I don't know. I've never been able to understand celebrity worship. Well, on one level I don't understand celebrity worship, but really, I think almost everybody has their celebrities. For most/many/some slashdotters they may not be actors, but it could be Joss Whedon, Linus Torvalds, Theo de Raadt, ESR, Richard Stallman, and even--as the GP mentioned--Thompson. Same kind of celebrity tracking, just a different kind of celebrity! (I'm think of names I see fairly regularly on slashdot..)
I would also add that Europe and the US--yes, even the big bad US--are efficient polluters. We produce a lot of products used by the rest of the world, and we do it efficiently! The numbers are all out there--CO2 emissions, GDP, etc--you can do the comparisons yourself!
China also produces many products, but they are not as efficient, pollution-wise. This is why they have sulfur dioxide emissions that are as high as America's were almost 40 years ago BEFORE we cut back to our current low rates. Sulfur dioxide causes those nasty little problems like acid rain which currently impacts a large number of Chinese cities and agricultural areas. And now they appear to have become the biggest CO2 polluters as well.
Let's just consider this...by offshoring our efficient manufacturing from the US and Europe to China / 3rd world, where the end result is cheaper to buy, but much more environmentally damaging, we are directly damaging the environment. People who promote Kyoto want to make US/European companies even less competitive in manufacturing, which will no doubt force even more manufacturing to China/3rd world, are ignoring the consequences of their actions! they care for only the seen, and not the unseen..
The thing that annoys me the most about CO2 debate is that people who obsess on it tend to ignore so many other KNOWN worse factors!
Actually aren't most of our space launch vehicles essentially modified ICBMs? I mean, isn't that true of most space launch vehicles? Von Braun and all that?
Well, let's do this "reasoning" again. The sacred city of Catholicism is Rome, in the Italian peninsula. There are plenty of non-Christians in Italy. Is that reason for a Catholic to declare Holy War against the rest of the world? Let's get one thing straight: the fact that a lunatic person calls "reason" a random assortment of facts do not make it rational. Your reasoning (I was tempted to use scare quotes, as you did!) doesn't make sense. Jews are not allowed in Saudi Arabia, period. That's the law. This is a long cultural traditional. You can rant and rave about how it doesn't make sense all you want--I in fact agree!--it's backwards, racist, and barbaric. That doesn't change the fact that a very large number of people are fine with that. Nobody said anything about "rationality" entering the discussion, you just pulled that red herring out of nowhere.
If Alex pushes Bob and Bob blows Alex's headoff with a shotgun, is that "rational" -- by any standard I would follow, hell no! But there is a clear cause and effect.
American troops were sent to the Arab peninsula to fight an Arab dictator, Saddam Hussein, who was committing genocide with the help of the Soviet Union. Don't forget us! We funded him too.
That was a perfectly legal reason for their presence there, they had been invited by the government of Saudi Arabia. So wait...now legality matters? Jews aren't allowed in Saudi Arabia as a legal matter. Ok, just so we're agreed... ??
The US in 1991 even restrained from toppling Saddam, at the request of the Saudi government who was afraid that Iran would become too powerful without Saddam. that's one theory. I wish we had taken him out then and there, and cleaned up our trash earlier.
If this was a well conducted sequence of events or not is debatable, but it certainly cannot be considered a "reason" for terrorism, because there's no rational justification for terror. You're applying YOUR cultural biases and understandings to the matter at hand. You can't do that--because other cultures frequently don't make sense to us!
Or maybe not. A large part of the Middle East current situation was defined exactly forty years ago this month, when Egypt, Jordan, and Syria tried and failed to do what Ahmedinejad still proposes to do today. Yes, I'm glad you can bring up dates. Nobody MADE the united states backup Israel and become as hated as they are.
Until the day when the moderate Arabs and Muslims clearly reject the proposals of the terrorists, it will always be the same.
The Israeli culture is vastly superior to that of their enemies because it's an advanced technological culture. A well trained soldier will always be able to defeat a horde of fanatics. Ah yes, and now the truth comes out--the innate Israeli superiority (CULTURAL superiority!) over a "horde of fanatics." Orientalism at its fightest, people!
we're not dealing with people who follow our cultural norms. You've illustrated quite well how you can know facts but completely understand how millions of people would react instead blathering about how they are not rational which is UTTERLY irrelevant!
Explain it to me then? What is the point? Americans don't have a history? What does that mean--we clearly DO have a history. Whether it's a 200 year history from the founding, a 500 year founding since exploration, or farther back our shared european / african / asian / etc heritage?
What point are you trying to make? That history isn't valid unless it spans thousands of years? That doesn't make sense as history is a shared enterprise.
I think the truth is you're just trying to belittle the US and the American experience to satisfy some sense of wounded superiority.
Ok, I can buy that--it's a completely semantically pedantic argument (Marshall Hodgson wrote a great article, I believe entitled "The unity of world history" that is definitely worth checking out)--but that's totally NOT what the above poster is saying. To quote his reply to me "americans are always proud of their "history" but essentially they have none."
There's no ambiguity there, we're not quibbling over semantics.
So, uh... what made all the 19 terrorists in 2001? If you buy UBL's reasons, us having troops stationed in the Arabian peninsula during the first Iraq war. That's what got him going...not supposed to allow infidels, and CERTAINTLY not infidel troops.
What made those that blew up the Cole? more of the same--also having a ship stationed off the peninsula.. same troops thing as above.
What made those that blew up our embassies in Africa? Since al-qaida, same thing as above.
What made those that blew up Marine Barracks in Lebanon? Us maintaining troops in a foreign country? I've never really understood this one as a terrorist action--can attacks on solely military targets really be "terrorist" ?
What made the Turks invade Europe? I don't know, what made Europeans invade Africa, Mongols invade China, Germany invade Poland, etc etc etc... why does anyone invade anyone? turks were conquering places well before they were Muslim, so I don't think you can blame that one on Islam!
Please note I'm not JUSTIFYING any of these... they're complete BS. but saying that there is no reason is also silly--the people doing the attacking have plenty of reasons. Iran doesn't randomly hate us, they hate us for helping to get rid of Mossadegh and supporting the repressive Shah all those years. UBL doesn't randomly hate us (though he comes close..) he has specific reasons. Again, I'm not saying any of these are GOOD reasons, I'm just saying, had we never interfered in the middle east, never supported cruel dictators, and never sent troops over there, things might be different.
One could also make the argument it's good to fight Islamic fundamentalism, period. I might even say that! I do rather think it's one of those self perpetuating things though...the more you fight it, the more it pops up.
I'll also agree that the original poster (the BLAME BUSH!!! guy) is a whacko...
the difference between us-american and european history is fundamental. in other words, a few thousand years. us-american history is in fact european history. That's a very Euro-centric point of view!! Ironic?
but some us guys treat their 500 years of history like it was going back to the antique ages. that's not the case. How so? Who exactly treats it that way? This seems somewhat out of the blue... Are you trying to claim that because American history is at most 500 years, there is nothing to learn--lessons or otherwise? That seems a rather shocking thing to say..
the usa population quite successfully wiped out their two real histories: natives are forgotten and europeans are not americans. Again, where the heck are you getting this? I went through 12 years of public education in the US, and believe me--we learned a great deal about our nation's treatment of native americans. Everybody knows of the "trail of tears" and of the deaths of millions of natives. I think you might be shocked by how many Americans have some native american ancestry today, btw... I have no idea where you are getting this crap.
Your second point--"europeans are not americans"?? Europeans are NOT Americans. Many Americans may have at various times BEEN from Europe, but what on earth are you trying to say here? It doesn't make sense to me. America is fully derived from Europeans--population, philosophies (Locke and various Anglo/Scottish/etc philosophers played a huge role in the early days!) but that does not make us Europeans.. is that what you're claiming?
all this "new-world" vs "old-world" crap because of a difference of 500 years. Ok, I'm starting to get it... i think this is a sore point that you rant on all the time? because NOBODY brought up "new world" / "old world" divide. (Though I would add that it was EUROPEANS who created the term New World, as it has been in usage for 500 years!!)
there didn't much real change happen in those years either. maybe the civil war and the slavery thing, but my grandfather lived in a kingdom (small period of democracy in between), in a dictatorship, in socialism and finally in capitalism. he never ever changed his place of living, but he had to change his currency 4 times, he was from berlin. You're absolutely right. With the exception of the civil war (~5 years out of ~220) American society has been far, far more stable than that of Europe in the last 200 years.
I know that, but Christians don't force themselves violently upon others. Not at this exact moment in history in large numbers at least. Christians have historically "forced themselves violently" upon more people than any other religions--combined probably!
Christians were behind the holocaust for that matter. What does that say? Not a lot...
Christians are (currently ?) not very danguerous at all. Just much easier to attack. Tell that to Iraq or Afghanistan--from their point of views "Christians" are fairly dangerous...
And europeans/americans used religion to justify the crusades, slavery, the conquest of Africa, colonialism, and just about everything else. religions what you make of it. show me someone who follows the literal bible 100% and i'll show you someone that doesn't exist.
but 3G doesn't cover much of the nation yet Is that REALLY true? Between Alltell/Sprint and Verizon, it seems that a lot--most?--of the country is covered. Sprint/Alltell claim to cover like 200million with RevA, though I have NO idea how accurate that is. I do know that in the past, I've had very good luck with Verizon's evdo in some surprising places.
So I guess att's 3G may not be very good, but it seems like 3g evdo is not bad..
Jews are not the only Semites of the world, and criticism of Israel and its policies is hardly criticism of an entire people (let alone, all the world's Semitic people which include far more than just ethnic Jews). That's pretty irrelevant. Despite pedantic semantic playing around, "anti-semitic" ONLY refers to Jews. Yes, there are plenty of others that could be called semites--including Muslims (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, whatever--it's not a religious thing like you imply) but that has nothing to do with the word.
I would agree that criticizing Israel and its policies does not make you anti-semitic though. DESPITE the fact that Israel IS a Jewish state, criticizing a country is not criticizing a religious people!
(hmmm Kaplan seems to be a pretty right-wing blogger. That explains why a leftist nut felt entitled to attack him. Kaplan doesn't seem overly extreme though) I'm not familiar with Kaplan or their ongoing feud, but FrontPageMag is definitely a right-wing -- or at least, neocon website. I'm very conservative/libertarian, and find very little to agree with on frontpagemag most of the time. It's very Israel oriented which quite frankly bores me. Those two sides can fling shit back and forth between themselves for eternity and never get anywhere:)
Long lifespans make "sustainability" numbers extremely hard to calculate. Now we know that Bowheads live even longer than we thought, which makes those numbers even more suspect. Right now, Bowhead's are nearly extinct in some areas.
Some areas / some populations--which are not being hunted! As I said before, no commercial whaling of bowheads--so your story with made up numbers is pretty irrelevant.
Lots of activities are negative to whales. This is why, if we want whales around, we should restrict the hunting of whales. Lot's of things can kill whales, but some of those things we can quite easily control.
Restrict hunting of whales? Oh right, that's already been done...
Come right down to it, whales are highly intelligent mammals...the only highly intelligent mammals still being systematically hunted in a legal fashion. I don't see any real reason for it, except that some people like to say, "This is the way we've always done it."
Some people want to eat them. That's the reason.
Your IWC points--all very well and good, I don't substantively disagree with any of it, but what exactly is supposed to be news here? I never said or implied anything that contradicts that. I said that Japan and Norway were examples of the big commercial whalers! All of the countries you list ARE in the IWC. I never claimed otherwise. I guess it's just a cover-your-ass for when you tried to put words in my mouth?
Let me refresh you again as to EXACTLY what I said:
However, when we're talking about international treaties agreed to by dozens of countries to give the right to a few native groups to hunt 10s of whales a year in a sustainable fashion, what's the problem?
In summary: -Nothing about compliance / non-compliance from NATIONS -Nothing about COMMERCIAL whaling -ONLY mentions "native groups" -ONLY mentions "10s of whales a year" -Emphasis on "sustainable" -Dozens of countries, not "all" (this was where you originally misquoted me!) -About how binding it is--it's a treaty, not law
Try this: Taking the top three whaling countries, plus the eskimos, and set them all to hunting bowhead whales
Why, what is the point of this? Nobody is disputing that that would be a disaster for the population. As far as I know--and I've said this before--there is no commercial bowhead hunting. Zippo. The only hunting is a few 10s a year. Enough so that scientists believe the population is steadily growing. I don't have any reason to doubt this assessment. I honestly doubt you know enough about the bowhead populations that are currently being hunted to dispute this either?
And having an opinion is not the same as dismissing a competing idea out of hand. You didn't replay to anything except two lines at the bottom of my post, and there you only nitpicked.
Wow. So now when I criticize you for ENTIRELY misrepresenting what I wrote, that's just "nitpicking"? I've also got to say that it's amazing to me that you have such an insight into my inner thought process to know EXACTLY how I "completely dismissed an idea out of hand". I mean wow, you've only exchanged 2-3 posts online and you're able to know my innermost thoughts--that's impressive!!
It's really a silly debating point to call someone close-minded just because you disagree with them, and sillier to continue to pull random things I never said out of thin air.
So Closeminded: the idea that hunting whales should be further curtailed (popular idea), doesn't rate with you. Ok, so by your standard, merely having an opinion makes me close minded? There surely has to be more to it than that... If it makes you feel any better, I actually DON'T support commercial whaling!
Uninformed: You apparently think that all countries have agreed to the whaling moratorium (they haven't) and that the sustainability numbers are viewed as scientifically accurate (they aren't). Ok, I'll take this slow for you. Let's look at my previous post: "about international treaties agreed to by dozens of countries". I never made any claims about IWC membership other than "dozens" of countries (there are actually 77, which I think satisfies "dozens")--and I never even mentioned the moratorium! You can't even properly represent my point from the previous post, but you're calling ME close-minded and uninformed?!
Enlighten me--what country that whales isn't part of the IWC? I'm not really surprised that Uzbekistan isn't...
I'm not quite sure what I said that touched such a nerve, but whatever it is, I apologize--I think you took my post way more personally than it was ever intended given the number of ad hominems. Regardless, I'm sorry if I offended you.
I'll respond in general--the Whaling Commission is _bitterly_ fought against--mostly by countries like Japan and Norway who want more commercial whaling. I'm not sure it can be argued that they are a corrupt organization--if you have any proof of your allegations, I would be glad to see it. You wouldn't be making an assumption, would you?;) It's funny how that works...
In any case, the issue at hand is NOT commercial whaling, nor the alleged corruption of the commission--the issue is LIMITED native hunting rights. Furthermore, limited native hunting for species which, as far as I know, are not otherwise commercially hunted. I'm not even sure where these big bags of money would be coming from!
The commission claims the populations hunted by the native Alaskans are growing--even with the sustainable hunt that is allowed. Again, if you have any evidence to the contrary here--perhaps other than calling me a schmuck, or insulting me--I would be glad to hear it! Until then, you've just been making assumptions.
Incidentally, the whaling commission DOES allow whaling for science--so maybe one day the next miracle drug will be from a whale...
Cultural relativism is always stupid, whether you're talking about something like whaling, or whether you're talking about footbinding, or female genital mutilation...Just because someone has done it for a thousand years, doesn't make it right. No, it doesn't. However, when we're talking about international treaties agreed to by dozens of countries to give the right to a few native groups to hunt 10s of whales a year in a sustainable fashion, what's the problem? Just because someone (you?) doesn't like it, doesn't make it wrong.
Then you make a completely irrelevant comparison (humans vs squid and sharks), and speculate wildly about it's childbearing years. What the gp did was make a completely irrelevant list of ways in which human activities can be negative to whales (and presumably, should be stopped). I added a few more things that can kill whales to the list--should we stop those things too?
I think you're close-minded and uninformed. Hmm. I don't think so!:)
What exactly am I close-minded about? Or uninformed for that matter, was I wrong about something?
"Disgusting" is making excuses for hunting endangered species. Ok, so is it the killing or the endangered part that bothers you? If it's the killing and you eat meat, I don't get it. If it's the endangered--well, take it up with the International Whaling Commission. Can you believe there are people that study whales and stuff? And who issue approval before whales can be killed? I think they just might take their endangered status into account when they approve just how many whales can be killed per year, and I dare to presume they know more than you or I about whales.
Tradition is not sufficient justification for anything, much less killing. So... because it's your tradition to care about such things as the lives of animals... sigh
First Alaskan natives are "yayhoos" to you. Now you would rather that sentient human beings be killed rather than an animal--all because of some perverse mixed up moral equivalency? I can't even begin to comprehend the mindset that would make such a statement..
Straight out--one has to die, an endangered species whale, or a random human--you pick, which is it?
So, because something lives a long time, you would force your values upon people who have hunted whales for thousands of years? What makes your opinion so much better than their lifestyles?
Their numbers are low and getting lower? I don't know where you're getting your info (you probably should have read past the headline and into the FA, and not relied on your feelings of 'probably' etc...) but from what I've heard in the past, this type of whale--bowheads--are making a pretty decent recovery. That's why native Alaskans are allowed to hunt them.
Some sharks kill whales. Squids have even attacked whales. Should we start killing off the sharks and squids because they might attack whales?
Is anyone else alarmed that "we" (are you really an Alaskan native given a special permit to kill a finite number of whales a year? REALLY?) killed an old whale? If anything you should be glad--it was near the end of what we think their life expectancy is. It mated many times over and probably has countless progeny. I can't say I'm thrilled about it, but it's part of life.
That a bunch of Yayhoo's killed an animal over a century old? What, so Alaskan natives are "yayhoos" now? I quite frankly find that incredibly offensive. They've been hunting whales for thousands of years, what right do you have to judge how they live?
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I would also add that Europe and the US--yes, even the big bad US--are efficient polluters. We produce a lot of products used by the rest of the world, and we do it efficiently! The numbers are all out there--CO2 emissions, GDP, etc--you can do the comparisons yourself!
China also produces many products, but they are not as efficient, pollution-wise. This is why they have sulfur dioxide emissions that are as high as America's were almost 40 years ago BEFORE we cut back to our current low rates. Sulfur dioxide causes those nasty little problems like acid rain which currently impacts a large number of Chinese cities and agricultural areas. And now they appear to have become the biggest CO2 polluters as well.
Let's just consider this...by offshoring our efficient manufacturing from the US and Europe to China / 3rd world, where the end result is cheaper to buy, but much more environmentally damaging, we are directly damaging the environment. People who promote Kyoto want to make US/European companies even less competitive in manufacturing, which will no doubt force even more manufacturing to China/3rd world, are ignoring the consequences of their actions! they care for only the seen, and not the unseen..
The thing that annoys me the most about CO2 debate is that people who obsess on it tend to ignore so many other KNOWN worse factors!
Actually aren't most of our space launch vehicles essentially modified ICBMs? I mean, isn't that true of most space launch vehicles? Von Braun and all that?
agreed about how inaccurate it was.. and it happens to all of us at times. at least some people got a +5 funny out this, huh?
Or, you could just click the link that was posted with the article!
If Alex pushes Bob and Bob blows Alex's headoff with a shotgun, is that "rational" -- by any standard I would follow, hell no! But there is a clear cause and effect. American troops were sent to the Arab peninsula to fight an Arab dictator, Saddam Hussein, who was committing genocide with the help of the Soviet Union. Don't forget us! We funded him too. That was a perfectly legal reason for their presence there, they had been invited by the government of Saudi Arabia. So wait...now legality matters? Jews aren't allowed in Saudi Arabia as a legal matter. Ok, just so we're agreed... ?? The US in 1991 even restrained from toppling Saddam, at the request of the Saudi government who was afraid that Iran would become too powerful without Saddam. that's one theory. I wish we had taken him out then and there, and cleaned up our trash earlier. If this was a well conducted sequence of events or not is debatable, but it certainly cannot be considered a "reason" for terrorism, because there's no rational justification for terror. You're applying YOUR cultural biases and understandings to the matter at hand. You can't do that--because other cultures frequently don't make sense to us! Or maybe not. A large part of the Middle East current situation was defined exactly forty years ago this month, when Egypt, Jordan, and Syria tried and failed to do what Ahmedinejad still proposes to do today. Yes, I'm glad you can bring up dates. Nobody MADE the united states backup Israel and become as hated as they are. Until the day when the moderate Arabs and Muslims clearly reject the proposals of the terrorists, it will always be the same. The Israeli culture is vastly superior to that of their enemies because it's an advanced technological culture. A well trained soldier will always be able to defeat a horde of fanatics. Ah yes, and now the truth comes out--the innate Israeli superiority (CULTURAL superiority!) over a "horde of fanatics." Orientalism at its fightest, people!
we're not dealing with people who follow our cultural norms. You've illustrated quite well how you can know facts but completely understand how millions of people would react instead blathering about how they are not rational which is UTTERLY irrelevant!
Explain it to me then? What is the point? Americans don't have a history? What does that mean--we clearly DO have a history. Whether it's a 200 year history from the founding, a 500 year founding since exploration, or farther back our shared european / african / asian / etc heritage?
What point are you trying to make? That history isn't valid unless it spans thousands of years? That doesn't make sense as history is a shared enterprise.
I think the truth is you're just trying to belittle the US and the American experience to satisfy some sense of wounded superiority.
Ok, I can buy that--it's a completely semantically pedantic argument (Marshall Hodgson wrote a great article, I believe entitled "The unity of world history" that is definitely worth checking out)--but that's totally NOT what the above poster is saying. To quote his reply to me "americans are always proud of their "history" but essentially they have none."
There's no ambiguity there, we're not quibbling over semantics.
Please note I'm not JUSTIFYING any of these... they're complete BS. but saying that there is no reason is also silly--the people doing the attacking have plenty of reasons. Iran doesn't randomly hate us, they hate us for helping to get rid of Mossadegh and supporting the repressive Shah all those years. UBL doesn't randomly hate us (though he comes close..) he has specific reasons. Again, I'm not saying any of these are GOOD reasons, I'm just saying, had we never interfered in the middle east, never supported cruel dictators, and never sent troops over there, things might be different.
One could also make the argument it's good to fight Islamic fundamentalism, period. I might even say that! I do rather think it's one of those self perpetuating things though...the more you fight it, the more it pops up.
I'll also agree that the original poster (the BLAME BUSH!!! guy) is a whacko...
Your second point--"europeans are not americans"?? Europeans are NOT Americans. Many Americans may have at various times BEEN from Europe, but what on earth are you trying to say here? It doesn't make sense to me. America is fully derived from Europeans--population, philosophies (Locke and various Anglo/Scottish/etc philosophers played a huge role in the early days!) but that does not make us Europeans.. is that what you're claiming? all this "new-world" vs "old-world" crap because of a difference of 500 years. Ok, I'm starting to get it... i think this is a sore point that you rant on all the time? because NOBODY brought up "new world" / "old world" divide. (Though I would add that it was EUROPEANS who created the term New World, as it has been in usage for 500 years!!) there didn't much real change happen in those years either. maybe the civil war and the slavery thing, but my grandfather lived in a kingdom (small period of democracy in between), in a dictatorship, in socialism and finally in capitalism. he never ever changed his place of living, but he had to change his currency 4 times, he was from berlin. You're absolutely right. With the exception of the civil war (~5 years out of ~220) American society has been far, far more stable than that of Europe in the last 200 years.
Christians were behind the holocaust for that matter. What does that say? Not a lot... Christians are (currently ?) not very danguerous at all. Just much easier to attack. Tell that to Iraq or Afghanistan--from their point of views "Christians" are fairly dangerous...
And europeans/americans used religion to justify the crusades, slavery, the conquest of Africa, colonialism, and just about everything else. religions what you make of it. show me someone who follows the literal bible 100% and i'll show you someone that doesn't exist.
Really?
e vdoCoverage2.jsp?map=Denver_CO&mrkt=Denver,%20Co
Sprint seems to claim they do http://www.sprint.com/business/products/products/
It looks Verizon also claims too, but their site isn't as good.
So I guess att's 3G may not be very good, but it seems like 3g evdo is not bad..
I would agree that criticizing Israel and its policies does not make you anti-semitic though. DESPITE the fact that Israel IS a Jewish state, criticizing a country is not criticizing a religious people!
Long lifespans make "sustainability" numbers extremely hard to calculate. Now we know that Bowheads live even longer than we thought, which makes those numbers even more suspect. Right now, Bowhead's are nearly extinct in some areas.
Some areas / some populations--which are not being hunted! As I said before, no commercial whaling of bowheads--so your story with made up numbers is pretty irrelevant.
Lots of activities are negative to whales. This is why, if we want whales around, we should restrict the hunting of whales. Lot's of things can kill whales, but some of those things we can quite easily control.
Restrict hunting of whales? Oh right, that's already been done...
Come right down to it, whales are highly intelligent mammals...the only highly intelligent mammals still being systematically hunted in a legal fashion. I don't see any real reason for it, except that some people like to say, "This is the way we've always done it."
Some people want to eat them. That's the reason.
Your IWC points--all very well and good, I don't substantively disagree with any of it, but what exactly is supposed to be news here? I never said or implied anything that contradicts that. I said that Japan and Norway were examples of the big commercial whalers! All of the countries you list ARE in the IWC. I never claimed otherwise. I guess it's just a cover-your-ass for when you tried to put words in my mouth?
Let me refresh you again as to EXACTLY what I said:
However, when we're talking about international treaties agreed to by dozens of countries to give the right to a few native groups to hunt 10s of whales a year in a sustainable fashion, what's the problem?
In summary:
-Nothing about compliance / non-compliance from NATIONS
-Nothing about COMMERCIAL whaling
-ONLY mentions "native groups"
-ONLY mentions "10s of whales a year"
-Emphasis on "sustainable"
-Dozens of countries, not "all" (this was where you originally misquoted me!)
-About how binding it is--it's a treaty, not law
Try this: Taking the top three whaling countries, plus the eskimos, and set them all to hunting bowhead whales
Why, what is the point of this? Nobody is disputing that that would be a disaster for the population. As far as I know--and I've said this before--there is no commercial bowhead hunting. Zippo. The only hunting is a few 10s a year. Enough so that scientists believe the population is steadily growing. I don't have any reason to doubt this assessment. I honestly doubt you know enough about the bowhead populations that are currently being hunted to dispute this either?
And having an opinion is not the same as dismissing a competing idea out of hand. You didn't replay to anything except two lines at the bottom of my post, and there you only nitpicked.
Wow. So now when I criticize you for ENTIRELY misrepresenting what I wrote, that's just "nitpicking"? I've also got to say that it's amazing to me that you have such an insight into my inner thought process to know EXACTLY how I "completely dismissed an idea out of hand". I mean wow, you've only exchanged 2-3 posts online and you're able to know my innermost thoughts--that's impressive!!
It's really a silly debating point to call someone close-minded just because you disagree with them, and sillier to continue to pull random things I never said out of thin air.
Enlighten me--what country that whales isn't part of the IWC? I'm not really surprised that Uzbekistan isn't...
You're not really helping yourself here..
I'm not quite sure what I said that touched such a nerve, but whatever it is, I apologize--I think you took my post way more personally than it was ever intended given the number of ad hominems. Regardless, I'm sorry if I offended you.
;) It's funny how that works...
I'll respond in general--the Whaling Commission is _bitterly_ fought against--mostly by countries like Japan and Norway who want more commercial whaling. I'm not sure it can be argued that they are a corrupt organization--if you have any proof of your allegations, I would be glad to see it. You wouldn't be making an assumption, would you?
In any case, the issue at hand is NOT commercial whaling, nor the alleged corruption of the commission--the issue is LIMITED native hunting rights. Furthermore, limited native hunting for species which, as far as I know, are not otherwise commercially hunted. I'm not even sure where these big bags of money would be coming from!
The commission claims the populations hunted by the native Alaskans are growing--even with the sustainable hunt that is allowed. Again, if you have any evidence to the contrary here--perhaps other than calling me a schmuck, or insulting me--I would be glad to hear it! Until then, you've just been making assumptions.
Incidentally, the whaling commission DOES allow whaling for science--so maybe one day the next miracle drug will be from a whale...
What exactly am I close-minded about? Or uninformed for that matter, was I wrong about something?
Well, at least you're honest and open about it and not hypocritical!
I completely and 100% disagree with you, though.
First Alaskan natives are "yayhoos" to you. Now you would rather that sentient human beings be killed rather than an animal--all because of some perverse mixed up moral equivalency? I can't even begin to comprehend the mindset that would make such a statement..
Straight out--one has to die, an endangered species whale, or a random human--you pick, which is it?
So, because something lives a long time, you would force your values upon people who have hunted whales for thousands of years? What makes your opinion so much better than their lifestyles?
Their numbers are low and getting lower? I don't know where you're getting your info (you probably should have read past the headline and into the FA, and not relied on your feelings of 'probably' etc...) but from what I've heard in the past, this type of whale--bowheads--are making a pretty decent recovery. That's why native Alaskans are allowed to hunt them.
Some sharks kill whales. Squids have even attacked whales. Should we start killing off the sharks and squids because they might attack whales?
Is anyone else alarmed that "we" (are you really an Alaskan native given a special permit to kill a finite number of whales a year? REALLY?) killed an old whale? If anything you should be glad--it was near the end of what we think their life expectancy is. It mated many times over and probably has countless progeny. I can't say I'm thrilled about it, but it's part of life.
Disgusting...