From: Sammy
BenjaminDate: Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 7:42 AM
Subject: Re: *** In response to
your email to WWF ***
Dear Mim Osterberg,
(Please reply to the bold text
questions - Thanks)
Thank you for responding to my email.
It helps to know others in the world care and are making an effort to stop
this senseless killing.
Can you give me contacts, email,
address and telephone numbers of those people in Denmark, Japan, USA and
where ever you think I can take my appeal where people have the power of
decision making to do some thing about stopping these hunts?
In the least there needs to be a
limit to the numbers that are hunted and those should be strictly allowed
for for food consumption purpose and NOT for pleasure killing or sport.
We are so helpless against what
some people will do to our natural resources and it makes a joke out of
the many organizations that are set up to protect it. Many such organizations
seem to have more reasons not to do anything concrete to fulfil the promise
upon which they were established, that is , to protect these innocent creatures.
In a few years they will be as less
regarded as the UN which seems to have become a mockery of International
unity and support where they seem to achieve almost nothing other that
publishing great words and speeches.
How do I become part of this
organization as I do have the passion and drive to persuade people with
data that we cannot deplete our planet of its natural resources and species?
I am going to use CAPITALS to put
emphasis on the following and please do not consider this as shouting like
most people assume it.
THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT IS VERY
DISTURBING :
"All of these hunts occur outside
international regulation and control."
SO
IF THE CRIMINALS DRAG ME INTO ONE OF THESE "OUTSIDE INTERNATIONAL
REGULATION" REGION, THEN THEY
CAN MURDER ME AND NOBODY CAN DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT ? IS THAT LEGAL ? DID
SOMEBODY INTENTIONALLY GIVE THE CROOKS A LOOPHOLE TO BREAK THE LAW AND
LIVE FREE AS CRIMINALS ?
This
is OUR WORLD and WE NEED TO PROTECT IT irregardless of WHERE THE CRIME
IS OCCURRING.
Truly and Best Regards,
Sammy (Samuel Benjamin)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mim Osterberg from WWF International
Online Team wrote on Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 11:19 PM :
Dear Samuel Benjamin,
*** In response to your email
to WWF ***
Your message:
I am deeply disturbed by learning
about the criminal tradition that permits the killing of dolphins and whales
in the Faroe Islands under Denmark jurisdiction.
Please read the web site provided
below and advice on what is the truth and what is not. This will help me
understand where we can go to seek the right help to stop this killing
if it is true.
http://b-inet.com/sammy/killing-dolphins
Thank You.
Regards,
Samuel Benjamin.
Our response: Dear Samuel,
Thanks for your concern and for
taking the time to write to us about this issue. There are a significant
number of hunts of whales, dolphins and porpoises (collectively known as
cetaceans) that take place around the world. The hunt shown in these
pictures is the pilot whale hunt which occurs every year in the Faroes.In
addition to this hunt, Japan takes thousands of small cetaceans in directed
hunts every year, including dolphins, porpoises and small whales such as
the Baird's beaked whale. Greenland also takes large numbers of narwhals
in a hunt that has been classified as unsustainable. All of these
hunts occur outside international regulation and control.
The International Whaling Commission
(IWC) regulates and controls directed kills of whales, and has maintained
an international moratorium on whaling for several decades. However
the IWC currently only has the remit to manage whaling of the great whale
species.
WWF has been working for many years
to pressure the IWC to expand its remit to include small whales, dolphins
and porpoises, which need the IWC's help just as much as the great whale
species do.
See the following link for WWF's
work at the IWC: www.panda.org/species/iwc
In addition, several of our partners
are doing important work to raise awareness of these hunts. See several
links below for reports on a number of hunts around the world -
Report on the Dall's porpoise hunt
in Japan, the largest small cetacean hunt in the world:
www.eia-international.org/cgi/reports/reports.cgi?t=template&a=119
Report on Baird's beaked whale hunt
in Japan:
www.eia-international.org/cgi/reports/reports.cgi?t=template&a=56
The role of the aquarium trade in
dolphin hunts:
www.wdcs.org/submissions_bin/drivenbydemand.pdf
Our partners have also been successfully
running campaigns in the countries in which these hunts occur to demonstrate
to those who eat cetacean meat the high levels of contaminants such as
mercury and PCBs that occur in some of these animals, and the health risk
that poses to those humans who eat the meat.
See the following link for a global
report on this issue by the Environmental Investigation Agency:
www.eia-international.org/files/reports84-1.pdf
as well as a report focusing on
Japan (also available in Japanese):
www.eia-international.org/cgi/reports/reports.cgi?t=template&a=165
I hope this information has been
useful - you will also find more general information on cetaceans on our
website (www.panda.org/species)
and those of our partners, EIA (www.eia-international.org)
and WDCS (www.wdcs.org)
Hope this helps. Please let us know
if you need any more information.
All the best,
Mim Osterberg
WWF International Online Team
My 12 year son found this IMPORTANT
INFORMATION : If he can understand how politics works negatively when
making critical decisions, what message are we sending to out children
???????? To learn to live in a world where nobody wants to do the right
thing and corruption and selfishness is used to make decisions ?????
Liron
Benjamin from NC wrote at Thu,
Nov 19, 2009 at 7:44 PM :
I was reading the email
that you had sent and I did some researching and found out also that the
EU was trying to stop Greenland from catching whales in the Arctic Ocean.
First Denmark was opposing this activity.
However, when the voting time came,
surprisingly Denmark took the side of Greenland in the vote to continue
whaling. Another thing that I noticed while reading this article is that
whaling is not allowed in EU water territories.
Wouldn't that mean that what
Denmark is doing is actually illegal per EU's laws.
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2009/03/14/denmark-to-back-greenland-over-whaling/
- Liron.
Ben W. from NC wrote on Wed,
Nov 18, 2009 at 8:52 PM :
Sammy,
I agree with you that killing for
"sport" is morally wrong and killing for food, less so. Killing for tradition
is a hazier ground for me. For example: the difference between a bullfight
and, say, animal sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem is huge. In one
case, the animal is teased and injured repeatedly before finally being
put out of its misery, while in the other, the animal is primped and pampered
and then killed very quickly without struggle.
Just a few thoughts.
- Ben
Narender
Kumar Jain from ???? wrote on Thu,
Nov 19, 2009 at 1:12 PM :
Dear Sammy,
I feel sad at a poor response to
such a great cause -- because, I feel, many think it is futile.
The "offending" group of these "civilised people" would claim it is their
birthright to do as they please -- whether eating dogs or snakes or killing
intelligent animals for the sport. I heard OBMA say in his Audio
book "Dreams of my father" that a Kenyan boy has to prove his manhood by
killing a lion. That is justified because the animal and the man had an
equal chance.
A calf is dragged by the teams of
horsemen playing "Buz Kashi" in Afghanistan. There is so much violence
in the world.
I read a story about a Gujrat
coast where shark whales come to breed and are killed by the local fishermen
as each animal berings Rs 100,000. A Swami convinced them that the Shark
whales come from thousands of miles to their place of birth which he likened
to a daughter coming to her parental home for their first baby, and being
killed for the greed of money by the parents. Many fishermen stopped their
killing.
Wish you have the same powers
as that Swami. God bless you in your crusade for humane treatment
of animals. Sincerely(N.K.
Jain)
Sammy
Benjamin wrote :
QUESTION TO ALL :
Does anybody have contacts in any
EU organizations ? Denmark Government ? I am gathering information on wild
life protection agencies all around the world and will contact them shortly.
Best Regards,
Sammy.
On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 8:07
PM, Sammy Benjamin wrote:
Pradeep,
I understand your point and am
sympathetic to how they "cultivate" livestock in humanly degrading conditions
and that has to change. You are also right Joe, Tom and Sam will not give
up his burgers to correct the killing of innocent creatures.
However I want to be very specific
when I quote that no living being
should be "sacrificed" to satisfy a human tradition of courage such as
the spanish bull fighting or Dane tribes becoming male adults by killing
dolphins and whales.
If they are going to consume every
animal that they kill then my voice will be subdued as the butchering of
animals for consumption may become justified by many who will drop their
support.
I love animals and cannot kill anything,
but after long hours of thinking and questioning, it became relevant ....
The Big fish eats the small fish .... this rule
was made by somebody else who created this universe. Hence you can make
your own inference from it.
There is always a natural balance
in the universe that controls numbers of any species (except humans seem
to escape that check). It has been proven that if you allow any certain
species to overcrowd the planet, they end up destroying the ecosystem that
leads to the extinction of some other species. Hence I accept that there
is a balancing act that maintains the equilibrium.
However,
people accept such sacrifice of innocent animals for the pleasure of
killing and enjoy watching it as if it were a great show to enjoy.
Many of my intellectual highly educated people will stay silent for their
own obvious reasons, unknown to me, even against these most devastating
atrocities.
From this email I will not even
generate half dozen responses and this is the most discouraging experience
of all, to put so much effort in such a cause and sticking my neck out
to fight for change, and find out that most people don't even care. This
allows the crooks to get away with bloody murder for their personal gain.
Alas, if only I was not so stubborn.
Despite all the discouragement, I will continue to fight for this cause
because I know that is the right thing to do even if I am the last man
standing.
I hope I am at least educating as
many people as possible about such crimes so that somebody somewhere will
make the right decisions. Maybe our children will come to realize how bad
their parents were and change how they live their lives and protect and
respect the environment they will inherit from us.
Regards,
Sammy.
On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 6:19 PM,
Pradeep Gajjar wrote:
Sammy:
Yes, this is outrageous - but so
is our silence when millions of other intelligent animals are being slaughtered,
in the name of tradition or to satisfy our taste buds.
If this is brutal - which it is;
it is also a daily occurance in slaughterhouses all across the world -
as well as right here in USA. Even before the slaughter - millions of animals
are enslaved and kept in cramped and filthy environments. At least these
dolphins are FREE before they are rounded up and slaughtered.
So Sammy, which damn politician
or even Joe on the street who likes his burgers, is going to even try to
oppose this? Just go around asking people at your workplace - as to how
many would be willing to give up their burgers and turkeys.
What these guys are doing to animals
- others are doing to people too. The ones with no voice and being raped,
murdered, abused by other humans backed up by "special interests", all
across the world.
We can surely raise our collective
voices - but don't think anyone at the helm cares to hear; because there
is a buck to me made in this brutality...or simply we are not coming up
with any bucks for them to work for this issue.
We also don't have a right to categorize
animals as "dumb" or "intelligent" - I think Humans are the dumbest species
on this planet, and are hell bent on pulling the plug on ourselves - how
smart is that? or maybe it is our Karma that is getting back to us?
I don't think we will get any further
than we are, unless we are ALL ready to stop looking at every other thing
we see as a "resource" to be "exploited". Some time back the west tried
to stop people in Korea and China from eating dogs - ofcourse without giving
up our own cows and pigs...and we know how far that went.
It is very sad - that the way we
are going, in the next 20 years, a huge swath of living things will be
left only in books, videos, or as stuffed animals - just like we now see
pictures of the dodo bird. Smart humans in the meanwhile will start creating
animals of their choice...most of which will come and bite our butts off.
Regards...
...Pradeep
From
: Sammy Benjamin
Date: Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 08:26
AM
Clearly, we have to do something
to STOP this cruelty. We cannot let humans destroy wild species for their
own pleasure or tradition. I am astounded that major well established wile
life protection agencies cannot do anything to stop this.
Here are various options that come
to mind, some feasible, others not :
1 - Educate the people from Faroe
Island what they are doing is WRONG.
2 - Convince the Danish government
to issue a BAN on this tradition.
3 - Monitor the Faroe Island bays
to prevent hunting of large mammals not used for consumption.
4 - Take the sea mammals far out
to sea and away from such dangerous regions where their existence is threatened.
5 - Train these mammals to recognize
danger and protect themselves, even attack when they need arises to try
and get out of hostile situations.
Any other suggestions ?
Regards,
Sammy.
From: Suresh
Nadabar
Date: Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 12:52
AM
Hi Sammy, It
is really outrageous and I had seen this just last week or so. In
fact, I googled and found some petitioning website against it, and I petioned.
You could send that website to others so that they can voice it.Another
question I would raise, going step further is how could we tolerate other
animal cruelty as well, such as slaughtering of pigs, cows, chicken, Turkeys,..etc.
Just thinking of it make me feel sick and nausea!! Have
a good week----------------------------------------------------------
From: Judith
Songavker
Hi, Plz let me
know what can we do to stop this cruel killing. It was really hard for
me to see all photos till the end. Regards,Judith
Raj. R from Apex, NC wrote on Fri,
Nov 20, 2009 at 8:12 AM :
Human beings are conscious of the
fact that they are conscious. Such acts of cruelty are self destructive
as we are all (all sentient conscious beings, whether humans, dolphins,
birds, fish etc.) connected in the ocean of universal consciousness.
Each conscious entity is a drop
in the big ocean of universal consciousness and any act that disturbs harmony
ripples across all of the ocean. Humanity is at a level that is a
reflection of our collective conscious and unconscious creation of reality.
At some level all of humanity is
responsible indirectly by inaction or complicity. In the end nature
may abandon humankind as a failed experiment as humanity did not reflect
upon their own progress of maturity and repeatedly shown tendencies towards
devolution.
Raj R
