#there’s a secondary academy in my area that has announced that it’s completely cutting all arts GCSEs. no more art. no more music.

[freckleslikestars]

I feel this so hard. Like. Growing up watching x files and Star Trek and having your parents and people around you expect you to be a doctor (you’d be just like scully!) and reading articles about the scully effect and then you go into the Arts and Humanities and you feel like you’re such a disappointment? Yeah.

But this is where I think STEAM is so much better than STEM. Including the arts is vital to the progress of the sciences. Arts and Humanities tend to lean more towards collaboration and divergent thinking, without which progress is hindered, and encouraging looking holistically at how we can bring the arts into STEM is so vitally important.

I think we forget that some of histories most famous scientists - doctors and engineers and mathematicians - were also artists. Da Vinci, both an artist and an inventor, most famously, but many women too. Maria Sibylla Merian, an entomologist from the 1600s who made great strides in the study of butterfly metamorphosis and whose career started with scientific illustrations. Marianne North, whose over 800 botanical paintings are housed in a gallery at Kew. Hedy Lamarr was both an actress and an inventor, frequently using down-time on sets to design inventions - her work on frequency hopping is one of the reasons we have WiFi today. Rachel Carson was a marine biologist who wrote many books that brought environmental issues closer to the public eye.

And to take art at its most literal sense, there are all of the scientific illustrations that have been used to document and teach and develop our understanding, many of which were done by women, often going uncredited.

But to look a little further, without arts and humanities, STEM has a habit of losing ethics, and without ethical research, and an understanding of why research has to be ethical, progress can’t happen in a way that benefits humanity.

So whilst, yes, it feels sometimes like we’re not fulfilling some quota of potential that society has constructed around fictional women, and whilst we mustn’t diminish the impact that these women had on bringing women into STEM fields that have historically, and still do, lack when it comes to women working within them, I do not think that Scully or Janeway would be disappointed to see women being able to chose the avenue of career that they want and that they can excel in.

Watching the x files and voyager and hearing about the Scully effect and ig the janeway effect (?) of inspiring women to go into stem and leadership roles in science I'm like yeah! Feminism! But I also feel like I have this obligation to be a smart woman in stem but I am at best a woman (?) who tried stem and was like fuck that I am not stem smart. I now I feel like I've let people down.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Sun Myung Moon’s fish business had plans to corner the shark fin trade

▲ Sharks that died after their fins were cut off.

Moonies Fishing Shows Little or No Profit—So Where Do They Get Their Money?

by Tim Sullivan  (National Fisherman, September 1981 or a few years later)

Are the “Moonies” trying to take over the United States fishing industry, and are they succeeding? After following the activities of Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church and related businesses for the past five years, these are two of the questions I am most frequently asked. My answers, most simply, are yes and no.

The Plans Going back to the beginning of Moon’s involvement with the industry in 1976, the record is quite clear: the Korean industrialist/evangelist would like very much to exploit the profit potentials of the fisheries. Outwardly, this intent came in an announcement from Stephen Baker, an advertising agent who had just completed a job of promoting Moon’s God Bless America Festival in Washington, D.C. In September 1976, Baker told The New York Times that Moon had purchased a fleet of seven trawlers and a fleet of trucks and “is going to make fish a staple” in the country. Baker said that with his advertising help, “We’ll make fish another Perdue chicken.” Later, he described this announcement as “premature,” which was partially accurate. There were, in fact, no trawlers and no fleet of trucks. Moon’s yacht New Hope and speedboat Flying Phoenix were making some waves in the New England rod-and-reel tuna fishery, and there was one truck to carry the fish around, but the major efforts were only in the planning stage.

Robert Brandyberry, a former Unification Church member, testified at a recent trial that he had attended a high-level church meeting in September 1976 at which Moon made fishing a major topic of discussion. Notes taken during the session indicated plans for marine enterprises centered in key areas of the country: Boston, New York, New Orleans and Florida, Los Angeles and Seattle. “We need to have all connected businesses within our organization,” Brandyberry wrote. “No competition because we use our own members.With worldwide network we can control business. All young men must go all over the world fishing.”

An internal church document, written on October 30, 1976, and obtained soon after, cited projected sales of $600,000 for the following year and profits of $86,000 but warned of problems involving the use of aliens and the poor corporate image of Tong II, the original Moon-related fish business. The document, signed by A. Richard Arnold, “director of marketing services,” stated: “We are building no foundation for the huge harvest of fish that Father (Moon) is planning to help restore the world.” “We must ‘crack’ the wholesale markets or fail in our mission. Every day we waste with no results is failing our fundraisers in the streets. Tong II’s business reputation is very bad. A new corporation can start a clean operation and quickly achieve bank credits that would be impossible as a division of Tong II.”

The Threat Reports of these pronouncements and plans were widely circulated in the industry and prompted a fear among many that the church, using the free labor of its members, its tax-exempt status, etc., could indeed “crack” the markets as Arnold had suggested and “control business” as Moon demanded. And Moon and his affiliates certainly had the resources with which to try. Only three days after the Arnold report was drafted, a new corporation—International Oceanic Enterprise, Inc.—was formed in Virginia. The company, doing business as International Seafood, began operating out of a plant on the Norfolk waterfront, and the church money began to flow.

Records of the Unification Church International show disbursements of $250,000 to International Seafood on November 7, 1976; $250,000 to International Oceanic on November 13; $150,000 on April 12, 1977; and $250,003 on July 5—a total of $2,400,003 during a 15-month period ending in February 1978. The latter-day expenditures during that time undoubtedly helped to fund both a new venture in boatbuilding and the acquisition of more than 700 acres of waterfront property in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, in early 1978. This purchase by International Oceanic also signaled the formation of a few more corporations: U.S. Marine to handle shipbuilding; Master Marine, also involved in boatbuilding; and One-Up, a hold company. Total expenditures: approximately $5 million. Other acquisitions related to fishing included a small lobster company in Gloucester, Massachusetts, purchased for $300,000, which was $100,000 over its market value.

The church also purchased an old milk factory in San Leandro, California, for an unknown quantity of money, named it Golden Gate Seafoods and began describing it as the secondary processing arm of a budding operation in Alaska. The Alaska operation, a small yet highly efficient processing facility, cost more than $7 million, according to former International Seafood employees who have since disassociated themselves from the operation. The church has dabbled in other fisheries, too, working the waters off Florida with a small fleet of boats pursuing kingfish for sale in a small store in Miami. They’ve acquired another shipyard in Mississippi. Most recently, they descended on Gloucester, Massachusetts, with a fleet of thirty 25’ boats built by Master Marine for use in the bluefin tuna fishery. This brings to over 60 the number of vessels now licensed in this one fishery and more are on the way. Those seven trawlers that ad man Baker spoke about back in 1976 finally do exist, along with several other large vessels around the country.

There is another international trading company known as Uniworld, and a trading company in Japan— Shiawasa Shoji. UCI has done other business in fish under a variety of little-known names like Fast Brothers, Father’s Fish Co., Happiness Seafoods and the Ginseng Co. The total capital outlay just for the most visible holdings exceeds $15 million, making the affiliated companies one of the largest seafood catching, processing and marketing networks in the country.

Former church members have verified private businessmen’s fears that the workers in many of the operations, being church members, either go unpaid or return their money to the church as a donation after the formal exercise of paying the help is completed.

That many of the various companies received start-up and operating monies from the tax-free holdings of the Unification Church International is fact, well documented in church records.

With extensive holdings on every coast and involvement in many of the major fisheries—from shrimp, scallops and Atlantic bluefin to Alaska bottomfish—it seems obvious that the inroads and power Moon sought have been achieved. No other operation in the country has shown such phenomenal growth in such a short time. By all appearances it is successful, but the appearances belie the reality.

Losses The Norfolk operation was a dismal failure, a drain on the corporate coffers rather than a source of income. Its various leaders suffered from a lack of experience in the industry. Products were packed in an inappropriate manner, there were some troubles with short weights, and big plans fell through on a number of attempts to corner the market on a variety of exotic seafood ranging from shrimp and squid to sharkfins (see National Fisherman December 1980, page 34).

▲ Shark fins

▲ Commercial shark fin categories: primary and secondary sets

Numerous efforts were made to attract business by paying the boats more than the prevailing rates and selling to wholesalers at lower-than-competitive prices, but this tactic gained few inroads.

In 1978, company officials admitted candidly that International was losing money, probably at a rate in excess of $250,000 per year. In 1979, International’s competitors estimated even greater losses, and in May 1979, the operation ceased, to the surprise of few. What was surprising was that only six months after the closure, International returned to spend $1.6 million to purchase the plant and surrounding waterfront property it had previously rented.

Shipbuilding In Bayou La Batre, Alabama, and Moss Point, Mississippi, the shipbuilding operations continue at the same slow pace the rest of the shipbuilding industry has experienced for the past two years. Master Marine’s production in 1979 was around a dozen vessels, and a comparable production from the combined facilities in Alabama and Mississippi was reported last year. “They’re getting by,” says a rival builder in Bayou La Batre, “but they’re not making any killing; no one is right now.”

The scene is markedly different than it was in 1978, when International, Master Marine, et al swooped down on the town to buy up the shipbuilding facilities and the 700 acres of waterfront property while announcing plans for expanding the shipbuilding operations and establishing fish plants and a marine academy. The shipbuilding has stagnated, and the 700 acres lay idle. There are no plants, no academy, and Moon’s affiliates are known not for their fishing involvement but for a youth center they opened for the community’s teenagers.

Costly Delays The operation in Kodiak, Alaska, too, is less extensive than expected. The fish plant is now in operation and handling a variety of locally-caught seafood, but the fleet of company-owned, company-built boats to supply the plant hasn’t materialized. There are many vessels, sporting names like Sunrise and Green Hope, the products of labor at the Master Marine yards, but repeated advertisements throughout the industry have failed to attract enough experienced skippers to handle the vessels in the often-treacherous waters of the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea.

The plant, which has been operated by many of the same people who operated the Norfolk operations, also took three years to complete—double the original predictions—and costs rose accordingly, from an original estimate of $3 million to now over $7 million. “Perhaps it will yield profits some day, but there are some great costs to overcome,” says Mulk Prudent, an old hand in fish dealing who was hired to salvage the Norfolk operation and then worked selling product from the Alaska plant out of his office in Seattle.

In San Leandro, Golden Gate Seafoods also appears to have suffered because of the construction delays in Alaska, designated, as it was, to be the final processing arm of the Kodiak plant. The operation appears to be making some money handling the catches from vessels in the Oakland area, and costs have certainly been cut since the days of the late 1970s when Golden Gate, with no plant of its own, bought fish from the local boats, trucked it whole across the country to Norfolk for processing and then trucked it back to the West Coast for shipment to Japan. Golden Gate is also involved in a lawsuit in which a Moon-affiliated operation in Gloucester, Massachusetts, charges it did not pay for a shipment of squid that was packed and shipped last summer. “From the investigation we’ve done, we’d have to say they are no big money-maker,” says Anthony Bertolino, Gloucester attorney. He is trying to recover money allegedly lost by Capt. Joe and Sons, the Gloucester fish processor that actually packed the squid that is the focus of Moon affiliate A’s lawsuit against Moon affiliate B.

And, certainly, if there are profits, they are so modest that they could hardly be a source of funds with which to prop up the other operations. The most publicized and apparently successful operation is in Gloucester. There, International Seafood has a lobster company, while Uniworld trades in tuna, and the church itself has a fleet of 50 tuna boats, with Master Marine holding another 10. Cries that the “Moonies” are taking over the industry can be heard everywhere.

But, again, the appearances overshadow the reality. The profits, if there are any, are certainly not great and, most assuredly, aren’t the source of money for propping up Norfolk, Kodiak or the lesser holdings elsewhere. And none of Moon’s non-fishing operations in the country are known to be large enough to support the fishing enterprises, either.

Who Has the Money? The church itself could be the source, according to many. But Mose Durst, the president of the church, maintains that the reverse is true. Since the “Moonies” have downplayed begging and their flower and candle sales as a source of income, the businesses support the church, he says.

This seems doubtful, but anything is possible in the financial maze of the Unification Church, Unification Church International, International Oceanic, International Seafoods, One-Up, U.S. Marine Corporation, Master Marine, Fathers Fish, Fast Bros., [Ocean Enterprises of Alaska, Inc., International Seafoods of Alaska, Inc., Ocean Peace, Inc., Top Ocean, Inc.] etc., etc.

Where the money comes from remains a mystery.

____________________________________

A huge Moon Church scam in Japan is revealed

Moon extracted $500 million from Japanese female members

Moon church of Japan used members for profit, not religious purposes

Shark finning: The cruelest cuts

Moon owned Sushi Company, True World Foods, Linked to Whaling

The Dark Side of True World Foods

Sushi and Rev. Moon – Chicago Tribune

FDA cites Elk Grove True World Foods seafood plant for unsanitary conditions

Jack White and his crew of five in the ‘Green Hope’ drowned off Alaska

John Williams died in a tragic Ocean Church accident in 2003

Japanese Unification Church member froze to death

SEASPIRACY website

SEASPIRACY trailer (Netscape) Seaspiracy examines the global fishing industry, challenging notions of sustainable fishing and showing how human actions cause widespread environmental destruction.