Campaign Letter Points for letters/faxes to President Obama:
Below are points that can be used in structuring letters on the whale sell-out protest,
• Request that the president honor his campaign promise to never resume commercial whaling if elected, wherein he stated on March 16, 2008: "As president, I will ensure that the US provides leadership in enforcing international wildlife protection agreements, including strengthening the international moratorium on commercial whaling. Allowing Japan to continue commercial whaling is unacceptable."
• In a drastic departure away from this pledge, a US-backed plan was advanced at the March intersessional meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) that would reinstate commercial whaling if passed at the next IWC meeting. As written, nations like Japan will be able to resume this "unacceptable" commercial whaling.
• This plan would sanction killing of whales in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary in Antarctica and in the North Pacific; perpetuated with the discredited ruse of Japan's lethal "scientific research" whaling.
• The IWC interssesional's proposal has tinkered its wording to avoid a direct depiction of a return to commercial whaling, yet the result of the proposal would be just that. One glaring example of complicity with Japan's agenda is the word change from "Aboriginal" to "Indigenous" whaling. This switch in language not only addresses Alaskan Inuits and Greenlanders and their quotas on threatened whales, but it also assisted a Japanese ploy, wherein "Indigenous" would also apply to all of Japan's coastal whalers to increase the unsustainable plunder of whales in the North Pacific.
• The president stated that he would "ensure that the US provides leadership in enforcing international wildlife protection agreements." This unfulfilled pledge can be remedied once he compels Japan to actually honor all the agreements it has broken with impunity. Japan has violated the Law of the Sea Convention, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources , the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
• As the president promised to enforce these agreements, Japan’s breaking of these accords should be challenged by the US in the International Court of Justice, through the dispute resolution procedures of the Law of the Sea Convention, and with the conciliation procedures of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
• Request that the president, along with your particular Senators and Representative, deploy the powers of the Pelly Amendment to seek redress from the rogue whaling nations by having the US use its sanctioning powers against Japan, Norway, and Iceland until they stop whaling. (http://www.animallaw.info/statutes/stus22usc1978.htm)
• In fulfilling his promise of "strengthening the international moratorium on commercial whaling'" the president should give his support to S.3116; the International Whale Conservation and Protection Act of 2010.
• Urge your Senators and Representative to vigorously push the International Whale Conservation and Protection Act of 2010 into Law.
• The US has become a beacon for whale conservation with the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Over 75% of Americans oppose the barbaric practice of whaling. Its vital that the actions of the US insure these protections.
• Whales have proven to be extremely social, highly intelligent, communicative, and able to feel intense emotion. It has been empirically shown that the cetaceans are highly sentient beings and are not some "product" to be bartered or compromised.
• As a constituent and as someone who may have voted and rallied support for Obama's presidency, you are justified to withhold both if the president goes forward with this betrayal to both the whales and the majority of Americans.
• Obama must honor his pledge to protect the whales -- he must not act to insure their demise.
Each of the 12 letters below must be sent out separately to 12 different "influential" recipients along with the following introduction:
The Obama Administration, through its delegation to the International Whaling Commission (IWC), has agreed to a deal that would permit a return to legal commercial whaling. The agreement would legalize Japan, Iceland and Norway' s whaling which and unravel the moratorium on whaling that has been in place since 1986.
The only chance to derail this sell-out of the whales appears to be direct protest to President Obama. This President who promised a new way of doing things is capable of changing this scheme; but only if those of us who revere the ocean and the whales make our outrage known to the White House.
This isn't a "1 click" petition, but you don't have to write from scratch. The letter below has been tailored into a customized statement which will be accorded much more respect than any obviously cloned form letter. As such, the potential for your making a difference will be magnified significantly.
Please cut & paste this customized "one-of-a-kind" letter of protest and feel free to add your own commentary (such as how this will affect your future support as a voter and/or contributor) as well as material from the bullet points above. It's very important to keep this message as your individual expression so please don't forward it (to possibly become duplicated).
Please express your personal dissent by sending in an actual letter by both mail and by fax to achieve maximum impact (emails to the White House won't receive nearly the same attention). Use stationary with your letterhead if available.
Please sign with your title/or and organization; and mail and fax to:
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20500
Fax: (202) 456-2461
Also include in your letter/fax: Copied to: Senators ________, and Representative _________
Thank you
•••••••••••••••••
1)
Dear Mr. President,
Please don't sanction the resumption of commercial whaling!
I've absorbed the whaling issue in great depth over the years. ANY resumption of commercial whaling will soon lead to the same unrestrained worldwide slaughter that earlier drove most species of whales to the point of extinction.
Perhaps the following from-the-gut quote can alter this stuation:
>From a US politicianon this subject:
"Have people in power gone totally mad? How would they like a grenade tipped harpoon shot into their head, dragged screaming to the slaughter ship, then repeatedly shot with bullets and electrocuted before being hauled up and methodically chopped bit by bit to pieces. What is it they don't understand?
The public (sentiment) be damned...Power is what power does...Consume...All before it...Even the smallest fish in the seas...Or in this case, the largest mammals...We cannot restrain ourselves...Ever"
- Rep. Steve W. Lindsey, NH
Sincerely
______
2)
Dear Mr. President,
Please don't allow this nation to sanction commercial whaling. I ask you to contemplate this aspect what the killing of the highly sentient and intelligent cetaceans really means.
Humans may be the paramount tool-makers of the Earth, but the whale may be our paramount thinker. We can only imagine how a whale or dolphin perceives the stars, but they may well do so better than we. Indeed, if the power of such an awesome brain could be utilized, travel to the stars might have already been achieved. The mind can travel to realms that rockets can never reach.
The desire to travel to the stars could very well be an aberration, a need within a species that has been ecologically deprived. Intelligent species here or elsewhere in the universe may have determined that space travel is not the ultimate expression of intelligence. It may only be the ultimate expression of technology: technology and wisdom may be widely diverse expressions of different forms of intelligence.
Sincerely,
_______
3)
Dear Mr. President,
Please deny the pro-whaling compromise that the US is backing.
With whale stocks, decimation can been accomplished in a remarkably short time: the first North Pacific right whale wasn't killed until 1835, yet just fourteen years later their population was reduced to the point of commercial collapse. Note that this was even before the combined introduction in the 1860's of the explosive harpoon, the faster steamship, and the air compressor (which floated the carcasses).
Sincerely,
_______
4)
Dear Mr. President,
Please stop the promotion of the current pro-whaling position that the US is advancing.
I'll illustrate my point with the behavior of one of the pro-whaling countries:
Iceland is one of the 3 nations "going rogue" with whales. The greed of the Icelandic people recently caused the total collapse of their banking system. So, their brilliant new government somehow decided it would be a good idea to increase the kill quota to 100 Minke along with 150 endangered* Fin whales (expressly prohibited by international treaty).
Add their blatantly illegal export of whale meat to Japan to reveal the true nature of Iceland.
*currently listed as endangered on the World Conservation Union’s 2006 Red List and also classified as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Fin whales are listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
Sincerely,
_____
5)
Dear Mr. President,
Please don't allow this nation to sanction commercial whaling.
Allow me to refer to Melville's "Moby Dick" for an essential question that should be asked before allowing the US to become a pro-whaling nation.
Melville’s search for meaning is alternately illuminating and elusive, like the great while whale he searches for. A key question is asked, almost as an afterthought, at the end of Father Mapple’s famous sermon, "So what is a man if he outlives the lifetime of his God?"
Yes...really. What do you do when you no longer believe in the things that have driven you? How do you go on?
Sincerely,
_______
6)
Dear Mr. President,
Please don't turn this nation towards the disgraceful pro-whaling position. We have no right to destroy the biodiversity of this planet.
Aside from mankind's material needs, the other species and ecosystems exist for their own sake, not just as a required resource to be dominated or destroyed. Such behavior, now the status quo, is clearly insane.
All of us alive now are members of the most important generation of human beings who have ever lived, because we're determining the future, not just for a few decades, but for thousands of years.
Sincerely,
______
7)
Dear Mr. President,
I urge you to once and for all end the murder of whales. Yes, murders...this is also a moral issue. This is an example of the worst form of bigotry. People kill these sentient beings simply because they can get away with it for now and out of sheer hubris.
Whaling is a most violent form of bullying, greed, and arrogance. Please consider that Nature may just get fed up with us eating her alive.
The world’s whale stocks are a truly international resource in that they belong to no single nation, nor to a group of nations, but rather they are the wards of the entire world.
If you stop the hunts, not only will you be protecting the cetaceans and consumers who eat their heavy metal-laden flesh, you won't be contributing to the disruption of our delicate ocean ecosystems.
Sincerely,
_______
8)
Dear Mr. President,
Regarding the US condoning the Japanese-promoted pro-whaling compromise:
The Japanese say that we must respect their culture. I can only respond by asking why? What is it about Japanese culture we MUST respect? We can choose to respect the tea ceremony and rightfully so. We can choose to respect origami, ikebana, bonsai, No plays, sumo, Zen, and Shintoism. We can choose not to respect seppuku, class inequality, kamikazes, and the slaughter of whales and dolphins.
The rational conclusion is that ecology must rule over any perceived "culture" or "tradition" if it defies the tenets of ecology. Using the cultural excuse of this disgraceful practice is as if Fiji still wanted to cling to the practice of cannibalism in the name of another once-proud culture.
The opposition of the killing of anything cannot be dismissed as anti-cultural. There is no racial or cultural justification for this inhumane slaughter. None.
Sincerely,
________
9)
Dear Mr. President,
Please consider just what the US sanctioning of whaling really means. Don't be party to the slaughter of more whales.
Cetaceans do have built-in abilities like sonar that put our electronic sonar devices to shame. Sperm whales have even developed a sonic raygun, so to speak, allowing them to stun prey from a head filled with spermaceti oil to amplify and project a sonic blast. However, we expect an intelligent species to arrive in a spaceship armed with laser rayguns, bearing gifts of futuristic technologies. This is a fantasy that we can understand, that we yearn for. For us, technology is intelligence. Intelligence is not a naked creature swimming freely, eating fish, and singing in the sea.
The whale is an organic submarine. A whale may not arrive in a spaceship, but it is itself a living submersible ship. All of its technology is internal and organic. We do not accept this. The human understanding of intelligence is material. The more superior the technology, the more superior the intelligence. Yet intelligence is relative; it evolves to fulfill the evolutionary needs of a species. All successful species are intelligent in accordance with their ecological position.
Sincerely,
_______
10)
Dear Mr. President,
Please stop the promotion of the pro-whaling "compromise" position.
Whaling is a barbaric anachronism and its havoc must be reined in.
Please don't remove the ban on commercial whaling.
I believe this activity to be a disgrace on mankind; criminal in every sense of the word.
Sincerely,
_______
11)
Dear Mr. President,
Please don't promote this disgraceful pro-whaling "compromise" position.
Here's but one example why:
Norway's whaling fleet is comprised of approximately 30 vessels that are specifically built as self-contained killing/butchering vessels; each flensing the whales while onboard.
Norwegian whalers can’t kill enough whales to reach their quotas. In the past few years they've taken much less of their targeted kills. In their last season, out of a self set quota of over 1,000 whales, they were only able to kill about 500.
They don't even really know how many migratory Minke whales are in "their" waters, yet they "cull" them in the absurd belief that these baleen whales are competitors for "their" fish.
Sincerely,
______
12)
Dear Mr. President,
I am deeply disturbed with the US capitulation to back a resumption of commercialized whaling.
These cetaceans are highly sentient beings, not "product". They are extremely social, highly intelligent, communicative, and can feel intense emotion and pain. Their brains surpass humans in size and in complexity. The negative impact of these hunts on whale populations is mostly unknown, particularly with the humpbacks.
Moreover, the wholesale prices for whale meat have plummeted as the facts over mercury and other pollution levels have turned Japanese consumers against whales as food. Thousands of tons from former hunts still lay stored in warehouse freezers.
A threshold must certainly now be reached where the United States can declare "enough is enough" instead of capitulation to a few outlaw whaling states. I urge you to use all your powers to vigorously represent the 75% reasoning and caring Americans who want this insanity to end.
Sincerely,
