Dear Americans, Asians, Australians, Canadians, Europeans and New Zealanders:

Below are two videos about something that may or may not have concerned you. It is about whaling. If it does not currently concern you and has never concerned you, I challenge you to watch the following two videos, and still feel at ease with yourself to sit back and continue doing nothing about it.

The first video addresses "scientific research" as an excuse for what in truth is commercial whaling by Japan, which kills 1,500-2,000 whales of at least six species (Minke, Fin, Sperm, Sei, Bryde's and Humpback) every year. It features an Australian journalist asking the Japanese ambassador whether the Australians could kill a few Japanese people in order to understand the Japanese people better. I challenge you to not laugh out loud when you see it.

Now that you've had your laugh, it's time to get serious. The second video is Reality TV at its most graphic. You will probably cry. I didn't cry because as a child I was trained not to. But I'm doing something about it, and I ask you to do the same.

It is very simple.

1. Open your local Yellow Pages to "Automobile - Dealers".

2. Call and/or write each Japanese car dealer saying that you will not buy a Japanese automobile for as long as Japan persists with whaling.

3. Pass this on.

That's it.

If people from every city do this, the head offices of Toyota and Honda and Subaru will hear about it - an international boycott against Japanese products - and they will in turn notify the Japanese government about it.

We have tried demonstrating in front of Japanese consulates and embassies, on grounds of cruelty and conservation, but the only thing they can understand, or pay attention to, is economics.

This strategy is to pit huge Japanese industries against the small, lingering, whaling industry. If we all do it, there should be no contest.

The monstrous cruelty aside, whale and dolphin meat is overloaded with toxins like mercury, dioxins and PCB. In order to sustain the whaling industry, the Japanese whale meat industry is labeling supermarket whale meat as "health food". In order to create a new generation of whale meat consumers, the Japanese government is feeding toxic whale meat to young children in their elementary school lunch programs.

The harpooned whale in Video #2 took longer than the 8-minute-footage-itself to die. Please give the whales at least 8 minutes of your time.

If because of the above description you would not even watch Video #2, that's okay, as long as you do something.

Video #2 is not perfect. Japan kills one thousand whales in the Antarctic Ocean every year, not 3,000. But one is one too many. Also, it mentions Greenpeace and not Sea Shepherd, but is not about organizations. It is about whales, about whaling, and about ourselves.

Anthony Marr, founder
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
www.HOPE-CARE.org
see "Anti-Whaling" section.

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The Mary T. and Frank L. Hoffman Family Foundation.

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