Hi everyone,

I ask you all if you have any compassion in your heart to please foward the following message to everyone you know. Japan is allowing a true world attrocity to continue and it needs to be stopped. Less than a month ago, 100 Bottlenose dolphins were senseless slaughtered because these sick people like to eat dolphin sushi. Please help stop this from continuing. I urge each of you to follow the contact information below and help, your voice can help save these beautiful, intelligent animals from a horrible fate by cruel and oppressive people. Please help.

CALL TO ACTION: Futo Dolphins In Immediate Danger!!
1. We need you to immediately e-mail and fax the Japanese Fisheries officers in Futo to urge them to stop capturing and killing dolphins.

Today we received the following information from a reliable source in Japan:
Responding to an order placed by members of the dolphin captivity industry, the fishermen of Futo, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan have driven a pod of about 100 bottlenose dolphins into Futo harbor. The harbor has been sealed with a net so that the dolphins can't escape. Divers from at least two Japanese aquariums will arrive in Futo tomorrow morning to select between 20 and 30 "show-quality" dolphins for their facilities. Some of the remaining dolphins will be killed for research. What will happen to the remaining dolphins is uncertain at this time.
In 1999, after being denounced in the world press, the fishermen in Futo stopped hunting and killing dolphins. Now, five years later, they are starting again with the support of zoos, aquariums, and 'swim with the dolphins' programs in Japan and abroad. There is a great risk that Futo will follow in the footsteps of Taiji, reopening its dolphin drives and becoming a supplier of dolphins for the dolphin captivity industry.

In order to prevent this, worldwide protests are needed immediately.

WE NEED TO FLOOD THE AUTHORITIES WITH LETTERS BEFORE BUYERS FROM THE AQUARIUMS ARRIVE ON THE SCENE.

Please urge the authorities to let the captured dolphins go. Ask that no further dolphin captures take place in Futo in the future.

Silverstreak your passion is appreciated. What is the net affect to the bottlenose dolphin overall as a species. With respect to this Japanese prefecture.

Well, let me see, the fact that these are proven, self-aware and highly intelligent animals being slaughtered.

This isn't the same as fish or cows or chickens, or hell even dogs and cats. (Not that I condone dogs and cats being slaughtered but they aren't intelligent and self aware like the dolphin)

Let's just look at it this way, if 50 dolphins are killed this way everyday, that will have a huge affect on the population of them. Look at what happened to whales. Look at what happens to the Tigers and Panda, and the animals that are becoming endangered all over the world.

All I want to do is try to create some awareness to the atrocities countries like Japan are allowed to get away with.

Have you seen what the Chinese do to Bears? People in asia have no respect for nature, this is proven by the huge amount of endangered animals there and the things like this dolphin sushi hunt that goes on.

If enough of the rest of the world is told about these and each person who reads it takes just a few minutes to send one email, who knows, we may actually be able to do something.

At the very least tell people, maybe you won't send the email but someone else will.

Please just take the message via a copy paste and email it around. That's all I'm trying to do is create some awareness and hoping that it helps the population of these animals, who don't deserve to die by fish hooks and butcher knives.

Are you vegetarian Silverstreak?

No, and eating cows and chickens isn't the same thing. So don't start with that BS.

Oh okay. I just wanted to know if I could still eat the dumb stuff.

Sorry buddy. I used to live in Japan. There is no such thing as dolphin sushi.

BTW you know why whales are at the brink of extinction? It's not because of countires like Japan and Norway hunting them for meat. It's from the AMERICANS who used to hunt them for WHALE OIL. Sound familiar?

Yeah, whatever, did you visit the site, did you talk with the JAPANESE PEOPLE protesting? Did you see the people all over the world protesting it?

By the way, don't start on the Americans did this rant, we all know what Americans are guilty of and we are all pretty damn sick of talking about them.

And for the record it was countries like Russia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the UK and the USA who hunted whales to the brink of extinction.

Get your facts straight before you start a discussion you want to make people think you know something about.

I mean, your whole statement is just plain stupid.

That would be like me saying well I lived in China and I they don't eat Bear Claws. (Well guess what bonehead, they do) Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't go on. You can't be everywhere in Japan at the same time.

Dolt.

HA HA! Silverstreak doesn't understand what "discussion" means. Everyone point and laugh!

No, Silvie, I knew of a restaurant called "Kujira-ya" (Whale Restaurant.) Also whale meat is available in little tins like tuna. It says something like, "this whale was first killed for scientific stufdy" on it.
The whale meat IS NOT served raw and eaten as sushi. I did not say it wasn't eaten at all. In any case, it certainly is not an every day staple of the diet. Same goes for the bear claws in China.

I don't know who eats the whale meat. I think it's mostly old people. Whale was eaten a lot more in the past before Japan could import cattle, etc. Like it or not, it's part of the culture.

BTW Do you seriously think the only food available in Japan is sushi?

Silverstreak, endangerment and extinction are legitimate beefs. But thats obviously not what you're presenting here. You offer no suggestion or statistics that Bottlenosed dolphins are threatened by any of this. In fact you state that the fishermen in this region had stopped preying on dolphins for 5 years, leading one to assume that the local population boomed during that period. So whats the problem with them being rounded up and used for some legitimate purpose? You can fill every zoo and major aquariam in the world with animals from non-decimated populations, and you're not gonna make a dent in their totals.

This isn't kill by the thousands for cheap sushi, this is capture a couple dozen, put a few on display and diasect the rest. You cannot kill on a large enough scale to make a dent in the ecology for those purposes. THere simply isn't enough sustainable demand.

And your use of the word atrocity I believe is insulting to anyone who has or has ancestors who have lived through real atrocities. Rwanda, Auschuwitz (sp), Nanking, Dresden, etc...these are atrocities. Actual human lives being exterminated and slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands (if not millions). Torture and murder, those are atrocities. To use that word for the capture/death of a hundred dolphins is deplorable. It diminishes the impact and meaning of the word and is a cheap tactic to heighten the importance of something that just isn't that important.

You can rant about how intelligent and thoughtful dolphins are all you like, but until they start building aquatic Starbuck's and stockpiling their own WMD's, they're just animals like any other. And I suspect the only reason that there's an uproar is because these are 'cute' animals. They do not reason, they do not think, if they feel pain, I don't particularly care. As long as we're careful enough to maintain the global populations to avoid extinction and maintain a healthy ecosystem, they can kill them (or any other animal) til their heart's content. They are not human beings. They exist for our reasonable usage. And I find nothing unreasonable about the numbers being taken or the purposes for which they're being used.

Advocate for an issue that matters and take this PETA crap elsewhere.

QUOTE (EnlightenmentHK @ Dec 5 2004, 17.53)

They do not reason, they do not think, if they feel pain, I don't particularly care.

I'm sorry sir but I consider you a poor excuse for a human being.

You shouldn't use enlightenment as your username.

They are animals SAJe's, they are not sentient beings. They exist either to become hamburgers, test medicines or cheap cosmetics, to become cute little pets, or to balance our ecosystem.

If we have a purpose for them that supercedes their uninterrupted existance, than so be it.

And I'm a poor excuse for a human being because why exactly? Because I can eat a big mac without a guilty conscience?

Unless you're a Vegan SAJe, you don't have much room to talk. And if you are, even than...its questionable.

QUOTE (EnlightenmentHK @ Dec 5 2004, 18.29)

And I'm a poor excuse for a human being because why exactly?

Because a gang of dolphins just rescueded a few of us lame humans. They took no money as I recall.

I must have missed the benevolant dolphin rescuers story. And not really sure what that had to do with anything.

QUOTE (EnlightenmentHK @ Dec 5 2004, 18.29)

They are animals SAJe's, they are not sentient beings. They exist either to become hamburgers, test medicines or cheap cosmetics, to become cute little pets, or to balance our ecosystem.

Sounds like you're quoting the bible, man...

I must have missed that passage Wonkimus. Not that I've ever read the book.

its the bible due to the word of Atkins.

serouisly guys, calm down. so people have a hankering for some dolphin meat. its not harming the envionment, and its not driving the species to extinction. of all the things going on in this fucked up world right now, dolphins are not a major concern.

QUOTE (EnlightenmentHK @ Dec 5 2004, 17.53)

They do not reason, they do not think, if they feel pain, I don't particularly care.

I found that comment quite distasteful. How could you not have empathy for a creature in pain?

And no, I'm not vegetarian and I don't doubt that some of the meat products I eat come from sources that don't respect or sympathise with the animals they're in charge of. Though to say I don't care if an animal feels pain would make me just as cruel as said sources.

I'm happy that cruel battery hen practices are being outlawed. I won't think "oh crap, the price off eggs may go up".

I'm not some flaming lefty or anything. I just thought empathy for a creature in pain was a normal human emotion. Maybe I was wrong.