March 25, 2006
Dear activists and friends in AR:
Today is the first day of the infamous Canadian seal hunt of the
medieval year 2006 AD. To thumb their nose at us, the unenlightened
Canadian government even increased the quota by 5,000 to 325,000. In this
tragic moment, everyone is sizzling with outrage and frustration, and in
my case as a Canadian, shame. And yet, in spite of our great passion, six
months from now, things will have cooled off, and the campaign will have
slackened. To keep the flame of our passion burning as brightly and hotly
as possible, which the seals need us to do, Anthony Marr will launch his
fourth Compassion for Animals Road Expedition (CARE-4), which will cover
31 states and 6 provinces from July 8 through December 10. (Anthony Marr)
Announcing: The fourth Compassion for Animals Road Expedition
(CARE-4) by Anthony Marr, founder of Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE - see
www.HOPE-CARE.org), sponsored in part by In Defense of Animals (IDA - see
www.IDAUSA.org). Between July and December, 2006, he will make PowerPoint
presentations and conduct media events in 31 American states and 6
Canadian provinces. Now that we are preparing for this new undertaking, we
are writing to invite your participation in this new international
campaign, and ask for your needed support - for the whales, dolphins and
seals.
The focus: The focus of CARE-4 will be for the whales, dolphins and
seals, or, double-negatively, against global whaling, the Japanese dolphin
capture/slaughter, and the Canadian seal massacre.
CARE-4 route map
For the seals: Anti-sealing activists around the world are galvanized
at this moment by the impending massacre of yet another 325,000 seals. But
come July through December, the action will have cooled off. Anthony wants
to keep the fire stoked and the heat sizzling, and the
anti-Canadian-seafood boycott ever-expanding. In CARE-3 (May through
August, 2005), Anthony turned his car into the �Seal Mobile�, with
anti-sealing posters taped on the sides, and the slogan �I AM CANADIAN;
BOYCOTT MY COUNTRY!� painted on the windows. After the first week, he lost
count of the number of friendly honks on the highway, and the number of
thumb-up signs from passers-by. With the Seal Mobile, Anthony led many
�Funeral Motorcades for the Seals�, which ranged from 3.5 km to 350 km.
350 km represents the length of a single file of 350,000 dead seals (at
one meter per seal) along the highway. Media loved it, and covered the
motorcades in droves. The two most memorable motorcades were the one from
Houston to Dallas (about 350 km), covered by all 4 major TV stations, and
the one from San Diego to Los Angeles and back (total also about 350 km).
He intends to do more of these motorcades in CARE-4, from NYC to DC, for
example.
For the whales: Having conducted overt and covert operations in Japan on
two visits in the last two years, Anthony Marr has developed a new
anti-whaling strategy never tried before, which he believes will
contribute significantly to the ending of whaling worldwide, starting with
Japan.
For the dolphins: Anthony has developed a new interspecies
communication technique which could save dolphins by entire pods from
capture and slaughter, which he tested successfully in 2004. Also, the new
anti-whaling strategy will benefit the dolphins as well as the whales.
New Anti-Whaling Strategy:
While on his second trip to Japan in November 2005 towards terminating
Japanese whaling and dolphin slaughter, and upon his return to Vancouver,
a new strategy gradually materialized in his mind. Now that it has been
fully formed, Anthony Marr believes that, given widespread participation
and generous support throughout North ! America, it has the potential to
devastate these evil industries. It is said to be a �Yin� strategy - an
excellent compliment to Sea Shepherd's Yang approach! It is built, in
part, upon the interweaving of the following observations made by Anthony
while in Japan:
#1. The Japanese government is impervious to
protests-on-compassionate-grounds from the international community,
particularly the AR movement. Japanese consulate bureaucrats laugh at
protesters. They respond to the AR movement as one would a mosquito.
#2. The AR movement has not taken significant hold in Japan, meaning
that the Japanese people are not much informed nor concerned about animal
issues; thus no significant anti-whaling movement currently exists in
Japan, and no significant action from within Japan has yet come forth.
#3. Japan is considered to be a police state (Paul Watson), and yet,
police presence is light, meaning that the Japanese people have been tamed
down, and are extremely tradition-bound and law-abiding - to Japanese
tradition and law, that is, including those regarding whaling, dolphin
capture-slaughter, food and health. Questioning, criticizing, opposing and
protesting a law, and the way it is enforced or not enforced, are not
common occurrences in Japan.
#4. Japanese media is practically government-controlled. Major news
stories, in particular potentially confrontational and controversial ones,
have to be approved by government before publication. Whereas Western
media thrive on confrontation and controversy, Japanese media shun them
(although recently, there was a very good article in Japan Times about the
dolphin slaughter, in English), meaning that media outside of Japan must
be engaged in informing the Japanese people about these issues.
#5. Whale meat is legally sold in supermarkets throughout Japan (Seiyu,
for example, Japanese equivalent of Safeway, better yet, Wal Mart, as you
will see, with over 400 outlets, 95% of which openly display whale meat
for sale). Whale and dolphin meat are found in especially high
concentration in places like Taiji, Katuura and Shingu, and Shimonoseki
where the whaling fleet assembled prior to departure for the Antarctic.
#6. Whale meat, and worse so, dolphin meat, are overloaded with
exceedingly high concentrations of toxins, particularly mercury (causing
severe brain damage and behavioral mal! function especially in children
and fetuses), dioxin (the most deadly carcinogen known to science) and PCB
(PCB-loaded beluga whale carcasses in Canada are treated as toxic waste).
Mercury concentrations in whale and dolphin meat randomly sampled
throughout Japan regularly exceed 20 ppm - 50 times the maximum allowable
concentration of 0.4 ppm set by the Japanese government itself.
#7. Japanese scientists have been publishing Fact #6 for years, and
even presenting it at the International Whaling Commission convention.
There is no way the Japanese government could claim ignorance to these
facts.
#8. And yet, in spite of #6 & #7, the Japanese government is vigorously
promoting #5, for the profit of its whaling industry, thus acting
dishonorably in its obligation as the steward for the Japanese people, and
more so, violating its own health-protection laws.
#9. The Japanese government is actively introducing whale meat into
school lunch programs and social events, touting it as �health food� and
�brain enhancer�, in its attempt to invigorate whale meat consumption.
This is tantamount to the deliberate and deceitful poisoning its own
children, for the profit of its whaling industry.
#10. The Japanese people are a long way from animal rights activism,
but they would likely respond to a human issue, especially one involving
children, their own children.
#11. Honor and respect are important fact! ors in the Japanese culture.
The Japanese government might take notice if the law-abiding Japanese
people feel and express that their government has behaved dishonorably,
and has lost their respect, and further, their confidence that it would
look after their best interest.
#12. Japan�s main moral defense for whaling and dolphin slaughter has
been the T-word - Tradition - that Japan has been killing whales and
dolphins for centuries. But centuries ago, were there mercury, dioxin and
PCB in whale and dolphin meat?
Basically, Japan has zero defense - moral, ethical, medical or legal -
for continuing whaling and dolphin slaughtering, i! ! n the judgment its
own people and in the international community, and the World Health
Organization for that matter. Its real drive is economical, and that
pertains only to the profit of the whaling and dolphin capture-slaughter
industries.
Since whale and dolphin meat is unfit for consumption, it should be
banned in Japan and worldwide. In fact, research at the Faroe Islands,
which continues its �grind� (pilot whale killing) tradition, has clearly
demonstrated severe and permanent brain damage in fetuses and children.
Norway, another whaling nation, at least urges its own pregnant women to
shun consumption of any whale meat. If whale and dolphin meat are banned
in Japan, and whale and dolphin meat consumption abandoned, Japanese
whaling and dolphin slaughter would be sunk, dragging the whaling
industries of other nations down with! ! it.
Question is: How do we inform the Japanese people about the relevant
points above? How do we protect Japanese children from their own
government? From #4 above, it is up to international media to inform the
Japanese people.
The question becomes: How do we engage media outside of Japan to take
on this cause? A newspaper in, say, St. Louis, would likely not devote
space to what it would likely consider an irrelevant Japanese issue,
UNLESS there is a local angle. And, as if by providence, greed, of all
things, has given us just such a local �hook�, and it would be a waste and
a shame, not to mention a belittling of the divine, to not employ it.
Witness Fact #13:
#13. Seiyu (see #5 above) is a close associate of Wal Mart, so close
that they own each other�s shares and share each other�s directors,
executives and policies. Wal-Mart, which owns 37.7% of Seiyu, is the
single largest shareholder in the company, and five of Wal Mart�s
executives sit on Seiyu's Board of Directors. In other words, Wal Mart is
a major driving force of Japan�s whale meat market, which drives Japanese
whaling. And there are Wal Marts in every American city.
Wal Mart is already unpopular with certain sectors of American society
for other unsavory reasons. A cooperative, coordinated, orchestrated,
nationwide campaign against �Whale Mart� will certainly make news, not
just about mercury poisoning, but about the cruelty and environmental
devastation of whaling and dolphin capture-slaughter. This news, once
made, will certainly reach the people of Japan through such
non-government-controlled channels as CNN.
To make this happen, Anthony Marr will undertake a fourth nation-wide
campaign tour. He will present his evolving PowerPoint presentation titled
Know Thy Enemy, which has motivated thousands so far, followed by a
post-presentation media event at a local Wal Mart store.
Anthony also intends to present this show to as many schools as
possible in every city, and have the students of each school write letters
to the students of a chosen sister school in Japan, directly warning them
of the dangers in consuming whale and dolphin meat, and of course the
cruelty o! f the industries. With such a direct warning, the parents would
likely take action against! their own government.
While in Washington DC, Anthony will also serve as a speaker at the Animal
Rights National Conference, August 10-14 (see
www.AR2006.org ). The theme
of the conference this year is, very appropriately, Cooperation. This
coast-to-coast Anti-Whale-Mart Campaign, as well as the Funeral Motorcades
for the Seals, involving dozens of groups from coast to coast, will serve
to illustrate the strength and power of cooperation within our movement
against a common enemy.
While on tour, Anthony will also be giving a lecture titled I. T. of
Earth - The Science of Peace, designed for those interested in charting a
course toward long term peace on Earth. I.T. stands for Integrative
Transcendence - of the nations into a single, global, internally
harmonious Planetary Organism, in which there will be no military on the
national level. I.T. is the backbone of the new philosophical system
called Omniscientific Cosmology, advanced in his book Omni-Science and the
Human Destiny (see. www.HOPE-CARE.org ).
CARE-4 is sponsored in part by:
Anthony Marr will give this project all he's got, but he will need
local help. This includes hosting a presentation, organizing an
Anti-Whale-Mart media event, and/or a Funeral Motorcade for the Seals, and
providing lodging for the campaigner and financial help for the campaign,
which will have cost upwards of $20,000 when its over at year-end.
Thank you again for your past support, without which there could have
been no campaign, let alone its success.
For the animals,
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
604-222-1169
www.HOPE-CARE.org
www.Omni-Science.org
[email protected]
Please send donations to
Heal Our Planet Earth
4118 West 11th Ave.,
Vancouver, British Columbia
Ca! nada V6R 2L6
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To contact Anthony Marr directly
Anthony Marr
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
Compassion for Animals Road Expeditions (CARE)
http://www.HOPE-CARE.org
[email protected]
604-222-1169, toll free 1-866-822-1169
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