Movie: "The Cove"

[Goldstein1984]

Today there's been some posting on DU regarding the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Bob Barker's donation to $5,000,000, and the ramming of the Sea Shepherd vessel Ady Gil by a boat from the Japanese whaling fleet.

Most people now know of Sea Shepherd because of the book, "Whale Warriors," and the Animal Planet series, "Whale Wars." The campaign to stop commercial whaling is part of a larger battle to protect cetaceans from meaningless slaughter. Another effort to stop the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan is being waged. "The Cove," a movie that documents the slaughter of dolphins in now available on DVD at http://www.thecovemovie.com/.

From the education material on "The Cove" website:

"In the 1960s, Richard O’Barry was the world’s leading authority on dolphin training, working on the set of the popular television program Flipper. Day in and day out, O’Barry kept the dolphins working and television audiences smiling. But one day, that all came to a tragic end. The Cove, directed by Louie Psihoyos (rhymes with Sequoias), tells the amazing true story of how Psihoyos, O’Barry and an elite team of activists, filmmakers and freedivers embarked on a covert mission to penetrate a hidden cove in Japan, shining light on a dark and deadly secret. The mysteries they uncovered were only the tip of the iceberg."

The dolphin slaughter is painful to hear about, the film of the process that I've seen is difficult to watch. The story of how the movie was made is fascinating. I encourage anyone who supports efforts to protect cetaceans by ending the commercial slaughter and harvest of whales and dolphins to visit the website and see the movie to learn what is being done and what can be done to stop the anachronistic practices masquerading as research and sometimes defended from behind the shield of "culture."

[LeftyMom]

1. There's also a good movie about their anti shark finning effort, "Sharkwater."

I haven't seen The Cove yet, but I can verify that Sharkwater is quite good.

[Cetacea]

2. It's on the Oscar short list for best documentary.

Let's hope wide exposure puts an end to the barbaric genocide taking place in Japan. Hell has a special place for them.

[elocs]

3. "The Cove" is available at Netflix. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

4. Dolphins are sentient beings. Killing them is murder. Period. End of story.

I know this is very difficult for some fisher folk to realize and acknowledge. The resistance is not all corporate profiteer-driven. But we simply must stop killing dolphins. They are our brothers and sisters in the ocean. They may be more intelligent than we are, but they are, at the least, comparable to us in intelligence and consciousness. The change that must occur in our attitude is like the change that occurred regarding slavery. Certain races were considered less than human, thus it was not considered a crime to treat them like cattle, to abuse them in horrible ways, to own them and enslave them and dispose of them at will--sell them, kill them. Although there are still some slavery problems in human culture (including poverty), the principle of equal human rights has pretty much succeeded. Slavery--one human being owning another--is universally condemned.

And it was very difficult to establish this principle--especially for those who were born into a slave-owning culture. Someone like Thomas Jefferson--the author of the most influential freedom document in history, the Declaration of Independence--who knew slavery was wrong, and who even tried and failed to include an anti-slavery provision in the Declaration of Independence--could not give it up because he was a Virginian. He could not rise above the culture he was born into. He could see out of it--see beyond it--intellectually. He could not get out of it, emotionally, socially, politically and economically.

Dolphins are constantly approaching us to make friendly contact. Wild creatures don't do this. They hide from us. They fear us. Dolphins, no matter what we do to them, keep trying. Why? They are extremely intelligent, as anybody who has worked with dolphins knows. So it is not stupidity that causes them to keep approaching us, despite our slaughters. They LIKE us! They feel kinship. Undomesticated dolphins--dolphins in the wild, unattached to humans, untrained by humans, undomesticated by humans--continually exhibit this behavior, this effort to be friends. There is no other example of this in nature. Even the more intelligent other animals--chimps, gorillas, elephants, wolves, whales--take extraordinary effort on our part to overcome their aversion and natural fear. They do not naturally approach us and seek friendship. Only the dolphins do this. And it's time that we recognize it for what it is--equal kinship.

For some humans, who were born into a fishing culture--and who consider everything in the sea to be food--this is a big leap of consciousness. Except for the corporate profiteer aspect of the problem--those driven by greed--the cultures involved are admirable ones. The Japanese. The Norwegians. These are progressive, well-educated people, strong supporters of human rights, strong supporters of world peace. The fisher folk among them are not "bad people" any more than Thomas Jefferson was. They are emotionally attached to their culture--an attachment that is reinforced by economics and politics. Detaching from it is very difficult. Ending human slavery was also extremely difficult, and in that case it took a horribly bloody civil war in the U.S., as well as British Navy enforcement (as England outlawed it first) and other violent conflicts (including, for instance, the slave revolt in Haiti, and Simon Bolivar's efforts in South America). It took clandestine efforts (the Underground Railroad); it took people of conscience courageously speaking up against entrenched moneyed interests. And it has required an on-going effort against bigotry to this day.

I pray that the people involved in murdering dolphins will awaken to their crime and let this aspect of their cultural tradition go the way of slavery. I applaud and support the new Abolitionists who are working so hard, often in dangerous conditions, to end the murder of these kindred beings. We have not yet decoded their language. It is very complex. One day we will know what they are saying. Meanwhile, their behavior and body language could not be more eloquent: They want to communicate with us.

[MercutioATC]

5. Dolphins are animals and "murder" has a legal definition.

Humans with dark skin may look different than those with lighter skin, but they're still HUMANS.

To draw a parallel between slavery and killing dolphins is both factually improper and offensive.

[LWolf]

6. .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7389760

[MercutioATC]

7. Your point?

Lots of scientists say lots of things.

The fact remains that dolphins are animals.

[tavalon]

10. Your fact and you're welcome to it

That "fact" is rapidly (and deservedly, IMO) becoming fluid.

[Ignis]

20. ...Because scientists shore don't know them any facts!

:eyes:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

30. Scientists have facts.

But some scientists saying that "dolphins should be treated like people" is just an opinion with no more weight than a Japanese whaler's.

[Ignis]

36. Scientists don't make legislation, as you well know.

And to assume that all of the complex arguments that various scientists have made regarding the intelligence, culture, and communication of dolphins can be gleaned by skimming a single science article from the Times is intellectually lazy in the extreme.

We're talking almost 50 years of research here, not just a single hippie scientist tokin' in his office and making shit up for a newspaper article.

If we can't use facts derived from scientific research to make legal and ethical judgments about how we should treat other species, we're no better than Creationists and Dominionists who believe that humans have some sort of magical superiority over other species...just because.

[LWolf]

50. So are humans. nt

[tavalon]

8. I think that's quite human-centric

How about if we compare killing people in war with killing dolphins?

[MercutioATC]

12. How about we compare killing tuna with killing dolphins?

No war necessary.

[tavalon]

13. That would be absurd

The level of intelligence/self awareness between tuna and dolphins is like comparing marmosets with humans. It doesn't even begin to compare.

[MercutioATC]

14. So where do you draw the line?

Is a dog too smart to be killed? A horse? A cow?

More importantly, what specific level of intelligence, measured in what manner, should be used to grant human rights to non-humans?

[tavalon]

15. I don't really know the answer to that,

but I'm smart enough to know it needs to be looked at closely. Having been in close contact with dolphins, there is no doubt in my mind that they are highly sentient and self aware. I get your slippery slope argument but, even so, we are far past time when we should assess this. It's very nineteenth century to think we should only accord personhood to humans. A belief in our divine rights over "animals" has gotten us to a very bad place and we would do well to rethink it, even in its difficulty.

[MercutioATC]

16. I'm not arguing that point.

Hell, you may even be right.

My point is that it's silly to scream about dolphin killing being "murder" until dolphins are granted status that would allow murder provisions to be applied to them.

[tavalon]

17. Sometimes getting the ball rolling on such things

requires screaming, silly or not.

[Cetacea]

26. Deleted for silliness.

[Peace Patriot]

9. You're speaking to a civil rights activist here (Alabama, 1965), so don't talk to me about

what is "offensive."

Slavery was also LEGAL. It had its LEGAL definitions. It had its self-justifications. It had its utter blindness to its own immorality. And those who owned humans with dark skin could not see them as humans. And you really had to be there, to understand what this meant as late as 1965 in the southern United States, because the mentality that viewed obvious human beings as sub-human was still visible in crude and obvious and brutal ways a hundred years after slavery was ended. Well, maybe you were there. Or maybe you are dark-skinned yourself. I don't know. I'm sorry if you find this personally offensive or insulting. I will not back down. I consider dolphins to be sentient beings. Killing them is murder.

And I don't care what "legal definitions" say otherwise. Slavery was LEGAL. Killing slaves was NOT "murder" if you 'owned' them and it was a mere "property crime" if you didn't. It made no difference to slave owners and their culture that people with dark skin had brains, could speak, walked on two legals and had opposable thumbs. They couldn't see them.

Sentience has nothing to do with physical appearance anyway. And if you were a drowning sailor rescued by dolphins you probably wouldn't quibble about it. They eat sardines. They save humans! Get it? They recognize us as KIN. And it's time we recognized them back.

[MercutioATC]

11. An Alabama "civil rights activist" should know that killing slaves WAS illegal.

Slave owners who killed slaves were often charged, convicted, and jailed in Alabama.


That said, I still believe that there is a fundamental difference between killing a human and killing a non-human animal.

[Cetacea]

33. Laws change as we evolve.

[Cetacea]

38. "They recognize us as KIN".

Thank you! And the science behind that is that they can see through our skulls and each others so they know, as we know, that we share very similar brains. And this may partially account for the natural affinity humans and dolphins have for one another.

[Cetacea]

22. It's murder and genocide. Period. End of story.

In light of what we now know, these savage barbarians need to be prosecuted.



edit: sorry Peacepatriot, I just saw your post.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

23. Kind of like how chicken farming is equivalent to the Holocaust.

:crazy:

[Cetacea]

24. Not even close to a valid comparison. Chickens are animals.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

25. So are dolphins.

[Cetacea]

27. SO are humans. So then killing them is ok.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

28. If you're the kind of person that compares chicken farming to the holocaust...

I guess this sort of silliness is important.

[Cetacea]

29. You are afraid of dolphins.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

31. Well, they are pretty rotten bastards once you get to know them.

Rape, murder, etc.

But no, I'm not afraid of them. They're kind of cute in captivity. Big googly eyes, nice smiles, little baby like chirps. If they weren't cute, no one would give a shit.

[Cetacea]

32. You hate them too.

I see your type posting that meme all over the net. Does that make them less than human? A few isolated cases don't mean much, and we don't know if pollution and genocide are driving them to violence.

Besides, they are not violent to man. Quite to the contrary they have a long tradition of saving human lives.

Hater.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

34. No more than I hate chickens, cattle, swine, etc.

"Does that make them less than human?"

Yes, Cetacea. Dolphins are significantly less than human.

"A few isolated cases don't mean anything, and we don't know if pollution and genocide is driving them to violence."

Isolated cases? Are you talking about dolphin behaviour? Because that's standard, recognized dolphin behaviour and pollution's got nothing to do with it. Weren't you just claiming upthread that you knew a lot about dolphins?

"Besides, they are not violent to man."

Well, no. Dolphins don't have legs and live on land. There have been incidents of dolphins biting humans and dragging them under, albeit these are dolphins either in captivity or used to humans so that could change behaviour. Enough with the superstitious new age mysticism about dolphins being some noble moral creature.

[Cetacea]

37. We disagree.

"Yes, Cetacean. Dolphins are significantly less than human."


Criteria? Proof?

"A few isolated cases don't mean anything, and we don't know if pollution and genocide is driving them to violence."

Isolated cases? Are you talking about dolphin behavior? Because that's standard, recognized dolphin behavior and pollution's got nothing to do with it. Weren't you just claiming upthread that you knew a lot about dolphins?"

I didn't make such a claim. If I did I apologize. And how dolphins treat each other is their own business. How do they treat us should be the question to address.



"Well, no. Dolphins don't have legs and live on land. There have been incidents of dolphins biting humans and dragging them under, albeit these are dolphins either in captivity or used to humans so that could change behavior. Enough with the superstitious new age mysticism about dolphins being some noble moral creature."

Right .
They don't live on land. So we are taking them in putting them in alien environments and they have yet to kill or mame a human. They will treat assholes like assholes occasionally and give them a little scare just to show who is boss in the oceans. We are talking about millions of encounters and not one fatality.

To your credit you recognize that some could be affected by captivity.

There is nothing superstitious about the fact that in their world, they treat us with kindness and respect. Or that they are possibly as intelligent or more so than humans. Or that they have ethics and morals. Or their own culture and language. And science is gradually catching up. It was only a few years ago that scientists were comparing them to dogs. Now they are second in intelligence to humans. In a few years they will probably be equal to humans. (You can't mess with the human ego too quickly).
Soon they will enjoy elevated status and laws will be adjusted to fit that status. Sorry. That is already happening. In the meantime we can't allow a few dozen barbarians to continue actions that are simply beyond the pale of acceptable behavior.

You can't argue with science.
But we can try to stop a few isolated individuals from practicing cruel and unusual practices on other sentient beings who are much like ourselves.





I like chickens. But let's be real here.

[Cetacea]

39. Offensive?

Watching dolphins drown in the blood of their friends and relatives is offensive. Have you even seen the movie referenced in the OP?

[Ignis]

21. Thanks for this, PP. Eloquent and moving. (nt)

[Coventina]

40. I wish I could recommend your post a million times.

Thank you.

:hug:

[skipos]

18. The Cove is a great movie. If you are squeamish, keep in mind that

there is only about 2 minutes in the whole movie that you won't like.

[shanti]

43. yes, very eye-opening

i couldn't take the screaming from the dolphins. it killed me to see/hear those amazing creatures suffering like that:( my animal loving mother declined to watch it due to those 2 minutes of gore.

[Beaverhausen]

47. I plan to see it but dread watching even 2 minutes of suffering

[Goldstein1984]

19. Lots of discussion about

parallels, or lack of them, between human suffering and animal suffering and human intelligence and dolphin intelligence. Also discussions about legal definitions. In one post, the monotheistic idea of the human dominion of Man over the rest of creation was invoked, then it was rejected in reply. The perspective created by culture was also mentioned.

I believe suffering is suffering. Yes, suffering is part of nature, but I think inflicting unnecessary suffering is a human trait. Witness the Japanese need to not only eat raw fish, which I believe is fine, to needing to see the fish still living and breathing on the plate while they consume it.

Intelligence is intelligence, and we can recognize it in dolphins and other cetaceans even if we lack the ability to quantify it. I've witnessed the play and interaction of untrained dolphins both from on-board ships and in the water while scuba diving. What I've experienced convinces me that dolphins are not "just animals" in the anthropocentric sense that it makes them subject to human whims, and it also convinces me that people who believe otherwise are quite simply wrong and would know they are wrong if they were better informed.

Legal/illegal is just a practical abstract of right/wrong. Many things that are wrong have been or are legal, and many things that are right have been or are illegal. For purposes of reaching a meaningful, moral and ethical conclusion about how humans should be treating cetaceans, I believe the legal/illegal distinction is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The biblical notion that man is separate and superior to the rest of creation is most certainly relevant and is the root cause of the difficulties in recognizing suffering in other animals, in finding common ground to discuss concepts like intelligence, suffering and rights for species other than Homo spines.

Finally, culture certainly is a factor in how cetaceans are viewed and how they are valued. But cultures evolve. If Japan uses the standard cultural defense of "our people have been doing Behavior X since time immemorial," it begs the question, how they have been doing Behavior X? How deeply rooted in Japanese culture is traveling to Antarctica in giant steel harpoon ships accompanied by a processing vessel navigating with the aid of radar and satellite ice mapping and killing a thousand whales in a season? Whaling was part of the culture of White people in New England, but there has been no argument that they are entitled to whale because their ancestors did.

In the end, I hope the argument prevails that says whaling is an anachronistic cultural practice, like cannibalism, that inflicts unnecessary suffering and death on intelligent creatures that we should view as fellow beings on this planet.

[MisterP]

41. ah, but Japan is not at all monotheistic, so we have to look for other factors

and the 25% for whaling are the same sector of Japan that believed Nanjing 1937 was really a big tea party for the Chinese, that believes whatever the Yasukuni Shrine says, and can't wait for Ishihara Shintaro's ubasute program to be adopted by the nation...

[Goldstein1984]

42. Japan is a special case

I'm going to have to Google the ubasate program.

[MisterP]

44. oh, that was a reference to his quote that "old women who live after they have lost their

reproductive function are useless and are committing a sin": he's sorta Japan's Palin, except he'll never ever retire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubasute is a (very intermittent) old custom of elder abandonment

[Goldstein1984]

46. As a grandparent very involved in the life and education of his

grandchildren, I think the sin is grandparents who hop in an RV and take off to do their own thing.

I live in Eagle River, Alaska. I can see Wasilla from my front porch.

[Peace Patriot]

48. To me, the question of Dolphins is different from all over questions about the treatment of

animals and all other issues--such as human pollution of the oceans (very, very, VERY serious), over-fishing, endangered species, biodiversity, marine sanctuaries, ending whaling, and so forth.

Dolphins have been putting out signals to us of their sentience--their highly intelligent self-awareness, and their recognition that we, too, are self-aware--our kinship--for thousands of years. Most humans didn't get it, and many still don't get it, but some of us do, at long last. I think that this is a very positive development as to our own evolution and growing maturity as citizens of the Cosmos. Perhaps, in our learning this, Dolphins can prepare us for encounters with aliens from other worlds, which are surely going to happen, eventually, if we survive our own pollution of the planet and violent tendencies. We really and truly need to expand our definition of what is "human"--because sentient beings who have evolved on other planets are not likely to look like us, or act like us, or communicate the way we do, and the odds that alien evolution has occurred in other places, have been growing exponentially with various discoveries over the last decade (the discovery of the prevalence of planets around other suns, the discovery of water in numerous places in our own solar system, the discovery of extremophiles on earth--creatures who thrive in extremes of hot and cold--and more.)

But expanding our view of what is "human" is most needed here and now, for the sake of creatures whom we have not previously recognized as sentient, but who are. It is a matter of ethics. If there are strong signs of sentience, but questions remain, we must err on the side of sentience. A mistake on this matter is too grave a mistake to risk.

There is a good episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," called "The Measure of a Man," in which Commander Data--a human-built android with consciousness--is suddenly told to report to Starfleet's science lab to be dismantled and studied. He refuses the order. And therein begins a court trial on Data's human rights. The episode is quite compelling, but I did notice one flaw, and it is this: If your lawnmower or your toaster starts talking to you, and tells you that it is a sentient being (and you are able to determine that you haven't gone wacko, or someone isn't playing a trick on you--that this is really happening), you would be obliged to begin treating that object as a sentient being. Data CLAIMS to be sentient. That should be the end of it.

This argument doesn't come up in the episode, which proceeds to trial and ends on an ambiguous note, regarding Data's emotional attachments and giving him "the benefit of the doubt." But the point is relevant to Dolphins. While they cannot speak our languages and articulate their sentience, their behavior virtually does make that statement, i.e., "you and me are alike." They "say" this to us again and again in various ways. And it is not trained behavior. It is natural to them to associate with humans, to seek out humans, to be unafraid of humans, and to try to communicate with humans--with no prompting on our part. They clearly feel kinship with us and want to communicate.

Their distinction from dogs is that Dolphins seek our company and try to make contact with us in the wild. Dogs have been bred and trained to be our companions. Wild dogs, wolves and similar species do not like us, do not seek us out, do not want us in their territory and will commit violence against us if provoked or threatened or if they are hungry and can manage to take us down. They are quite intelligent, of course. But I do not believe that they are sentient--are self-aware. We may some day discover and recognize some other quality that is equivalent to self-awareness in animals with obvious intelligence. For now--in my opinion--seeking our company in the wild, untrained, is the clearest signal we could get from another creature that they are self-aware and know that we are self-aware. And only Dolphins have this characteristic.

This is quite apart from any issue of abuse and infliction of suffering on animals--for instance, raising food animals in miserable conditions--or destruction of habitat for wild animals, or the wanton slaughter of whales. We should probably stop killing most wild animals because we have so completely decimated so many species and their environments, that we have now created a grave threat to our own species--of both climate destabilization and loss of biodiversity (the complex matrix from which we evolved!); and also, what may be a catastrophic loss of ocean fisheries to pollution and overfishing. Parts of the ocean have gone dead. Wild nature is becoming rare. Many wild creatures are becoming rare. We are losing species at an alarming rate. But conservation and humane treatment are different issues than recognizing a species as our equal--as self-aware. I have no doubt that Dolphins are, but I can understand how hard it is for some of my fellow and sister human beings to grasp the importance of this--just from an ethical point of view--not to mention its Cosmic implications: that TWO sentient species have evolved on this planet alone.

[Greyhound]

35. K&R.

[slay]

45. A disturbingly important documentary. For those that are too poor to buy it:

it is available on the usual torrent sites. I believe that this kind of movie should be bought or rented and the documentary makers compensated, but I also believe in getting their message out. If you're not super poor or you don't know how to do torrents, then nevermind - or Netflix it. If you do, it can be found at btjunkie. Difficult to watch due to the subject matter, but highly recommended.

[applegrove]

49. The Cove got a 95% on the rotten tomatoes website for movies.