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Slaughtering Whales As an Expression of National Culture
Call me Insensitive .
Call me anything you like , but it needs to be said and I'm going to say it : The Japanese whaling industry for using the "cultural tradition" argument as a justification for carring on its barbaric practice .
As you read this , a Japanese fleet is scouring the Southern Ocean for whales , lots of them . After years of being restrained by international treaty to dilling a few whales under the flimsy pretext of "scientific research , " the fleet plans to cut loose this season . More than 2,000 whales are being "harvested ," including up to 50 humpbacks , a protected species that was hunted nearly to extinction by the mid-20th century .
If you listen to the Japanese government and the whaling industry lobby it serves , whales are plentiful and , besides , whalers are merely exercising a cultural prerogative . Sure . It's kind of like origami or flower arranging , only you use an explosive charge packed into a harpoon tip .
In playing the culture card , Japan joins Norway , another pro-whaling nation that would love to take its harpoons back to sea . If anything , the Norwegian augument is even weaker than Japan's .
Of course , using the word "culture " is a smokescreen anyway . This isn't about culture . Like almost everythingelse in the world that stains the human spirit , this is about greed .
Whaling , as practiced by the nation-states , has always been a purely commercial venture . In the Age of Sail the industry grew out of economic necessity . When a whale was killed all of it was used --as food , as lamp oil , as lubricant . Whale-bone was used to make corset stays and scrimshaw . Blubber was used to make soap and cosmetics . A single whale --remember , we're talking about the largest animal on earth--could produce a lot of stuff and that meant a lot of money .
But that was then . Excepting a few indigenous settlements here and there , where local hunting using traditional methods is still practiced , whale meat if no longer a dietary staple , and whale oil hasn't fueled any lamps in well over a century . There is no byproduct taken from a whale that can't be made or obtained by other means .
In other words , any whale being killed in the open ocean today is being killed for absolutely no good reason at all . Whaling is an obsolete industry , serving no one , which only makes the cruelty of the killing that much more repulsive .
Yet the Japanese have a large , modern whaling fleet tied up in Shimonoseki , a port on the southern tip of Honshu , and they're determined to use it .
The stated reason behind the intention of killing 50 humpbacks is to measure the whale's pregnancy rates as part of a larger study of the Antarctic ecosystem . Pure bilge water , an old salt might say .
But more and more the Japanese are turning to the cultural-tradition defense , a blatant if clumsy attempt to portray themselves as the victims of cultural prejudice . That , too , is bilge water . This is no time for the world to cave in to some misguided sense of political correctness , Oh the contrary , pressure should be applied to stop . If Japan won't stop , a boysott of Japanese goods would not be unreasonable .
所以，这个句子应该是没有问题的。
more and more在这里不是限定词，而是状语，= increasingly.
blatant: 公然的，明目张胆的
clumsy：拙劣的
if在此是让步连词=though
if clumsy为省略形式的插入分句，= even if it is clumsy。
原文大意：
但日本日益转向为其文化传统辩解，明目张胆地（尽管很拙劣）企图把自己描绘成文化偏见的受害者。
