I just watched a documentary called, ‘The Cove’, about the 23,000 dolphins killed a year in Japan, for food and dolphin ‘circuses’.

The documentary is well made. It seemed to have lots of financial backing. Watching ‘The Cove’ I learned a lot about the great love people have for animals and fish.  I was educated on the dangers of eating dolphin food and the short sightedness of governments and entrepreneurs regarding the available amount of fish we can capture.

I found out that there is a passionate population out there which will invest millions of dollars to ensure the well being of dolphins, whales and other such ‘intelligent’ fish/animals. I myself am on a board to rescue cats so  I appreciate how important it is to have members of the world team involved in rescuing animals. Accolades to animal activists. Most of them anyway (some are just unethical in their  ‘caring’).

I am a bit baffled though because I cannot remember a similar operation going on in the world having to do with the killing fields of the Congo, Darfur, Cambodia etc. Watch ‘The Cove’ and you will see MacGyver-like techniques and equipment smuggled into Japan to video and ultimately communicate to the world the terrible atrocity being committed in a small cove in this country. 

Because of the animal activist heroic work we were able to see the bloodied cove where the capture takes place. It was horrendous to watch. Just terrible.

But to me, animals exist on our planet to remind us how important people are.

If that is indeed the case, if I am at all right, then how is it that we have forgotten this message? I am mystified by the deep, deep caring individuals have for animals and how they will go to the ends of our stratosphere to rescue one, versus our lack of vigilance for little children, men and women all over the world who are in big trouble.

While activism for humankind’s safety exists, I often wonder if it is fueled by the same energy as animal activism. I consider, if we were to take that force and superimpose it over our work on behalf of the disenfranchised in the world — what a better place we would live in.

There is outrage against the Japanese for killing 23,000 dolphins a year, and rightfully so. But where is that same outrage and willingness to act over the hundreds of thousands of children dying a year from diarrhea, a condition that is cheaply and easily resolved.*

Well done to the producers of ‘The Cove’. I will never eat Dolphin nor will I attend a Dolphin circus – in my province it’s called: Marine Land and Game Farm. I will also encourage others to stay away.

 I do call out to all peoples however, to consider the caring and  outrage you feel for the abused little puppy staring out at you from the bars of the Humane Society and and determine if your anger and frustration (at the world’s ills) is as great for  the caged five  year old in a sweat factory in Pakistan. If it is not, I respectfully suggest it should be.

I think if animal activists were in charge of  repairing our world, and its people, the job would get done.  They are a tenacious group, they are! But alas that is not the case.

Your thoughts?  

Around 6,000 children under the age of 5 die of diarrhea every day. That’s about 2.2 million every year or 1 child every 14 seconds. Approximately 26,000 children under the age of 5 die every day of relatively easily treated – or preventable – conditions (mainly malnutrition, diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria).

While our feelings are mostly focused on children, do not forget that around a million adults who usually are providing for and caring for the children also die every year of the same diseases.

http://rehydrate.org/diarrhoea/ http://www.child-survival.org/childsurvival/whatiscs.php http://youthink.worldbank.org/issues/environment/