#Guangxi man seized for smuggling 7 pieces of #rhinohorn last April from #Vietnam to #China sentenced to 10 years: image via WCS China @WCSChina, 6 April 2015
Cardinal Richelieu would not
Have misunderstood
Beyond the doors of hell
Wait the gates of heaven
And the Chinese envoy was here
But left hastily
The doors of hell are open
The gates of heaven are closed
The gates of heaven are closed
Beyond this place lies another place
That must be concealed from us
To save it
Mother and Calf, White Rhinos, Eastern Cape, South Africa. No geotags or details with this one folks. There are too many
poachers out there ready to kill any Rhino for its horn, which is just
hair, just because sad believers in Chinese medicine think it has
magical powers. The same logic would suggest if you eat feathers you
will be able to fly! Try grinding up your own hair and swallowing that
instead. There might not be a single one left outside a zoo by 2020: photo by G Bayliss, 30 January 2014
It's In The Horns. Two rhinos, mother and child, in Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania: photo by Allison Mickel, 1 January 2013
Rhino horns with other wild animal products for sale, outdoor market, Vientiane, Laos: photo by Tiger Trail Outdoor Adventures, 19 December 2014
Example of a rhino horn and traditional medicine containing rhino horn: photo by International Fund for Animal Rescue Blog, 15 February 2008
"Trading blows over trading #rhinohorn" Op-Ed via @dailymaverick #rhino image via Swahili Africa @SwahiliAfrica, 13 April 2015
Burn Horn, Save Rhinos Czech Republic. Ceremony. On Sunday, the 21st September 2014, at 11am at Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic and Bratislava Zoo in Slovakia, Ministers for Environment for both countries set alight seized illegal and stockpiled rhino horns in a gesture symbolising the world has reached the 11th hour to save rhinosExample of a rhino horn and traditional medicine containing rhino horn: photo by International Fund for Animal Rescue Blog, 21 September 2014
Poached rhinoceros. Young recently poached male rhino in Chitwan national park, Nepal. The valuable horn is removed: photo by Knut-Erik Halle, 23 February 2003
Poached rhinoceros. Young recently poached male rhino in Chitwan national park, Nepal. The valuable horn is removed: photo by Knut-Erik Halle, 23 February 2003
Poached rhinoceros. Young recently poached male rhino in Chitwan national park, Nepal. The valuable horn is removed: photo by Knut-Erik Halle, 23 February 2003
"@DSWT #DidYouKnow #rhinohorn is made of the same stuff as fingernails. Yet one is killed every 8 hrs for it.”: image via sapling @_sapling, 9 April 2015
This is the result of primordial, fallacious 'medicine' and unpardonable decoration. #ExtinctionIsNow #rhinohorn: image via Dr.Stattos @zerospooky, 26 April 2015
"@rhinowinessa @braammalherbe more than gold & platinum combined most valuable commodity per Kg #rhinohorn @ $90 00 ": image via SWANK @swank_ZA, 7 May 2015
THIS IS THE SICK REALITY... Poaching KILLS!!... #SaveOurRhino @RhinoHornIsNotMedicine #BoycottChina: image via Desiree Laverne @Desiree_Laverne, 7 April 2015
These people really are the scum of the earth. #Rhino #china #vietnam #scum #chewyournails #boycottchina: image via Gareth Preiss @Gareth1012, 2 May 2015
RT "@luckynshi:" #Chewyournails #china #chinesescum #Rhino #savetherhino: image via Gareth Preiss @Gareth1012, 12 April 2015
You will not be forgotten my girls. #chinachewyournails #chinesescum #Rhino #Rhinopoaching: image via Gareth Preiss @Gareth1012, 19 May 2015
3 more #rhinos killed in #Hoedspruit yesterday #chinachewyournails #chinesescum #stoprhinopoaching: image via Gareth Preiss @Gareth1012, 14 December 2014
Northern white rhino's death leaves just five alive in world #SaveOurRhino #StopRhinopoaching: image via Diana Romanos @romdia5, 28 December 2014
A de-horned Rhino was found wandering with 12 bullets in it. #chinachewyournails #Rhino #stoprhinopoaching #boycottchina: image via Gareth Preiss @Gareth1012, 15 January 2015
#stopRhinopoaching: image via Onkgopotse OG Diseko @og_diseko, 1 February 2015
Why would you risk your life to kill what risks it life to save others life? #stoprhinopoaching @SANParksKNP: image via SMS 76 to 47052 @Jazzyhope_Sadc, 7 February 2015
Shocking news: Sumatran #rhino extinct in Sabah #Malaysia #PalmOil #Poaching: image via Rhino pentarou @pentarou_2010, 3 May 2015
#Rhino horn has absolute ZERO medicinal VALUE! El CUERNO #rinoceronte NO tiene valor MEDICINAL, es como uñas o pelo: image via Isaac Vega @saacBIOvega, 3 May 2015
Mother #Rhino and 3 month old baby killed last week Baby was shot as he was running around his mum via @Protect_Wildlife: image via Isaac Vega @saacBIOvega, 5 May 2015
Kruger National Park remains the hardest hit by poachers, having lost 286 #rhino since the beginning of 2015: image via Trevor Kolk @TrevorKolk, 10 May 2015
#Death of a #NorthernWhiteRhino leaves just six remaining in existence.#SadReality #DoSomething: image via Katie Stark @littledevil147, 20 October 2014
If you must do something in your travels, as a Kenyan, take time to visit @OlPejeta and see a #NorthernWhiteRhino: image via Mutheu Mutua @AKenyanGirl, 16 December 2014
Only the best of science can save the #NorthernWhiteRhino from the worst of humanity image via TomWaselewski @PG_TomWas, 18 December 2014
Should we try to halt extinction? #Science #Nature #BBC#NorthernWhiteRhino #Extinction image via Projects Magazine @ProjectsZine, 22 December 2014
Last of the species, can they be saved? #NorthernWhiteRhino #SaveTheRhinos via @Mashable: image via Mutheu Mutua @AKenyanGirl, 1 April 2015
Last of the species, can they be saved? #NorthernWhiteRhino #SaveTheRhinos via @Mashable: image via Mutheu Mutua @AKenyanGirl, 1 April 2015
Last of the species, can they be saved? #NorthernWhiteRhino #SaveTheRhinos via @Mashable: image via Mutheu Mutua @AKenyanGirl, 1 April 2015
Crazy. Armed rangers must protect last male #northernwhiterhino left on Earth via @The_PlaidZebra: image via Maudlyne lhejirika @maudlynei, 16 April 2015
‘Sudan doesn’t know how precious he is. His eye is a sad black dot in his massive wrinkled face as he wanders the reserve with his guards. Sudan is the last male northern white Rhino on the planet. It seems an image of human tenderness that Sudan is lovingly guarded by armed men who stand vigilantly and caringly with him. But of course it is an image of brutality. Even at this last desperate stage in the fate of the northern white rhino, poachers would kill Sudan if they could and hack off his horn to sell it on the Asian medicine market" [Jonathan Jones].: photo by CB2/ZOB/Brent Stirton/National Geographic via The Guardian, 12 May 2015
A rhino killed for its horn last month in Kruger National Park, South Africa: photo by Salym Fayad/EPA via the Guardian, 21 March 2015
The Rhinoceros: Albrecht Dürer, 1515, woodcut (British Museum, London)
Rhinoceros: Albrecht Dürer, 1515, pen drawing, 274 x 420 mm (British Museum, London)
Asian rhino (Rhinocerotidae spp.). There are fewer than 4,000 wild rhinos in Asia. All three Asian species are highly targeted for their horns. Two, the Javan and Sumatran rhinos are critically endangered. The animals are killed and their horns sawn off and smuggled to their destination markets in Asia: photo by STR/EPA via the Guardian, 5 February 2015
An Indian one horned rhino in the Kaziranga national park, Assam, India. The park is a rhino sanctuary and is helping to revive the species and protect them from poachers: photo by Paul Hilton/HSI via The Guardian, 8 January 2015
Keeper Mohamed Doyo leans over to pat female northern white rhino Najin in her pen where she is being kept for observation at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, home to three of the last six northern white rhinos on Earth. Keepers say it is highly unlikely the three will ever reproduce naturally, meaning the species is doomed to extinction, unless science can help. One of the last six in the world has died in a San Diego safari park: photo by Ben Curtis/AP via the Guardian, 15 December 2014
Orphaned baby rhino in Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, Ngare Ndare forest, Kenya. The conservancy is hand-raising three orphaned baby rhino: Nicky, Hope and Kilifi. Rhino are becoming extinct as a result of the brutal poaching fuelled by an illegal international market for their horns: photo by Luca Ghidoni/Barcroft Media via The Guardian, 12 September 2014
A billboard in Hanoi, Vietnam, reads: ‘Rhino horns are just like buffalo horns, human hair and nail. Do not waste your money,’ to mark the World Rhino Day on 22 September. This year’s theme was ‘Five rhino species forever.’: photo by Luong Thai Linh/EPA via The Guardian, 26 September 2014
Beijing, China. Girls wear costumes at the Global Mobile Internet Conference: photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AP via The Guardian, 29 April 2015
Beijing, China. Girls Girls dressed as bumblebees make conversation at the conference: photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AP via The Guardian, 29 April 2015
Keeper Mohamed Doyo leans over to pat female northern white rhino Najin in her pen where she is being kept for observation at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, home to three of the last six northern white rhinos on Earth. Keepers say it is highly unlikely the three will ever reproduce naturally, meaning the species is doomed to extinction, unless science can help. One of the last six in the world has died in a San Diego safari park: photo by Ben Curtis/AP via the Guardian, 15 December 2014
John Cale: Chinese Envoy (live, 1983)
ReplyDeleteIs it me or do rhinos, like elephants, always seem sad, Tom?
ReplyDeleteThese pictures are sickening and so depressing.
Over here people are falling over themselves now that the Chinese are (apparently) investing 43 bn dollars towards our bright and radiant future.
Back in the old days there was a sort of poem/song that went:
'China is our friend
China is our friend.
That is the Truth.
but: don't bring their system here'
Think that still holds, whether the system is Commie or capitalist.
I don't think it's just you, K.
ReplyDeleteBeing the last individuals of a vanishing species, and having experienced the persistent ferocity of a more powerful predator -- that is, homo necans, man the killer -- would seem a pretty sad-making thing, on the face of it.
However when one sees photos of rhinos, as also of elephants, in company among others of their species, it's quite apparent that their social bonding and in particular their maternal instincts remain in place, even amid this tragedy, as the shades of evening come down -- their presence as wild creatures on the planet now to be numbered perhaps in months and years, not in millennia... though of course it took millennia for their magnificence as organisms to evolve.
It was them, not us, who should have "inherited the earth".
So it may be the sadness is a combination of their appearance of dejection with our terrible knowledge.
But how does the sense of compassion/empathy we feel when we see endangered animals engage with the sense of privilege and entitlement, and the accompanying denial of compassion/empathy, which is an identifying feature of the new money elites?
The haste of the world to fall on its knees before the sheer quantitative enormity of the consuming capacity of the Chinese economy, that grand babylonian tower built of sheer accumulation of units, would suggest that there is a readiness, a willingness, indeed an eagerness to write off all other species, large or small, cute and cuddly or no, the minute Chinese dollars walk into the market.
Their "system" now seems nothing more than a grotesque elaboration of the capitalist model, reaching apogee and nadir in the same historical moment.
The celestial double-happiness peak of the "human experiment", and the vicious malebolge pit of same, all wrapped into one.
The treatment of animals says everything about the culture.
Dogs are publicly bred as food animals, and, in open air street markets, burned alive in barbecue pits, watched by the gleeful customers who are about to consume them.
To serve the high-end clientele, the Chinese elites, wild animal restaurants are now exfoliating, particularly in the border zone pleasure playgrounds, where the whoring, gaming, and endangered-species consumption, along with the common garden variety do-a-deal business, may all go on unimpeded, under the same uncaring sky.