Lee wrote:

>Asia is not the world, any more than the U.S.

No, it's just the part of the world where the vast majority of shark fins
are harvested, and where the vast majority of fins harvested are eaten. Duh!

> Name a country, any country,
>where all drugs thave have been abused are illegal in all circumstances.
>The point is not that the consequences of the crimes are the same or that
>the significance of them is the same, but that they are both crimes and
both
>wrong.

Spoken like a true bureaucrat. Well done! I suppose you think that murder
and car theft are the same too, then ? Jeez!

> If violating the laws is not wrong, then perhaps you should take a
>closer look at the laws themselves.

Yes, why don't you ?

>Would you throw away 90% of the food your children could have eaten just to
>acquire the 10% you plan to sell.

I like how you edited out the part of my statement about shark meat being
abhorrent to most Asians. Very convenient, if somewhat disingenuous.

> I mean, let's get this right.  The people
>we are talking about are not eating the shark fins, they're selling them
specifically because they can get a high price.

Oh really ? And what would this world-wise bureaucrat estimate is the going
rate for shark fins at the first stage in the supply chain ? Please, please,
take a guess!

>These particular starving
>people you are talking about are throwing away perfectly good food.  I
don't
>know about you, but when I was hungry, and I've been hungry before, I did
>not throw out food.

Your statement is about as valid as when my mother scolded me for not
cleaning my plate, given that there were starving children in Africa. Cheap
and unrealistic, not to mention supremely disrespectful, given that you have
no possible way of knowing what it is like in the deep end. Neither do I,
but at least I don't pretend to have been in their situation, or know what
it's like.

> And that is reality here, whether the educated world likes it or not. The
> only thing that will make this go away is a sustained effort to educate -
> village by village - about the value of an intact ecosystem to the
> community. The Philippines is making inroads on that, especially where
> whalesharks are concerned.

>You're going to have to do more than that.  You're going to have to find a
>way to provide honest, law abiding people, a way to succeed and even
prosper
>and, while you are at it, continue to be honest about what is wrong and
make
>it a less desirable route.

Agree! But the two go hand-in-hand. One doesn't work without the other, does
it ?

> The US has come some way with the legislation against shark finning (and I
> presume that's what you are referring to). But there are still holes in
the
> moral armor of the US on similarly cruel practices, like long-line fishing
> for example. Read "Hungry Ocean" about the swordfish trade in New England.

>I'm not patting the U.S. on the back in particular.

Good! It would be easy to conclude otherwise, as I did, from your reference
to the way "we" have legislated against the practice of shark finning.

> > In that regard, my comments referred to an occupational group who -
> > lacking access to, say, the long-line technology that US business
>interests are
> > using to pillage the fishing grounds of the South Pacific

>Two wrongs do not make a right.  If it's U.S. business interests taking all
>the fish, do something about it.

Oh, now it's not your responsibility ? And the statement was not mine, but
Strike's. So were several I've snipped in the following.

> Firstly, nobody is "sinking" the bodies. Sharks don't have a swim bladder.
> If they don't swim, they sink. Without fins, they can't swim. So they
sink.
> Plenty of pictures out thereon the Web of that.

>That's not what the message I responded to said.

Your adversity to researching before answering is well-documented.

>  It specifically said that
>the fishermen were attaching rocks to sink the bodies.  I can only respond
>to what the post said.

You can do whatever you want! Nobody that I'm aware of has barred posters
from doing a bit of research on their own!

> Redirecting things to some other scenarios is fine
>if you're trying to start a new thread, but in this one, let's deal with
>what is said.

I did. It's bullshit. You, on the other hand, didn't deal with it, you
bought it hook, line and sinker.

>Listen to what we're saying here.  People who eat shark fin soup are wrong.
>People who throw perfectly good food are right?

Go back and read the part you deftly edited out earlier. Back when you were
"hungry", did you consider killing a dog and eating it ?

>Sorry, but those that intentionally chose to break the law are wrong,
>more
>wrong, in fact, than those that legally purchase their illegally obtained
>product.

> Firstly, I can't agree that there is a difference in criminality between
> those who provide the illegal product and those who partake of it.

>I'm sure you can see the difference between breaking the law and abiding by
>it, and that's what you're talking about here.

No, Lee, that's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about in
this particular paragraph is your statement that it is more wrong to provide
the illegal product than it is to partake of it. I doubt that is the basis
of US law. To use your favorite (albeit in other contexts fatally flawed)
analogy, has buying and taking drugs been legalized while I was looking the
other way ?

>In this country, it is not
>legal to trade in illegally acquired fish or game.  Those that knowingly do
>so are wrong too, and are sometimes punished even more harshly than those
>that illegally acquired the fish or game.

And this is mostly done by all the starving masses in the US, right ?

> Secondly, to paraphrase Strike, I think it behooves anyone making that
kind
> of statement to first walk a mile in the other side's shoes. Imagine
> yourself looking into the eyes of your hungry child and telling him that
> Daddy can't provide any food (or shoes, or shelter) today, because someone
> 10,000 miles away decided that what Daddy does is bad.

>Get ready to tell your children that there's no food for anybody because
>somebody thought it was not wrong to hunt the oceans to extinction,
throwing
>away 90% of what they could have eaten so that they can sell what they did
>not acquire legally.  Because somebody thought that their failure, for
>whatever reasons, to stop the demand side, led them to condone the supply
>side.

You're still stuck in your fantasy world where legislation will solve all
the problems of the world.

Bjorn