Fishermen catch live sharks and hack off their fins. Then they throw the sharks — now unable to swim — back into the ocean, where they inevitably starve, suffocate, or bleed to death.

Why? To provide the key ingredient in shark fin soup, which retails at some restaurants for $30 a bowl. (The dish is a Chinese delicacy traditionally served at weddings and banquets.)

But the brutal practice of finning isn’t just cruel to individual sharks — it’s also threatening the existence of some shark species, and, in turn, disrupting oceanic ecosystems worldwide. More than 70 million sharks are killed through finning every year.

The good news is that the California legislature is considering a bill (AB 376) to ban the sale of shark fins, and a vote could come as early as this week.

Oregon and Hawaii have already passed similar bans, but opponents of AB 376 claim that the bill would infringe on Asian American cultures. The Asian Pacific American Ocean Harmony Alliance disagrees. That’s why they started a petition on Change.org to ask the California legislature to pass AB 376.

There’s an old Chinese idiom — “tian ren he ye” — which translates to “Nature and human beings cooperate as one.” The APA Ocean Harmony Alliance believes that passing AB 376 is the right thing to do to prevent brutal finning of sharks as well as an important way to honor Asian cultures’ high regard for nature.

Banks, including US investment bank Goldman Sachs and Italy’s UniCredit, held tens of millions of dollars on behalf of the Libyan Investment Authority, the agency created by the country’s regime to manage the wealth gained from lucrative energy projects.

In total the Libyan fund had assets worth $53.3bn at the end of June last year, of which just under $20bn was held on deposit in a variety of currencies.

About $110m of the fund was invested in a private-equity vehicle managed by RBS, though by the end of the first six months of last year the value of its holding had fallen to $74.4m.

Most striking are Libya’s disastrous attempts to make money from investing in complex structured credit and equity products.

HSBC, Goldman Sachs and RBS declined to comment on their dealings with the Libyan authorities.

HSBC had in recent years moved to build its business in the country and had opened a representative office in Tripoli.
Along with the wealth funds of other oil-rich Middle Eastern and North African country’s, Libya’s was seen as a lucrative target by international investment banks in the years before the financial crisis.

Goldman Sachs had been reputed to have had lucrative dealings with the country.
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Earlier this week, Sudanese Armed Forces bombed and invaded the border town of Abyei, displacing thousands of civilians and putting the entire region at risk for wide-spread violence and destruction.

Not only that, but Sudan is bombing again in Darfur. Some of the largest refugee camps in the world – located in Darfur – have no access to aid, such as food, water and medical supplies.

With less than two months left until the planned independence of oil-rich South Sudan, the situation is at risk of getting much, much worse. And while political battles continue to play out, it is the innocent civilians of Sudan – in both the South and North – who will suffer unspeakable acts of violence

I don’t think anybody noticed it though because I would have expected more outrage, especially from the OTW women here.
Only Michelle commented on signing the petition.

By the way, my comment no. 4 linked above also contains the link to the actual article that was published in Psychology Today.

Thanks again for re-enforcing everyone to take a look at this issue and the egregious insult to black women everywhere.

Colleagues and peers of Satoshi Kanazawa, the article’s author, have since analyzed his same data and unanimously (and unsurprisingly) found his conclusions in error.

Yet Psychology Today has remained silent. They have refused to apologize or even explain why they published the article.

Articles like Kanazawa’s are more than offensive or spurious—they’re deeply harmful because they promote racist and sexist stereotypes as science.

That’s why documentary filmmaker Aishah Simmons and academic Alisa Bierria are leading a petition on Change.org to call on Psychology Today to apologize and take transparent steps to prevent the publication of racist and sexist material in the future. Click here to sign Aishah and Alisa’s petition.

Kanazawa’s article never would have survived a thorough and responsible editorial process. In fact, the author himself doesn’t stand up to review.

Kanazawa has a history of pushing discredited research and is particularly notorious for making meritless claims about race and gender. (He is also known as the mind behind the much-mocked book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters.)

In an attempt to defend previous publications, Kanazawa wrote, “If what I say is wrong (because it is illogical or lacks credible scientific evidence), then it is my problem. If what I say offends you, it is your problem.”

Well, as Khadijah Britton of Scientific American put it, “Satoshi Kanazawa has a problem.” So does Psychology Today.

Prominent women’s rights advocates, including Gloria Steinem and Beverly Guy Sheftall, former President of the National Women’s Studies Association, have already declared their support for the campaign