tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post1013973900509679747..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Elephant MemoriesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-2873888097514951322014-10-28T22:48:14.503-07:002014-10-28T22:48:14.503-07:00Brad, Of course I knew you understood.
I take it ...Brad, Of course I knew you understood.<br /><br />I take it what we're seeing here is pretty much the standard capitalist mercantile model at work, with the predictable chain of traders and brokers between the supply side and the consumer marketplace. The additive value in cultural b.s. applied along the way (those "core values" imbedded in the cheapjack bricabrac) is really just salt in the wounds made by the tribal spear in the body of the dying elephant.<br /><br />The swarming presence of Chinese buyers and scouts around import/ export depots and airports in Africa is the lard that greases the chamber of the bounty hunter's gun.<br /><br />The only real problem one can see in all this is, as was suggested earlier -- it may well be that notwithstanding the now proven extraordinary capacity of the Chinese for math, the now proven extraordinary capacity for creature wisdom, not to speak of memory, of the elephant, might have proven a lot more useful to mother earth, in the long run.<br /><br />But of course that's a funny thing about our species, it's not until just after something beautiful and noble is irrevocably lost that anyone stops to wonder if, perhaps, it might just have been not only beautiful and noble, but necessary and esential to everything.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-38074975696911473342014-10-28T21:47:05.474-07:002014-10-28T21:47:05.474-07:00Yeah . . . the economics of it, I understand, in t...Yeah . . . the economics of it, I understand, in the same way I do the arch-necessity of a flu-symptom sneeze. I suppose I just mean the blood & the bolts of it -- the monetizing of flesh and bone. No surprise, I suppose, given the brutalization we direct at ourselves. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-52812124126438999712014-10-28T21:26:12.491-07:002014-10-28T21:26:12.491-07:00Of course, everyone knows and will have seen all t...Of course, everyone knows and will have seen all this, or doesn't want to, hasn't, won't look. One person who reports being unable to bear to look at the same time reports being able to look without flinching nay indeed with what would be the word for it, admiration? at pretentious pseudo avant garde mystico-psycho-babble disguised as poetry, so everyone's tolerance for unpleasantness must be unique unto said perceiving subject, as the case may be &c.<br /><br />National Geographic did a pretty good investigative series on the ivory trade last year. The new Chinese affluence, the obsession with wealth and status, the symbolic displacement into commodity objects (mass produced ivory kitsch ware) of the good feelings generated by "core values" (which nobody's got the time or patience or frankly the poor business sense to actually bother to put into practise any more, making the commercial simulacra that much the more precious), the fact that 83% of middle class interviewees reported they're planning a purchase of ivory in the coming year (that would be this year)... <br /><br />Brad, the series might help to answer some of your questions re. poaching. It's pretty simple, really. Just another front-end service of our wicked fairy godmother, Global Business.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJbOmWE0jIo" rel="nofollow">battle for the elephants: series intro: inside the ivory trade</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNjb9uvurTU" rel="nofollow">battle for the elephants: episode one: the plight of the elephant</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Oo6SCt4erI" rel="nofollow">battle for the elephants: episode two: criminal traders exposed</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws6X9FIvL0s%22" rel="nofollow">battle for the elephants: episode three: the china ivory market</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9cZvhzoq7A" rel="nofollow">battle for the elephants: episode four: massive ivory stockpile</a><br /><br />For people to know "intellectually" that it's the Chinese doing the elephants in, for base reasons and by low means, of course helps the elephants not a fig. Up goes the price, up goes the poaching. Down goes the animal, out come the tusks.<br /><br />As the purpose here is not, in fact, to inflict unpleasantness, I elected not to show a closer view of the young elephant whose face was chopped off in order to get its tusks. If you want to see it, you can find it. To be honest, to look at it is a meditative experience. The job had been done by machetes. And in a hurry. Hard work, one supposes, and done raggedly; in terms of surgical efficiency, the cut would have embarrassed your average suburban jihadi-next-door.<br /><br />Empathy with the orphaned elephants is not all that difficult to achieve, provided of course you have a heart and are not a member of the new emerging Chinese middle class. (And by the way their pollution is lovely too, it has that special rank bouquet that spells eco-deadly superpower... even this faraway, making for unusually sublime toxic sunsets...)<br /><br />Anybody who doesn't feel like a motherless child, any more, ought be holding their breath.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-7649506142885008742014-10-28T17:12:32.585-07:002014-10-28T17:12:32.585-07:00L'Enfant, thank you, and yes, here too, a deep...L'Enfant, thank you, and yes, here too, a deep sadness in pondering all this, and an even deeper frustration in not being able to do something to help African elephants to survive.<br /><br />It's terrible to say this, but if some vast machine capable of sorting out the ultimate moral determinations in the universe -- and of course this statement assumes the folly of supposing there are moral determinations in the universe -- were confronted with the either/or decision, in Solomonic fashion, whether to exterminate the elephants or to exterminate the principal predator which endangers their survival, i.e. the Chinese, I'd hate to have to say which mass extermination I'd rather see happen.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-80348268388741615472014-10-28T15:53:41.060-07:002014-10-28T15:53:41.060-07:00Dear Tom,
So very sad about all these orphaned bab...Dear Tom,<br />So very sad about all these orphaned baby elephants.. and so mas about poachers..L'Enfant de la Haute Merhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17122358316297267842noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-63038956678783480792014-10-28T15:42:22.156-07:002014-10-28T15:42:22.156-07:00A few brief excerpts from that piece:
__
A surge ...A few brief excerpts from that piece:<br />__<br /><br />A surge in demand for ivory in Asia is fuelling an illicit trade in elephant tusks, especially from Africa. Over the past eight years, the price of ivory has gone up from about $100 per kilogram ($100 per 2.2 pounds) to $1,800, creating a lucrative black market.<br /><br />Experts warn that if the trade is not stopped, elephant populations could dramatically plummet. The elephants could be nearly extinct by 2020, some activists say. Sierra Leone lost its last elephants in December, and Senegal has fewer than 10 left.<br /><br />"If we don't get the illegal trade under control soon, elephants could be wiped out over much of Africa, making recovery next to impossible," said Samuel K. Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington. "The impact that loss of this keystone species would have on African ecosystems is difficult to even imagine."<br /><br />__<br /><br />The primary destinations for illegal ivory have traditionally been Thailand, Japan and China, which have thriving black markets and some of the world's best ivory carvers. Thailand had three seizures last year and already had its biggest yet in February, when 2 tons of African tusks worth $3.6 million were found in containers bound for Laos.<br /><br />But these countries are not alone. Over the past decade, half of the largest ivory seizures took place in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam, indicating they are also becoming key transit points, according to an October 2009 report by the Elephant Trade Information System.<br />__<br /><br />Deep within the forests and parks of Africa, the source of ivory to China is clear.<br /><br />In Kenya alone, poaching deaths spiked seven-fold in the last three years, culminating in 271 elephant killings last year. The Tsavo National Park area had 50,000 elephants in the 1960s; today, it has 11,000. And at least 10 Chinese nationals have been arrested at Kenya's airport trying to transport ivory back to Asia since the beginning of last year.<br /><br />The Kalashnikov assault rifles slung around the shoulders of Kenyan park rangers are not for animals, but for poachers. It is a dangerous game for both sides: A ranger was killed in a shootout on Christmas Day, and a poacher in a shootout in February.<br /><br />Poachers use guns, rusty metal snares and poison arrows. It's the poison arrows that worry the rangers because they belong to local Kenyan tribesmen. The pastoral tribes that once protected Kenya's elephants are increasingly becoming their killers.<br /><br />"Now the trend is different, because they know they can make quick money out of these trophies. They sell it to the poachers," said Yussuf Adan, the senior warden in Tsavo East. Such a sale can net a tribesman hundreds or even thousands of dollars, a life-changing amount.<br /><br />Last month, ranger Mohamed Kamanya had to cut the tusks out of an elephant killed by a poacher's poisoned arrow. Kamanya says it's like a human death.<br /><br />"Economic interests have surpassed ecological interests," he said. "I think we're in for a serious problem."TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-91070189849267835742014-10-28T15:40:03.562-07:002014-10-28T15:40:03.562-07:00Many thanks, all, from here in our common and coll...Many thanks, all, from here in our common and collective vale of sorrow for who we are as a species, and what we've done.<br /><br />The fact that it became illegal 25 years ago has done little to diminish the ivory trade out of central Africa, which has caused all these terrible orphanings. In fact the volume of the traffic has increased along with the demand, in turn accelerating with consumer wealth in China, the principal market.<br /><br />Extermination of this magnificent animal is now nothing but a matter of time. The time it takes to complete the killing -- in that other, business sense of the term.<br /><br />One aspect of the tragedy of the African elephant that's particularly affecting: the actual killing is done not by the distant deep-pockets connoisseur consumer but by the same people the animal has for so long blessed with its sacred presence.<br /><br />The story resembles that of the sea otter, all but exterminated in the Pacific Northwest in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with the brutal job of killing left to the local native tribes, for whom the animal had been a respected resource as well as a central spiritual / cultural symbol since before memory, and the desired parts of the animal -- in this case its particularly dense coat -- ending up as luxury garments, symbol of conspicuous consumption, among Chinese mandarins, who were pleased to pay $100 apiece for an otter skin that a trader had bought from Indians at Nootka for a few bits of copper, a nail, a button, a teapot (potlatch goods).<br /><br />This wire service article summarizes the situation as of five years ago. Since then the price of ivory, and the wholesale killing of African elephants for their tusks, have increased:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/37167109/ns/world_news-world_environment/t/ivory-trade-threatens-african-elephant/#.VFAN5-d0HJw" rel="nofollow">Ivory trade threatens African elephant (AP)</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-12278267252740652592014-10-28T13:11:04.446-07:002014-10-28T13:11:04.446-07:00Dear Tom,
Could never thank you enough for bringi...Dear Tom,<br /><br />Could never thank you enough for bringing their suffering forward, as well as a very small nugget of hope for them. Thank you, just the same, DonnaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-36062616537082245632014-10-28T10:52:12.660-07:002014-10-28T10:52:12.660-07:00Earth, abbatoir.
According to the World Wildlife...Earth, abbatoir. <br /><br />According to the World Wildlife Fund, half of all vertebrate life on the planet has vanished in the past forty years. I take that to exclude homo allegedly sapiens, who has done anything but vanish.Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-87367109141987952602014-10-28T08:47:29.404-07:002014-10-28T08:47:29.404-07:00I can understand on some abstract level hatred of ...I can understand on some abstract level hatred of another, for some imagined or real wrong. But I do not understand poaching.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-73735510978059749012014-10-28T05:37:13.994-07:002014-10-28T05:37:13.994-07:00i feel as deeply moved by these elephants as i fee...i feel as deeply moved by these elephants as i feel moved by Mercy Kennedy. and not because of any likenesses we share with Mercy or with the elephants. (and i certainly don't mean to diminish what i feel for Mercy. it shines hard, obsidian, in a crucible.) but because we, in our infinite selfishness and self concern, in the fitful and plundering ways we have interpreted our place on this earth, have perpetrated this violence ourselves. each time.<br /><br />xo<br />erinerinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16636371927224076866noreply@blogger.com