Hundreds of fishing vessels vanishing along Argentina’s waters
usa.oceana.org
usa.oceana.org
https://twitter.com/epineyro_ok/status/1378112721628114947
ADS-B track: https://i.imgur.com/1wxAkK2.jpg
"Last night we flew at 5000 feet over the foreign fishing fleet that preys on our seas, causing ecological disasters. They weren't at mile 201, they were well in our territorial waters."
(courtesy /r/aviation and gTranslate)
They have spent years getting it back to spec to make the trans-pacfic flight back home
Description of property: https://www.aerotime.aero/22859-john-travoltas-house
Photo of house w/ 707 in "car-port" from above article: https://www.aerotime.aero/upload/files/john-travoltas-house-...
Local beer was a little rare in the places around our hotel (probably because we were near Broad Street), but they had "Trooper" at Malt House. It was actually really great.
That may also be influenced by the fact that I mostly only could get foreign light lagers everywhere else, and Malt House was a great place to relax on the canal a little away from the Hen Party craziness.
1968 GULFSTREAM G1159B N24YS (still owned by the Fry family)
1976 ROCKWELL NA-265-60 N607CF (now owned by an airshow)
1955 PIPER PA-23 N3494B (owned by someone else)
1971 GULFSTREAM G1159B N44YS (still owned by the Fry family)
1976 ROCKWELL NA-265-60 N39CB (now owned by an airshow)
1977 DEHAVILLAND CANADA DHC-6-300 N814BC (still owned by the Fry family)
1978 BOEING 727-281(A)(RE) N724YS (now registered to a UK blind trust)
1980 BOEING 747SP-27 N747A (now owned by NASA)
1981 ROCKWELL NA-265-65 N88BF (still owned by the Fry family)
1981 ROCKWELL NA-265-65 N654YS (still owned by the Fry family)
1992 BEECH B300 N4YS (still owned by the Fry family)
2011 GULFSTREAM G280 N38GL (now owned by a casino corporation)
That is -insane- low for a craft like that.
I bought a number of things there on a few trips I made to Cali back in... 2013! Well, that explains it.
Edit: Yes, the electronics store chain and not just the grocery store that was at Kooser and Camden many, many years.
Thing is, you have to keep the 787 flying - they're not designed to be parked for weeks or months at a time. Normally that'd be a problem for a business jet since they're little more than toys for rich people but the 787 is up to 20% more fuel efficient than comparable older models. As long as its set up for cargo, the owner can just rent it out and have someone else cover the majority of the maintenance burden. It wouldn't be profitable, but if you need (or want) a brand new commercial jet, it's an easy way to subsidize that cost.
https://www.privatefly.com/private-jets/large-airliner-hire/...
Looks pretty cool if I was wealthier and wanted a destination wedding this would be the way!
I've wondered lately if he is working so much because of his hobbies, or just loves any acting gig?
(I need a life?)
That's quite a career!
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-economy-gdp-idU...
It doesn't matter when you read this.
Before you ask, no, there is no such thing as a stealth radar fishing boat.
China: "Hold my píjiŭ."
We're living out a Neal Stephenson novel.
Maybe US could help Argentina enforce its fishing rights, in return for a lease of port space. The sort of win-win arrangement that builds mutual good will.
China accounts for 11% of Argentina’s exports. I’d imagine a lot of it is soy and maybe lithium.
The World Bank says[2] that exports make up 14.25% of Argentine GDP. Assuming no substitution, if China cut off all Argentine exports, it would therefore reduce Argentine GDP by 1.56% -- a very big deal. There would of course be substitution, so that's a weak upper bound.
And maybe an extremely weak one. According to this[3] (apparently Australian news outlet which I admit I've never heard of), China's trade sanctions against Australia following the latter's suggestion that the world look more into the origins of the coronavirus only reduced Australian exports to China by 2%.
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/argentina/exports/china
[2] https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/ARG#:~:text=Arg....
[3] https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/c....
Uyghurs is an internal affair and they brought Beijing pressure on themselves by making terrorism acts. Fishing in other nations' waters, bullying Taiwan, leaking virus are international acts that are serious enough for retaliation from the international community, if they wanted to do something about it.
like what?
List of incidents covered within this general Wikipedia article [1].
A factor I haven't seen discussed much in non-Chinese press is that the Xinjiang region was one of the last (if not the very last) to resist the CCP in the Chinese Civil War [2] [3], with some relatively non-trivial, remotely-originated clandestine support by both the (by then) Taiwan-based KMT and CIA until well after (around 1953) the generally-recognized end of the civil war (around 1949).
I'd like to hear the perspective of native-born Chinese "CCP-ologist" and "CIA-ologist" HN readers on how this historical background might color the CCP's current handling of the region. IMHO, both the CCP and CIA have long memories, but I could be off base.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_China
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_Xinjiang_into...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuomintang_Islamic_insurgency
Or if lab leak was proven, or lab leak + it was a product GOF deliberately created to infect humans it could provide enough public support to back it. I think there are enough hawks in government. Good or bad, a hot or 'warm' war is a huge and devastating step without huge public support across many nation coalitions. Don't want iraq 2.0 with weapons of mass infection that turn out to not be true.
Personally I think Trump emboldened this behavior with his child-like understanding of the politics and singular focus on 'they will pay for the wall' attitude towards NATO.
Also remember we Argentinians suffered a bloody dictatorship in the 70s, complete with illegal detentions, torture and executions, and while of course the military renews itself with new people, some sectors of it still haven't come to terms with their past (some remain who actually sympathize with the dictatorship or were involved in it).
So no, what you're describing is not the full picture.
I even saw a higher up personally helping once, I was in an open source tech conference, and a colonel was present to show the air force work using Ubuntu and Debian, while chatting with him he got a phone call about a radar issue, he immediately picked up a laptop and started to fire up some domestic made tech and started helping the operators directly.
If the timing wasn't seemly so random I would think they did it on purpose just to show off the cool tech.
In battle, overriding a safety feature might be the difference between returning fire and saving the ship and crew, or losing all hands.
The mentality is changing a lot and I'm starting to see safety requirements in contracts and more and more frequent audits from customers on the topic (even though it wasn't in the spirit of things or the contract when system was designed, ugh...) and it's very, very hard to retrofit safety and personel safety in a product line, codebase, system design, and especially in the daily reflexes of systems or sw engineers. Everyone seems to overshoot ("safety says we must do X" - well no it's still an engineering compromise you still have choices and trade-offs - "but safety!" - yes, let's go back to the safety plan, what are the critical elements, what are the failure modes, what are the chances, what is the expected system response?...)
It's particularly tough for those teams that have to swallow the double firehose of safety and "cyber"-security :-D
"Oh the ship disappeared? What are you going to do?"
I can't help but be cynical in this situation. If their Coast Guard is as efficient as their ATC that's what you can expect.
You'd have better luck getting the British to send their OPV based in the Falklands over than get any meaningful response from what little of the Argentine armed forces or other authorities have.
There is simply that much of them. Chinese fishing fleet is world's biggest, and they have 1 gigaton a year steel output to make more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3lkM4t8AaA
Argentina sinks Chinese fishing ship that entered restricted area(2016)
>"The offending ship continued to maneuver in an attempt to cause a collision" (0:20)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00rMVee0R4c
>Therefore, the concept of people's war was applied to the sea with fishermen and other nautical laborers being drafted into a maritime militia.
>Most vessels are issued with navigation and communication equipment while some are also issued small arms. The communications systems can be used both for communication and espionage. Often fishermen supply their own vessels, however, there are also core contingents of the maritime militia who operate vessels fitted out for militia work instead of fishing; these vessels feature reinforced bows for ramming and high powered water cannons. The increasing sophistication of militia vessels' communication equipment is a double-edged sword for Chinese authorities. New equipment, as well as training in its use, has substantially improved command, control, and coordination of militia units. However, the vessels' resulting professionalism and sophisticated maneuvers make them more identifiable as government-sponsored actors, dampening their ability to function as a gray-zone force.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Armed_Forces_Mariti...
S. Korean Coast Guard fires machine gun in warning to illegal Chinese fishing boats
>"They were surrounded and threatened by some 30 other fishing boats" (0:17)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42AWXEzcoFk
You don't need to look very far to find reports like this. There are too many incidents to list here.
Mandatory disclaimer for the pro-China accounts: I'm very much not interested in deflecting to the West's problems--they exist, but they don't excuse China (nor does China's bad behavior excuse that of the West's). This kind of deflection is just a race to the bottom.
Bullshit, somebody on board is turning off the ship's transponder. They know that they are doing something criminal.
Further, and I say this as someone who prefers to err on the tough-on-crime side, it's unjust to punish the desperate when the wealthy are pulling the strings, raking in the profit, and bearing none of the risk.
So people do care about human rights.
But of course with hypocrisy - so we are quite nice - but we paid Gaddafi and now ergogan and morocco to do the dirty work to keep them away, so we can have more or less clean hands.
FWIW, this was nothing but a media circus. Trump largely continued immigration practices that existed under Obama and indeed Trump deported fewer undocumented immigrants than Obama did in his first term, but under Obama everything was great and then under Trump they were “concentration camps” and kids were in cages and being separated from their family and America is a white supremacist hellscape and etc.
This doesn’t mean that the Us didn’t deserve its immigration-policy reckoning; only that Trump didn’t do anything to cause it except offend the media.
(for the rabid partisans out there, this one particular defense of Trump doesn’t imply that I’m a Trump supporter or that he doesn’t deserve criticism for other things, etc)
It would be better to fight the defacto slavery of the crews (agencies, owners and so on), the abysmal conditions in these crews home countries and sanction the hell out the owners of these ships and the people / companies making a healthy profit from them. But why bother, because you would just end up with more expensive shipping im general and more expensive fish.
Fisherboats do not want to fight gun ships - and just retreat if they see, the threat is serious.
Hell, we're witnessing in-your-face genocide of the Uighurs, takeover of Hong Kong, imminent takeover of Taiwan, support of North Korea's psychopathic regime, destruction of the environment in every way possible (as in this story), etc... and the rest of the world sits on its collective hands. China knows how to boil frogs nice and slowly.
The problem with these rules, IMHO, is that they were created to serve the interests of western powers. Hard to force other countries to play by them, then.
The "our bastard" doctrine was an idiocy on massive scale, and continues to be one.
The West has bred all the snakes in the snake pit they ended up in now itself.
> "He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard."
There is no yours, or their bastards, there are just bastards.
The only way it turns to shoot-and-sink is if the boats flagrantly disregard orders through multiple points of escalation. Even then the attempt would be to disable the ship, not destroy it (by shooting out the engine or rudder, for example).
This feels like a way to get into a game of "you can't be everywhere at once".
If they flee, sink the ship.
They’ll catch on.
So how about:
Sell the ship, let the crew live in a nice hotel, book them a 1st class flight back home, then bill the country under who's flag the ship was operating. If they can't / refuse to pay, import sanctions.
That way, you're not punishing the crew, yet making such behavior financially uninteresting. That's the only way because the person who decided to send that ship there is probably far away and busy counting profits.
Also, it's a lot easier to capture the boat if that's a positive experience for the crew. They might flee from a trip to prison but few people run from a paid vacation offer.
They may still run if accepting the paid vacation offer would be followed by imprisonment at home.
So offer them permanent residency instead. And then prepare for the logistics issue of managing a great fleet of boats racing straight to your ports.
"Dealing" with China is going to get a lot hotter. Period.
Want to get rid of the fishing fleet? Make a credible offer of residency and amnesty to all their crews - no strings attached, no continued use as pawns in politics. Simple trade: they bring in and surrender their vessel, you give each a green card, a key to a room, some starting cash, and a "thank you for your service", and forget about them.
But OK, so let's scratch the "and forget about them" part. Have the counterintelligence agency keep their details in their database, and warn them that they won't get security clearance in the next decade or three. This won't discourage anyone who's eager to escape their home country.
Or start using a bunch of them to sink for reef seeding.
The point is to make the expected ROI of trespassing in other nations' territorial waters negative. The crew is cheap and easy to replace relative to the boat. So you have to make the boat go away (sink it or impound it) to make the corporate owner back on land feel the heat.
Imprison them and give them back to their home country ASAP is probably the right way to handle the crew.
It would also have the nice side effect of dissuading countries to lend their flag to shady companies all over the world.
Realistically, once this becomes a strategem, and a known one, anyone with a boat can enter your waters, hoist the jolly roger, then say "Yeah, take me into asylum." And poof, your immigration procedures evaporate.
Aren't the vast majority of these actually "flags of convenience" and registered in Panama?
Thats why navies exist.
You send a handful of frigates and bombers there and start sinking ships.
Like any navy is supposed to.
Nations like ours with low birth rates and aging workforces depend on immigrants to maintain vibrant economies. The alternative is to become like Japan, where the economy stagnates and abandoned houses litter the countryside.
Thus uncontrolled migration can never be a solution to our population issues. Instead effort should be put into attracting more skilled workforce that is in demand, and they should come in legally.
Long story short, many people still want to have children, and not having fertility should be the problem that is getting addressed.
Male-female resentment is not the reason fertility rates around the globe have fallen precipitously over the past century. That's a bizarre idea.
When women have access to contraception and opportunities to participate in the workforce and pursue higher education, it turns out they are less interested in raising large families.
There are tools we could be using to encourage people to have more children, such as universal childcare and pre-K, generous financial support for low-income families, and high quality public schools. Unfortunately, opponents to immigration typically also oppose these policies, too.
There are competent engineers "waiting in line" for years, while illegals are allowed to stay... it's basically rewarding the criminals and punishing the honest ones.
Immigration is generally not territorial dispute, indeed, its far more often voting for an alternate regime with one’s feet than asserting a hostile territorial claim.
A few trawlers got boarded but no shots were fired.
One narrative concerning piracy off the coast of Somalia is that incursion of foreign fishing fleets took away the opportunity for lawful livelihoods for those living in Somalia. Which in the context of this post is ... troublingly ironic.
When the locals, for lack of a standing Navy, defend their waters, we call them pirates and send our Navy to fight them. No surprise, that these pirates went after bigger ships, realizing that being more profitable than fishing. Now imagine a world, in which our Navies would defend Somali waters against these intrusions. While at the same time, we did some real, like non-military, backes nation building through the UN. I guess that would have been a much better way to combat piracy there. But who gives a shit about some poor bastards in a failed state somewhere in Africa?
Really the only nation that can stop this is China.
I assume self-preservation instinct kicks in after the first instance of someone calling your bluff, but it can't really be helped.
Trained giant squid and dolphins would be the next impractical idea.
Final option: pull a Captain Nemo.
Putting the inner 10 year old away now.
Also
> But Ireland and the UK didnt
Yes one can only wonder why the UK would side with Canada over the EU.
> foreshadowing the biggest gripe of Brexit?
Only the biggest nonense of the brexit nonsenses.
Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars. In fact, the UK's hypocritical support of Canada in the conflict led Iceland to declare for Spain / the EU.
[5] Rose, Alex (2008). Who Killed the Grand Banks?. Toronto: Wiley. pp. 53–71. ISBN 978-0-470-15387-1.
http://www.aquatic.uoguelph.ca/human/policy/lawofthesea/cane...
Disclaimer: I used to work for Ascentio.
I have some buddies that are working on improving this!
Doubtful[1][2][3][4]
[1] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a9/78/53/a9785360d124d8aaa623...
[2] https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nRSimtZke9k/WWlqQvTqa6I/AAAAAAAAN...
[3] https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/18-b...
[4] https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-G2GwFIKQQpI/VcDUw4Y8N9I/AAAAAAAAC...
And that's just the tip of the iceberg of examples.
The Korean War technically isn’t over, and since both sides claim they won, you’ll have to pick a winner yourself.
The US military’s extreme prowess in the first Iraq war was the last evidence the Soviets needed that they had lost the Cold War.
The US was able to achieve its goals in Yugoslavia in a straightforward manner.
The cold war was an implosion by economics and the vast bulk of the preasure came from western europe who alost harvested nearly all of the victory gains, and that happened years before the first gulf war.
The US Acted as a poorly paid mercenary force for the houses of Said doing the first and second gulf war and the long term strategic goal went in Iran's favor when the US/Saudi backed puppet government of Iraq imploded and someone else had to step in and deal with ISIS(that someone else originally turned out to be Iran's republican guard backed by Russian advisors and hardware).
Kosovo again had Europe playing they leading role in the diplomacy both post and doing the war and harvesting most of the benefits.
Outside of late western Roman empire, i can think of few nations where the army was as impotent in terms of actually backing the diplomatic game or rather where the diplomats where as incompetent that despite having the best trained/funded army no tactical victory was too great to turn into an strategic defeat.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/19/manilas-images-are-reve...
And then there is the oddities like japan who theoretically do not have an navy but who's cost guard(or self defense force) operate carriers.
It may be more that police is trained to do that compared to soldiers, as in order to be effective in what they supposed to do, they all should be specialized. And yes, when it comes to fighting drug dealers and all around looks more like a war zone instead of a "misbehaving civilians" affair, then a more appropriate tool use gets warranted.
They won't go away and they WILL take every single living thing from the ocean unless someone steps in.
Quite standard practice, and very much applicable in situations where these roaming fleets are steeling quota that they have no right to.
The problem with a lot of navies is that if you refuse to decommission old rust buckets you end up with an navy that looks impressive on paper but rarely makes it out of port and i suspect this is the case for the Argentinian navy.
you don't need dozens of blue water warships to patrol against pirate fishing, you need a few patrol boats and a few long range maritime surveillance planes.
Information about the satellite: https://yaxt25j6l6kcxh7gzsles3njx4-ac5fdsxevxq4s5y-www-romse...
Satellite map where you can see it: https://in-the-sky.org/satmap_worldmap.php
https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/satellite-data-nails-c...
Lots of opportunity to help! Illegal fishing is the #1 contributor to slavery worldwide and is in the top 3 financial crimes.
Any European counterparts?
EARSC.org would be a good starting point for some European companies.
No, I kid. What will actually happen is China will get caught red handed again and they'll perform the diplomatic equivalent of "So what are you gonna do about it" while pumping more jingoistic lies to their population.
China has no respect for boundaries but demands others to respect theirs so it's not like they don't care. They do care all right, a bit too much actually if you ask Vietnam and the Philippines...
It's just a matter of what they can get away with. China is flexing its power and it will fill any void (ie Africa) where it can see an opportunity to exploit. It's not like other countries haven't done that before but China is now eager for resources and influence and they are big...
source: was born in a former socialist/communist country.. both former "socialist" and former country.
China has been socialist since the communists won the Chinese civil war in 1949.
China employs capitalist methods in order to further its productive capabilities in order to complete it socialist revolution. Ultimately the Chinese communist party has full and final control of all property. In other words Chinese “capitalism” does not entail private property rights as are guarded in constitutions in other countries.
Educational material:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_with_Chinese_chara...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Revolution
https://www.learningfromchina.net/why-china-is-a-socialist-c...
Private property rights are only for the good of the state. What laws exist, are for the good of the socialist system, and can be amended by the communist party at any time. Chinese courts do not have the power of judicial review and cannot invalidate a statute on the grounds that it violates the constitution... ie China is a totalitarian system.
“Private property” in China is for the benefit of the state. The basic tenant of Chinese government... “From each according to their ability, to each according to his needs” means redistribution is always in the hands of the state.
READ the educational material!
Again, China's 'socialism' is very different nearly all variations found in Western Democracies.
Private property under China is fundamentally different. The communist party can redistribute it any time. You can’t sue the Chinese government to get your property back, as they can amend any laws at will.
So it being different than European communism doesn’t meant it’s not socialism.
China is socialist under their own definition of socialism. Yet they have heard the siren song and have been steadily marching closer to a state-aided crony capitalist system that resembles Russia's current system, but much better managed.
When did I say that? I never did. China is Socialist AND Totalitarian.
> China is socialist under their own definition of socialism
"Socialism:
a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."
And PLEASE read this before replying:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_with_Chinese_charact...
From the article:
> in July 2011 President Hu Jintao stressed that ‘China is still in the primary stage of socialism and will remain so for a long time to come’ (Xinhua, 2011)
China is very very interested in progressing the socialist and finally communist agenda. Believing otherwise is ignorance.
Show me the equivalent of the 5th amendment in Chinese law protecting private property rights. And please don’t forget... Chinese courts do not have the power of judicial review and cannot invalidate a statute on the grounds that it violates the constitution... ie China is a totalitarian system.
And READ the educational material before commenting!
This is the amendment you asked for: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/mar/16/china
The laws are only to promote production to increase the country's productive output. At any time the government can strip you of your property and redistribute it... which HAS happened numerous times already, without recourse, not appropriate compensation.
How can you possibly argue that faux property laws mean the country is not socialist??
The sooner the wider community accepts that China is a totalitarian regime with a long term communist agenda, the sooner we can stop allowing them to take advantage of the international community.
Property theft, land and sea right violation... corporate espionage. All are part of the official Chinese communist party aims.
> Yet China’s courts cannot invoke the constitution in rulings, so such a change will offer limited legal protection to peasants
https://www.cfr.org/blog/chinas-retrograde-rural-land-polici...
How China’s Legal System Enables Intellectual Property Theft
https://thediplomat.com/2020/11/how-chinas-legal-system-enab...
Human Rights Practices: China
https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-...
Seriously?
>And READ the educational material before commenting!
Seems like a real condescending way to reply.
I can only come to the conclusion that social media is a net negative on society, since I can’t help educate ignorance, and people are unwilling to educate themselves when they have firmly held beliefs.
Social media simply allows people to become more entrenched. And some people will view this comment as the same, a form of relativism. The difference that social media comments gloss over, is there are often truths vs falsehoods. Facts vs prejudice. Social media makes it too easy to confuse the two.
HN... you are more of the same. Like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc etc. Unless these websites take measures to actively mod dis-information, they will be a net negative.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s definitely debatable how China’s socialism has evolved, what elements of Capitalism it now uses. What it’s future path holds. But no textbook, no Encyclopedia will claim that China is not socialist. To do so is not only ignorant, but in the current climate aids a propaganda narrative that continues to allow massive human rights violations.
It’s time social media sites say that user base size, absolute profits, etc are not more important than facts. More people get their information from social media than textbooks, educational systems, and primary sources than ever before.
Democracies which require informed citizenship cannot survive in such circumstances.
The writing is on the wall all around us. Let’s educate ourselves before we fall into darkness
“The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.” — Carl Sagan
The economic situation of Argentina means that there are not enough funds to control de coast. So these ships go in and out at the 200 miles that limit the international waters. It’s easy to see by satellite, but hard to control with a small and under equipped coast patrol.
I sometimes hate humanity as a species. How can a living thing be purposefully so destructive towards it's own planet? The only one it has and will ever have (at least for now we haven't infested any other planet). This is one of the many things that makes me angry knowing there is nothing that will realistically be done to stop it. We will suffer the consequences and these people will then go and fuck up some other sea area until there is nothing left anywhere in the world.
All of it? I mean hate towards globalization that helped China and other hegemonic dictators with no regards for rule of law continue to do what it does is one thing. Blatant hate for humanity is another.
That said we have to realize as a whole that our current way of living is not sustainable and will result is us screwing over future generations that will have to live in an incredibly polluted, and ecologically damaged planet. We have to use our intellect and capacity of achieving anything we put our mind towards and take real, meaningful steps to solve this problem. Before it's too late. There are also many other important global issues that need our attention as a society but that's past the scope of this comment.
This is what humans have been doing for a long time. The problems were just much more acute for the next generations. Until very recently, most humans were born into scenarios without good shelter, solid water supplies, solid food supplies, general safety, or any medical protection from trivial things like infection let alone anything more complicated.
What’s happening here is this poor Chinese fisherman are still dealing with the acute issues (feeding existing family, etc) so the trade of returning home empty handed vs breaking boundaries is too difficult for them to come out on the right side of.
So, I do see your viewpoint, but looking at individuals is one small slice of the problem, not the whole by any means. We can't count on individual goodness, not when greed or desire is allowed to motivate our leaders so heavily.
To quote Wiki: <<Formerly the fourth largest lake in the world with an area of 68,000 km2 (26,300 sq mi), the Aral Sea began shrinking in the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects.>>
As I understand, most of the diverted water was used to grow cotton.
That harm was done during the Soviet Union. Most would agree, the Soviet system was less capitalistic than the current Mainland Chinese system.
All types of governments can cause environmental ruin, and all types of governments can clean it up. Also, not all environmental ruin is permanent. The United States, UK, and Japan had extensive, wide-spread industrial pollution in the 1960s and 1970s. They spent the next 30 years cleaning up, and did a pretty good job.
We might not be there yet but we are going to be the first species in the history of the planet capable of protecting the biosphere from the inevitable assault from the cosmos.
Everyone that talks about how horrific a cancer the human race is on the planet is a hypocrite because they are still alive themselves. If they really meant it they would take action by ending their own lives. They don't because what they really mean is everyone else is a cancer on the planet except for them. It's a selfish and narcissistic attitude.
The cognitive dissonance they feel turns into downvotes rather than deeper thoughts on why they aren't an integral part of the "problem" they complain about.
Or do you prefer the idea of future environmental dystopia?
If you hate humanity then beauty is pointless, because humans are the only ones who appreciate beauty for beauty, rather than "beauty" just being an evolutionary signal to fuck.
This is incorrect - see e.g. http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150511-why-are-animals-so-b... or https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/magazine/beauty-evolution...
One of the unattractive human attributes is our self-centered arrogance. And unfortunately, combine with our other traits this results in some pretty bad behaviors that have a terrible impact on other species. The question of whether the planet would be better off without humans is not so obviously answered in the negative.
But arrogance lifted to these levels would probably not exist if we weren't here.
The universe doesn't care about us. The universe doesn't care about the things you think are "beautiful". Tomorrow a planet-busting asteroid could collide with the earth and destroy every last bit of life on it (except maybe Tardigrades). The only thing that could possibly ameliorate that is humanity continuing to expand and grow, being a space-faring species, etc. That way some life (and therefore beauty) could be saved when we take those things with us into the stars.
Unless and until we find other intelligent species that are better stewards than us, we're all the universe has got, no matter how shit we are at the job.
After you are born, you need to eat.
What solution can you think of?
Other countries have in the past literally board and scuttle trespassing fishing vessels.
Do that, even only a couple times, and few foreign boats will risk the trip. It is cheap to do.
Once bribes, 'personal cuts', etc. have been made/taken, there's not much left. Not to mention the kind of culture that breeds.
Sending the Chinese Navy into territorial waters off of South America to secure theft of Argentinian natural resources would be a completely different move, and arguably an act of war.
Unfortunate that it's literally called The South China Sea. This dispute will likely never go away.
Even China would not bother.
In reality, Argentina would either need to buy or build a respectable navy (too poor), OR publicly ally with the US AND petition that the US Navy enforce Argentina's territorial rights (the US military and its navy are overstretched already).
Why does Argentina need the US navy? Why not Brazil?
Unless people are getting paid off to look the other way?
Game-theoretically, it seems preferable to sink them without any warning.
Consider: the fines would only be paid if they are less than the cost of acquiring a new ship. So if they have to pay fines of 90% of the value, you're still saving them 10% compared to getting a new ship. And if the fines are >100%, they would just ignore it and leave Argentina with the ship.
Unless Argentina can turn it into a revenue stream, sinking them unconditionally seems preferable. The Chinese fishing boats don't have anything to give them in a negotiation. All they have to give them is leaving the area, and that is accomplished by sinking the boats too.
"The military of Country X is firing on and sinking our country's vessels" is much more likely to lead to retaliation. China may not have the navy or willingness to project power across the Pacific, but I guarantee they have the capability if focused to utterly destroy the computing infrastructure of the country - and while enthusiastic private parties may not get involved in civil penalties, "Argentina just declared war on us!" is a hell of a rallying cry.
Edit: also keep in mind that even governments are not monolithic entities with a single mind. Those costs are coming out of someone's budget.
Of course you gotta cut a lot of economic ties before you start poking pooh bear.
This sounds a lot more like "selling back".
Which makes a lot of sense if you don't have anything better to do with it... just make sure you're selling it back for enough money to make a good profit.
I guess Argentina can offer to host a US military base in exchange for taking care of Chinese fishing vessels.
The truth is, Argentina knows what’s happened but is likely powerless to stop it. If they acted to curb the issue, China would stop bribes to the Argentina leadership and likely impose sanctions of some kinda.
No need to inject unsubstantiable allegations in an otherwise sensible comment.
The power imbalance between a small country with long-standing financial issues and a history of inability in enforcing its complex borders, and a rising global superpower, is quite evident.
https://theglobalamericans.org/2021/02/new-directions-in-the...
>Corruption fuelling illegal fishing
>[Argentine journalist Roberto Maturana] says that in Argentina, these arrangements are facilitated by corrupt officials at the government sub-department of fishing, responsible for granting fishing licenses. ‘Often officials will issue an Argentine license to two different Chinese boats. So whilst one is in port, the other will be out fishing’.
Given Argentina's corruption problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Argentina), and China's fishing agenda (https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/30/china-beijing-fishing-a... ), it would be a surprise if corruption was not happening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_prefecture-l...
> South Korean, Spanish, and Taiwanese vessels conducted 26 percent of estimated fishing activity in the study with nearly 200 vessels. Almost “90 percent of the Spanish vessels that fished along Argentina’s national waters appeared to turn off their public tracking devices at least once, and Spanish vessels spent nearly twice as much time with AIS devices off as they did visibly fishing,” according to the report.
If power imbalance is the main issue here, surely something can be done about the other 1/3 at least?
Can't tell if this was a Falkland Islands / Great Britain reference or not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-American_Treaty_of_Recip...
It's true that the US consider South America "their own backyard", but there is a web of complex relationships which makes it unlikely they would blindly help this or that country retaliate against actions from superpowers - short of somebody establishing permanent strategic bases that are direct threats to the US mainland.
It's a yearly naval exercise conducted by many countries in the Pacific. In the event of a naval war with China, they would have to fight not only the US but Australia, Canada, Japan, Philippines, and countless other countries.
It would not go well for them, I assure you.
But if China did decide to project power, the question is not "would the US and its allies win a shooting war", the question is "will the US push back at all?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-American_Treaty_of_Recip...
Which again returns to the original question; would the US push back, and how far would they go?
The US has many overseas bases in Latin America already... including a few of them in Argentina.
The Rio Pact, the yearly naval exercises, the overseas bases... and the historical precedent of the Monroe doctrine makes it very clear that the US doesn't want any outsiders messing around.
Surely China has bigger fish to fry (rimshot) with its foreign relations.
Yeah, probably. That's why I said if. It's an interesting scenario to think through, even if it's unlikely.
Nobody in Argentina would buy Chinese products again, probably.
I predict that if they search a little, would find exactly the same pattern in Ethiopian waters.
Sure, but would that really affect Chinese decision making? I imagine that a partial US boycott would have a much larger impact than a full boycott in Argentina. Their GDP is 32nd in the world according to Wikipedia.
The same has to happen in the oceans.
If you live on the ocean, you have every human right to fish fo nourishment. The issue here is militarized mass scale industrial fishing, illegally raping reassures to feed foreign people, mostly landlocked people sushi rolls and fish fillet.
What we need is a culture that eats local. Its a consumption issue. Farmed fish are most of the time also destructive to the environment, they are fed less than ideal and sustainable feeds, are not as healthy to eat, and most importantly are not healthy and happy fish, they are slaves in horrible life cycles.
My perspective is that there are simply too many people and they are leading an increasingly modern (high consumption) lifestyle.
I would advocate for lots of intermediate size cities but that doesn't seem to be what anyone in power wants.
Also, are you advocating for Thanos like mercy here? ;)
We need a shrinking population and less consumerism. We are not currently sustainable (and unlikely to become so anytime soon).
I think this is a big, and very sad misunderstanding.
Back in humanity's hunter gatherer days, we truly lived off what the planet spontaneously produces, and that sustained world population of something like 50 million people.
The we invented farming, and all sorts of technology, and now we're 7000 million.
So how do those 6950 extra millions survive?
I think the best way to think of it is that they (we) produce their (our) own food!
Each mouth to feed also comes with two hands to produce food. The planet doesn't have to do the work. We make our own food.
> The planet doesn't have to do the work. We make our own food.
We don't just conjure food from the ether, it requires space and resources, both of which are finite. We're already using half of the world's habitable land for farming, and we need to retain some wild spaces to perform all of the ecological functions that farmland can't. There's a limited amount of fresh water, etc.
And food isn't the only bottleneck. If the current population all lived a modern western lifestyle, we'd be emitting an even more unsustainable amount of carbon.
The planet is a closed, finite system, so by definition there must be some upper limit to what it can support.
2 hands to produce it? No. Modern agriculture relies on machines for most things. The high yield monocrop pattern is how we feed so many already. I firmly believe that increasing people will decrease suitability.
That way we can better analyze the context of what "much" actually means.
This hostility to transporting goods you see occasionally is hard for me to understand.
I mean, I know I disagree with it, but what's weird is I don't even understand the underlying reasoning.
Wild animals are likely to have parasites. Farmed animals can be controlled for that.
Think anti biotic use in chickens for example. And the resistances that come with it. And fish tanks that do exist already have some of these issues already as well. How expanding that even more is a good thing is nebolous to me.
Please don't do this.
> are not healthy and happy fish
Citation needed that wild fish are "happy".
And it's dishonesty to assume unsustainable farming and sustainable wild catch in your argument.
Do you have any evidence that sufficient wild catch exists to feed the population?
https://www.cleanseas.com.au/custom/files/media/our-farm-2.j...
Edit: I should say part of the issue. There are other ecological concerns with farmed fish.
I mean what on earth year are we in again?
It's about disruption of an ecosystem that material reality demonstrates we still very poorly understand.
There's exactly zero evidence that anyone other than very specific tribes of indigenous peoples who sustained thousands of years, that humans writ large know how to maintain ecosystems.
All evidence points to our current practices having massive deleterious consequences and that we are already a few decades into a mass extinction event.
If that's not enough evidence to harbor every ship (or at least 95%) until we figure out what the fuck we're doing, there's no hope.
That's the truly repulsive aspects of barbarism, it's about the combination of ignorance and indifference as to the consequences of our actions
At the same time, while I am anecdotally aware we are experiencing a range of shortages right now, it never seems to quite show up in our economic data.
Take for example the FRED data on global fish prices [0]. When you look at that chart you see nothing particularly interesting. You can pore over all of the commodities charts and if that was all the data you had you would soon come to the conclusion that nothing obvious is wrong with our environment (at least from an economic standpoint).
To be absolutely clear, I'm not questioning that something is wrong, I think we're in major trouble. But I am still genuinely surprised that this peril doesn't present itself in any economic data I can find. Any insights into when we will feel this our how/when this environmental destruction will become visible in our economic data would be appreciated.
Also, fish are not a long term investment. The price only depends on how hard they are to find combined with demand to eat them sometime soon. If you could buy a fish now with the expectation of selling it later when stocks dry up then I think you’d see a lot more upward pressure.
Surely you can't parlay indefinitely, but there hasn't been an implosion yet... until there is... but then everyone who enjoyed the political and financial benefits of parlaying is long dead, their inheritors heavily insulated... or there isn't a financial implosion... or there's some other disaster rendering this disaster moot... or something else (free energy? Second Coming?) appears and fixes it, allowing the reckless to get away with it... if we ever agree on who the reckless were...
We could just follow Taleb's warnings (the precautionary principle, antifragility, black swan events), but we can't even agree on basic reality, and the people who are greatly benefiting off their version of reality will never budge, and the people who might suffer aren't yet born (probably).
I’ve heard the limit described as “when the nation can only afford the interest payments on the principal” which means the nation can never pay back the principal itself. I heard that 10 years ago
Simply put, The environmental destruction isn’t what you think. For instance, Based on my experience climate modeling and working with environmental papers - I don’t believe carbon emissions has a meaningful impact on global warming.
Further, and in way of example: the warming should lead to increased food production (they often say as much in their papers). What will happen is greater soil erosion, so we have to protect against that (or we will long-term) have crop problems.
The general point, is the system is more complex than we realize. There are no one-off answers because the system will always be adjusting to try to keep an equilibrium AND so will humans. Farm Fishing is on the rise, protection zones are being setup, global fishing rules have been ignored, but local ones have not, etc etc
Like most simulations, they pretty much only can match reality so closely. for instance, we don’t have many long term measurements, so we make (educated-ish) guesses. Academics also repeatedly run their models, tweaking parameters to get the results they want. Frankly, I don’t trust any research using simulations, after being paid to work on environmental, biological systems, simulations for drones and machines (trucks, construction, etc). (Drones and other machines at least had a way to quickly test).
Out of curiosity, what are some examples of these measurements/guesses you are referring to?
Climate modeling is a tricky thing because the system is so complex and we are continually surprised by interactions and effects we didn't expect.
However, climate science is about far more than just models. The models are actually the least compelling part.
That’s an appeal to authority though. What’s wrong with the following statement?
“95% of numerologists strongly believe in the predictive power of numerology so therefore we should trust them.”
When people question the foundations of an entire field, presenting a giant sample of people who work in said field an implicitly agree with the foundation by labeling themselves as such isn’t really a compelling argument?
Guess what percentage of catholic priests think faith in Jesus is important?
I think the difference in this case is the arguments and evidence presented by climate science is generally accepted by experts and policy makers outside of the field.
There definitely seems the need for some international waters rules to be agreed on, but given today's politics it seems unlikely the major powers would approach that with goodwill.
And if an illegal fishing armada turned up would very likely sink a few vessels to send a message.
But yeah, don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. But who would be willing to mess with China?
It was definitely well-known amongst the scientists on the ship that the operations were illegal. I know they made an effort to report as many as they could but my impression was that officials were overwhelmed by complaints and the illegal ships would work together to avoid detection/quickly move to international water so, since it was a losing battle, the government didn’t put forth too much effort.
Whether that’s the real reason nothing is done or just the good reason used to justify their inaction is anyone’s guess. I will say there were a shocking number of ships that I could see and I wouldn’t be surprised if they outnumbered the Argentinian navy.
Obviously the crews should be taken off first, then returned to land and then deported as soon as possible. There's not much point in punishing them any further.
Negative publicity where? I’m sure within Argentina this would be very popular and if China protests it’ll have to own up that these illegal boats are coming from there, which it may not want to do.
Their other boats will take them home. Probably have to toss over some of their illegal catch to make room, though.
And, 2)
> These distant-water fleets mainly fish for shortfin squid, which are vital to Argentina’s economy
1 and 2 combined make me wonder if destroying the ocean ecosystem, and damaging Argentina's economy could be a goal in itself, somehow.
Maybe to (now I'm guessing), in the future, get to lend out money to the government in Argentina, if they're in a bad economic situation -- and make the country depend on the CCP or something like that?
I'm just guessing and wondering. However it'd be weird to me if the CCP hadn't thought about what'll happen, because of the overfishing, and they said that, yes this is good for us; it's something we want (the party, probably not the people).
Agents of the imperial European powers used to act in the "interests of the empire" abroad without significant oversight ~200 years ago so this situation could be similar with the Chinese fleet being paid with incentives that encourage bending of the rules.
There are plenty of other cultural differences in these stories but overall I'm always left wondering whether some of these reflect broader cultural attitudes or if this is like if someone tried to get a deep understanding of western culture by reading Spiderman comics and that's it.
From the man himself: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/t-magazine/george-rr-mart...
> And it would be an unfair and silly comparison anyway.
Your personal opinions on the allegory don’t affect the author’s intent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fir...
I've seen multiple spins on the scenario you've described, in which some scenarios the exhaustive approach is justified (the half-D world is on the verge of collapse, or about to fall to a corrupting force which will decay the resources, etc.);
is reasoned (if the protag leave the sustainable portion, their opponent or enemy will plunder the rest, basically 0-sum game);
is sustained (instead of harvesting everything, they transfer the resource to their own half-D, or if it's non-competitive, they do leave sustainable parts).
Then other genres of the wuxia and xianxia type where the protag is the leader of a faction, and have the faction resources (garden, mines, etc.).
I think you are thinking too deep into this. Reading a popular novel doesn't mean the readers agree with every action or idea the protag or the author take/presents, popular novel are more like fast food, maybe this fry is a bit too salty, maybe that fry is not salty enough, maybe the cola is lacking ice, etc.
One could perhaps look at the behaviors of Chinese tourists at buffets as another example: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/976211.shtml
But it's just a curiosity since as you say, it's not a representative sample and it's just a genre of fiction, not some real psychological / sociological study.
I've also heard the explanation that this particular behavior could be a reaction to recent history - in particular the famines that China went through in the 20th century. People still have through direct experience or through their recent parents of grandparents that experience of literally starving.
half-d? = half dimension / pocket dimension? don't know what half-d is.
So typical Chinese fantasy/ high-level Wuxia/ Xianxia goes protag need resources -> need lots with no strings -> a failing pocket dimension to exploit! -> maybe discovered through conflict / treasure map / etc.
Why though? Think of them as a one-time map in an RPG or something, where you access once for some material/etc. but can never revisit.
As for the behavior of that bunch of Chinese tourists, I would say that wasting was an issue in the recent generations (but won't be in the next generation), due to a number of factors such as the abundance of food on the market and in restaurant, hospitality (by providing more-than-can-eat), showoff (by providing extraordinary amount of food), corruption (government paid for, no need to hold back), etc.
However, the fight against corruption in recent years and recently passed laws that prohibit display in public and in video of wasting food would mean that the next generation growing up would have a different standard of what should be considered as waste.
Similarly, those growing up in the 70s-90s that had experience of a lack of food variety and amount, would either be very harsh on any waste of food, or would be overly lenient on wasting food.
As to the theory that this behavior came from memories of grandparents that experienced the famines, I'd say it's stretching it. There's too many variables that would affect the amount of influence, especially if the grandparents weren't around to educate about not wasting food. And if the grandparents didn't educate correctly, it could even cause a backlash.
It's not in their territory, they likely don't give a rat's ass. Ecosystem damage in the western hemisphere might actually be a good aspect for some of those who might crack down on this.
I suspect we're all well aware that vessels and crews of any nation pulling this in China's territorial waters would not be treated kindly.
Are you talking worldwide freshwater and saltwater fish?
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/4/2218
https://sustainablefisheries-uw.org/science-of-seaspiracy/
> Among the assessed stocks in the database, the average fishing pressure increased and the biomass declined on average until 1995, when fishing pressure began to decrease. By 2005, average biomass had started to increase (Fig. 1B). Averaged across all stocks in the database, biomass in 2016 was higher than BMSY, and fishing pressure was lower than UMSY. However, improvement is still needed for 24% of stocks, accounting for 19% of potential catch, which still have low biomass and high fishing pressure compared with MSY-based targets
> Since the mid-1990s, catch has generally declined in proportion to decreases in fishing pressure and was, in 2016, at 54% of where it was in 1989 for assessed stocks (Fig. 1B). This pattern is also observed at the regional level, where the correlation between exploitation rate and catch is generally >0.8 (Fig. 2). Global catch as reported by the FAO also declined during that period, but less so than for the assessed stocks reported here, likely because fishing effort in the parts of the world without assessment has not declined (18).
> Regions that have average biomass near or above BMSY are Australia, Atlantic Ocean tunas, Canada West Coast, European Union non-Mediterranean, Indian Ocean tunas, Norway/Iceland/Faroes, New Zealand, Pacific Ocean tunas, Alaska, the US Southeast and Gulf, and the US West Coast. Although these regions have not avoided the overfishing of all stocks, conservative management has kept most stocks at high biomass. Many areas where biomass was below BMSY in 2000 have seen reductions in fishing pressure and stock increases, including the Atlantic Ocean tunas; the East, Southeast, and Gulf coasts of the United States; the Canada East Coast; and the Northwest Pacific Ocean (Japan and Russia). Tuna stocks in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, which were well above BMSY in 1970, were near BMSY in 2016.
> Stocks in the Mediterranean-Black Sea have low biomass and continue to decline, whereas stocks in South America have declined considerably in the last 20 y and were below target levels in 2016. Fishing pressure in South America has been dropping since the early 2000s. Only 4 of 36 stocks in NW Africa have MSY-based reference points for biomass estimated, all of which are large-volume, small-pelagic fisheries and are therefore unrepresentative of the many demersal fisheries in the region. The stock abundance for those small-pelagic stocks is above MSY targets, but exploitation rates were high (2.5 times UMSY) for the 6 NW African stocks for which exploitation rate reference points exist. Regional assessments (19) estimated that most demersal stocks were overexploited by 2008 and recommended reductions in fishing pressure.
It is of course difficult to create and enforce a regulatory regime to prevent overfishing, but there tends to be buy-in among fisherman once their fisheries collapse.
What are these bribes you talk of? Can you provide sources?
> Oceana documented over 800 foreign vessels logging more than 900,000 total hours of apparent fishing. The analysis also revealed that 69% of this fishing activity was conducted by more than 400 Chinese vessels.
...
> As part of this analysis, Oceana documented more than 6,000 gap events, instances where AIS transmissions are not detected for more than 24 hours, which potentially indicates vessels are disabling their public tracking devices. These vessels were invisible for more than 600,000 total hours, hiding fishing vessel locations and masking potentially illegal behavior, such as crossing into Argentina’s national waters to fish. The Chinese fleet was responsible for 66% of these incidents.
It appears that Chinese vessels are actually slightly less likely to disable AIS than others?
Edit: from the actual report at the end of the article, which I missed at first:
> While China had the highest total number of gaps, the Spanish fleet appeared to have the worst AIS compliance on a per-vessel basis. Nine out of the 10 fishing vessels that spent the most time with their AIS off were flagged to Spain, despite constant AIS operation being mandatory under European Union law.
I wonder whether that means they can be sued, or whether the responsible regulatory agency would have to take the initiative.
When you have that many vessels you don’t need to turn them off as much because you’re catching everything that moves in a far shorter period of time.
Aside: There were actually 316 Chinese vessels with gaps in AIS transmission, 71 Taiwanese, 36 South Korean, 27 Spanish, 5 Argentine and 5 unknown ones.
https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/satellite-data-nails-c...
summary:
* The documentary distorts facts and in some cases even outright lies:
1. They claim that the oceans will be empty by 2048, but that claim is based off widely refuted (by even the original authors!) paper from 2006. A 2020 update says the global fish stocks are improving.
2. They claim that 40% of seafood caught is "bycatch", but they define bycatch as "anything that's not sustainably managed". No reputable scientific organization uses that definition for bycatch.
3. They claim 250k sea turtles are killed per year as a result of bycatch, but the source cited for this is some random blog post. Actual studies show the number is closer to 4600.
5. They claim that 46% of plastic in the ocean is from fishing nets, but that's based off a study that shows that in a specific area of the ocean (great pacific garbage patch), fishing nets make up 46% of the floating plastic.
* The documentary allege corruption but their evidence amounts to "well they could be faking the numbers". A company could be cooking the books (it happens all the time, eg. wirecard), but that doesn't mean it's a widespread practice. Independent studies have verified that msc certification is a reliable and overall beneficial program.
* The documentary's interviews are misleading because they ask simplified questions to complex problems, then play them back out of context in an attempt to create gotcha moments. The movie has received criticism from the people interviewed, even the ones that were portrayed positively.
* The creator doesn't seem to be interested in sustainability at all. In one segment he visits a bunch of whale fisherman. He concludes that the practice is totally sustainable, but he still doesn't like it and goes on to say that sustainability is not how we should care for our oceans. The documentary doesn't end with ways on how to make fishing more sustainable, it instead lists reasons why you should go vegan.
It's a global problem but there's one bad/reckless actor (China) that needs to better police the issue internally.
To be honest, I don't know if a 'global' effort of physically policing the oceans is possible (given they cover 2/3rds of the Earth). I do think it in the short term it will eventually come down to fishing crew being arrested and boats confiscated and sunk, with the crew being given one way flights back to their home country.
Back in the 1700s, there were Indonesians coming down to collect sea cucumbers for the Chinese market:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makassan_contact_with_Australi...
Not sure if it's current policy, but the guest lecturer described an assessment process for boats they apprehended. A vintage all-wooden boat with no electricity/etc was allowed to continue their traditional fishing practices in the area. A modern boat with powered outboard, metal/fibreglass hull, etc was seized and destroyed. There was a third class I can't recall that was somewhere in between.
I can see something like this being a way forward, where you can fish smallscale for personal use (yacht crew subsisting on whatever they can catch) or small commercial use with a certain style of boat and catching method. Any bigger operations would be restricted to specific zones, or captured and destroyed with little warning.
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/03/18/...
archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20210508222031/https://www.econo...
We uncovered how one ship helped North Korea get oil despite sanctions
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/world/winson-north-korea-...
This is well known throughout the world, but my suspicion is that governments receive enough Chinese investment (personal or otherwise) that they turn the other cheek. SA in particular had whole quarters of industrial areas that had only Chinese signage, and were wholly owned by China / Chinese businesses.
Peru: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMhQ5zmm-pI
North Korean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PZzxF4hwVI
West Africa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUClXFF2PKs
U.S. Navy Arrest and Sink 300 Chinese Fishing Ships Off South America Coast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9vTjgIDUQo
China stripping unguarded Atlantic coasts was news to me, though.
The video is fake. It's based on real events but congrats, you just fell for fake news and then helped spread it. I can't find any info that the US sunk Chinese fishing boats. That would be headline news if it actually happened.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/25/can-anyo...
The video clearly claims the USN sunk the ships and uses video footage to support the lie. Please stop supporting fake news.
Are you referring to something specific?
[0] https://www.cnnchile.com/pais/11-barcos-pesqueros-chinos-zee...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY3gjXIdZ2g
[2] https://www.infobae.com/america/2020/12/04/armada-de-chile-i...
In this case, the problem is enforcement, which locals on here seem to think is related to coast guard resources and/or corruption. I would hazard that its an issue of will and/or competency, in this case.
Overharvesting in international waters and overharvesting legally within territorial waters is a different issue. The actual solution, IMO, is a blanket ban with certain exemptions. Fishing is very political thought, and constantly underestimated by politicians and MOPs who naively wade in. Financially, fishing is not that big an industry. It does represent a livelihood for a lot of people. It also has huge cultural significance, literally an ancient way of life. For everyone else, it has some cultural significance, culinary significance... so a touches a lot of people. It's genuinely a big ask. I support a ban, but underestimating effects on people is a recipe for failure, and bad blood.
Commercial, terrestrial wild harvests at industrial scale famously wiped out US bison herds very quickly. One notable example of many. Inland fisheries, especially salmon, faired similarly. Bans have been far more effective than controlled harvests. Two big examples are Cod and whaling. Cod fishing is one of the oldest modern regulatory history in fishing... but Cod never recovered. Whaling OTOH, most species that were not depleted entirely have recovered. The ban worked.
Oceanic fishing is similar to terrestrial harvests and inland fisheries , just bigger and with the added difficulty of requiring international coordination. We can't harvest wild stock sustainably at a commercial scale. Perhaps it's possible in theory, but theory has rarely proven out in practice.
2. What are those pirates going to prey on? Fish fingers?
>Of the vessels with AIS gaps, 31% of them visited the Port of Montevideo, Uruguay at the end of their trip. This port has allegedly been favored by vessels engaging in illegal activity.
Far better would be to catch them, fly the crew home and and auction the vessels.
In Australia they do similar but burn the boats as these tend to be smaller vessels made of wood. The thought that you'll lose your boat for a catch if fish is a huge deterrent.
Sinking some of these vessels would attract the right amount of international attention and force action. Seizing and destroying is a worth while risk and a “cost of doing business”.
You want to play a game of cat and mouse? You’re one cat they’re many many more mice.
Some have even reinforced bows for ramming, not really standard issue fishing stuff.
-- 毛泽东
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_power_grows_out_of_t...
China wont strongly protest seizure of illegal fishing boats if they are fishing in another countries waters. They would if you start gunning citizens down, because in what civilized world is the death penalty an appropriate punishment for theft, not least having no due process etc.
As for cat an mouse, you dont have to catch them all, a few seizures will 1) Scare vessels so they look for lower risk waters and 2) They may well keep fishing the fringes, but are less likely to go blatantly deep into territorial waters.
And if they sweep in for the largest modern boats it might even be a profitable exercise.
Argentina needs an unmarked police force to protect its oceans.
These ships go unmarked they get sunken by an unmarked military force.
Make a big show of releasing the perps back to their home country and keep the ships.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pesca+ilegal+ch...
I don't think there's any negotiating with willfully negligent and dishonest Chinese industries & government.
To be honest, I am hoping the entire world soon turns against China. Maybe once enough of western industry is extricated from China.
Broken vessels should be taken to port and kept there until repairs AND said repairs are verified. Verification should consists of "the tracker was on continuously for a week."
If there's no vessel at a given location, it's clearly safe for live-fire targetted at said location.
That an earth first movement decides a line has now been crossed and the gloves are coming off, and e.g. uses a swarm of cheap disposable kamikaze drones to sink a few hundred ships in one 3:10am coordinated unattributed assault?
KSR's The Ministry for the Future evokes this scenario, and makes plain the ethical reasoning behind it...
...we are all just waiting for someone with the resources to e.g. fly their personal 787-8 overhead, to decide that watching from the sidelines is not patriotic, for some value of patriotism.
I place my chip on within four years.
Not blaming you or anyone, I'm powerless, too. Just kinda useless to say "oh how tragic".
I think we should recognize it and raise awareness to it as much as possible. I don't advocate for veganism, either. I advocate that fish and other food that is so hard to replenish be used and treated like a delicacy.
Today by luck we caught an octopus and by luck I was at the market when the ship came in with the catch. Instead of an octopus everyday for every meal. That is not going to sustain. Same for other foods.
But the downside of making octopus and other food a delicacy is that that is the reason why everybody wants it soo which creates the demand causing this.
I am thinking it out loud here.
Coordinating multiple UAV patrols across a wide area and cross-referencing that with other data is a nontrivial task, and because of the distances involved most of that will have to be through satellite. You'll want multiple command centers with the ground control stations for those UAVs, a data processing center, and operators who can identify suspicious craft and coordinate an interception. Because of the distances and numbers involved, you probably won't be able to have enough vessels on station and ready to intercept ships quickly. Better to use helicopters. You want a decent radius of action (over 100 nmi) and equipped with a surface search radar, FLIR, satellite data link and target sharing, room for a boarding team, plus sufficient armament to support the boarding team against small arms fire and the capability to shoot out the rudder if needed (a 20mm autocannon would work well for both, alternatively a machine gun on the door and a hellfire-type missile). Good candidates would be Seahawk or Lynx helicopters. Land-based helicopters won't have the range to reach targets in a large portion of the EEZ, which is where cutter-class ships would come in to play. A more exotic option would be to convert a cargo ship into a helicopter carrier, but to my knowledge no coast guard has done anything like that.
Anyway, that's a rough sketch of what you would need to make illegal fishing operations extremely risky. As you can see, it is expensive (multibillion just for acquisitions, and maintenance and sustainment would probably be in the hundreds of millions annually) and requires a lot of work to get right.
The CCP does not care about human rights. It does not care about territorial sovereignty. It does not even possess any true allies. The only thing that matters to them is the Power Equation - do you have the power and will to oppose them. If you do not, you will be rolled over and exploited.
What makes you say that the CCP are smarter than the WW2 Germans? And why don't you think that they have allies?
Is there a convention/rule?
So, let's say the West relocates production to India, dozen other neighboring countries and Africa, and gives China the finger. Will China go on fine and dandy with just Middle-East customers and whatnot? Will it turn to blocking and pillaging traffic on the seas from those other countries? Will it turn to terrorism, something like torturing Uyghurs until the US gives in and turns off the sanctions? Will it go to war with all the neighbors, beginning with Taiwan? Will it fire the nukes, and/or have NK fire the nukes?
I've heard that Western politics, including international politics, are a product of popular demand, even if people won't say they like what the government does. Well, either people are fine with China's hijinks while all the tsatskes are cheap, or there's some complications to the idea that the West might want to do something.
That said, I guess... I'm actually OK with jingoist anti-China hatred in this particular case if it helps drive attention to a genuine ecological catastrophe? The woke hippies welcome you aboard, mate.
Of course, it didn't work out like that.
I assume that people understood their town's local economy would be uplifted by a renewed fishing industry.
Of course, that was never a real possibility.
If the military cannot perform this task then why does Argentina spend $3billion on them?
The obvious answer is that Argentina is a failed state, incapable of defending itself.
Now, I’m not going to get down in to the weeds about fishing property rights, but it looks like you’re trying to climb up this abstraction layer (“territorial sovereignty”) to justify violence against the peaceful.
If indeed they are stealing from someone under the law, I don’t think violent action via a national military is in any way whatsoever a proportionate response. You seem to be advocating for collective guilt because there are so many, and collective guilt or group punishment is a violation of human rights.
https://www.nationalfisherman.com/national-international/oce...
[Insert monkey puppet meme.]
Not defending them, but it looks like it's a wider problem than just "China bad".
Voting with wallet only works when there are options. I bet the devices that you and I used to write these very comments are highly likely made in China too, at least partly
A great deal of our overall consumer products are, but most of our consumables come from the US or Central/South America.
Is it any wonder a rising power chafes at rules that it didn't get same amount of influence over at the time of writing because it was weaker? Our entire structure of international law is based on decisions made in those first few years after WW2. It's been 70+ years since then and the world has changed dramatically. I'm quite concerned that if the current international structure isn't flexible enough to bend and accommodate the pressure those changes, its going to break like an earthquake fault and we could very well have a WW3 scenario on our hands.
Xinjiang, Tibet, and events in Hong Hong don’t bode well. Trends in the South China Sea show that China doesn’t respect its neighboring countries claims either. So the external events that do exist are not promising that China will be better.
And in internal politics and equality, we haven’t yet forced academics and professionals into labor camps but it may be trending that way.
Edit: I’m by no means downplaying the terribleness the USA did in South America, the Middle East or elsewhere nor our own internal discriminations and worse, I’m pointing out that given the limited information we have, it does not give any confidence that China will be an improvement. My own feel given my fairly limited understanding is that overall it will be worse for the environment and justice globally and at the very best essentially the same but with a new face.
“I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he's wrong, than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.”
I remember this quote from an old Ice Cube btw
Good luck with that.
Turn over pretty much any item in your house, and you’ll see ”Made in China.”
Every single one of our nations has its markets dominated by corporations that have found the only way to compete, is to manufacture in China.
Many nations are now incapable of manufacturing their own goods.
Once you’re a pickle, you’ll never be a cucumber again.
This did not start with China. Japan did it after WWII (remember "cheap Japanese"?). Korea did it after Japan.
Now, both Korea and Japan are becoming known for high-quality, pricey stuff.
Many Korean and Japanese corporations manufacture in China, Thailand, and Vietnam.
China is headed that way too, but it may take longer.
Here's a site from a quick search. https://www.tedss.com/LearnMore/American-Made-Capacitors
Here is a site for US built computers with the option to specify US only components. https://usamadeproducts.biz/electronics-computers.html
Made in USA != all parts made in the USA. Kinda like how "Made in the USA" cars/trucks are often 90% made overseas then sent to the US for final assembly to earn that sticker.
I'll ignore the fact that the very first link in your computer URL is Apple, which does not have a 100% made in the USA product.
The second computer company in your link is Digital Storm. They use MSI boards which are made in Taiwan and China.
It appears to have done nothing to stop China, which, just off of the top of my head:
1) Is by far the largest industrial polluter in the world
2) Seems hell bent on completely fishing all of the fish out of the ocean
3) Makes absurd territorial claims to places like Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the South China Sea, then acts indignant when these absurd territorial claims are questioned.
4) Is currently engaged in an active genocide
5) Perpetrated the deadliest industrial disaster so far (the wuhan lab leak)
6) Does all of this, in the rest of the world's face, and barely even bothers to lie about it. Then plays the victim if it is brought up.
I mean what the hell? What are we even doing? Is this seriously how the global order collapses? What does the world look like with a hegemonic China?
It is seriously the most depressing thing to me that the world appears to just be rolling over to allow a genocidal dictatorship to take over. Where does that leave humanity in 1000 years?