, and then taken the matches out of the room again. Only once the threat was gone, and he was out of the room, did the plant finally calm down.
So yes, plants just like human beings suffer and go through stress. It's not a good argument to use for "cruelty and suffering"
The Japanese consider dolphin meat to be a delicacy and serve it in their high priced restaurants. See if any of those restaurants are used to cater/host sales conferences or other such bashes of Japanese brand names. Then just publicize the info. Headlines like "Tonda Corp or Hoyota Motors hosts its sales kick off conference with dolphin meat serving restaurant" in US Market will have some salutary effect. If big name players stop supporting restaurants serving marine mammal meat the market will be greatly diminished. Hopefully.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It depends on what you base your ethics around. You have options. 1) There is a universal right/wrong dictated by God. 2) What is good for humanity as a whole is right. 3) What is good for me personally is right. 4) What is good for intelligent life is right. 5) What is natural is right. 6) What feels good is right. 7)Nothing is right/wrong
If you don't decide what your ethics are based on then how can you decide what is logical???? If you believe #2 then killing dolphins is ok. If you believe #1 then you should check scripture about your diet. If you believe #4 then you need to create a line somewhere. Maybe dolphins is that line.