U.S. State Department expresses concern about Japan dolphin slaughter, supports Ambassador Kennedy
By Candace Calloway Whiting
22 January 2014 Below is the audio recording from the National Public Radio interview with State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf. It is about three minutes long and worth listening to as they discuss Ambassador Kennedy’s fresh approach as Ambassador. This is the transcript of the press briefing, it is interesting in the reaction to Twitter:21 Jan 2014 STATE DEPARTMENT DAILY PRESS BRIEFING State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf briefs reporters joining her teleconference on a range of international topics. Looks like the next question is from Elizabeth Shogren of NPR. QUESTION: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I wonder if you saw that Ambassador Kennedy tweeted that she’s deeply concerned about – by the inhumanness of drive to hunt dolphins in Japan. I wonder if you know anything about why she decided to tweet this comment and whether there’s any other U.S. reaction to that drive. MS. HARF: Yeah. Well, obviously, we – in general, in terms of why she tweeted, we communicate with the public in a variety of ways. So I don’t think I have probably more of an analysis of why she went to Twitter to talk about this. But suffice to say the U.S. does remain committed to the global moratorium on commercial whaling, and we are concerned with both the sustainability and the humaneness of the Japanese dolphin hunts. We have been very clear that this is our position, and we remain – excuse me – remain concerned about it. And the Ambassador was expressing our view that we’ve made public for a long time. QUESTION: And was there any official correspondence with the Japanese officials on this issue? MS. HARF: I can check and see. We have discussed our concerns directly with Japan. I can check and see what level we’ve discussed those concerns at. QUESTION: Thank you. MS. HARF: Thanks.
U.S. State Department Expresses Concern About the Japan Dolphin Drive, Supports Ambassador Kennedy
By Captain Paul Watson
23 January 2014 Led by U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy and supported by the Ambassador to Japan from the U.K., Timothy Hitchens, the world’s governments are finally beginning to react to the horrifically brutal slaughter of dolphins at Taiji, Japan. Adding strength to official condemnations is Germany’s Federal Agricultural Minister Hans Peter Friedrichs who stated that the most recent pictures and reports from the Taiji drive hunts were “outrageous and shocking” and “Dolphins have to be protected.” The U.S. State Department has officially backed Ambassador Caroline Kennedy’s position. The Japanese reaction to these official protests was to immediately round up a pod of striped dolphins. They brought them into the cove and killed them immediately in effect throwing blood into the face of the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. The arrogance of these thugs of Taiji is astounding but what is even more astounding is the stubborn insistence by the Japanese government that the murder of dolphins continue in the name of “culture”. This is the nation that intends to host the Olympics. This is the nation demanding support from these very allies against China. This is a nation that is depleting the tuna from the sea, illegally slaughtering whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary and allowing this small group of fishermen to disgrace their entire nation. The government of Japan is displaying massive disrespect to their allies and to the people of the world who value the lives of dolphins and whales. The world is also learning that the motivation behind these massacres is the demand from marine aquariums and dolphinariums around the world willing to pay huge amounts to enslave dolphins for human amusement. These facilities are the gladiatorial arenas of our modern world and they buy and trade dolphins like slaves, they abuse them and kill them in the name of amusement. No more is there an excuse for buying a ticket to see the enslavement of dolphins. Now every person who pays admission to enter one of these deathariums is complicit in the horror of places like Taiji. The blood of the dolphins cannot be washed from the hands of the spectators under the guise of “education”. There is an emerging planetary culture that reveres life and promotes ecological sanity and this culture of compassion and ecological understanding must take precedence over cultures that promote suffering, death and destruction. When the dolphin killers say this is their culture and we should respect their culture, we must demand in return that they respect the culture of the dolphins and that they recognize that the preservation, conservation and future of our environments and the diversity of species within these environments must always take precedence over the desires of a few individuals wishing to retain anthropocentric cultures based on the infliction of pain and death. We live in a world where human dominance coupled with ignorance and arrogance has the potential to destroy the life support systems of all life on Earth. Humanity can no longer continue to defend cultures based on the infliction of death. The slaughter of the dolphins at Taiji, the pilot whales in the Faeroe Islands, the whales in the waters off Iceland and Norway and in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary must end and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society will not rest until the killing stops and the enslavement ends.
